The Anthropology of Body, Health and Illness - YBLS009

• Title: The Anthropology of Body, Health and Illness
• Form of teaching: lecture
• Guaranteed by: Programme Liberal Arts and Humanities (24-SHVAJ)
• Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
• Actual: from 2025
• Duration in semesters: 1
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 4
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/0, MC [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (30)
• Maximum number of enrolled students: 30
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Old code: YBAJ215
• Repeated enrollment: 1 (2) / 1 / 1 / 1
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: PhDr. Jaroslav Klepal, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses available to incoming students
• Pre-requisite : {Group of prerequisites for LAH and Exchange students - ANTR}
• Incompatibility : YBAJ215

Annotation

English

Sociocultural anthropology in general, and medical anthropology in particular, has been questioning predominant understandings of human body, health, and sickness. This course focuses on anthropological encounters with beliefs and practices through which embodiment, wellbeing, and afflictions are experienced, communicated, and enacted in the contemporary cross-cultural context and globalized world. Topics covered include medical pluralism, disability, (bio)medicalization, reproduction, mental health, complementary and alternative medicine, and (bio)medical technologies. By the end of the course, students will have a better grasp of concepts and methods of sociocultural anthropology; they will be able to critically reflect on their own and others’ embodied experiences of health and disease; and they will be able to apply findings of medical anthropology beyond the field.

Last update: Horáčková Karolína, Mgr. (23.12.2024)

Aim of the course

To examine and compare ways in which anthropologists from different theoretical and epistemological perspectives approach issues of body, health, and illness.

To introduce anthropological perspectives which emphasise the cultural, historical, political, economic, and social contexts in which body, health, and illness are produced, understood and responded to.

To encourage students to develop in-depth knowledge of key debates and topics in medical anthropology.

Last update: Horáčková Karolína, Mgr. (23.12.2024)

Course completion requirements

1) attendance and active participation (10%) 

2) reading responses  (30%)

3) final paper (aprox. lenght 2000 words) (60%)

Last update: Horáčková Karolína, Mgr. (23.12.2024)

Teaching methods

The main teaching methods of this course will be lectures and discussions. During the course we will listen to several lectures by invited guests and watch several documentaries. Within the discussion part, students will present readings and questions. There will be one or two presentations at every class session, depending on a number of students enrolled. 

Last update: Horáčková Karolína, Mgr. (23.12.2024)

Syllabus

1)     Medical anthropology: Keywords, key distinctions, and historical trajectories

2)     Research and methods in medical anthropology

3)     Body and embodiment

4)     Ethnomedicine

5)     Medical pluralism

6)     (Bio)medicalization

7)     Gender, birth and reproduction

8)     Dis/ability

9)     Anthropology and/of psychiatry

10)  Complementary and alternative medicine

11)  Biomedical technologies

A detailed syllabus will be distributed at the beginning of the semester.

Last update: Horáčková Karolína, Mgr. (23.12.2024)