ANTHR-274 Medical Anthropology: Objects, Subjects, and Narratives
Medicine does more than diagnose and treat illness. It produces knowledge about bodies, shapes understandings of health and disease, and influences how individuals experience themselves and others. This course examines medicine as a social, cultural, and political practice through three interconnected themes: objects, subjects, and narratives. Drawing on ethnographic research and critical social theory, we explore how medical knowledge is produced, how bodies become objects of scientific inquiry and intervention, and how medical categories and institutions shape identities, experiences, and social relations. We consider the material worlds of medicine, from pharmaceuticals and medical technologies to the human body itself; the formation of medical subjects through diagnosis, treatment, and care; and the narratives through which illness, suffering, and healing acquire meaning.
Standard Course (40)
Credits
1
Notes
Engaging with questions of power, knowledge, embodiment, and inequality, students will examine topics including medicalization, mental health, pharmaceuticalization, biological citizenship, structural violence, and the politics of life and death. Throughout the course, we ask how medicine both reflects and transforms the societies in which it operates.