We're excited to announce a third series of mini-courses for UCSF PhD students offered by the Graduate Division Dean’s Office and taught by UCSF Social and Population Sciences PhD students.
About the Courses
Open to first year students, these mini-courses build on the lessons of GRAD 202: Racism in Science by providing opportunities for reading and discussion around a more specific topic. Each course offering will focus on literature and scholarship at the intersection of race, racism, and social justice, with biomedical research and health. Students will be expected to evaluate assigned readings critically before class and to present and discuss themes in class. Students will also be expected to write and present an essay that includes critical analysis of topics covered.
Spring 2025 Mini-Courses
All mini-courses will be offered online.
Medicalizing Inequity
Student Instructor: Alex Simon, PhD Candidate, History of Health Sciences; Halle Young, PhD Candidate, Medical Anthropology
Module One: Tuesday, April 1 – Thursday, April 17, 2025
Schedule: Tusesday/Thursday, 1 pm - 3 pm PST
Description: Synopsis: This three-week mini-course examines racism in various medical milieus, with a specific focus on women of color. By considering texts, films, and historical documents, we will highlight the intersectionality of race, gender, and health. Together, we will delve into the historical and ongoing technologies of medical racism, and how people creatively maneuver around them to access the care they require.
Week 1: Pain & Perception
Week 1 focuses on the historical and scientific biases surrounding pain management in women of color in the US. We will analyze how systemic racism and gendered assumptions within medicine have shaped disparities in the treatment of pain, and the broader implication for health equity.
Week 2: Reproductive (In)justice
Week 2 will highlight racism in reproductive care, focusing on differential outcomes in pregnancy, as well as systemic of LARCs (long-acting reversible contraception) in the US
Week 3: Medical Access
Week 3 emphasizes disproportionate access to medical care in the US, demonstrating how marginalized communities often lack access to quality medical care, and the creative steps they take to work around disenfranchising structures to receive the care they need.
How Health Science Research Institutions Perpetuate Racism and Health Inequities in Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ BIPOC Populations
Instructors: Berty DC Arreguin, PhD Candidate, Sociology; Daphne Scott-Henderson, PhD Candidate, Nursing
Module Two: April 21 - May 9, 2025
Schedule: Mondays/Wednesdays, 4 pm - 6 pm PST
Description: This mini-course examines health science research institutions in the United States through a sociological lens, offering a critical exploration of systemic inequities and their impacts. The series is designed to:
- Analyze the history and contemporary realities of structural racism and heterosexism within these institutions.
- Identify and explore the root causes of health disparities affecting Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ BIPOC communities.
- Investigate how these populations experience and manage chronic illness, including their coping mechanisms and resilience.
- Equip students with strategies for conducting inclusive, ethical, and culturally responsive research.
- Through a dynamic mix of scholarly articles, group discussions, and engaging presentations, students will gain the tools to critically assess institutional practices and advocate for equity in health science research.
Objectives/Learning Outcomes:
- Analyze and interpret key contemporary sociological perspectives and their relevance to health equity.
- Apply an intersectional lens to health, utilizing it as a critical research and analysis framework.
- Examine the history and ongoing impact of structural racism within health science research institutions.
- Identify and address the root causes of health disparities affecting Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ BIPOC populations.
- Evaluate sexual and reproductive healthcare disparities, with a particular focus on the lived experiences of Black lesbian women.
- Explore how marginalized populations experience and navigate chronic illness, including their coping mechanisms and resilience strategies.
Past Mini-Courses
Spring 2024
How Health Science Research Institutions Continue to Perpetuate Racism and Health Inequalities Among Black and Latinx Populations
Instructor: Berty DC Arreguin, PhD Candidate in Sociology
Dates: Monday, May 13, 2024 - Friday, May 31, 2024
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 p.m. PDT - 3:00 p.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: This mini-course will focus on health sciences research institutions in the United States from a sociological aspect. This series aims to, 1. Cross-examine the history and present-day structural racism within these institutions, 2. Uncover the root causes of health inequalities experienced by Black and Latinx populations, and 3. Understand how these populations experience and cope with a chronic illness. Students will engage with a series of articles, group discussions, and presentations.
