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Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University

Department of Technology, Culture, and Society STS 2904 B Special Topics: Medical Anthropology

Fall 2014 Prof. Barbara Andersen

Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30am-12:20pm; RGSH 304

To contact professor: baa247@nyu.edu Please be aware that I may not answer course emails between the hours of 6pm and 8am. Office: LC 143 Office hours: Thursdays 12:30-1:20, or by appointment

Course Pre-requisites Completion of first year writing requirements. Course Description How does culture affect human health? How do new pharmaceuticals change social practices and values? What can epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria reveal about the ways that power and resources are distributed worldwide? Medical anthropology examines these and other questions through ethnographically grounded research on the intertwining of cultural, environmental, political, economic, and biological processes. This course will track the “social lives” of diseases and offer cultural perspectives on medical practices and technologies. Course Objectives At the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:

• Discuss the broad scope of medical anthropology • Identify how ethnographic and other qualitative research methods are practiced

within medical anthropology • Analyze how disease concepts and healing practices vary cross-culturally • Analyze how social inequalities influence health and illness • Analyze the cultural impact of new medical technologies, drugs, and scientific

practices • Summarize complex academic articles and books and relate their arguments to

non-academic texts and personal experiences

Course Structure Classes will be a mix of lectures and group discussions. This is a reading-intensive course. Many readings are complex and use anthropology-specific terms and jargon. Students should come prepared to discuss the readings; if you donʼt understand something, make a note of it and ask in class.

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Readings The required texts for the course are: Hewlett, Barry and Bonnie Hewlett. Ebola, Culture, and Politics: The Anthropology of an Emerging Disease Dumit, Joe. Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health Herring, D. Ann, and Alan C. Swedlund, eds. Plagues and Epidemics: Infected Spaces Past and Present. Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl All required texts will be available in the NYU Bookstore as well as on reserve in Dibner library. Shorter readings are available as PDFs on Classes and are marked C on the class schedule. Course Requirements Please read and comply with NYUʼs policy on Academic Integrity: http://cas.nyu.edu/page/ug.academicintegrity. You must submit original work and use proper citation formats in all written assignments. Papers will be screened by the Turnitin anti-plagiarism application prior to grading. Students who plagiarize or cheat will receive a grade of F in the course and disciplinary action will be taken. Attendance and participation 10%

• You must attend all course meetings and contribute to discussions. If you miss a class because of illness, please notify me by email (baa247@nyu.edu) and provide medical documentation to Judith Simonsen (Dibner Hall Room LC240C). If you will not be attending class because of a religious holiday please notify Ms. Simonsen at least fifteen days in advance and she will contact me.

• This is a reading-intensive course. Read all assigned texts before coming to class. If you donʼt understand something, ask!

• Be attentive and respectful. Do not use your phone or social media during class time—I will notice, and it will affect your grade.

Presentation of discussion questions 10%

• Each student will be responsible for leading one class discussion by presenting three discussion questions drawn from the dayʼs readings. You must pick your presentation date by Thursday, September 11 through the following form: https://docs.google.com/a/nyu.edu/forms/d/1mr_OY1V25uapFyW9EL72TU-tLuSRSGPP9BpquYbU8ow/viewform?usp=send_form

Papers 30% (2 @ 15% each)

• You will write two 1200-1500 word papers. The topic of the paper will be announced two weeks before the due date. The first paper will be due Tuesday, October 7, and the second will be due on Tuesday, November 25.

• Grading rubrics will be provided with paper topics.

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• Please submit papers through Classes, saved as .doc or .docx files. Midterm test Tuesday, October 21 25%

• This will be an in-class test covering all materials (readings, lectures, and films) from September 2 to October 16. The test will comprise 4-6 short answer questions and 1 essay question.

Final exam Date TBA 25%

• The date and location of this exam will be scheduled by the Registrar. This exam will cover all materials (readings, lectures, and films) from October 23 to the end of the semester. It will comprise 6-8 short answer questions and 2 essay questions.

Disability Accommodations If you are student with a disability who is requesting accommodations, please contact New York Universityʼs Moses Center for Students with Disabilities at 212-998-4980 or mosescsd@nyu.edu. You must be registered with CSD to receive accommodations. Information about the Moses Center can be found at www.nyu.edu/csd. The Moses Center is located at 726 Broadway on the 2nd floor. Class Schedule T, September 2 Course Introduction—Syllabus Review Th, September 4 Introduction to Medical Anthropology

• Erickson. Historical Origins of Medical Systems. C • Hewlett and Hewlett, Ch.1-2

T, September 9 Explaining Illness

• Foster. Disease Etiologies in Non-Western Medical Systems. C • Glick. Medicine as an Ethnographic Category. C • Csordas. The Sore that Does Not Heal: Cause and Concept in the Navajo

Experience of Cancer. C

Th, September 11 Healing and Curing • Levi-Strauss. The Effectiveness of Symbols. C • Mattingly and Lawlor. The Fragility of Healing. C • Hewlett and Hewlett, Ch. 3 • In-class Film: The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America

T, September 16 Medical Pluralism

• Crandon-Malamut. Medical Dialogue and the Political Economy of Medical Pluralism: A Case from Rural Highland Bolivia. C

• Bates. Why Not Call Modern Medicine ʻAlternativeʼ? C

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Th, September 18 Health Disparities • Castro et al. Plagues and Epidemics, Ch. 13 • Löwy. Plagues and Epidemics, Ch. 15 • Hewlett & Hewlett, Ch. 4

T, September 23 Health Transitions

• Barrett. Plagues and Epidemics, Ch. 5 • Noymer. Plagues and Epidemics. Ch. 8 • Whyte. Chronicity and Control: Framing Non-Communicable Diseases in Africa.

