Professor Jenna Grant (she series pronouns)
Office hours: Tuesdays, 2:00-3:30PM or by appointment
Office: Denny 136
Email: jmgrant@uw.edu
Teaching assistant: Tess Chen (she/her)
Office hours: Mondays, 12-2pm or by appointment; in-person and Zoom (by appointment)
Office: TA loft, top floor of Denny
Email: tchen01@uw.edu
ANTH 303: Technologies of Health
Winter 2025
Monday/Wednesday 2:30-4:20pm
SAV 264
Description
How do technologies bring forward new forms of social and political life? How do history, (sub)culture, and economy configure the use of biotechnologies? We will explore questions such as these that animate recent work in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS). Topics that we will consider include infrastructure and “datafication”; design and globalization of technologies; the ethics of new technologies, including genetic testing and artificial intelligence; and technologies involved in asthma care.
The course consists of lecture, discussion, and in-class problem work. Active participation in each class session is a requirement of this course. The ability to participate in discussions is an important skill and vital to the creation of academic communities. We will cultivate critical and creative thinking about medical technologies through regular response posts on Canvas; workshopping abstracts for the final paper; and collaborative work in-class.
I cannot presume to know how the ongoing disasters of austerity, climate emergency, deportation, and dispossession are affecting you, but I know it is a lot. Too much. As an educator, I hope to build an empathetic learning community that supports your academic trajectory and opens up new ways of understanding the world. Please let me know if you are facing circumstances that prevent you from participating in the course. We will do our best to help you succeed.
Course Objectives
- To develop a critical vocabulary for understanding the interrelationships of health, the body, and technology
- To develop the ability to analyze different dimensions of technologies, including infrastructure, data, inequity, 'neutrality,' labour, race, gender, and disability.
- To develop skills to communicate orally and in writing about technology.
Course Requirements
Reading, thinking, and discussion are at the heart of this course. Please come to class prepared to discuss the readings—quotes and questions are always great points of entry.
We have randomly assigned you to a small group of 9-10 students, currently labeled by color but you are welcome to change the name. This is your group for discussion, peer review, and other in-class work that we will do over the quarter. The hope is that sticking to a relatively stable group will support learning and community in this large class.
Please feel free to ask questions and offer your perspective. If there is an issue you wish to discuss that is not on the syllabus, feel free to email or visit our office hours. Do not make disrespectful or derogatory remarks about or to other students, the professor, the TA, or the peoples and health conditions that we study. This course explores sensitive and potentially disturbing issues. Please let me know if you are concerned about a topic or reading.
I prefer to handle questions or issues in class or in student hours (Tuesdays 2:00-3:30pm) rather than by email. If something needs to happen over email, I will do my best to reply within 48 hours. I generally do not respond to email at night and on weekends. If you must miss class, ask a fellow student or members of your group for notes or help catching you up; do not email the instructor or the TA asking what you have missed. We can meet in office hours for clarification if you have questions about course materials, but this does not involve a review of what we did in class.
Please direct all inquiries about the class to the TA, Tess Chen. The TA will share concerns with me as needed.
Please do not use your phones or computers for anything other than accessing course materials and taking notes during class.
‘Bring your image’ (BYI) discussion posts on Canvas (30%): You are required to write five 250-300-word discussion posts in which you ‘bring an image’ that you create or find that enables you to expand on an important aspect of the readings for the week. Each post is worth six points (6 points x 5 posts = 30 points total). Here are guidelines for comprehensive posts:
3 points: a clear statement of the main argument of the readings, in your own words;
2 points: define at least one concept or term, using citation (Author date: page #)
1 point for providing full citation for your image (who made the image, where you found it, date if possible).
Short analytical paper (30%): You will write a 5-page paper (12-point font, double-spaced) that analyzes a theme in Breathtaking. You are welcome to bring additional course materials into conversation with the book. Details will be distributed in Week 2. The paper is due on Canvas 12 February by 11:59pm.
Zine: Exploratory ethnography of a health technology (30%): Imagine that you are an ethnographer. You want to understand the design, testing, use, or consequences of a health technology. This should be a technology 1) related to health or the body; 2) that is ‘close to home’, in other words, a technology that you, your friends, family, or community use; that you use at your lab or worksite. Create a zine that includes the following components:
- Specific topic: Which technology and which people, problems, or practices you will focus on?
