The Critical Health Colloquium foregrounds interdisciplinary perspectives on health systems and education. These perspectives include those that focus on political economy, institutionalized forms of social reproduction, the history of medical institutions, and cultures of work in the healthcare system. One area of special investigation is the relationship between universities, medical centers, and federal research funding: what is the present and historical impact of this alliance on the education and healthcare systems in the US?
The Critical Health Colloquium also explores the following topics:
- the social and political structures that authorize medical knowledge;
- the financing of health institutions;
- the healthcare labor market, including the reconfiguration of labor via automation and deskilling; and
- the rise of liberal arts and humanistic health curricula in higher education.
The Colloquium incorporates the presentation of works in progress by Swarthmore faculty, workshops with scholars and organizers from Philadelphia and across the U.S. focused on the intersections of health and higher ed, the collaborative creation of a research guide to support organizers at the intersection of health and higher ed, and a convening that looks to the past, present, and future of academic medicine.
Fall Schedule of Critical Health Colloquium Events:
Critical Health Colloquium: Works in Progress with Elise A. Mitchell
October 21, 1pm, TLC Conference Room, McCabe Library
“The Morbipolitics of Caribbean Quarantines” is the third chapter of Dr. Elise A. Mitchell’s book manuscript, Morbid Geographies: Enslavement, Epidemics, and Embodiment in the Early Modern Atlantic World (under contract with Penn Press). This chapter develops the concept of “morbipolitics” as it weaves together the stories of countless enslaved African arrivals who found themselves sick with smallpox and subject to circum-Caribbean quarantine policies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Open to faculty and staff from Swarthmore and our greater Tri-Co community.
Space is limited, please RSVP by 10/14 [RSVP form linked here].
Snacks and beverages will be served!
Access details can be found here [AccessAble website linked here]
Critical Health Colloquium Reading Group on Merlin Chowkwanyun’s All Health Politics Is Local
October 29, 12pm, TLC Conference Room, McCabe Library
Join us to discuss a short selection from Merlin Chowkwanyun’s book, All Health Politics is Local, (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). All Health Politics is Local argues that health dilemmas in the US are shaped by local social topography, including political machines, neighborhood organizations, racial politics, urban development, anchor institutions, and political-economic shifts. RSVP is required, space is limited. The first 10 respondents to this form will also receive a copy of All Health Politics is Local, (pick-up details forthcoming – please expect to receive an email).
Open to faculty and staff from Swarthmore and our greater Tri-Co community.
Space is limited, please RSVP by 10/21 [RSVP form linked here].
Snacks and beverages will be served!
Access details can be found here [AccessAble website linked here]
Critical Health Colloquium: A Conversation with Merlin Chowkwanyun (Columbia) on Health/PAC
November 10, 4pm, Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Formed in New York City in 1967 as an outgrowth of Students for a Democratic Society, the Health Policy Action Center, or Health/PAC, developed a comprehensive political economic analysis of the city’s–and then the nation’s–healthcare system. The organization published a regular newsletter in which the group coined terms like the “medical industrial complex” and “American health empire” that have had lasting power in accounting for hospitals, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and other organizations seeking profit from care.
In this event, Professor Merlin Chowkwanyun will discuss how a group of researchers developed and circulated the Health/PAC Bulletin, outline the shape of Health/PAC’s analysis of the American health empire, and consider the role of worker-informed political economic research in healthcare in the present. Professor Chowkwanyun has been pivotal for digitizing the Health/PAC Bulletin and chronicling the organization’s history in several articles and in their book, All Health Politics is Local (UNC, 2022). They are Donald H. Gemson Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
This event is free and open to the public and our greater Tri-Co community.
Access details can be found here [AccessAble website linked here]
