phd medical anthropology online

Medical Anthropology

About the Program

The Joint UCB/UCSF PhD in Medical Anthropology is one of the pioneering programs in the discipline both nationally and globally. The program provides disciplinary leadership and an outstanding and comprehensive training leading to the PhD degree. No other program offers the Joint Program's combination of excellence in critical medical anthropology; psychiatric and psychological anthropology; gender and queer theory; disability studies; health, citizenship, immigration and the global; violence in wartime and peacetime as a medical topic; studies of science, technology and modernity; intersections of medicine and social theory; and innovative ethnographic scholarship.

Topics of active research include:

• Violence and trauma
• Psychiatric and psychological anthropology, ethnopsychiatry, and psychoanalysis
• Genomics and ethics
• Transplantation and organ and tissue commodification
• Citizenship, immigration, refugeeism, and the body
• Youth and child survival
• Hunger, infectious disease, development, and governmentality
• Traditional medicine and its modernity
• Sexuality, gender, and the commodity form
• Geriatrics and dementia
• Death, dying, and the politics of "bare life"
• Disability studies

The core faculty on the Berkeley side of the Joint Program form an organized research group called Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body. This group links medical anthropology, science and technology studies, postcolonial anthropology, disability studies, critical development and humanitarianism studies, psychological and psychoanalytic anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. There seven faculty members in the group:

• Charles L. Briggs, Co-Director of Medical Anthropology, Co-chair of Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, Equity Advisor for the Anthropology Department
• Lawrence Cohen, Co-Director of Medical Anthropology, Director of Institute for South Asia Studies, Head Graduate Advisor for Medical Anthropology
• Cori Hayden
• Seth Holmes, Co-chair of Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, and Co-director of MD/PhD Track in Medical Anthropology (UCB and UCSF)
• Karen Nakamura, Director of Disability Studies Lab
• Stefania Pandolfo
• See also faculty on the UCSF side of the joint program in medical anthropology

Together with sociocultural colleagues at Berkeley and medical anthropology colleagues at UCSF and with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the Joint UCB-UCSF Medical Anthropology Program and in the Department of Anthropology, these scholars have created both the most diverse and the most contemporary program in the field.  Alumni from this program have moved on to leading positions across the country and the world and continue to move the field in new directions.

The expansion of traditional medical anthropology at Berkeley into Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body reflects several disciplinary breakthroughs associated with our faculty. Though variants of "medical anthropology" are almost as old as the parent discipline of anthropology, the field of Medical Anthropology emerged in post-war North America as an effort to link international public health, ethnomedicine, and allied social science in the service of the anthropology of development. The field shared both the promise and the limits of modernization theory more generally. Both the critical Marxist and symbolic/phenomenological/interpretive challenges of the 1970s and 1980s thickened debate, along with closer links to historical analyses of the scholarly medical traditions and the development of qualitative methodologies concurrent with the expansion of NIH, NIMH, and other governmental programs of research support.

Despite the rapid growth of the field at this time, most research remained auxiliary to the categorical if not the political and economic imperatives of biomedicine. With the arrival of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Berkeley became a leader in defining "critically interpretive medical anthropology." Critical medical anthropology refused the theory/applied divide that characterized so many departments and programs, arguing the impossibility of separating "theoretical" debate in cultural anthropology and the human sciences on the one hand and more engaged commitment to the health and survival of communities and groups, on the other. Scheper-Hughes's articulation of a critical anthropology of hunger, as well as the violence continuum in times of war and of peace, offer powerful examples of the change in the field she was instrumental in creating.

The rise of this movement at Berkeley led to a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s with two dominant programs in graduate training, critical medical anthropology in the Joint Program at Berkeley and UCSF and interpretive medical anthropology at Harvard. Lawrence Cohen came from Harvard in 1992 to join Scheper-Hughes. Their teaching and joint research produced a critical and ongoing conversation bringing together the leading formations in the field. Cohen has worked to link debates between critical, interpretive, and biocultural medical anthropologies to broader theoretical questions of materialization that have emerged in feminist and queer scholarship.  Cohen has worked at this intersection on diverse topics, including aging, organ transplant and donation, gender and bodies.

