ANTH 311 - Language of Healing

2023-2024 Catalog Year

Credit(s): 3
Lecture: 3
Non-Lecture: 0

This course addresses two interrelated questions. What sorts of language practices support good health and promote healing and what sorts of language practices impair health and impede healing? We explore these questions cross-culturally through focused reading, critical discussion, and a participatory project in the tradition of embodied anthropology. Course themes include: symbolic healing, meaning response (placebo/nocebo effect), talk therapy, illness narratives, racialization and public health messages, and enduring debates concerning effective and humane doctor-patient communication. Students also receive instruction in ethnographic research methods and carry out a project related to a health-related practice of their choice.

Prerequisite(s): ANTH 120 or ANTH 202
Offered: Every Fall Semester and Spring Semester - Even Years