Ritual, Health, and Healing
ANTH 289
Spring 2016 not offered
|
| Crosslisting:
SISP 289 |
| Course Cluster: Health Studies, Service-Learning |
Modern medicine has long imagined itself in opposition to and better than so called traditional medicine as well as ritual and religious healing. We will challenge this dichotomy in this seminar, exploring on the one hand the phenomenologies and politics of encounter between local systems of healing and global biomedical knowledge and on the other, the moral and material worlds of ritual and religious healing. What kinds of mode of knowing are rituals? How do rituals heal and what do they heal? What can rituals contribute to the health of individuals and communities with health understood as a political project in these dire times of environmental toxicity, world hunger, wars, and economic inequity? How might ritual and bodies talk back to hegemonic power?
Topics will be the intersections of illness, subjectivity, and socio-historical experience; spirit possession; shamanism; indigenous medicine; gender and healing; epistemologies of embodiment; colonialism and affliction. We will also look at emergent integrative models in modern medicine. |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Note: These titles are subject to change.
Michael Taussig, SHAMANISM, COLONIALISM AND THE WILD MAN: A STUDY IN TERROR AND HEALING, selections
Stacey Langwick, BODIES, POLITICS, AND AFRICAN HEALING ISBN: 978-0-253-22245-9
Sudhir Kakar, MYSTICS, SHAMANS, AND DOCTORS: A PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO INDIA AND ITS HEALING TRADITIONS ISBN ISBN 0-226-42279-8 1
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, IN AMMA'S HEALING ROOM: GENDER AND VERNACULAR ISLAM IN SOUTH INDIA ISBN: 0-253-21837-3
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
|
Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly reading response exercises, three short analytical papers, and one final 8-10 page paper. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
|
|