Colonial Legacies and Experimentation in the Health Sciences
Instructor: Bri Matusovsky, PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology
Dates: Monday, April 1, 2024 - Friday, April 19, 2024
Schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 9:00 a.m. PDT - 10:30 a.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: This mini-course on "Colonial Legacies and Experimentation in the Health Sciences" will draw on humanities and social sciences texts to consider the ways in which historical and contemporary mobilizations of categories of race have been central to medical and scientific understandings of who is (and is not) human. We will build on prior course material (Grad 202) to consider how the biological sciences interface with categories of classification including race, disability, gender, and human. We will think beyond anthropocentric conceptions of science to also question what it means to treat ethically not only people but also other non-human living beings including biological specimens, animals, and environments. We will discuss the historical background and contemporary significance of these categories of difference, paying special attention to ideas of consent, pain, and agency as they are understood today.
We will read texts which reference medical anthropology, de-colonial and post-colonial theory, critical race theory, political ecology, science and technology studies (STS), and Indigenous STS. In week 1, "Consent and Non-Consent: Colonization and Experimentation," we will read historical and contemporary sources about how colonial logics of extraction and ownership were foundational to contemporary logics of consent and experimentation. In week 2, "Cycles of Violence and Healing in Western Science," we will question the ways in which these logics continue to inform the ethics of the health sciences and medicine in the Western world. In week 3, "Inspiration from Post-Colonial Presents, Imagination of Anti-Colonial Futures," we will discuss contemporary critiques of Western science, and related responses and interventions.
Spring 2023
Exposure, Anti-Blackness, Environment, and the Body
Instructor: Sheyda Aboii, MD/PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology
Dates: Monday, April 3, 2023 - Friday, April 21, 2023 (Module 1)
Schedule: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:00 a.m. PDT - 10:30 a.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: So-called forever chemicals—carcinogenic compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyls (PFASs)—have merged with bodies and bodily formations on a planetary scale; these synthetic exposures boast temporal lives rivaling the fathomable. Connected to pasts and far-flung futures—persisting intergenerationally—these materials perform a temporal alchemy of sorts. They simultaneously abide by and exceed the temporal boundaries of crisis, of the discreet exposure-event. At the same time, the physical unevenness of such contemporary chemical exposures—a primary manifestation of environmental racism—demands that we attend to race, specifically antiblackness, as an exposure in and of itself alongside the ways in which historically exposed populations have responded to such conditions of exposure by cultivating narratives beyond descriptions of harm.
“Exposure, Antiblackness, Environment, and the Body” is a virtual mini-course exploring this multi-faceted nature of persistent yet proliferating environmental exposures on people’s health and lived experiences. Over two weeks, we will trace the thematization of exposure broadly, engaging works of film, music, poetry, social theory, and speculative fiction to stretch beyond the effects of synthetic molecules on bodies and ingrained frameworks of knowing harm. We will sample from environmental justice literatures, environmental sociology, B/black studies, B/black feminisms, humanism studies, feminist science and technology studies, and medical anthropology. We will consider how these cross-disciplinary analyses of exposure highlight the inherent tension between efforts to render the exposure apparent and efforts to think beyond the harms of ongoing exposure within the protracted setting of late industrialism.
Synthesizing across these materials, we will consider how the body surfaces as a site of structural manifestation, alternatively sensing apparatus, contested terrain, disruptor of scale, and a site wherein the social and political implications of exposure gather and converge. Together, we will cultivate a critique of a limited notion of environmental exposure that is centered on bodily harm and behavioral risk. Reading exposure expansively in this way sets distinct analyses into conversation, placing the objects and subjects of a transitive verbal action in suspense. Such an approach not only attends to who or what is exposed but also to the who or what is performing or underlying the conditions of exposure. Read together, these literatures ask: If all that exposure articulates is not contained in the synthetic molecule alone, what analyses of contemporary conditions, power dynamics, bodily experiences, and subsistence strategies might then emerge? We will conclude by reflecting on how our individual histories and professional commitments map onto these alternative imaginings of exposure and exposed life.
Health, Decolonization, and Disability in the Global South
Instructor: Kara Zamora, MA , PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology
Dates: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 - Friday, June 2, 2023 (Module 3)
Schedule: Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:00 a.m. PDT - 2:00 p.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: This mini course on “Health, Decolonization, and Disability in the Global South” centers the topic of coloniality and builds on prior course material (Grad 202) by exploring the production of race and disability as categories of Othering produced during programs/processes of colonization. In particular, this course builds on topics in a prior mini course “Colonial Legacies in Global Health” by focusing on topics such as disability in the Global South and decolonizing the health sciences. Throughout the course, careful attention will be paid to refining students’ use of broad terms such as "disability" versus "impairment", “colonial” versus “neo-colonial”, “decolonial” versus "anti-imperial" and will emphasize grounding students’ thinking around developing interventions linked to specific histories of colonization.
