Society for Medical Anthropology

Academic Resources: Graduate Programs

 

University of Kansas

Degrees offered:

• A.B., M.A., PH.D.

Medical Anthropology Faculty:

• Faculty who have advised the theses and dissertations, and have taught the courses mentioned here, include (with their current interests):
• Michael Crawford (Siberia, Caribbean, Alaska, genetics of complex phenotypes--hypertension, predisposition of leukemia/lymphoma, biological aging)
  
• Bartholomew Dean (Amazonia; indigenous health and healing; rural community health initiatives; health and human rights)
  
• Sandra Gray (East Africa, nutrition, reproductive ecology)
  
• John Janzen (Central Africa, comparative studies in medicine, war trauma & healing)
  
• Allan Hanson (social consequences of new reproductive technology),
  
• Jim Mielke (disease and adaptation,historical epidemiology & demography)
  
• Donald Stull (U.S. High Plains and Upper South; community and occupational health related to the food-processing industry and rural industrialization)
  
• Ann Kuckelman Cobb (Transcultural/international nursing and health; emphasis on Brazil; qualitative research methods)

Program information:

• University of Kansas Medical anthropology teaching, research and graduate training are done at of the University of Kansas within the general rubric of a four field approach, along a continuum from "sociocultural medical" to "biocultural medical," and on to the "biological and/or physical anthropology" including paleoanthropology. At the M.A. level students with an interest in medical anthropology take core courses in the subfields of anthropology and the history of anthropology, and a course in field methods. A thesis is required. At the Ph.D level students work closely with an adviser and their committee in the topic of their specialization. The contours of medical anthropology at Kansas as a focus within anthropology are evident from titles of recent (1997 to early 1999) theses and dissertations of graduating students:
• The embodiment and transformation of traumatic memory among Vietnamese refugees;
  
• Subsistence effects on body composition of nomadic pastoral and settled agricultural Turkana;
  
• Morbidity in Karamoja, Uganda, 1992-1996;
  
• Homegrown Eugenics: Socioeconomic Differentials in Utilization of Prenatal Testing;
  
• The African-American fertility decline 1880-1940: UVB Radiation Deprivation as a contributory factor;
  
• Practice and knowledge in the medical culture of Dar es Salaam;
  
• Bionic ears and genetic mistakes: the cultural construction of deafness in clinical settings;
  
• Biomedical borderlands: exploring the negotiated terrain between Biomedicine and Alternative therapies in the United States;
  
• Individual-Based Simulation of Virulence Evolution in the Human Immunodeficiency Virus;
  
• Modernity, morality, and healing: The appeals of Pentecostal conversion in Cochabamba, Bolivia;
  
• Contextual factors and meaningful pregnancies: An ethnographic study of pregnant Hispanic females and their families in northern New Mexico;
  
• Too much body: the quest for slenderness in contemporary American society.
  

Courses:

Courses regularly taught with a medical anthropology content include:

• Introduction to Medical Anthropology
  
• Advanced Medical Anthropology
  
• Human Adaptation
  
• (Reproductive) Technology and Society in the Contemporary World
  
• Demographic Anthropology
  
• Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
  
• Contemporary Health & Illness in Africa
  
• Disease and Adaptation
  
• Introduction to Human Nutrition
  
• Reproductive Ecology
  
• Culture and Nursing
  
• Research in Nursing Anthropology
  
• Population Dynamics
  
• How to write a grant proposal

Address:

• Department of Anthropology
  University of Kansas
  Fraser Hall 622
  Tel. 785 864-4103
  http://www.ku.edu/~kuanth/