Pandemics in Cultural Context

Catalog description

A pandemic is a biological and medical event, but it is also a social one. Medical anthropology studies these intersections and the biosocial and cultural dimensions of health, illness, and disease. This course uses anthropological theory, social science research methods, writing across the humanities, and visual representations to help us understand infectious disease. We will explore broad debates in medical anthropology, though the focus will remain on recent pandemics. In this course, we will explore and unpack many large questions which shape our lives: what is it to be ill? To be healthy? How do we experience and narrate pain and illness, and how might others do so differently? How might health disparities and outcomes be culturally created? In probing these questions, this course will provide students with a framework for critically engaging with discourse on infectious diseases, as well as approaching the social challenges illuminated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Through this course we will learn to approach disease and illness within their specific cultural, political, economic, and ecological contexts.