KS 400N

Alternative health is undeniably popular at the moment. Consumers buy billions of dollar’s worth of alternative health products and services every year. Celebrities are positioned as alternative health experts while alternative health experts become themselves celebrities through the complex mechanisms of popularity, fads, influence(rs), and fandoms. The rise of alternative health practice in the West is a relatively new cultural practice, albeit with historical antecedents, that produces particular ways of understanding the self in relation to bodies, communities, and society as well as abstract concepts such as wellness and sickness. This course examines the broad and far-reaching concept of alternative health and its corollary, alternative medicine, through the framework of critical cultural studies. We will explore what it means for alternative health to circulate in (and out of) popular culture, and various public spheres, as well as the relationship of alternative health to public health. Although focusing primarily on the rise of alternative and complementary medicine in the West since the 1970s, the course will also examine the history of heterodox approaches to health and medicine. The course will explore some of the diverse practices and discourses that fall under the umbrella term of alternative health, including wellness; Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM); the anti vaxx movement; Yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi; complementary medicines (such as chiropractic care, osteopathy, etc.); dietary, nutritional, and herbal supplementation and medicine. We will collaboratively explore the intersection of alternative health and social justice, and the relationship of alternative health discourses to contemporary public health crises.