AN525,
Spring 2005
Instructor:
Dr. Bilinda Straight
Moore
Hall 1001; Tel: 387-0409
email:
bilinda DOT straight AT wmich.edu
Office
Hours: M 3:30-4:30; W 12:30-1:30 & by appoint.
Web
Page: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bstraigh
Spirits and
Medicine
How is healing linked to belief? What do we or should we mean by belief, experience, and consciousness? How do the beliefs and cultural understandings of healing professionals mutually shape the understandings and experiences of their clients? What is the relationship between body and mind cross-culturally, and how does this relate to healing? In this course, we will seek answers to these and related questions. First, we will consider the issue of perception itself—how individuals come to their understandings of the world. Related to this, we will also examine some anthropological ideas about what human consciousness and experience are—an issue that will be central for us as we seek to understand different forms of illness and healing. Then we will look at healing practices in the United States and cross-culturally as they relate to belief, experience, and consciousness, including: western medicine and alternatives, spirit possession and trance, and methods of divination.
Required
Course Readings
Csordas, Thomas. 1990. The
Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of
Charismatic Healing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The
Feeling of What Happens: Body and
Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York, NY: Harcourt
Brace.
Desjarlais, Robert. 1993. Body
and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness
and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Lock, Margaret. 2002. Twice
Dead: Organ Transplants and the
Reinvention of Death. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Shelley, Mary. 1996. Frankenstein.
Norton Critical Edition,
edited by J. Paul Hunter.
Turner, Edith. 1992. Experiencing
Ritual: A New Interpretation of
African Healing. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Grading (See Grading Key
for complete instructions)
Attendance/Participation
15%
Responses
20%
Preliminary Bibliography
20%
Presentations
15%
Final Essay
30%
Films:
Due to overwhelming
enthusiasm for this suggestion by a previous class, a film series will
be
embedded in the discussions. Films will fit the day’s topic where
possible, but
will in general serve as another discussion thread related to the
course’s
overall themes of consciousness, cross-cultural understandings of
illness, healing,
and experience.
Attendance/Participation
(15% of grade): In a class of
this kind and size, your presence and participation are
essential to the quality of the experience for others as well as
yourself. Half
of your attendance grade will be based on the number of days you are
absent,
calculated as points missed on a one-hundred percent scale. The other
half of
this grade will be based on the quality of your participation. I will
create an
email list for this class, giving you another means of
participating—thus,
shyness in class will not be penalized. We may also have our own chat
space—details on this and what it will mean for your
participation grade will
follow.
Responses. Students
will write weekly one-page critical
responses to the readings (20% of grade).
These responses should help you frame your questions and participation
in
discussions. Although these are not formal essays, they must be typed,
and are
expected to be critical commentaries that reflect your understanding
and
response to the reading. You must write about all of the readings for
the week
in your weekly response. Grades will be 0 (not turned in on time); 1
(equal to
75 pts.—more effort was needed); 2 (equal to 85 pts.—good);
3 (equal to 95 pts—excellent);
4 (100 pts—outstanding). All written work in this class will be
graded based on
content, style, and mechanics.
Preliminary
Bibliography (20%
of grade):
This will be an essay and annotated bibliography of sources you are
using in
your paper. Begin with an introduction that includes the thesis
statement or
argument you will be pursuing in your paper. Discuss the kinds of
material
(essays, books, popular media, local fieldwork you will use to pursue
your
argument. Next, provide a one-paragraph summary for each of 4 or 5
sources, and a sentence or two of how they should be
useful to your paper. Include full bibliographic information for
each of
these sources, and do not include course
readings! Course readings should be
used for your paper where appropriate but do not count towards this
assignment.
(Recommended readings can be used though). You must use at least one
book. Web
sources are not allowed (except for downloaded articles from scholarly
journals
available online). If your topic is on something on the internet itself
(following chat rooms on a particular topic, or analysis of online
media) this
is your data, not your bib sources.
Presentations
(15% of
grade): In
lieu of a final exam, you will give a presentation based on your paper.
The
presentation should be conference style, crisp, and clear, lasting no
more than
5 minutes. You are encouraged to provide a handout, powerpoint, etc.,
due to
the brief time limit imposed to allow everyone to present. Socializing
and
informal discussion will be encouraged but of course not required,
following
the exam period.
Final
Essay (30% of grade): This
will be a 12-15 page
research essay for undergraduates, 15-17 pages for graduate students.
(I will
read up to 20 pages.) It can be on a topic of your choice, but must be
relevant
to the course readings. If you have difficulty in coming up with a
topic,
please feel free to see me. Include a bibliography for anything you
cite. When
you cite, quote, or paraphrase in text, put an in-text citation in
parentheses
(author’s last name, date, page number if a direct quote). It looks like this: (Straight 1997) for
citation or paraphrase, (Straight 1997: 37) for direct quote. You
should always
cite when you are drawing upon someone’s research or ideas. If
you conduct any
of your own interviews, you should create pseudonyms for your
respondents and
cite quotations from those interviews like this (Miller interview,
2002).