Spring 2022
Abolishing the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC)
Instructor: Fabián Fernández, MPH | MD candidate and PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology
Dates: Monday, March 28 - Friday, April 15, 2022
Schedule: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: "Abolishing the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC)" is a mini-course dedicated to critiquing the medical system using academic writings, short videos, podcasts, and speculative fiction to expand the horizon of what is possible. Together we will explore different dimensions of the MIC with special attention to our current moment and the impacts of COVID-19. We begin by rooting ourselves in the ways they medicine developed through colonialism before thinking critically about the ways healthcare participated in ableism, consumerism, policing, and population control. In our final class we will reflect on the ways our family histories and experiences intersect with the MIC in ways that disrupt, challenge, and work towards a more visionary approach to health and wellbeing.
Instructor Bio: Fabián Fernández is a graduate student in the joint UCSF-UCB M.D./Ph.D. program in Medical Anthropology. He researches issues of safety, workplace violence, and policing in U.S. Emergency Departments. In his time in the Bay Area, he has organized with healthcare workers from Do No Harm Coalition fighting against wage theft, evictions, and police sweeps. He has also worked to support individuals and families affected by police violence. He models his healing work from years of practice with Clínica Martín Baró, a student-run free clinic grounded in latin-american liberation psychology. He grounds himself in music, spoken word, somatic practices, and ancestral healing.
Occupational Health and Safety in Context of Racism and Exploitation
Instructor: Brianna Singleton, RN, PHN, MPH, AGPCNP-BC | PhD candidate in Nursing
Dates: Monday, April 18 - Friday, May 6, 2022
Schedule: Tuesday and Thursday, 4:10 - 7:00 p.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: Health is a choice, not made by the individual, but through the conditions of social and physical environments that are available, attractive, and accessible. Work is fundamental to human health. Most adults spend a significant portion of their life providing labor for an employer. Steady employment provides financial capital to access basic physiological needs such as food, water, shelter, and clothing. Economic benefits extend into access – or highlight social inequalities and segregation – to leisure activities, health insurance, and choice of education attainment. Every day, individuals weigh the risks of being exposed to, and possibly being harmed by, work hazards. More often than not, most people prefer non-standard work arrangements or dangerous working conditions rather than unemployment.
Exposure to racism and low socioeconomic status are the main mechanisms leading to adverse health outcomes. Employment in the United States today was founded on 400 years of slavery and longstanding imperialism and colonialism; thus, exploitation of people and resources is the basis of a ‘thriving’ economy. This mini-course is designed to explore how structural racism is the foundation of work and contributes to circumstances that increase risk for exposure to occupational hazards, illness, and injuries among lower wage workers of color. This course will highlight the intersection of law, history, and segregation that consequently increases disproportionate burden of work-related injury and illness among workers of color.
Instructor Bio: As an Adult-Geriatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner and a nursing PhD student with a specialty in Occupational and Environmental Health, Brianna’s research focuses on the unique experience of mental health and wellness among machine-based workers in the transportation industry. As an occupational health nurse and researcher, Brianna recognizes that building partnerships with local and national organizations, specifically industries that have high concentrations of workers who are vulnerable to increased morbidity and mortality due to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, or disability, is vital in achieving health equity, social equality, and a healthier Earth. Her desire is to provide high-quality patient care as a nurse practitioner and conduct evidence-based research as a nurse scientist to improve the quality of life and health outcomes of people who have been marginalized by institutional racism and social inequality.
