Studying at York
A Picture of Health: The Mass Media & Public Health in the Twentieth Century - HIS00093M
Module summary
What do Superman, Bette Davis and Kylie Minogue all have in common? Each has been used to persuade people to safeguard their health and consider the issues affecting other people. With the advent of new media technologies in the twentieth century public health officials became convinced that mass media had to be used to improve public health. Educating people and keeping them informed about the health situation was seen to play a key role in the enduring fight against disease. People got their information and formed opinions about health from a variety of unofficial sources as well, including popular magazines, films, advertising and television, as well as from official propaganda. There were multiple discourses about what it meant to be healthy, suffer disease, or interact with medical professionals.
This course examines media images of public health in different national contexts across the twentieth century, as well as international strategies. It will explore how and why imagery was produced and disseminated, and how it shaped public opinion. In each session we will study different public health topics through the ‘lens’ of the media. Students will have the opportunity to engage with a variety of source materials including posters, ephemera and photographs and will discuss questions about content, creators, audiences, purpose, and intended versus received meaning.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Spring Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
The module aims to:
- Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation;
- Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
- Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.
Module learning outcomes
After completing this module students should:
-
Understand the key differences between, and be able to critique, methods and approaches to using visual sources as part of historical analysis.
-
Be able to identify key primary sources and collections.
-
Appreciate how historians of medicine have used visual sources to explore different issues connected to public health across the twentieth century.
-
Be familiar with the technologies and approaches used in visualising health, and the role of prominent groups such as public health educators, international organizations, advertisers and charities in this representation
Module content
Teaching Programme:
Students will attend eight weekly two-hour seminars in weeks 2-9.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
-
Introduction: key themes and intersections in visual culture and the history of medicine.
-
To Your Health: Public Health Education 1: 1900-1939
-
Public Health and Popular Culture 1: 1918-1939
-
Fighting Fit: Public Health Campaigns Go To War
-
Public Health Education 2: the post-war years
-
“Nurse, the screens!” Doctors and Nurses on television and film
-
International Perspectives
-
Apocalypse soon – health warnings and health panics in the mass media
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
Students will complete a 2,000-word formative essay, due in week 6 of the term. They will then submit a 4,000-word assessed essay for summative assessment in week 1 of the following term.
For further details about assessed work, students should refer to the Taught Masters Degrees Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Following their formative assessment, students will receive oral feedback at a one-to-one meeting with their tutor and written feedback consisting of comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission. Tutors are also available in their student hours to discuss formative assessment. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
Berridge, Virginia and Kelly Loughlin. Medicine, the market and the mass media: producing health in the twentieth century. London: Routledge, 2005.
Bonah, Christian and Anja Lauko¨tter (Eds.). Body, capital, and screens. Visual media and the healthy self in the 20th century. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020.
Hansen, Bert. Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009.