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/