Ritual, Health, and Healing
ANTH 289
Fall 2013 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
SISP 289 |
| Course Cluster: Service-Learning |
Modern medicine in its colonial and postcolonial history has long imagined itself in opposition to ritual and religious healing and as progress over "traditional" medicine. In this course, we will problematize this narrative historically, ethnographically, and methodologically. We will explore on the one hand the moral and material worlds of ritual and religious healing in a variety of settings and, on the other, the phenomenologies and politics of encounter between local systems of healing and state-sponsored medicines increasingly intent in the present moment on promoting secular and neoliberal models of global health and civil society. Topics include the intersections of illness, subjectivity, and socio-historical experience; spirit possession; shamanism; indigenous medicine; gender and healing; epistemologies of embodiment; colonialism and affliction; and alternative medicine.
In addition, through a weekly movement lab and because the body is so integral to human ritual, health, and healing, we will use physical explorations, exercises, and improvisations as an additional means of inquiry into concepts significant to the study of ritual and healing. Putting texts, con/texts, and soma in conversation, we will explore questions like: What kinds of mode of knowing are rituals? Why are bodies and embodiment so critical to healing rituals? How do rituals heal and what do they heal? What can rituals contribute to the health of individuals and communities as a political project? And how do rituals talk back to hegemonic systems? |
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| Credit: 1.5 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Michael Taussig, SHAMANISM, COLONIALISM AND THE WILD MAN: A STUDY IN TERROR AND HEALING, ISBN: 9780226790138
Sidney Greenfield, SPIRITS WITH SCALPELS: THE CULTURAL BIOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS HEALING IN BRAZIL. ISBN: 9781598743685
William R. LaFleur, LIQUID LIFE: ABORTION AND BUDDHISM IN JAPAN. ISBN: 978-0-691-02965-8
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, IN AMMA'S HEALING ROOM: GENDER AND VERNACULAR ISLAM IN SOUTH INDIA ISBN: 0-253-21837-3
Todd Ramón Ochoa, SOCIETY OF THE DEAD: QUITA MANAQUITA AND PALO PRAISE IN CUBA, ISBN: 780520256842
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Examinations and Assignments:
Reading responses, class presentation, midterm essay, and final research project. |
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| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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