CURRENT ISSUES IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND GLOBAL HEALTH
ANTH 324/524 Autumn Quarter, 2023
Fridays 1:30-2:50 Credits: 2 (CR/NC)
Location: Synchronous Distance Learning: All presentations will be live streamed via Zoom
No prerequisites
Course Instructor/Coordinator: Bettina Shell-Duncan
Current Issues in Medical Anthropology and Global Health is a weekly seminar series featuring guest speakers designed to introduce students to current issues in the field of medical anthropology and global health, ranging from humanistic to scientific approaches in the field. It will feature presentations from “core” faculty in the Medical Anthropology and Global Health (MAGH) area of emphasis in the Department of Anthropology, MAGH students and alumni, MAGH professionals working in the greater Seattle area, and visiting scholars. Undergraduates in the MAGH option or possibly interested in this option are encouraged to enroll, as are anthropology graduate students with interest in our MAGH area of emphasis.
COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
By pairing both anthropology and global health, we emphasize that health is much more than the product of a series of clinical encounters. We examine factors that shape human health within political, socioeconomic, ecological, and cultural contexts. Here at the University of Washington, we have a unique program that integrates the focus on the sociocultural, political and physical environment to the biological processes that produce health outcomes. By this means, we are able to understand biological and sociocultural variability, and how they intersect from the molecular to the global level, resulting in the production of health disparities.
In recent years, technological innovations and the promotion of free trade and free market economic policies have led to extraordinary transformations in information, communication and production systems around the world. This process of globalization has led to unprecedented integration of economies. It has also brought about extensive population mobility and human contact while intensifying economic disparities. Life chances and life quality within and between communities and countries are increasingly unequal. This deepening gap is sharply reflected in the disparities that exist in peoples’ health and in their health care. There is also an increasing appreciation that human biology is not everywhere identical but has instead been shaped by local environment and history. In order to affect change, there is a need to understand these dynamics and examine the forces shaping individual, community and global health patterns. This requires adoption of a broad and creative vision to illuminate the complex links between local and global, and the exchange and flow of resources, technologies, ideas, cultural values and people.
In this seminar we highlight the broad spectrum of expertise in medical anthropology and global health. Through their presentations speakers will share the path that led them to research in MAGH, a current issue in their field of expertise, and lead discussion with class participants.
While this course does not count toward the Anthropology major, it will highlight upcoming courses that may be of interest to both majors and non-majors.
Theme for Autumn 2023:
Decolonizing Medical Anthropology and Global Health: What Steps have been Taken?
In the past 4-5 years many academic disciplines, including medical anthropology and global health, have been energized by a movement that seeks to decolonize the disciplines. This movement seeks to fight against ingrained systems of power and dominance that are embedded by the colonial legacy of our work practices. In theory and practice our disciplines have devalued ways of knowing and being that do not fit into a European model, making it difficult for both professionals in the Global South and informal experts with whom we collaborate during fieldwork to participate in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Academic gatekeepers include: administrators of universities who define what scholarly products are valued, and often de-valuing public facing means of sharing our research; journal editors who often prioritize the success of scholars in the Global North while ignoring local experts and amateur researchers; publishers who placing priority on English language scholarship that is often not accessible or intelligible to the general public; funding agencies that set research priorities and prioritize forms in inquiry that do not reflect diverse ways of knowing; academic researchers who do not attempt to address power inequities and thus form academic collaborations that are not equitable. We ask:
- What are the ways that population health researchers are changing their practices?
- How is pedagogy being decolonized?
- How are we attempting to reconceptualize our work?
- What challenges are we still facing?
September 29 Introduction to Seminar
October 6 Dr. Rachel Chapman, “Black Authoritative Knowledge: Preventing Health Disparities during COVID through Perinatal Home Screening”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
October 13 Dubal Memorial Lecture, presented by Dr. Natali Valdez
“Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era”
** This is a special webinar event open to the public. Registration is available at:
October 20 Absa Samba, Dr. Muna Osman, and Bettina Shell-Duncan, “Reflections on Participation in a Coalition Advocating Legislation Concerning Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting in Washington State: Decolonizing Efforts to Address the Practice?”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
October 27 Dr. Paula Saravia and Dr. Jorge Tibor Gutierrez
“’Asymmetric Realities’ and the struggles to translate the invisible. Community and intercultural medicine in Chile.”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
November 3 Dr. Rachel Wilbur, IREACH, Washington State University, “From Historical Trauma to Survivance: The Role of Agency in Combatting the Health Effects of Colonial Subjugation.”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
November 17 Dr. Hugo Puerto and Dr. Jon Chu
“Anthropology and Community Health.”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
December 1 Dr. Marieke van Eijk and Christine Hueber
“Medical Debt Be Gone: What Health Care Workers Can Do to Avoid Crushing their Patients with Expensive Health Bills.”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602
December 8 Delaney Glass
“lndividual-Community Health Nexus Among Emerging Arab Adults.”
Join URL: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96881527602