Colonial Legacies in Global Health
Instructor: Kara A. Zamora, MA | PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology
Dates: Monday, May 9 - Friday, May 27, 2022
Schedule: Monday and Thursday, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. PDT
Maximum Class Size: 15
Course Description: This course will center the topic of coloniality and builds on prior course material (GRAD 202) by exploring the production of race and racial categories as categories of Othering produced during programs/processes of colonization. In particular, this course builds on topics in the prior mini course “Colonial and Carceral Legacies in Sciences and Medicine” by focusing on topics such as disability in the Global South, logics of Whiteness embedded in public health programs of sanitation, and other biomedicalized “civilizing processes” as processes of whitening. This course will also specifically attend to the role of the United States in global processes of colonialism, both historically and in the present, through an examination of American colonial medicine and global health programs based in the U.S. today. Throughout the course, careful attention will be paid to refining students’ use of broad terms such as “colonization” (e.g., settler colonialism within the continental US versus overseas US colonialism in the Philippines) versus “neo-colonial” US global military practices, and “decolonization,” and will emphasize grounding students’ thinking around developing decolonial interventions to specific histories of colonialism.
Instructor Bio: Kara Zamora is a 4th year PhD student in the joint Medical Anthropology PhD program at UCSF and UC Berkeley. She has worked as a qualitative/Health Services Researcher at UCSF and the San Francisco VA on regional and national studies that have focused on: Chronic pain care in safety net healthcare setting; rural access to mental health treatment among veterans; and more recently on functional status decline among older adults, and music in daily caregiving among people living with dementia. Her PhD research is focused on topics which include: postcolonial theory; American empire; colonial medicine; critical global health; chronic pain; disability in the Global South; and visual research methods such as photo ethnography and PhotoVoice.
Spring 2021
Colonial and Carceral Legacies in Sciences and Medicine
Instructor: Carlos Martinez, Medical Anthropology
Course Description: This course will examine colonial and carceral legacies undergirding the development of science and medicine in the Western world. The course will draw on texts from a wide range of disciplines, including medical anthropology, history of science and medicine, ethnic studies, and science and technology studies. Perspectives on decolonial and abolitionist responses and interventions will be explored and discussed.
Instructor Bio: Carlos Martinez is a UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellow and PhD candidate in the joint program in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. His research focuses on migrant and refugee health, post-deportation experiences, statelessness, criminality and abolition, and colonial and decolonial approaches to medicine in the United States and Latin America. His current project examines the intersecting and contradictory logics of care, violence, and surveillance ensnaring Mexican deportees and Central American refugees in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, along with the emerging forms of mutual aid and social solidarity.
The Black Experience in American Medicine
Instructor: Antoine Johnson, History of Health Sciences
Course Description: This course will explore African Americans’ complicated relationship with American medicine. It seeks to contextualize health inequities from the antebellum period through the twentieth century, including medical experimentation on enslaved Black people to social and environmental factors exposing African Americans to premature death. The course will draw upon primary sources, book chapters, and journal articles on various subjects to be explored. Students will analyze the material and are encouraged to share their perspectives while discussing the material during class.
Instructor Bio: My research examines HIV/AIDS among African Americans throughout the Bay Area from the disease's 1981 identification throughout the 1990s, highlighting ways state-sanctioned violence increased Black people's disease susceptibility, as well as government, medical, and media responses to the Black AIDS experience.
I practice the "observation and participation" pedagogical model of teaching. Both students and instructors can get bored listening to someone speak for 45-plus minutes. After teaching five classes, I have found it effective to incorporate student involvement throughout lectures where they share what they learned from assigned readings and work through their ideas. Thus, in this class, students will be encouraged to strengthen their analytical skills while sharing their thoughts on assigned material.
Historical Legacies of Racism and Futures Reimagined in Public Health, Healthcare and Biomedical Science
Instructor: Rashon Lane, Sociology
Course Description: This course will highlight the history and current-day structural racism in science, public health and clinical practice. This series aims to critique how science and public health are practiced by engaging with guest speakers, critical race theory and science and technology studies. A sociological lens will be used to explore how racism in science is constructed, including the funding of science, how research is designed, and racist practices in health care settings. Together we will examine our role as researchers and practitioners in reimagining a more equitable science.
Instructor Bio: Rashon is a doctoral candidate interested in how structural inequalities in society disproportionately marginalize social and economic opportunities for survivors of public health epidemics. Her research is centered in documenting survivor narratives and community trauma in vulnerable populations. Her current project includes documenting how communities experienced disaster capitalism after the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola outbreak. Since 2007, she has served as a Behavioral Scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in cardiovascular disease prevention. She holds a master's degree in social psychology and program evaluation from Claremont Graduate University, and a bachelors in psychology from Tuskegee University.
