This is the most recent version of a graduate course in medical anthropology theory that I teach. The main caveat is that this is the second in a set of three theory courses students are required to take, so it presumes the students have already taken the first course, which covers an extensive range of contemporary medical anthropology. My hope with the course is to create a productive space for eclecticism and play in the (serious) endeavor of thinking through some medical anthropology conundrums.

 

Ian Whitmarsh is Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California–San Francisco and author of Biomedical Ambiguity: Race, Asthma, and the Contested Meaning of Genetic Research in the Caribbean (Cornell UP: 2008).