Mind Madness Meditation

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This senior seminar will explore how people around the global navigate global capitalism, flows of information, and changing cultural norms and societal expectations through the prism of mental illness. In this course we use biomedical ways of identifying mental illness—such as those defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (known as the DSM-5)—as well as locally defined disorders that may not appear in psychiatric diagnoses. Anthropologists call these “etic” (global, cross-cultural) and “emic” (local and culturally embedded). Recognizing that global definitions and experiences of symptoms and diagnoses may differ in significant ways across cultures matters when thinking about who experiences what and where. But it also tells us a great deal about society and global politics and security: people wear social and emotional stress and trauma in and on their bodies. We will pull back the layers to these challenges and more in this senior seminar. Along the way, we will also engage in radical self-care, ending each class together in meditation and keeping self-care log each week.