The rapid growth of science studies and the increasing centrality of both science and the body to contemporary debate in the academy posed new challenges to medical anthropology. Paul Rabinow has studied the new genomics intensively, leading to multiple books and to the development of what he has termed "an anthropology of reason." Against too-easy criticism of scientific and medical practice that did not question what Michel Foucault called the "speaker's benefit" of the critic, Rabinow offered a method and a form of analysis that offered a way out of the endless battles of the "Culture Wars." Berkeley anthropology emerged as the most powerful alternative to the dominant approaches to the sociology of science and science studies. From the mid-1990s and on, these two streams of medical anthropology and the anthropology of reason have been in closer and sharper interaction. Far from pushing students towards either pole, the debate constituted a space for encouraging students to link critical, interpretive, and genealogic analysis.

In a world of linking new genomics, bioinformatics, and pharmacotherapy to corporate medicine and public-private hybrid structures internationally, "bioethics" has become ever more ubiquitous and empty a critical practice. The question of ethics and more generally of human and non-human futures links the current work of Cohen, Rabinow, Scheper-Hughes, and Hayden. Cori Hayden (former Director and current core faculty member of the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society), along with colleagues at Berkeley and UCSF, has continued to develop new approaches to the social studies of science, including bioethics.  Her work on global and Latin American pharmaceutical politics, intellectual property, and the ethics of clinical trials has led to new understandings of privatization and “public-ization,” the “popular” and populism, and relationships between distinction and copying.

To the question of ethics and to the related investigation of trauma, loss, and healing, Stefania Pandolfo brings a rigorous anthropological conversation incorporating contemporary philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and her field research in a Moroccan psychiatric hospital.  Pandolfo's work provides a bridge allowing for analysis linking medical anthropology and recent social theories of language, melancholy, and the body. Pandolfo has offered extensive training to graduate students in the anthropology of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine, linking a reexamination of existential psychiatry and a close engagement with the work of scholars from Benjamin and Blanchot to Freud, Lacan, and Binswanger to both Mahgrebi and European clinical and theoretical work. 

The strong center of gravity in psychological and psychiatric anthropology is expanded by the work of Scheper-Hughes on emotions and critical psychiatry as well as of Karen Nakamura on mental illness and related social movements.  Nakamura’s work has served as a nexus for gender and queer theory, psychological anthropology, and disability studies at Berkeley.  Along with others in the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s Disability Studies Cluster, she has helped build one of the world’s most active, engaged and diverse networks for disability studies. 

By tracing genealogies of the unexamined imbrication of theories of language, knowledge, performativity, and representation with research on biomedicine, public health, and traditional medicine, the Joint UCB-UCSF Medical Anthropology Program enables students to critically synthesize linguistic and critical medical anthropology in such a way as to transform both realms of anthropological inquiry. Charles L. Briggs has explored these connections through research on narrative and statistical representations of epidemic disease in Latin America; urban violence and its problematic representations; and a five-country study of how understandings of health, disease, citizenship, and the state are profoundly shaped by media coverage of health, all in collaboration with Clara Mantini-Briggs.

In addition, Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs study challenges to neoliberal health policies and new understandings of health, citizenship, and the state emerging from revolutionary healthcare in Venezuela.  Also at the intersection of health and citizenship, Seth Holmes studies labor, health, and health care in the context of transnational im/migration and food systems.  Against this background, he has explored the ways in which perceptions of race, class, and citizenship play into (and, at times, challenge and resist) the naturalization and normalization of social and health inequalities. Holmes also studies the ways in which health professionals come to understand and respond to social difference and the ways race and racialization function differently in the lives of indigenous Mexican immigrant youth depending on spatial and social context.

