Classes
Gender and Health
Looks at the intersection of gender, health policy, and health care organization around the world. Topics include critical medical anthropology, politics, poverty, and the social production of illness and healing. This course examines the intersection of gender, health policy, and health care organization around the world. Gender is frequently a central contributing (though sometimes ignored) factor to people’s health. Men and women have different biologies, and it thus stands to reason that their lives (social, economic, political, and biological) would have an effect on their health. What causes men to have different illnesses than women? What places one gender at greater risk for certain illnesses than the other? How do men and women across the world experience health policies? Are they affected and constrained by similar factors? How do their work lives affect their experiences with health? How is the body medically produced? How do poverty and development play a role in people’s well-being? Through an inquiry-based approach, these and other topics will be addressed in this class.
The Culture of Medicine
The Culture of Medicine Syllabus
Biomedicine is increasingly polarized by the lay public, with arguments ranging from disillusionment with its practice to an extolling of its abilities to solve social and medical problems. Debates have been waged over the perceived greed, avarice, and abuses of medical power; the efficacy of medical training; and how physician burnout and stress result in poor patient treatment. Yet these concerns are tempered by calls to action where medicine is not only seen as a social good and human right, but where physicians are the keys to social transformation through technological and care-giving innovation. How does such a paradox exist within a system of healing? Why is biomedicine so fraught with these opposing views? How did this system arise, and how does it become a culture of its own—with its own language, belief system, rituals, and ethos? This course will address some of the questions about medical ethos and practice across space and through time. The course is divided into three parts. The first part lays the building blocks, where we discuss the origins of biomedicine and how doctors in the global North are trained. The second part addresses clinical ethnographies from across the world, especially the global South, including Malawi, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and Botswana among others. The third and final part is aimed at understanding data analysis; using data collected on illness and the culture of medicine, we will use the software MAXQDA to learn how to understand and analyze data. This final section will provide students important transferrable analytical skills.
How Do Doctors Think? (College Seminar)
Please visit csem.nd.edu for the specific descriptions associated with each College Seminar section and to learn more about the course. College Seminar is a unique one-semester course shared by all sophomores majoring in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. The course offers students an introduction to the diversity and distinctive focus of the College. Specific sections vary in topics and texts (i.e. there will not be a shared reading list), but all feature an interdisciplinary approach, commitment to engaging important questions, employment of major works, and emphasis on the development of oral skills.
Analytical Methods in Anthropology II
Analytical Methods in Anthropology II Syllabus
This course provides grounding in some of the methods of qualitative data analysis present in the field of anthropology. The course’s focus is to help students develop skills that students can use to systematically and rigorously analyze anthropological data. During the semester, students will explore a range of approaches and will cover analytic skills that cut across traditions including theme identification, pattern recognition, content analysis, text analysis, KWIC, and schema analysis. Students will learn techniques and protocols in data arrangement and visualization that are appropriate for different analytical methods. It is a hands-on class where students will be able to work on their own data (or data provided to them by the professor). Collaboration and collegiality will be integral to the course success.
Fundamentals of Social & Cultural Anthropology
Fundamentals of Social & Cultural Anthropology Syllabus
Introduces the basics of social and cultural aspects of anthropology. Explores issues of human cultural diversity across cultures and through time. Looks at key theoretical, topical, and ethical issues. This course introduces students to the field of social-cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropologists are primarily interested in exploring issues of human cultural diversity across cultures and through time. This course will explore key theoretical, topical, and ethical issues of interest to cultural anthropologists. We will examine diverse ways in which people around the globe have constructed social organizations (such as kinship and political and economic systems) and cultural identities (such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class) and we will consider the impact of increasing globalization on such processes. Throughout the course we will consider how different anthropologists go about their work as they engage in research and as they represent others through the writing of ethnographies.
People, Environment, & Justice
People, Environment, & Justice Syllabus
Analyzes the intersections of populations and environments, examining both industrial components and traditional environmental knowledge. This course will work to identify major environmental issues facing today’s global population, their causes, and potential solutions.
Anthropology of Reproduction
Anthropology of Reproduction Syllabus
Explores a variety of reproduction-related issues: pregnancy and childbirth, midwifery, reproductive freedom, and the politics of the nation-state as they affect human reproduction and its relation to people’s choices and behavior. In this course we will examine a variety of issues related to reproduction. We will concentrate on anthropological studies related primarily to reproductive health throughout the life cycle such as sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth, midwifery, reproductive freedom, and the politics of the nation-state as they affect women’s (and men’s) reproductive lives. We will use ethnographic readings and examples from around the world to illustrate our discussions and gain an understanding of the complex intertwining of local and global politics regarding reproductive experiences and choices. An integral part of the course will be an ethnographic research project wherein you will apply anthropological theories and methods.