Late
Work: NO LATE WORK WILL BE
ACCEPTED—(any exceptions made for documented reasons will be
docked one letter
grade).
Academic
Integrity: You are
responsible for
making yourself aware of and understanding the
policies
and procedures in the Undergraduate Catalog (pp. 268-269)/Graduate
Catalog (pp.
26-27) that pertain to academic integrity. These policies include
cheating,
fabrication, falsification
and
forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism, complicity and computer
misuse. If
there is reason to believe you have been involved in academic
dishonesty, you
will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. You will be given
the
opportunity to review the charge(s). If you believe
you
are not responsible, you will have the opportunity for a hearing. You
should
consult with me if you are uncertain about an issue of academic honesty
prior
to the submission of an assignment or test.
Bilinda
Straight’s
Grading Key
All
quantitative semester grades are multiplied by the percentage of the
spread
they represent. Thus, if you have a 90 on attendance/participation,
multiplied
by 20% of the spread, gives you 18. All grades thus calculated are
added
together to equal the total percentage out of one hundred. Your
semester grade
is then calculated as per the key below. Using this key and
instructions, you
can keep track of your own grade as the semester progresses, but always
feel
free to ask me for assistance in calculating it.
Grade Scale for Final Grades
97-100
A+
94-96
A
87-93
BA
84-86
B
77-83
CB
74-76
C
67-73
DC
60-66
D
below 60 E
Course schedule
Remember, as John Lennon
said, life is what happens while you're making other plans.
As Buddha said, change is
inherent in the universe.
Like everything, this
schedule is subject to change. Indeed, the only contract for readings I
will
make here is that you will indeed read what follows. I reserve the
right to add
readings as we go.
PART ONE: Consciousness, Self, and Belief. Can western theories of self, consciousness, and social memory be reconciled with anthropological understandings of intersubjectivity, historical consciousness, and social memory? We will start addressing this question here, and will still be considering it when we leave this course.
Week One: 1/3 Overview of course (brief); Movie: Memento; discussion
Week Two: 1/10 “Core Consciousness” And
now, for something completely
different.
Reading: Feeling
of What Happens (Damasio) Appendix (pp. 312-335) and Parts I and II
(pp.
3-130). It may be unfamiliar reading, but do your best.
Week Three: 1/17 Habitus
and Social
Memory in Anthropology
Reading:
Selection from Bourdieu’s Outline of a
Theory of Practice (1977) and from Connerton’s How
Societies Remember (1989). (On reserve at Waldo)
Week Four: 1/24 Consciousness, Self, and Emotion
Explained?
Reading: Feeling of
What Happens (Damasio) Parts III and IV (pp. 131-311).
Week Five 1/31 Death and Beyond, a Beginning
Readings:
Shelley’s Frankenstein (in its
entirety); Butler’s essay in Frankenstein (pp. 302-313); and Twice Dead (Lock) Preamble-Ch. 4 (pp.
1-129). [Recommended in Frankenstein: Moers’
Female Gothic (pp. 214-224;
Lipking’s essay reading Frankenstein through Rousseau (pp.
313-330).]
Week Six: 2/7 Death and Beyond in the US and Japan
Reading: Twice Dead
(Lock) Chapters 5-10 (pp. 130-262).
Week Seven: 2/14 Death, the Self, and Consciousness
Reading: Twice Dead
(Lock) Chapters 11-end (pp. 263-377).
PART TWO: Belief, Consciousness, and Healing
Cross-Culturally
Week Eight: 2-21 Radical Possibilities for Belief
Reading: Experiencing Ritual
(Turner) Intro-Ch. 4
(pp. 1-102).
NO CLASS FEB 28 & MAR 2 (SPRING BREAK) or
MAR 7 (CONFERENCE)
Week Nine: 3/13 Belief in Spirits, Belief and Spirits
Reading: Experiencing
Ritual (Turner)
Chapters-Coda (pp. 103-180).
Week Ten: 3/21 From Spirits to Souls
Reading: Body and
Emotion (Desjarlais) Part I (pp. 3-156).
Week Eleven: 3/28 Healing Bodies and Souls
Reading: Bodies and
Emotion (Desjarlais) Part II (pp. 159-253).
Week Twelve: 4/4 Healing Souls and Bodies in the US
Reading: The Sacred
Self (Csordas): Chapters 1-5 (pp. 1-140).
ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY DUE IN CLASS 4/3
Week Thirteen: 4/11 The Borders of Self, Consciousness,
and Experience
Reading: The Sacred Self
(Csordas): Chapters 6-10
(pp. 141-282).
FINAL EXAM: 4/18 (7:15-9:15) Paper
presentations and final discussion. Turn in final copies of papers in
hard copy
and on CD.