Other Berkeley anthropology faculty bring important resources to graduate student training in the critical analysis of medicine, science, and psychiatry. Laura Nader was instrumental in helping to define the field and remains a leading scholar of medicine and the state. Stanley Brandes has studied many topics of relevance to the field, including alcohol and culture and questions of death and the body.  Aihwa Ong helped define the field of global anthropology and continues to work on biotechnology in various sites in North America, Southeast Asia, and China.  Mariane Ferme has analyzed and written on global health and development, including epidemics, outbreaks and their responses.

Our program is deepened by strong relationships with colleagues asking related questions across the Berkeley campus in units including History, English, Political Science, Sociology, City and Regional Planning, Comparative Literature, Gender and Women Studies, Critical Theory, Public Health and beyond.  In addition, our colleagues on the UCSF side of the Joint Program contribute cutting-edge anthropological work on global health, humanitarianism, critical studies of racialization, metrics in the health sciences, urban health, social studies of science and genetics, gender and health, aging and death, dental health, ethics of research and care, and medical history.  The breadth and depth of our core faculty at Berkeley, our links with colleagues across the Berkeley campus, and our close educational and research collaboration with faculty on the UCSF side of the Joint Program make this one of the broadest and most dynamic contexts for medical anthropology in the country and the world.

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Admission to the University

Applying for graduate admission.

Thank you for considering UC Berkeley for graduate study! UC Berkeley offers more than 120 graduate programs representing the breadth and depth of interdisciplinary scholarship. The Graduate Division hosts a complete list of graduate academic programs, departments, degrees offered, and application deadlines can be found on the Graduate Division website.

Prospective students must submit an online application to be considered for admission, in addition to any supplemental materials specific to the program for which they are applying. The online application and steps to take to apply can be found on the Graduate Division website .

Admission Requirements

The minimum graduate admission requirements are:

A bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution;

A satisfactory scholastic average, usually a minimum grade-point average (GPA) of 3.0 (B) on a 4.0 scale; and

Enough undergraduate training to do graduate work in your chosen field.

For a list of requirements to complete your graduate application, please see the Graduate Division’s Admissions Requirements page . It is also important to check with the program or department of interest, as they may have additional requirements specific to their program of study and degree. Department contact information can be found here .

Where to apply?

Visit the Berkeley Graduate Division application page .

Admission to the Program

The Department of Anthropology at Berkeley, and the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of California at San Francisco, currently offer a joint PhD in medical anthropology. Students may apply to enter the program through either the Berkeley or the San Francisco campus but not to both. The point of entry determines the student's home base during the program. Financial aid, primary advising, and other routine services are provided by the campus through which the student enters the program. All students, however, benefit by taking required coursework on both campuses and by the participation of the faculty on both sides of the program on all qualifying examinations and on the doctoral dissertation committees. The degree is the same and bears the name of both campuses.

Applications to all graduate programs are considered once each year for admission the following fall semester. The application period opens in early September, and the deadline for receipt of both department and Graduate Division applications is December 1. Applications are screened by the anthropology faculty, and selections are made on the basis of academic excellence, letters of recommendation, relevant experience, a strong statement of intellectual and professional purpose, and GRE scores (which are now optional).

The minimum requirement for admission to the Berkeley doctoral program in anthropology and in medical anthropology is a BA. The UCSF program in medical anthropology requires a master's degree in anthropology or a related discipline, or a postbaccalaureate professional degree.

Doctoral Degree Requirements

Normative time requirements, normative time to advancement.

Normative time to advancement is three years of coursework.

Normative Time in Candidacy

Normative time in candidacy is one to two years of dissertation research, and one to two years of writing the dissertation.

Total Normative Time

Total normative time is 6 years.

Time to Advancement

Curriculum  , foreign language(s).

In addition to English, the program requires at least one other language. This language may be a language of international scholarship, a literary language, or a field language. The required language must be directly relevant to the research.

