FYAN 102AC.  First-Year Seminar: Culture, Health and Medicine   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Provides an overview of the intersection where health, culture and political-economic power meet. It requires that students consider not only intellectually challenging materials on health and illness cross-culturally, but that they interrogate their own personal and social beliefs about bodies and the causes and responses to their vulnerabilities, as well. Medical anthropology analyzes the relations among health, illness, social institutions and cultural representations. Students pay particular attention to the ways that medical knowledge is created, disseminated and practiced in everyday life and how this affects local experiences and standards of what it means to be sick, alive, healthy or productive. Topics covered include disease classifications and categorizations; healing systems, including biomedicine; theories of body, illness and mind; the meanings and effects of new medical technologies; drug addiction; and how inequalities in health care or standards for quality of life are created and maintained. First-Year Seminars do not meet a divisional requirement in the pre-Fall 2024 WSU General Education program, and can only be used in Bucket 7 for General Education starting Fall 2024. Course includes diversity content.

FYAN 102X.  First-Year Seminar: We Are What We Eat: An Anthropology of Food   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Everybody has to eat, but what is considered food, how to cook it and what is considered healthy differs greatly between human societies. In this course, students explore the relationship between Homo sapiens and the food they eat—holistically pulling from biology, nutrition, history, archaeology, food science and cultural studies. What did humans' ancestors eat to evolve into such big-brained creatures that they are today? Is there such a thing as an ideal diet? How did humans shape food through domestication and directed breeding—and is that the same or different than GMOs? What kind of patterns are there in the different ways people all around the world perceive, cook and eat food? Through this course, students develop critical thinking and writing skills to analyze both popular and academic arguments surrounding health and food. Students participate in several hands-on, applied learning events, including a field trip to a student-selected location. First-Year Seminars do not meet a divisional requirement in the pre-Fall 2024 WSU General Education program, and can only be used in Bucket 7 for General Education starting Fall 2024. Course includes diversity content.