MEDFL5320 ¨C Medical history: sources, methods and historiographic questions

Course content

This course provides an opportunity for critical academic reflection, taking your own research project as the departure. In this course, we help you historicize your project and give you some basic skills in academic history. You will learn some basic theoretical and methodological concepts in the field of history, know more about how historians produce their knowledge in a scientific way, and you will learn how to search for a well researched article in medical history. A two-day course is clearly not enough time to give a substantial introduction to the history of medicine as such, but you will get a crash course on the history of important events. In order for you to understand how historians do research and write their academic texts, we select one topic in the history of medicine where you will read and discuss texts. Currently, this topic is the history of global health.

Substantial time in the course will be dedicated to discussing your own projects in a historical perspective, and together we will discuss the heuristic and methodological challenges that characterize the subject of medical history. We will place special emphasis on how to identify and work with relevant sources, thus helping you prepare your exam. The ambition is that after completing this course, you will have the structure of your exam paper and an outline of the most important sources you will use. By historicizing your own project both during the course and when writing the exam you will be able to reflect academically on your own project, a skill that is important when you will write up the introduction to your thesis. This course is designed for students that are writing phds that are not in the history of medicine.

Learning outcome

Knowledge

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• Describe certain key events in the history of medicine in the Western World
• Explain basic skills in medical history research such as the distinction between primary and secondary sources, historical? methodology and source criticism
• Explain where historians can go to find primary sources

Skills

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• Do a literature search in the history of medicine, and explain how it differs from a literature search in the biomedical sciences
• Discuss what characterizes a scholarly, well researched text in the history of medicine
• Create a thesis statement/an argument in the history of medicine
• Discuss what distinguishes historical research from biomedical research
• Provide an academic reflection on their own phd project based on the historical development in your field
• Discuss, taking their own phd project as departure, how medical concepts, knowledge and practice change over time and how this development is formed by and in turn forms the society in which it develops
• Discuss their own phd project in light of historical trajectories
• Historicize their own phd research project using primary and secondary sources

General Competence

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• Reflect on how medical concepts, knowledge, practice and research methodology change over time

Admission to the course

The course is restricted to students at the Medical Student Research Programme at the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Dentistry, UiO.

Students at The Medical Student Research Program apply for admission to the course in StudentWeb

Responses to applications for admission to the course are sent by e-mail 1-2 weeks after the application deadline.

The course has joint enrollment with the PhD course HES9320 ¨C Medical history: sources, methods and historiographic questions.

Overlapping courses

• 3 credits overlap with HES9320 ¨C Medical history: sources, methods and historiographic questions.
• 3 credits overlap with MF9320 ¨C Medical history: sources, methods and historiographic questions (discontinued).

Teaching

The course is taught over two days with six hours of teaching each.

You have to participate in at least 80 % of the seminars to be allowed to take the exam. Attendance will be registered.

Types of teaching:

Seminars on chosen subjects from medical history, group discussions on prescribed reading and individually guided work when it comes to identifying sources for one¡¯s own work. The course¡¯s calculated number of study points includes preparatory reading.

It is expected that participants participate both in such work and contribute results from it in the class room. Important: The provided reading will in part be of a type unfamiliar to participants who do not have a background in humanities. It is recommended to take this into consideration through staring one¡¯s ow preparation early.

We expect that you send a ? page abstract of your Medical Student Research Programme project four weeks before the course¡¯s start. We shall use it in teaching and you should therefore expect that it is to be shared with other of the course¡¯s participants.

Examination

Individual written assignment with submission deadline three weeks after the end of the course.

You have to participate in at least 80 % of the seminars to be allowed to take the exam.

Language of examination

You may write your examination paper in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.

Grading scale

Grades are awarded on a pass/fail scale. Read more about?the grading system.

More about examinations at UiO

• Use of sources and citations
• Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
• Withdrawal from an exam
• Illness at exams / postponed exams
• Explanation of grades and appeals
• Resitting an exam
• Cheating/attempted cheating

You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.