You are being watched and measured. And you are not alone. For over a century, a global web of state, commercial, and individual surveillance has observed and measured an ever-widening variety of bodies, situations, and spaces. As our bodies have become legible to authorities and to ourselves, they have come to serve as identity documents, markers of kinship, and signs of entitlement or otherness. This module will explore the ways in which new ideas, knowledge and technologies have enabled states, societies and individuals to identify and assess their citizens, police their borders, and generate self-knowledge. From the invention of the ‘average man’ in the 19th century to the rise of home DNA testing kits and biometric passports, we will look at what it means to ‘measure up’ in modern society, and ask: how, when and where should our bodies be subjected to measurement, by whom, and for what purposes? Case studies will include fingerprinting, DNA profiling, and the all-too-familiar bathroom scale; others will be selected by students.
This module explores mass migration, ideas of belonging and emerging cultures of health and welfare in the era of border control and formal citizenship -- that is, from the late nineteenth through to the twentieth-first century. It will examine the patterns, pathways and outcomes of the continuous large-scale movements of population across the globe so characteristic of the modern period. Through case studies of international, imperial and diasporic migrations, it will assess migrants’ significant and reciprocal impacts on the systems and institutions of the state, including those associated with health and welfare. Finally, we will examine the relationships and intersections between ethnicity, race and migration, and the ways in which close scrutiny of migration can generate new perspectives on gender, sexuality, dis/ability and class. This module will actively engage with present-day issues involving migration, ethnicity and health, such as responses of governments and health care providers to migration ‘crises’; and the (perceived and actual) cultural, social and epidemiological impacts of migrants on host communities and cultures, in light of historical perspective. How do we write and speak about the history of migration during a migration crisis?
In the 2022-2023 academic year, our case studies will include responses to migration in the USA, from Ellis Island to the Borderlands; emigration and immigration in the British Empire; and the experiences of African migrants in Europe and North America.