C Th, September 25 Globalization and Health

• Hewlett & Hewlett, Ch. 5-end • Quesada et al. Structural Vulnerability and Health: Latino Migrant Laborers in the

United States. C • PAPER TOPIC #1 ANNOUNCED IN-CLASS

T, September 30 Colonialism, History, and Structural Violence

• Farmer. On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below C • Kelm. Plagues and Epidemics Ch. 11 • Seay and Dionne. The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty,

diseased place. C Th, October 2 Disability and Debility

• Livingston. "Reconfiguring old age: Elderly women and concerns over care in southeastern Botswana." C

• In-class Film: Liebe Perle T, October 7 Chronicity and Identity

• Estroff. Self, Identity, and Subjective Experiences of Schizophrenia: In Search of the Subject. C

• Russ, Shim & Kaufman. Is there Life On Dialysis? Time and Aging in a Clinically Sustained Existence. C

Th, October 9 Biological Citizenship Pt. I

• Petryna, Ch. 1-2 • PAPER #1 DUE

T, October 14 FALL RECESS – NO CLASS Th, October 16 Biological Citizenship Pt II

• Petryna Ch. 4-5 • Dumit Ch. 1

T, October 21 MIDTERM EXAM Th, October 23 Pharmaceuticals

• Dumit Ch. 2-6 + conclusion

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T October 28 Addiction • Bourgois. Disciplining Addictions: The Biopolitics of Methadone and Heroin in the

United States. C • Stromberg, Nichter, and Nichter. Taking play seriously: low-level smoking among

college students. C • In-class film: Bevel Up

Th, October 30 Climate Change and Health

• Singer. Plagues and Epidemics, Ch. 2 • White-Newsome et al. Strategies to Reduce the Harmful Effects of Extreme Heat

Events: A Four-City Study. C T, November 4 Nutrition and Obesity

• Popenoe. Ideal. C • Hardin. Fasting for Health, Fasting for God: Samoan Evangelical Christian

Responses to Obesity and Chronic Disease. C • McMillan, Tracie. The New Face of Hunger. National Geographic multimedia

article: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/

Th, November 6 HIV/AIDS • Lepani. Fitting Condoms on Culture. C • Parikh. The Political Economy of Marriage and HIV: The ABC Approach, “Safe”

Infidelity, and Managing Moral Risk in Uganda. C • Biehl. Pharmaceuticalization: AIDS Treatment and Global Health Politics. C • In-class film: Pills, Profits, Protest

T, November 11 Imaging and Visualization Technologies

• Taylor. The Public Fetus and the Family Car: From Abortion Politics to a Volvo Advertisement. C

• Dumit. Is It Me or My Brain: Depression and Neuroscientific Facts. C • PAPER #2 TOPIC ANNOUNCED IN CLASS

Th, November 13 Organ Transplantation and Commodification

• Scheper-Hughes. Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography in the Organs-Trafficking Underworld C

• Hamdy. Political Challenges to Biomedical Universalism: Kidney Failure among Egypt's Poor C

T, November 18 Mental Health • Jenkins. Ethnopsychiatric interpretations of schizophrenic illness: The problem of

nervios within Mexican-American families. C • Bagatell. From Cure to Community: Transforming Notions of Autism. C

Th, November 20 Death and Dying

• Kaufman. In the Shadow of “Death With Dignity”: Medicine and Cultural Quandaries of the Vegetative State C

• Kaufman and Morgan. The anthropology of the beginnings and ends of life. C

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T, November 25 Interpersonal Violence • Knauft et al. Violence and sociality in human evolution. C • Wojcicki. “She drank his money": Survival sex and the problem of violence in

taverns in Gauteng Province, South Africa. C • PAPER #2 DUE

Th, November 27 THANKSGIVING RECESS – NO CLASS T, December 2 Reproductive Health

• Boddy, Remembering Amal C • Inhorn. Global Infertility and the Globalization of New Reproductive Technologies:

Illustrations from Egypt. C Th, December 4 Genes, Race, and the Afterlife of Eugenics

• Sleeboom-Faulkner. Genetic testing, governance, and the family in the People’s Republic of China. C

• Braun et al. Racial categories in medical practice: how useful are they? C • Taussig et al. Flexible eugenics: technologies of the self in the age of genetics C

T, December 9 Beyond Nature Versus Nurture

• Lock. The epigenome and nature/nurture reunification: a challenge for anthropology. C

• Benezra et al. Anthropology of microbes. C Th, December 11 COURSE WRAP-UP AND EXAM REVIEW