- Argument: What is your main claim about this technology? What are you trying to convince us to believe? Why is this important, or interesting?
- Scholarship: The research that has already been done that is relevant to your topic and methods.
- Methods: How did you answer your research question? Digital, in-person, a combination? Interviews, observations, autoethnography (observing your own use)? What are the possible ethical issues with this topic and method? For example, privacy, vulnerability, risk, discomfort.
- Audience: To whom, for whom? In other words, think in advance about how you will share this work with the people with whom you do your research or other audiences.
The BYI and paper assignments will develop your muscles for this project. With the BYIs, you think concepts with and through images. In the paper, you analyze an ethnographic study of asthma technologies. Now let’s bring your skills together in text-image format. The zine can be paper or digital and is due in class on Wenesday 12 March. We will do a gallery walk to look at paper zines and a slideshow to look at digital zines. Details on the project will be distributed in Week 7.
Participation - in-class exercises & discussion (10%). Throughout the quarter there will be in-class (only) exercises done in small groups. For example: investigation of a topic, discussion in your group, posting to a google doc, sharing ideas with the class. These are graded on a complete/incomplete basis. No make-ups.
Grading and Evaluation
‘Bring your image’ (BYI) discussion posts (5 x 6 points) 30%
Short paper (due 12 Feb) 30%
Zine (due 12 Mar) 30%
Participation in in-class exercises & discussion 10%
Resources
Accessibility: I strive to support equal access to learning for all students in my class. If you have a disability or think you might need accommodations for note-taking or any other aspect of your coursework, do not hesitate to let me know. The Disability Resources for Students (DRS) Office will facilitate an interactive process for establishing accommodations: 448 Schmitz, Box 355839, (206) 543-8924, (TTY) 543-8925, uwdss@u.washington.edu.
Generative AI: ChatGPT is clearly a technology, and it can fall into the category of "health" depending on use and users. I prefer that you do not use generative AI for your BYI posts and your exploratory ethnography. However, you are permitted to use AI tools to assist you reading peer-reviewed articles, and revising your writing. Do not just copy text from an AI tool without reading it! Also know that the text you enter into an AI tool is not private--it will be used, perhaps sold, by the developer and potentially other companies to modify the tool and possibly other uses that are not explicit. This means that it is not okay to enter personal information about others (for example, if you interview someone for your research paper), or other people's intellectual property (writing of the professor, or the TA, or a fellow student). Importantly, you are expected to be transparent. This means that you include a brief statement that includes:
1) the prompt or prompts you typed into the AI program
2) which AI tool you used and how you used it.
For example:
“I used X AI tool to suggest about 50% of my bibliography and to provide revision assistance. I edited the AI-produced content for accuracy and style, and I take full responsibility for the content.” (thanks to Abie Flaxman for this language).
“I used Grammarly to give me feedback on my sentence structure of my BYI post this week. English is my 3rd language and I like using AI as a proofreading tool.” (thanks to Katy Pearce for this language)
I read the book/article and I didn’t fully understand it, so I asked ChatGPT to give me other examples which helped my understanding.” (thanks to Katy Pearce for this language)
“I did not understand a term in the reading, and I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me.” (thanks to Katy Pearce for this language)
To help you document and understand how your use AI, consider using track changes so you know what is written by AI and what is written by you (e.g., an idea; quotes; full paragraphs, etc.); use timestamps so you know how long you worked on an assignment; take notes on how and where you used AI.
Reflect upon whether you are using a generative AI tool ethically, effectively, and safely.
- Did you use the tool as allowed? Did you share others’ intellectual property? Are there bias concerns?
- Was the learning objective achieved? Did the tool save time or add time to my work?
- Did I input anything protected into the tool that should not be given away? (thanks to UW School of Public Health Aug 2023 Instructor AI Training for some of this language)
I am happy to talk in class or office hours about your learning and your use of generative AI. I, too, am learning these technologies and welcome the conversation.
Plagiarism: Don’t do it! For further information, please see the university policy on academic honesty https://depts.washington.edu/grading/pdf/AcademicResponsibility.pdf. The purpose of this course is to help students become critical and independent thinkers. Original thoughts and ideas will be highly valued, and students are expected to treat the work of others similarly.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).
