Readings | Culture, Embodiment and the Senses | Anthropology

Required Texts

Desjarlais, Robert. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780812214345.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780674932258.

Kuriyama, Shigehisa. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780942299885.

Roseman, Marina. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780520082816.

Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780812216158.

Klima, Alan. The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780691074603.

Ramachandran, V. S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York, NY: William Morrow, 1998. ISBN: 9780688152475.

Films

Chevigny, Katy, and Julia Pimsleur. Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today. 57 min. 2001.

Wachowski, Andy, and Larry Wachowski. The Matrix. 136 min. 1999.

Reichle, Franz. The Knowledge of Healing. 89 min. 1997.

Lescot, Anne, and Laurence Magloire. Of Men and Gods. 52 min. 2002.

Course readings.
Lec #	TOPICS	READINGS
1-2	Course Introduction: Anthropology and the Senses	Lecture 1 Herzfeld, Michael. "Senses." Chapter 11 in Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, pp. 240-253. ISBN: 063120658. Lecture 2 Classen, Constance. "Worlds of Sense." Chapter 6 in Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 1993, pp. 121-138. ISBN: 9780415101264. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Margaret Lock. "The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1, no. 1 (March 1987): 6-41. (New series)
3-5	Healing the Body in Ancient Greece and China	Lecture 3 Kuriyama, Shigehisa. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999, preface, and chapter 1, pp. 7-60. ISBN: 9780942299885. Chevigny, Katy, and Julia Pimsleur. Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today. 57 min. 2001. Lecture 4 Kuriyama, Shigehisa. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999, chapters 2, and 4, pp. 61-108 and 153-192. ISBN: 9780942299885. Lecture 5 Kuriyama, Shigehisa. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999, chapter 6, pp. 233-272. ISBN: 9780942299885.
6-8	Philosophy, Medicine, and the Senses in Early-Modern Europe	Lecture 6 Descartes. "Discourse on the Method." In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. 1. Cambridge (Cambridgeshire), UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 111-151. ISBN: 9780521245944. Damasio, Antonio. "A Passion for Reasoning." Chapter 11 in Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam, 1994, pp. 244-252. ISBN: 9780399138942. Wachowski, Andy, and Larry Wachowski. The Matrix. 136 min. 1999. (Excerpts) Lecture 7 Bylebyl, Jerome. "The Manifest and the Hidden in the Renaissance Clinic." In Medicine and the Five Senses. Edited by W. F. Bynum, and Roy Porter. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 40-60. ISBN: 9780521611985. Palmer, Richard. "In Bad Odour: Smell and Its Significance in Medicine from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century." In Medicine and the Five Senses. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 61-68. ISBN: 9780521611985. Porter, Roy. "The Rise of Physical Examination." In Medicine and the Five Senses. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 179-197. ISBN: 9780521611985. Lecture 8 Keller, Eve. "The Subject of Touch: Medical Authority in Early Modern Midwifery." In Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, pp. 62-80. ISBN: 9780812218299. Stevens, Scott Manning. "New World Contacts and the Trope of the 'Naked Savage." In Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, pp. 124-140. ISBN: 9780812218299. Classen, Constance. "The Witch's Senses: Sensory Ideologies and Transgressive Femininities from the Renaissance to Modernity." In Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Berg, 2005, pp. 70-84. ISBN: 9781859738634.
9-10	Uncanny Experience and Sensing the Sacred in the Modern West	Lecture 9 Otto, Rudolf. "On Numinous Experience as Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans." In Experience of the Sacred: Readings in the Phenomenology of Religion. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992, pp. 77-85. ISBN: 9780874515305. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2003, pp. 123-162. ISBN: 9780142437476. James, William. "The Reality of the Unseen." Chapter 3 in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 59-77. ISBN: 0674932250. Lecture 10 James, William. "Conversion," and "Mysticism." In The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, chapters 9-10, and 16-17, pp. 160-210 and 299-336. ISBN: 9780674932258. Ramachandran, V. S., and Sandra Blakeslee. "God and the Limbic System." Chapter 9 in Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York, NY: William Morrow, 1998, pp. 174-198. ISBN: 9780688152475.
