SOAN 180 - FS: First-Year Seminar in Sociology

Credits: 3

Fall 2018, SOAN 180A-01: FS: Health and Concept of Race (3). First-year Seminar. Prerequisite: First-year class standing only. A deep examination of how people think about what race is, and how societal conceptions of race affect people’s health, whether health policy, health outcomes, access to healthcare, or relationship to the medical establishment. We tackle questions such as: What are different conceptions of race and what are some the institutions that socialize people into understanding what “race” is? Is skin color or ethnic predisposition to diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia indicative of a biological basis for race? Should race be used as a factor in medical diagnosis and is it an important factor to account for in medical research? What are some of the causes and outcomes of racial health disparities? Does race denote something inherently biological, cultural, or structural about one’s ancestry, background, or lifestyle? In the end, students should be better able to articulate the complexities of that undergird racial disparity in health outcomes. (SS4) Chin.