Anthropology Academic Services Director: Laura Todd, letodd@uw.edu
Anthropology Academic Counselor: Kendall Vinyard, kvin96@uw.edu
Anthropology Librarian: Anne Davis, adavey@uw.edu, Odegaard Undergraduate Library
Odegaard Writing and Research Center: One-on-one help with writing, a lot of great documents about writing—structure, style, argument, etc. https://depts.washington.edu/owrcweb/wordpress/
Research tips! UW Libraries top ten tips for success
Student Life: Support in areas of life outside the classroom: http://studentlife.washington.edu/
Counseling Center: Free counseling resources: http://counseling.uw.edu/
Husky HelpLine, 24/7 mental health support: 206-616-7777 and https://wellbeing.uw.edu/huskyhelpline/
Crisis Connections, mental health support in the Seattle area: 866-427-4747
Title IX makes it clear that violence and harassment based on sex and gender are Civil Rights offenses subject to the same kinds of accountability and the same kinds of support applied to offenses against other protected categories such as race, national origin, etc. If you or someone you know has been harassed or assaulted, there are resources:
LiveWell Confidential Advocates: http://livewell.uw.edu/survivor-support-advocacy/
http://www.washington.edu/sexualassault/ (UW)
http://police.uw.edu/aboutus/divisions/operations/criminalinvestigations/victimadvocacy/ (UW) http://knowyourix.org/basics/ (non-UW)
http://survjustice.org/about-us/ (non-UW)
Resources (linked)
Anthropology, STS
Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience
Engaging Science, Technology, and Society
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Medicine Anthropology Theory (MAT)
Science, Technology & Human Values
Medicine, Biological Science, Global Health
Websites
The Guardian Global Development
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Data Visualizations
Zines
Libraries Virginia zine resource guide
Libraries Virginia zine archive
Zines as communication tools
Some models and inspirations: (add more!)
https://www.wangshuf.com/ai-for-whose-good
Getting into fights with data centers
ANTH 303: Health Technologies: Course Schedule
*Course readings and schedule subject to change*
Required Books
- Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press.
- Kenner, Alison. 2018. Breathtaking: Asthma care in a time of climate change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Course books: You can purchase the books or find them online at UW libraries.
Course readings: You can access the articles by the link or as a pdf on Canvas in both Modules and Files for the week.
*Note: you need to be logged in with your UW netid to access many of these materials through the library.*
Weeks 1 & 2 – Introductions & orientations: How do scholars think, study, and write about technology?
Mon / 6 Jan
First day of class. Welcome, introduction to the course, review syllabus. In-class technology reflection.
Wed / 8 Jan – Politics 1
Today and next Monday, we begin with two texts in science and technology studies (STS), one older ‘classic’ and one more recent ‘classic’. These texts explore how technologies (or ‘artifacts’ in Winner’s terms) are shape and are shaped by politics, race, data, and infrastructure. Their methodologies come from sociology, critical race studies, and philosophy.
- Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus 109(1): 121-136.
Mon / 13 Jan – Politics 2
- Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press. [Preface, pp. ix-x; Introduction ‘The New Jim Code’, pp. 1-48]
Wed / 15 Jan - Datafication of the self
The bits of digital, personal information we passively or actively contribute to technology development (and profits) raise questions about who is responsible for health, and about technology’s ever-changing role in shaping the thinkable answers to these questions.
- Schüll, Natasha Dow. 2016. Data for life: Wearable technology and the design of self-care. BioSocieties 11: 317-333.
Further (optional)
Joseph, Nancy. 2021. Tracking your life. UW College of Arts & Sciences Perspectives, 9 July.
Assignment
Bring Your Image #1 due 11:59pm on Canvas
Discuss short analytical paper assignment.
Week 3 – Infrastructures
Mon / 20 Jan – NO CLASS – MLK Day
Wed / 22 Jan – Infrastructures of health care
Infrastructures of health care include the power grid, water supply, roads, and internet. Some scholars have argued that people—trained healthcare professionals for example—are also an infrastructure. We will consider how technologies depend upon and also circumvent infrastructures in health care systems, and how technologies relate to ideas of modernity. Further optional readings come from medical anthropologists writing about austerity and health financing.
