Professor Ana Vinea is offering a new course called Medicine and Modernity in the Arab World this fall! ARAB 214 will meet on TuTh 3:30-4:45pm.
Course Description:
The class introduces students to questions of medicine and modernity in the Arab world from the 19th century to the present. It takes medicine as a lens for understanding the formation of the modern Arab world, connecting medical practices, institutions, understandings of the body and of health, on one hand, with wider formation such as colonialism, nationalism, gender norms, state power, violence, technology, religion, and so on, on the other hand. The class approaches medicine from an anthropological perspective. As such, it provides an introduction to some discussions in the field of medical anthropology, a domain of inquiry that approaches health and disease not as natural, biological states, but as social and cultural phenomena that are the result of specific historical processes.