Module ANTH40M15: Anthropology of the Body (Advanced)

Department: Anthropology

ANTH40M15: Anthropology of the Body (Advanced)

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To provide students with an advanced understanding of how social anthropologists have understood the relationship between life as a social phenomenon and the body as a material reality, particularly in contexts relating to health and wellbeing.
• To engage critically with contemporary research about bodies and embodied experience as socially contingent phenomena.
• To evaluate how studies of bodily experience and practice can provide insights into contemporary issues of health and wellbeing, on both global and local scales.
• To explore the implications of understanding social and medical anthropology as a fundamentally embodied practice.

Content

• Key theoretical paradigms in social and medical anthropology addressing life as a material and embodied phenomenon.
• Contemporary ethnographic and theoretical engagements with the body as locus of social meaning and experience. Indicative topics might include:
• Practices of care and therapy.
• Beauty and bodily aesthetics.
• Anthropologies of disability and impairment.
• Commodification and circulation of bodies and body-parts.
• Gendered bodies, queer bodies and reproductive bodies.
• Situated biologies.
• Sensory experience as a social phenomenon.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of key theoretical paradigms in the anthropology of the body, and relevant critiques of these paradigms.
• Deploy sophisticated theoretical approaches to critique contemporary ethnographic research, and use contemporary research to critique established paradigms of embodied experience as socially contingent.
• Apply anthropological approaches to contemporary questions around health and wellbeing, at global and local scales.

• Demonstrate advanced in-depth knowledge of anthropological approaches to life as embodied and material.
• Apply key skills (see below) to core concepts and debates in the anthropology of the body and anthropology of health and wellbeing.
• Be competent in accessing and assimilating specialised research literature of an advanced nature.

• Demonstrate a high level of competence in the preparation and effective communication of research methods, data, interpretation and arguments in written and oral form.
• Reflect critically on the socially contingent nature of their own embodied experience, and on the embodied nature of their knowledge of the world.
• Link anthropological approaches to the body to contemporary events beyond the classroom.
• Re-evaluate ethnography and theory in light of contemporary events and dynamics.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures introduce students to the course material. They may consist of live presentations, guest lectures, break-out discussions, or other activities as appropriate to the material covered from week to week. 
• Seminars will provide students with an opportunity to explore and discuss material from the lectures and readings in depth with their tutors and peers. They may involve student presentations, break-out discussions, or other activities as appropriate to the material covered from week to week. 
• Summative assessment is by one 3000-word essay.
• Formative assessment is a 500-word outline of the summative assignment.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Written feedback on one formative assignment. Verbal feedback in seminars.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University