Making America Healthy Again: Illness and Politics in the US

After Trump's reelection in 2024, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. promised to 'make America healthy again,' a mirroring of Trump's well-known goal to 'make America great again.' But what does great health look like? This course examines the relationship between politics and health in the US. In both historical and contemporary perspectives, we will explore how illness gets infused with political discourse and vice versa. How is it that competing political viewpoints inform competing meanings of what health and illness themselves are? How does political polarization impact the ways we think about our bodies? Topics including eugenics, disability, the nation-state, healthcare systems, alternative medicine, expertise, and patient-activist movements.