HEALTH AND HEALING IN SOUTH ASIA

RELIGST 102

An introduction to the study of religion through the lens of health and health through the lens of religion employing approaches from the humanities and social sciences in conversation with health-related disciplines. It asks questions such as, How do religious peoples understand and live in sickness and health? How do people connect physical well-being to spiritual well-being? Medicine to meaning-making? How does looking at religion in sickness and health provide insight into its roles in a variety of cultures and contexts, globally and locally? How do health and religion connect particularly in situations of social marginalization and immigration? How does religion impact understandings of health and sickness beyond the borders of specific religious communities?

ASIAN/RELIGST 274

Introductory survey of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, etc., and an examination of the cultural, historical, ritual, and philosophical foundations of South Asian religion. Not open to students with credit for LCA 274 prior to Fall 2019.

ASIAN/RELIGST 505

Looking at the cultural institutions of politics, medicine, and religion in multiple cultures and historical times, students will explore ideas about what constitutes a perfect body, how and why different parts of the body are privileged over others, and how and why the notion of bodily perfectibility differs for men and women, children and adults, and humans and gods. Readings encourage such questions as: Is the perfect body attainable and, if so, how? And, who benefits from bodily perfection (or the rhetoric of the bodily perfection)? We will ask these questions with comparative intent: we want both to learn about cultures other than our own and, in the process of understanding the other, we will ask how this new knowledge might empower us to be more observant and critical of the role(s) and treatment of the body in our own society historically and today.

ANTHRO/ASIAN 305

South Asia has long been a region of significance in anthropology, offering rich and varied contexts for exploring questions about social organization, cultural practices, and religious diversity. Engage with evolving anthropological perspectives on the region, drawing from foundational theorizations of caste, kinship, and the state while attending to contemporary ethnographic insights on care, poverty, health, medicine, and gender. Address questions like: How does the ethnographic method reveal the complexities of social worlds and cultural life in South Asia? What insights and limitations does this approach offer? How might it be enriched with other analytical tools? Engage critically with anthropological theory and recent ethnographies to explore the structures, relationships, and beliefs that shape everyday experiences and broader social patterns in India and the region in local and global frameworks.

ASIAN/RELIGST 405

Introduces some of the most important deities of South Asia through visual representation, mythical narratives and rituals of worship. Topics include the development of iconographic forms and concepts, masculine and feminine aspects of the divine, the belief in human embodiments of divinities, the phenomenon of possession, modes of domestic and public worship and the symbolism of the temple structure.