ANTHRO 1826 - Medical Anthropology: Advanced Topics

Prof. Arthur Kleinman
T 12:00-2:45pm

Open to advanced undergraduates with some background in social sciences or humanities (regardless of concentration), and to graduate and professional students. 

Spring 2025: Future of Medical Anthropology

This course will look ahead toward the future of medical anthropology by reflecting on key works in its past as well as more recent ethnographies. Each week, the author of the assigned ethnography will be present in class to lead the discussion together with Professor Kleinman. Each of these distinguished ethnographers were mentored by Professor Kleinman and received their PhD degree at Harvard or were postdoctoral fellows here. A few are current PhD students. After 49 years at Harvard, this will be Professor Kleinman’s final course. The ethnographies focus on different aspects of medical anthropology and related fields including global health, social medicine, mental health, and social studies of science and technology. The different visions of the future that the ethnographies project will provide a basis for an ongoing discussion of the lineaments, major contributions, critical issues, and different ways forward for this field of inquiry and practice, a field that Arthur Kleinman introduced to Harvard in 1973 and then returned in 1982 to advance by building a cross-School program. Besides their substantive contributions, these ethnographers raise important questions about research approaches, theoretical engagements, and alternative visions of medical anthropology’s future. Special attention will be given to a close reading of each work and to its relationship to specific writings by Professor Kleinman and other Harvard medical anthropology faculty. The course will demonstrate that there has been, for over almost half a century, a Harvard School of Medical Anthropology built by the work of many Harvard faculty, students, and graduates and that its influence has transformed the field.