Fall 2025 CLA Courses: Health in the Arts and Sciences
CLA students, as you plan your fall 2025 schedule, explore courses that investigate health, medicine, and wellbeing through the lens of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Whether you’re interested in global health, medical writing, mental health, or health equity, these classes offer critical insights into how culture, communication, ethics, and environment shape human health. Perfect for pre-health students, policy thinkers, and anyone curious about how we care for ourselves and others—these courses combine liberal arts learning with real-world health issues.
Dive into the cultures of the world and learn how the different cultural and social practices influence the health, medicine and illnesses of each society.
Explore significant environmental issues through the analysis of texts from diverse literary genres. Analyze the contexts of texts and learn about scientific principles, technological constraints, and public policy to assess suitable responses.
Examine the connection between scientific discoveries and the deterioration of economies and environments that impact global health in its entirety. Topics will range from food insecurity, pollution, antibiotic resistance, climate change, and the role of grassroots movements in creating positive social change.
This course provides an overview of theory and research that lies at the intersection of mass communication and public health. We examine the potential for media exposure to influence public health outcomes, both as a product of people's everyday interactions with media and the strategic use of media messages to accomplish public health goals. To this end, we will explore large-scale public health campaigns in the context of tobacco, obesity, and cancer screening. We also will explore news media coverage of controversial health issues, such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and health information in entertainment media, such as smoking in movies. This course seeks to understand whether media messages have had intended and/or unintended effects on public attitudes and behavior. Although our focus is on mass media, interpersonal, medical, and digital media sources will be considered as well.
Music has the power to heal. Get into the field with this class and learn the methods and materials to apply that art to clinical settings.
Dive into the moral problems confronting physicians, patients, and others concerned with medical treatment, research, and public health policy.
This course explores foundational theories and current research in health psychology, focusing on the dynamic, bi-directional relationships between psychological processes and physical health. Topics include the impact of stress and coping mechanisms, psychological adjustment to chronic illness, and the role of mental and emotional factors in the development and progression of disease. Students will also examine strategies for promoting health behavior change and improving overall well-being.
Learn about the “hidden” disabilities of communication disorders and how they impact an individual’s health and wellbeing, especially when compounded with other conditions.
Study the artistic choices and narrative strategies that go into representations of health, illness, and trauma in Latin American films.
Why does inequality exist? How does it work? These are the essential questions examined in this class. Topics range from welfare and poverty to the role of race and gender in getting ahead. We will pay particular attention to social inequities—why some people live longer and happier lives while others are burdened by worry, poverty, and ill health.
Health care is a fundamental right, but access to it is not shared evenly by all. Explore how women's health is affected by the health system across different nations and how women's activists are taking an active role in shaping healthy societies.
Gain the skills to write for and navigate the fields of science, medicine and health while learning all about how the different stakeholders like patients, scientists, and government officials communicate.
What does it mean to be healthy, and who gets to be well?
What does it mean to be healthy, and who gets to be well? In CLA, we believe health and wellness are shaped not only by science and medicine, but by history, language, culture, policy, and human connection. From sociology to Spanish, music therapy to medical ethics, CLA students and faculty are using the tools of the liberal arts to address complex public health challenges and improve well-being across communities.
This story was written by Zayna Amanat, an undergraduate student in CLA.
