SPAN 485 Colonial Medicine and Empire (taught in Spanish) 

This course explores a range of topics and texts related to the history, theory, practice and experience of medical matters in the Hispanic world of colonial-imperial medicine. Topics include the intersection of indigenous and early modern European medical cultures; epidemics; gender and medicine; New World botany and medicine; diet and food; doctors and curander@s. Our point of departure and primary focus will be colonial Spanish America and imperial Spain, although readings will also include contemporary texts about earlier periods such as Julia Alvarez’s novel Para salvar el mundo, about Francisco Balmis’s 1803 expedition to deliver a smallpox vaccine to the Americas, or Gabriel García Márquez’s El amor en los tiempos del cólera. Secondary readings by Achim, Armus, Barrera Osorio, Bleichmar, Cañizares Esguerra, Cook, De Vos, Few, and others will provide context for our consideration of the primary texts, as will additional readings on narrative medicine and medical humanities.