Health and Recovery in times of disruption: Anthropological and historical perspectives

Uni Global and Department of Archeology, History, Religious and Cultural Studies-University of Bergen

Course leaders:

• Associate Professor/ Senior Researcher Nefissa Naguib, UniGlobal

Nefissa Naguib’s research interests include studies on tracing how histories of warzones and the wake of violence shape communities and cultures. A central aspect in her studies is women’s health and acts of resilience, recovery and efforts to rebuild lives in the Middle East.

• Associate Professor/ Senior Researcher Anne K. Bang, UniGlobal

Anne K. Bang is a Researcher at Uni Global and Associate Professor at the Department of Archeology, History, Religious and Cultural Studies at the University of Bergen. She has worked on Sufism and Sufi rituals in the Middle East and Africa, including faith-based healing rituals.

Invited Course leaders:

• Professor Marcia Inhorn, Yale University

Marcia Inhorn's research revolves around gender and feminist theory (including masculinity studies), religion and bioethics, globalization and global health, cultures of biomedicine and ethnomedicine, stigma and human suffering. She is the author or editor of 9 books on reproductive and global health, including 3 on infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in the Middle East.

• Associate Professor Kjersti Larsen, Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo
  Kjersti Larsen has conducted extensive field work in Zanzibar since 1984 and since 1997 in the Sudan. Her research has focused on spirit possession rituals and their relationship to perceptions of health and ethnic identity.

Short Course description:

The course will have three thematic focus areas, examining global health from the point of view of both anthropology and cultural history; Body and Mind, Hurt and Suffering and Healing. From the colonial era to the present, both the Middle East and Africa has been marked by changing modes of governance, wars and occupation, which in turn introduced new modes for perceiving the body, hurt/suffering, relief and healing. This process involves cultural negotiation, resilience, and, in some cases, the (re)invention of traditional practices. The course will draw on history to explore the complicated encounters between European, Middle Eastern and African cultures of health and healthcare, and between modernity and tradition.

Course Objectives

• • Introduction to the subfield of health that is within the broad discipline of history and anthropology
  • Understanding of how history and culture shape the way a society constructs illnesses and their medical approaches
  • Explore various approaches to human pain and recovery from a holistic perspective
  • Learn first hand about salient issues in illness and cure through community understandings and involvement

   

   

  For full course description and syllabus: click here (PDF)