Field Papers

Students will write two field statements on topics in medical anthropology (for example, comparative medical systems, the anthropology of the body, reproduction, psychiatry and anthropology, political economy of health, science and biotechnology, or shamanism). The third field statement is usually on the student's chosen ethnographic/geographical area (for example, Latin American peasants, urban India, or post-colonial southern Africa). Each field statement is prepared with a faculty sponsor. Medical anthropology students usually work with three professors from the Anthropology Department. Field statements should not exceed 20 pages, excluding the bibliography.

The dissertation prospectus is the intellectual justification and research plan for the dissertation. Medical Anthropology students must get their prospectus signed by all three dissertation committee members and file it at the end of their third year, either before or after the PhD oral qualifying examination. There is no designated length for a medical dissertation prospectus, but the average proposal should be about 10-12 pages plus bibliography.

Time in Candidacy

Advancement.

When the student has passed the oral qualifying examination, submitted his or her dissertation prospectus, proposed his or her dissertation committee (see Dissertation Committee below) he or she may be advanced to candidacy for the PhD by the dean of the Graduate Division.

Dissertation

This committee typically consists of four professors: the student's adviser as the committee chair, an inside member from the UCB Anthropology Department, an inside member from the Medical Anthropology program at UCSF, and an outside member from another department at UCB. The dissertation committee chair and the outside member must be members of the UCB Academic Senate.

Required Professional Development

Students are encouraged to serve at least two semesters as a graduate student instructor (GSI) in the course of earning the PhD. The department believes it is training its students to be college and university professors with a high regard for excellence in teaching as well as research. GSI-ships in Anthropology are awarded to students at least once in their careers as graduate students and students are also encouraged to apply to other departments on campus.

ANTHRO 210 Special Topics in Biological Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023 Advanced topics in biological anthropology, including both contemporary and ancestral human populations, such as biology of the life course, health and disease, violence and trauma, cognition and symbolic communication, and other anthropological topics viewed from the perspective of human biology. Special Topics in Biological Anthropology: Read More [+]

Rules & Requirements

Prerequisites: Consent of instructor

Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.

Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of seminar per week

Additional Format: Two hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Anthropology/Graduate

Grading: Letter grade.

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ANTHRO 217 Discourse and of the Body 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2016 This course juxtaposes discourse analysis and approaches to health and biomedicine, querying how ideologies of language and communication provide implicit foundations for work on health, disease, medicine, and the body and how biopolitical discourses and practices inform constructions of discourse. Discourse and of the Body: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week

Additional Format: Three hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.

Instructor: Briggs

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ANTHRO 219 Topics in Medical Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2018, Fall 2014 Comparative study of mental illness and socially generated disease: psychiatric treatment, practitioners, and institutions. Topics in Medical Anthropology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 221 Pre-Columbian Central America 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2016 Pre-Columbian Central America: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 227 Historical Archaeology Research 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2020, Spring 2019 Historical archaeology seminar. Subject matter will vary from year to year. Historical Archaeology Research: Read More [+]

Prerequisites: Graduate standing with some background in archaeology, or undergraduates who have taken 2, or consent of instructor

