Anthropology

This introductory course covers some of the most familiar and important themes in medical anthropology. The literature focuses on classic texts dealing with issues such as classification of illness, uncertainties, bodies, subjectivities, identities, narratives, medicines, symbolic healing, patients and therapeutic journeys, lay and expert knowledge, medical practices, technologies and infrastructures. The course introduces the field of medical anthropology as part of the overall study of culture and society.

This course analyzes classic and contemporary theoretical debates in tourism studies from an anthropological perspective. These debates are critically examined using ethnographic case studies from European, specifically Spanish, settings. Asian, African, and Latin American cases are used for comparison. 

The course examines pre-Columbian art history in one or more areas of the American continent. The course explores the potential and limits of applying the “art” category to pre-colonial indigenous productions. The course includes an overview of fundamental elements of the current debate on the anthropology of art. The course analyzes the artistic productions of Mesoamerican pre-colonial indigenous peoples to explore their multiple aesthetic, religious, and political functions. The course discusses how such products were perceived, collected, and exhibited in museums in modern times, focusing attention on the objects’ materiality and agency, here perceived as their ability to continuously arouse new questions and discourses. The course examines topics including art and anthropology; artistic practices in ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs, Maya, Teotihuacan, Aztecs); Indigenous American artefacts in early modern European collections; birth and transformation of the Ethnographic museum, with specific focus on the musealization of Haida artifacts; and contemporary indigenous art and politics of display.