WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2011-2012       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Ritual, Health, and Healing

ANTH 289
Fall 2011 not offered
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 both historically and ethnographically. 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.

Essential Capabilities: Intercultural Literacy, Interpretation
Students learn to interpret systems of health and healing in cross-cultural and historical perspective.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH
Course Format: DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on APR-16-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459