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 and medical 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: symbolic readings of the body; bodily boundaries and porosity, purity politics, gendered, racialised, and classed bodies including in the context of healthcare; practices of care and therapy; reproduction; disability and impairment; situated biologies; power and governance of the medicalised body; body modification, enhancement, and aesthetics; commodification and circulation of bodies and body-parts; embodied ecologies; death and dying.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of key theoretical paradigms in the anthropology of the body.
• 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 gathering, analysis and effective communication of data 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.

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. 
• Interactive components (for instance blog posts, vlogs and message boards) will provide students an opportunity to develop and communicate their own thoughts and ideas with feedback from their peers. Interactive peer-to-peer technologies may be used in formative assessment.
• Preparation for seminars and reading time will allow students to develop their understanding of material prior to seminars and written assignments.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Feedback on one formative assignment. Verbal feedback in seminars.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.