11	Memory, Belief, and the Politics of Mind	Leys, Ruth. "Traumatic Cures: Shell Shock, Janet, and the Question of Memory." In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. Edited by Paul Antze, and Michael Lambek. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 103-145. ISBN: 9780415915632. Young, Allan. "Bodily Memory and Traumatic Memory." In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. Edited by Paul Antze, and Michael Lambek. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 89-102. ISBN: 9780415915632. Kaptchuk, Ted. J. "Intentional Ignorance: A History of Blind Assessment and Placebo Controls in Medicine." Bull Hist Med 72 (1998): 389-433.
12	Intersubjectivity, Phenomenology, Emotion, and Embodiment	Csordas, Thomas J. "Somatic Modes of Attention." In Body/Meaning/Healing. Hampshire, UK; New York, NY: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 241-259. ISBN: 9780312293918. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. "Other Selves and the Human World." In Phenomenology of Perception. London, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 2002, pp. 346-365. ISBN: 9780415278416. Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. "What Do We Mean 'Human Experience'?" In The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 15-33. ISBN: 9780262720212.
13-14	Intersubjectivity and Ruptured Social Senses	Lecture 13 Favret-Saada, Jeanne, and Catherine Cullen. "Unbewitching as Therapy." American Ethnologist 1, no. 1 (February 1989): 40-56. Robarchek, Clayton, and Carole Robarchek. "Waorani Grief and the Witch-Killer's Rage: Worldview, Emotion, and Anthropological Explanation." Ethos 33, no. 2 (2005): 206-230. Lecture 14 James, Erica. "Haunting Ghosts: Madness, Gender and Ensekirite in Haiti in the Democratic Era." in Postcolonial Disorders, (forthcoming) edited by Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sandra Hyde, and Byron Good. Ms. Paul Farmer, "Sending Sickness: Sorcery, Politics, and Changing Concepts of AIDS in Rural Haiti." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1, no. 4 (March 1990): 6-27. Lescot, Anne, and Laurence Magloire. Of Men and Gods. 52 min. 2002.
15-24	Sensory Ethnographies	Lecture 15 Desjarlais, Robert R. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, chapters 1-2, pp. 3-89. ISBN: 9780812214345. Reichle, Franz. The Knowledge of Healing. 89 min. 1997. Lecture 16 Desjarlais, Robert. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, chapters 4-7, pp. 90-197. ISBN: 9780812214345. Reichle, Franz. The Knowledge of Healing. 89 min. 1997. Lecture 17 Desjarlais, Robert. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, chapters 8-10, pp. 198-253. ISBN: 9780812214345. Lecture 18 Roseman, Marina. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, chapters 1-3, pp. 1-79. ISBN: 9780520082816. Lecture 19 Dream Songs and Healing Sounds in the Rainforests of Malaysia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian/Folkways, 1995. (Sound recording) Roseman, Marina. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, chapter 4, pp. 80-128. ISBN: 9780520082816. Lecture 20 Roseman, Marina. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, chapters 5-7, pp. 129-184. ISBN: 9780520082816. Lecture 21 Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, prologue, parts 1 and 2, pp. ix-73. ISBN: 9780812216158. Lecture 22 Klima, Alan. The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, chapters 1, and 2, read chapters 3-5, pp. 53-165. ISBN: 9780691074603. (Skim) Lecture 23 Klima, Alan. The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, chapter 6, pp. 169-230. ISBN: 9780691074603. Lecture 24 Klima, Alan. The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, chapter 7, pp. 231-290. ISBN: 9780691074603.
25-26	Mind-Body Medicine, Research and the State	Lecture 25 NCCAM. Expanding Horizons of Healthcare: Five-Year Strategic Plan 2005-2009. (PDF - 9.9MB) Ramachandran, V. S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York, NY: William Morrow, 1998, chapters 3, and 11, pp. 39-62, and 212-226. ISBN: 9780688152475. Lecture 26 Ramachandran, V. S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind New York. NY: William Morrow, 1998, chapters 10, and 12, pp. 199-211, and 227-257. ISBN: 9780688152475.