Selective Courses

Students can further choose between a variety of selective courses which focus on Medical Anthropology in South Asia and related anthropological fields. Different selective courses are offered in cooperation with the other departments at the South Asia Institute (SAI), the Institute of Anthropology (IfE), and the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) in each semester. These courses cover “Contemporary Themes in Anthropology and Medical Anthropology” (Module 2) as well as “Selected Themes in South Asian Studies” (Module 3). They allow students to engage with various topics in more depth, to expand their knowledge of anthropology beyond the core courses of MAHASSA, and to learn about South Asia from the perspective of disciplines other than anthropology, such as history, political science, geography, development economics, or language studies. Selective courses in Medical Anthropology may engage with:

• Mental Health and Ritual Healing

• Gender and Reproductive Health

• Traditional Medical Systems of South Asia (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Yoga, Tibetan Medicine) and their transformation

• Non-codified therapeutic traditions of South Asia (Bone Setting)

• Medical Anthropology and Modernity

• Health and Ethics

• Public Health

• Medical Tourism

• Furthermore, courses in Anthropology and South Asian studies cover a wide range of topics. Examples of courses offered in the past are:

• From Culture to Transculture - An Anthropological Approach

• Feasting and Fasting – Food Cultures of South Asia

• Women as decision makers in developing countries

• Visual cultures and gender in (post)migration studies

• Religion and Politics in South Asia

• Global collapse in the Anthropocene

• Dramatic Anthropology: On the Relationship between Ethnography and Theory