Medical Anthropology

The concentration in medical anthropology at the University of Kentucky provides formalized theoretical and methodological training for graduate students interested in critical and cultural approaches to the study of health, medicine, and the body. Faculty and students focusing on medical anthropology share broad interests in cultural, historical and political-economic conditions of well being and affliction, as well as the production and distribution of knowledge, healing, and curing. Participants in the program share a fundamental concern with the study of health inequalities and the social forces that foster them, in addition to the everyday experiences of communities encountering and/or contesting forms of inequity.

Laboratory technicians processing diagnostic tests at the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Photo by Erin Koch.

Departmental faculty expertise includes critical medical anthropology/critical anthropology of health and affliction; structural inequalities; ethnography of science and technology; gender and sexuality studies; anthropology of the body; globalization studies and public health. Core faculty research interests include women's health activism; infectious disease; health concerns among rural populations; medicine and postcoloniality; sexuality and the body; chronic diseases; environmental influences on health; and global health standards and policies.

Medical pluralism in South India.
Photo by Lucinda Ramberg.

Students enrolled in the medical anthropology concentration will work with core faculty to develop specialized training. They will also complete requirements defined by the broader graduate curriculum, and are encouraged to pursue topics that intersect other areas of departmental expertise. Medical anthropology students may elect to participate in Graduate Certificate Programs in the Department of Behavioral Science (College of Medicine), and the Gender and Women's Studies Program or the Program in Social Theory (College of Arts and Sciences). Internship opportunities exist with the Appalachian Studies Program at the University of Kentucky; the U. K. Medical Center, the Center for Rural Health, and the Department of Preventive Medicine (all in the College of Medicine); and the Lexington-Fayette County Department of Health.

Medical Anthropology Faculty

• Mary Anglin, Department of Anthropology.
  Medical anthropology, breast cancer/reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, cultural anthropology, gender, political economy; Appalachia and U.S., Latin America.
• Deborah Crooks, Department of Anthropology.
  Biocultural anthropology, nutritional anthropology, livelihoods and food/nutrition security, the political-economy of child growth, the biology of inequality, human adaptability.
• Erin Koch, Department of Anthropology.
  Medical anthropology, ethnography of science and technology, globalization and health, infectious disease, displacement, humanitarianism, the state; Georgia (country), former Soviet Union, the U.S.
• Lucinda Ramberg, Program in Gender and Women’s Studies and Department of Anthropology.
  Medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, religion and secularism, sexuality, kinship, queer, feminist and postcolonial theory; South Asia.

Affiliated Faculty

• Lee Blonder, Department of Behavioral Science, College of Medicine.
  Medical anthropology, brain and behavior, evolution of language, emotion and psychopathology.
• Robert F. Kraus, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine.
  Cultural anthropology, cultural psychiatry, culture and personality; Arctic and Subarctic.
• Nancy Schoenberg, Department of Behavioral Science, College of Medicine.
  Medical anthropology, health and aging, chronic disease management, qualitative methodology; North America.
• Jean Wiese, Department of Behavioral Science, College of Medicine.
  Medical anthropology, communications, response to illness; Caribbean.

Medical Anthropology Courses

• Gender, Ethnicity, and Health
• Advanced Seminar in Medical Anthropology
• Critical Studies of Epidemiology and Public Health
• Global Health: People, Institutions and Change
• Biomedical Technologies and Power
• Culture, Power and the Body