Natural Science 0271 - Culture, Illness, and Healing

This is an introduction to the rich and growing field of medical anthropology, its theories and methods, as well as its clinical, public health, and policy applications. It will focus on how ethnographic research and social theory can enrich our understanding of medicine in both its traditional and modern forms, and it will assist students in understanding key issues in health and medicine that are often left out of standard approaches. Our goals will include: thinking about human illness and suffering in all of its social, cultural, political, and moral complexities; exploring both the universality and the local embeddedness of the human condition; and engaging with critical issues of medicine and care in the United States and around the world. Topics will include: the experience of illness and human suffering, the interaction of biology and society, issues of caregiving, conceptions of the body, global medical ethics, natural disasters and disease pandemics, and political violence and humanitarian intervention. Throughout, we will emphasize: a) the vantage point of the local worlds in which people experience, narrate, and respond to illness and other forms of suffering, and b) the ways in which large-scale forces contribute to such local experience.

Writing and Research Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives In this course students are generally expected to spend at least 6 to 8 hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time.