AANA18106U Medical Anthropology, advanced course

How does technology change the ways in which we live, age, and die with our bodies? How do different technologies reshape what it means to be a human? What kinds of facts and imaginaries of life are produced around those technologies? And, how are existing inequalities and injustices embedded in and/or challenged by these new technologies of living? In this course, we will examine changing contours of human life including the experiences of health and illness and conceptions of life and death in relation to science and technology. Looking into the entanglement of biomedical knowledge and technology in everyday life, we will explore how life itself is made into objects of technological interventions and how this process, rather than simply offering solutions to given problems, reshape our bodily experiences of and relations with the world while engendering novel ethical and cultural problems for us to deal with. In addition to extensive reading and discussion of literature in medical anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, students will engage a semester-long group project to analyze and “redesign” a technological artifact of their choice.

The aim of the course is to develop students’ knowledge of the sub-field of medical anthropology to help prepare for a health-related Masters thesis.