Introduction to Medical Anthropology 400:212 Summer 2001
Room: Cobb 115
Time: MWF 1:00-2:50 pm
Gabriella Coleman
email: egcolema@midway.uchicago.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday mornings by appointment.
Requirements
Class Participation 10%
Twice Weekly Write-ups 40%
Final Class Project 50%
Aside from class discussion, students are required to turn in a one page summary of the readings, which should include a basic summary, your own comments, and 1-2 questions. You will be required to turn in two per week. The questions have to be e-mailed to me by 9 a.m., the morning of class and the summaries can be turned in class or emailed to me before class.
The final project is a paper between 5-10 pages that can take one of two forms. You may pick your own paper topic (with my approval) or do the assigned class project. The project consists of picking a chronic illness or condition (such as Multiple Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Lyme Disease, Autism) and following its Usenet discussion group for three weeks and researching personal and advocacy web pages related to the condition. You will then be required to write a paper on the condition and the issues that patients raise in light of the different topics and issues we read and discuss. Usenet newsgroups can be found here
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No outside reading is required for the class project although I will handout a bibliography on chronic illness and social movements as suggested readings. I also recommend reading any media articles on the illness. A more specific set of questions will be given in the next week to help frame and structure the paper.
Papers are due on Monday, July 30 9 am.
Texts at Seminary Coop:
Arnold, David
1993 Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century
India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Browdin, Paul
1996 Medicine and Morality in Haiti: The Contest for Healing Power. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Desjarlais, Robert
1992 Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas.
Philadelphia: University of Penn Press.
Farmer, Paul
1999 Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Luhrman, TM
2000 Of 2 Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry. New York:
Knopf.
Rapp, Rayna
1999 Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis. New York:
Routledge.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy.
1992 Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Monday June 25
* Introduction
* Kali Mai Healing, movie
Conceptual and Methodological Issues: An Introduction to the Academic Terrain
Wednesday June 27
Comaroff, Jean
1978 Medicine and Culture: Some Anthropological Perspectives Social Science and Medicine 12b: pp. 247-254.
Scheper-Hugehes, Nancy and M. Lock
1987 The Mindful Body: A Prolegomena to Future Work in Medical Anthropology
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1(1) pp. 6-41.
Osborne, Lawrence
2001 "Regional Disturbances." New York Times Sunday Magazine. May 6.
pp. 98-102.
First Time Anthropology Students
Shultz, Emily A. and Robert H. Lavenda
1998 Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition.
Chapter 2 "Culture and the Human Condition." pp. 18-30
Optional:
Comaroff, Jean
1980 "Healing and the Cultural Order: The Case of the Barlong boo Ratshidi of Southern Africa." American Ethnologist pp.
Young, Alan
1976 Some Implications of Medical Beliefs and Practice for Social Anthropology.
American Anthropologist pp . 5-24.
The Political Economy of Illness and Healthcare
Friday June 29
Farmer, Paul
1999 Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues Introduction,
Introduction, Chapter 1, 4, 5, 6
Monday July 2
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
1992 Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Introduction
and Chapter 1, 3, 4, and 5.
Wednesday July 4
Holiday.
Friday July 6
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
1992 Death Without Weeping Chapter 7, 8, 9
Finkel, Michael
2001 "Complications." The New York Times Sunday Magazine. May 27.
The Religious and Moral Dimensions Of Healing
Monday July 9
Browdin, Paul
1996 Medicine and Morality in Haiti Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, 8
The Bio-Medical Paradigm
Wednesday July 11
Good, Byron and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
1993 Learning Medicine: The Construction of Medical Knowledge at Harvard
Medical School. Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of
Medicine and Everyday Life. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock eds. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 81-107.
Lantos, John
1997 "Medical Education and Medical Morality," Do We Still Need Doctors.
New York and London: Routledge. pp. 65-81
Tomes, N.
1998 The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in Everyday Life.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press. skim Introduction and read Chapter 1 and
Chapter 7.
Friday July 13
Arnold, David
1993 Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-
Century India. Introduction, Chapters 1, 3.
Monday July 16
Arnold, David
1993 Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-
Century India. Introduction, Chapter 4, 5, 6 and Conclusion
The Embodied, Aesthetic, and Lived Experience of Illness
Wednesday July 18
Levi-Strauss, C.
1963 The Effectiveness of Symbols. Structural Anthropology pp. 186-205.
Desjarlais, Robert
1992 Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal
Himalayas Chapter 3. pp. 63-90
Good, Mary-Jo Delvecchio and Paul Browdin, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman eds
1994 "Pain as Human Experience" and "A Body in Pain--The Making of a World
of Chronic Pain," pp. 1-30 (Chapters 1 and 2). Pain as a Human Experience.
Berkeley, University of California Press.
Wednesday July 18
.
Rapp, Rayna
1999 Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis
In America Chapters 1, 2,3
Friday July 20
Rapp, Rayna
1999 Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis
In America Chapter 4, 7, 8, 11.
Monday July 23
Luhrman, TM
2000 Of 2 Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry. New York:
Knopf. (selected Chapters)
The Chronic Experience of Illness
Wednesday July 25
Movie: SAFE (Todd Haynes, Director)
Murphy, Michelle
2000 The "Elsewhere within Here" and Environmental Illness; or, How to
Build Yourself a Body in a Safe Space. Configurations pp. 87-120
Dumit, Joe
1998 Symptomatic, Ill and Structurally Damned: Notes on Liminal Creativity and Social Movements. Paper available at http://symptom.mit.edu
Groopman, Jerome
2000 "Hurting all Over," The New Yorker. November 13, 2000. pp. 78-89.
.
Friday July 27
Papers are due.