- Beisel, Uli et al. 2016. The complexities of simple technologies: re-imagining the role of rapid diagnostic tests in malaria control. Malaria Journal
- Street, Alice. 2014. Rethinking infrastructures for global health: A view from West Africa and Papua New Guinea. Somatosphere
- Street, Alice. 2014. Rethinking infrastructures for global health. Our Changing World Lecture Series, University of Edinburgh. (video)
Further (optional)
- Appel, Hannah, Nikhil Anand, and Akhil Gupta. 2015. The infrastructure toolbox. Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology online, 24 September.
- Dao, Amy and Mark Nichter. 2015. The social life of health insurance in low- to middle-income countries: An anthropological research agenda. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 30(1): 122-143.
- Carney, Megan and Bayla Ostrach. 2020. Austerity, not COVID-19, strains national health care systems. Somatosphere
Assignment
Bring Your Image #2 due 11:59pm on Canvas
Weeks 4 & 5 – Breathtaking
Mon / 27 Jan
This week we begin Alison Kenner's Breathtaking about asthma care in the United States. We will think about different kinds of health technologies that are involved in the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of this prevalent and complex condition. We will pay special attention to how technologies mediate between different scales of harm and support which involve systems (health care infrastructure, air pollution, environmental exposure) and individuals (self-monitoring, self-medicating, training breath).
1) Kenner, Alison. 2018. Introduction and Chapter 1, pp. 1-56. Breathtaking: Asthma care in a time of climate change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2) Explore at least one asthma-related app. Kenner writes about "Asthmapolis", which is now "Propeller Health", but there are many more.
Wed / 29 Jan
Continue Breathtaking. Moran-Thomas’s essay looks at the encoding of race in a low-tech device, the pulse oximeter, which took center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Kenner, Alison. 2018. Chapters 2 & 3, pp. 57-113. Breathtaking: Asthma care in a time of climate change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Assignment
Bring Your Image #3 due 11:59pm on Canvas
Mon / 3 Feb
We consider an important question of how infrastructure--what Kenner calls, "chronic care infrastructure"—relates to self-tracking apps (remember what we learned in Week 3!).
- Kenner, Alison. 2018. Chapter 4, pp. 115-148. Breathtaking: Asthma care in a time of climate change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wed / 5 Feb
We finish Breathtaking.
- Kenner, Alison. 2018. Chapter 5 & Conclusion, pp. 149-185. Breathtaking: Asthma care in a time of climate change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Prepare for your assignment next week, the abstract for your exploratory ethnography of a health technology.
Assignment
No BYI – use the time to work on your paper.
Week 6 - Inequity and seeming neutrality
Mon / 10 Feb
- Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press. Chapter 1 ‘Engineered inequity’, pp. 49-76.
Wed / 12 Feb
- Moran-Thomas, Amy. 2020. How a popular medical device encodes racial bias. Boston Review, 5 August.
- IN-CLASS: Kantayya, Shalini. 2020. Coded bias. 7th Empire Media. (UW Libraries and Netflix)
DUE: Short paper, on Canvas by 11:59pm
Week 7 – The technological fix and imaginations of the proper human
Mon / 17 Feb - NO CLASS – Presidents’ Day
Wed / 19 Feb
This week takes us to philosophical questions about ethics, imagination, and the nature of the human in the design and use of medical technologies.
- Watch the talks by Adrienne Asch and Dorothy Roberts at the 2010 Tarrytown Meetings, a forum on biotechnologies and social justice. Come prepared to write and talk about points of convergence and difference between the Tarrytown talks and at least one other reading or video from this class.
- Borodina, Svetlana. 2021. Unfixing blindness: Retinal implants and negotiations of ability in postsocialist Russia. In Remaking the human: Cosmetic technologies of body repair, reshaping & replacement. Alvaro Jarrín and Chara Pussetti, eds. Pp. 207-223. New York: Berghahn.
- Jackson, Liz; Alex Haagaard, Rua Williams. 2022. Disability dongle. Platypus: The CASTAC blog, 19 April. https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/disability-dongle/
Assignment
Bring Your Image #4
Discuss the zine assignment in class.
Week 8 – Gender, (self)surveillance, and automation
Surveillance is a significant topic in technology studies since the work of Foucault’s Discipline and punishment on institutions like hospitals, schools, and prisons that shape, through force and through other means, the ways that we move through the world in our bodies, and how we ‘do the discipline’ on our own (sometimes, not always…). Think back, too, to Schüll’s (2016) “data for life” that we read in Week 3.
