The Normal and the Pathological: Sickness, Care, and Wellbeing Across Cultures

Taking its title from an important text by historian and philosopher of medicine Georges Canguilhem, this class considers how sickness, care, and wellbeing have been differently understood and embodied over time and between different cultural settings. Drawing on perspectives from anthropology, sociology, history, and the humanities, we will read a range of classic and contemporary texts to consider three broad themes: individual and social experiences of sickness and disability; systems of intervention, healing, and care; and population-level determinants of health and wellbeing. More broadly, students will be introduced to a number of significant conceptual perspectives across the social sciences, such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, biopower, disability theory, and actor-network theory. Students will complete brief weekly reading responses and one final paper. Instructor: Eugene Raikhel is a cultural and medical anthropologist with interests encompassing the anthropology of science, biomedicine and psychiatry; addiction and its treatment; suggestion and healing; and post-socialist transformations in Eurasia.

• Fulfills the Core - Social Science requirement
• Fulfills the Elective - Non-Western requirement