Anthropology

This course considers what and how the humanities can contribute to key debates about environmental crisis, climate change, overconsumption, biodiversity loss, and sustainability. This course provides a general introduction to the emerging field of the environmental humanities, as well as to other forms of transdisciplinary and collaborative environmental scholarship in which humanities thinking plays a key role. The first part of this course introduces a selection of key humanities ideas about human relationships with place, technology, and the more-than-human world, drawing insights from across multiple disciplines and cultures. It also provides a concise overview of selected conversations and debates in the environmental humanities, presenting theories, issues, concrete examples, and case studies. The second part of the course explores collaborations between the humanities and other fields, including relation to natural sciences, as well as the relationship between scholarship, action, and intervention in relation to environmental humanities research. This part of the course includes an outdoor fieldtrip in addition to in-class activities. The course includes a number of guest lecturers by Aarhus University staff members affiliated with the Aarhus University Center for the Environmental Humanities as well as the Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA) group in order to bring a diversity of perspectives and examples of current research to the course.

This course examines the social and cultural dimensions of specific life-threatening emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, the political economy of health, cultural interpretations of illness and healing, medical pluralism, therapy management, and the cultural construction of efficacy.

This course engages with central concepts and debates in the anthropology of health, illness and medicine. It considers the specificity of local therapeutic communities as well as the processes that connect such systems of knowledge and practice. The production of medical knowledge and healthcare systems – including biomedicine – are also examined, for they, and their social actors, do not exist outside of culture, society and power relations. Drawing on both classic and contemporary studies, students are introduced to different theoretical approaches and consider their value for specific research topics. Topics addressed include the meaning of disease and healing; theories of embodiment, disability and reproduction; medicalization; new medical technologies; and global health. Finally, the course considers how the study of medical knowledge and practice provide a prism to understand social relations and contribute to more general debates concerning issue such as nature-nurture, structural violence, modernity, globalization or commodification. Weekly sessions include lectures introducing conceptual building blocks and key debates, followed by student lead sessions dedicated to subtopics and case studies. Students are required to come prepared and share insights and questions based on their reading accounts, complete two writing exercises and prepare one presentation and discussion session in teamwork with colleagues. Lectures and readings are occasionally supplemented by documentaries and guest lectures.

The course introduces foreign students to Icelandic folk culture past and present: from the folk beliefs implied by the Icelandic sagas to the famous collection of folk tales concerning "hidden people", elves, magicians, seal-folk, ghosts, and more which was published by Jón Árnason in 1862-64; the ballads and music enjoyed by the people in the countryside; and the beliefs, behavior, and lifestyles encountered by the somewhat dumbfounded and awe-inspired early foreign travelers to Iceland during the last century.

This course explores the contemporary utilization of typical Berlin discourses in the context of tourism and city marketing, such as Berlin-specific subcultures, economic developments a la Smart City, political activism, and environmental concerns for tourism. By testing different approaches to experiencing and sensing the city, the course examines the basis of diverse ways of “knowing Berlin.” The course discusses questions including: what makes the tourist perspective so intriguing and specific? Who profits from this way of experiencing a city? How is cultural diversity and complexity practically channeled into profitable tourism sites and activities? In small groups and workshop-based, the course develops and analyzes contents and methods of explorative walking performances based on specific contemporary Berlin discourses and urban projects. In an application of the seminar's findings and self-produced material, students go on tours of Berlin addressing contemporary urban discourses centering on smart city, participation, touristification, and urban activism.