Lab, Field, and Clinic: History and Anthropology of Medicine and the Life Sciences

Undergraduate / Graduate

In this course we will examine the ways in which different groups of people-in different times and places-have understood the nature of life and living things, bodies and bodily processes, and health and disease, among other notions. We will address these issues principally, though not exclusively, through the lens of the changing sets of methods and practices commonly recognizable as science and medicine. We will also pay close attention to the methods through which scholars in history and anthropology have written about these topics, and how current scientific and medical practices affect historical and anthropological studies of science and medicine.