How to Take Over and Revise a Medical Ethnology Course in the Post-Everything Era

Abstract

Nearly all university lectures have faced the challenges of taking over a course from colleagues. Yet the conceptual and practical challenges of this process are rarely discussed in higher education. In this article, I describe my experiences of becoming the course convenor of an existing medical ethnology course and revising it. The first challenge was to make the course my own, while also maintaining the existing positive aspects. A secondary, but related, challenge was to update the course material in relation to contemporary social movements that have called for more attention to power, privilege and inclusivity in the classroom.