Course descriptions

This writing seminar examines the role of the city in the twenty-first century. In an increasingly urbanized world, the city has been portrayed as both a scourge and a panacea for humans. This writing seminar examines the phenomenon of the Global City with particular attention to why more and more cities wish to be defined as Global. What does 'Global' mean, and how is this designation measured and assigned? Readings in the seminar address a wide range of issues including architecture and design, spatial inequality, urban renewal, gentrification, and the economic and environmental challenges faced by metropolitan cities.

In most of the world, multiple therapeutic traditions co-exist, sometimes symbiotically and at others competitively. Many societies have radically different ideas and practices concerning health, the body and disease than in the US. And these ideas and practices are contested both within these societies and between different societies in an emerging global world. In this writing seminar, we will examine several contested topics within the field of medical anthropology in Haiti, Ghana, Eastern Europe, Japan, India, Southern Africa and the US: holistic versus ontological approaches towards disease, the politics of suffering, religious healing and contestation, the meaning(s) of organ donation, biomedicine under conditions of poverty, female circumcision, the ethics of clinical trials in the developing world, and finally, HIV/AIDS. This course is designed to improve students? writing skills via peer review, multiple drafts and revisions of essays, and midterm and final portfolios.

This writing seminar examines the role of the city in the twenty-first century. In an increasingly urbanized world, the city has been portrayed as both a scourge and a panacea for humans. This writing seminar examines the phenomenon of the Global City with particular attention to why more and more cities wish to be defined as Global. What does 'Global' mean, and how is this designation measured and assigned? Readings in the seminar address a wide range of issues including architecture and design, spatial inequality, urban renewal, gentrification, and the economic and environmental challenges faced by metropolitan cities.