Mon / 24 Feb
How is the regulation and use of everyday technologies, like bathrooms and cars in the U.S., implicated in the performance of gender?
- Beauchamp, Toby. 2018. Going stealth: Transgender politics and U.S. surveillance practices. Durham: Duke University Press. [Introduction ‘Suspicious visibility’, pp. 1-23; Chapter 3 ‘Bathrooms, borders, and biometrics’, pp. 79-106.]
- MacLeish, Ken. 2020. Care and the nonhuman politics of veteran drunk driving. Cultural Anthropology 35(1): 23-30.
Further
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-anti-trans-laws-are-anti-science/
https://glaad.org/transgender/allies
https://kctransguide.org/category/for-providers/
Wed / 26 Feb
Automation promises to make processes more efficient, less biased. Yet as we have seen this quarter, technologies require humans to program, train, and correct them. Drones require human sensors; AI requires human data labelers. At what cost? Two of these short readings expose the mental health toll of automation-related labor. The video talk by Obermeyer argues that automating decisions about end-of-life may in fact be more humane.
- Bryant, Brandon. 2017. Letter from a sensor operator. In Life in the age of drone warfare, Lisa Parks and Caren Kaplan, eds. Pp. 315-323. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Arroyave Bernal, Carlos Andrés. 2024. The hidden dangers of data labeling in AI development. Reflections, blog of Society for the Social Studies of Science. https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=36940
- Obermeyer, Ziad. 2017. If a machine could predict your death, should it? TEDxBoston, 24 October. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeGJax4SLP0
Assignment
Bring Your Image #5
Further
Onuoha, Mimi and Mother Cyborg (Diana Nucera). 2018. A people’s guide to AI. Allied Media Projects
Campolo, Alexander & Kate Crawford. 2020. Enchanted determinism: Power without responsibility in artificial intelligence. Engaging Science, Technology & Society 6.
Dounia, Linda. 2023. In/Visible. Curated show on Feral File.
On AI models and misdiagnosis
More on predictive AI from UW
Week 9 – Genetic technologies: Indigenous feminist and biopolitical approaches
Mon / 3 Mar
Reardon, TallBear, and Garrison analyze how genetic technologies are enrolled in projects to construct identity in biological, ethnic, and cultural terms. Reardon and TallBear look at genetic research with Indigenous groups in the U.S. and Australia; Garrison focuses on the Navajo case in more detail. The question of property (and relatedly, sovereignty) looms large: who owns DNA and knowledge produced from it?
- Reardon, Jenny and Kim TallBear. 2012. Your DNA is our history: Genomics, anthropology, and the construction of whiteness as property. Current Anthropology 53(S5): S233-S245.
Wed / 5 Mar
- Garrison, Nanibaa’. 2013. Genomic justice for Native Americans: Impact of the Havasupai case on genetic research. Science, Technology & Human Values 38(2): 201-223.
Further reading (optional)
Research, Evaluation, Data Collection, and Ethics (REDE) Protocol for Black populations in Canada: https://rede4blacklives.com/the-protocol/
Week 10 – Technologies for (healthy) solidarity
Mon / 10 Mar
- Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press. Chapter 4 ‘Technological benevolence’, pp. 137-159; Chapter 5 ‘Retooling solidarity, reimagining justice’, pp. 160-197.
- Bring an example of a technology that seems to support health and social solidarity, either in the way it was developed, designed, tested, or its effects. We will discuss in small groups in class.
Wed / 12 Mar
IN CLASS: gallery walk-through and slide show of zines!
DUE: Zine. Digital: by 2pm on canvas; paper: in during class.
Technologies of health and medicine at UW:
https://magazine.foster.uw.edu/features/information-systems-yingfei-wang/
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/study-looks-achilles-heel-insulin-pump-technology
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/engineers-adapt-smartphone-blood-sugar-screening
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/app-helps-curtail-ptsd-and-drinking-after-sexual-assault
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/study-video-app-eases-methadone-dose-confirmation-burden
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/ai-equal-humans-text-message-mental-health-trial
Rethinking the ventilator: https://artsci.washington.edu/news/2021-09/rethinking-ventilator
Decolonizing science: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decolonizing-science/id1551577928
Race correction and medicine: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/25/health/race-correction-in-medicine-history-refocused/index.html