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ANTHRO 228 Archaeological Method 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Fall 2011, Fall 2009 Various topics and issues in the methods of archaeological analysis and interpretation: style, ceramics, architectural analysis, lithic analysis, archaeozoology, etc. Archaeological Method: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 229A Archaeological Research Strategies: History of Theory in Anthropological Archaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020 Required for all first and second year graduate students in archaeology. Three hours of seminar discussion of major issues in the history and theory of archaeological research and practice (229A), and of the research strategies and design for various kinds of archaeological problems (229B). To be offered alternate semesters. Archaeological Research Strategies: History of Theory in Anthropological Archaeology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 229B Archaeological Research Strategies: Research Design 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2021 Required for all first and second year graduate students in archaeology. Three hours of seminar discussion of major issues in the history and theory of archaeological research and practice (229A), and of the research strategies and design for various kinds of archaeological problems (229B). To be offered alternate semesters. Archaeological Research Strategies: Research Design: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 229C Writing the Field Statement in Archaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2010, Fall 2009 This seminar is intended to guide students in the definition of a field within archaeology, from initial conceptualization to writing of a field statement, dissertation chapter, or review article. Writing the Field Statement in Archaeology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 230 Special Topics in Archaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024 Special Topics in Archaeology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 231 Advanced Topics in Bioarchaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2011, Spring 2009 This advanced seminar course explores how we reconstruct past lifeways from archaeological skeletal remains. It deals with the skeletal biology of past populations, covering both the theoretical approaches and methods used in the analysis of skeletal and dental remains. Advanced Topics in Bioarchaeology: Read More [+]

Instructor: Agarwal

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ANTHRO 232 Advanced Topics in Bone Biology: Biocultural and Evolutionary Perspectives 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2011 This advanced seminar course will discuss influences on bone health and maintence from a unique biocultural and evolutionary perspective. Advanced Topics in Bone Biology: Biocultural and Evolutionary Perspectives: Read More [+]

Prerequisites: 127A or C103/Integrative Biology C142 and consent of instructor

Additional Format: Two hours of seminar per week.

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ANTHRO 235 Special Topics in Museum Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2013, Spring 2012 Contemporary issues in museum studies from an anthropological perspective. Special Topics in Museum Anthropology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 240A Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory 5 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022 Anthropological theory and practice--following the rest of the world--have been undergoing important restructuring in the past decade. The course is organized to reflect this fact. We will begin by looking at recent debates about the nature and purpose of anthropology. This will provide a starting point for reading a series of classic ethnographies in new ways as well as examining some dimensions of the current research agenda in cultural anth ropology. Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory: Read More [+]

Prerequisites: Enrollment is strictly limited to and required of all anthropology and medical anthropology graduate students who have not been advanced to candidacy

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4-6 hours of seminar per week

Additional Format: Four to Six hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.

Instructor: Required of all graduate students in social/cultural anthropology.

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ANTHRO 240B Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory 5 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023 Anthropological theory and practice--following the rest of the world--have been undergoing important restructuring in the past decade. The course is organized to reflect this fact. We will begin by looking at recent debates about the nature and purpose of anthropology. This will provide a starting point for reading a series of classic ethnographies in new ways as well as examining some dimensions of the current research agenda in cultural anthropology. Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory: Read More [+]

Prerequisites: Enrollment is strictly limited to and required of all anthropology and medical anthropology graduate s tudents who have not been advanced to candidacy

ANTHRO 250A Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Psychological Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2019 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Psychological Anthropology: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-3 hours of seminar per week

Additional Format: Two to Three hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.

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ANTHRO 250E Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Politics 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2018, Fall 2017 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Politics: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250F Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Religion 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2003 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Religion: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250G Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Ethics 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 1999, Fall 1996 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Ethics: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250J Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Ethnographic Field Methods 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Ethnographic Field Methods: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250N Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Classic Ethnography 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Classic Ethnography: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250R Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Dissertation Writing 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Fall 2020 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Dissertation Writing: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250V Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Tourism 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Tourism: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 250X Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Special Topics 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024 Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Special Topics: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO C254 Topics in Science and Technology Studies 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2014, Fall 2013 This course provides a strong foundation for graduate work in STS, a multidisciplinary field with a signature capacity to rethink the relationship among science, technology, and political and social life. From climate change to population genomics, access to medicines and the impact of new media, the problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic. Topics in Science and Technology Studies: Read More [+]

Also listed as: ESPM C252/HISTORY C250/STS C200

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ANTHRO C261 Theories of Narrative 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Spring 2006 This course examines a broad range of theories that elucidate the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion; imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. It focuses on narratives at work, on the move, in action as they emerge from the matrix of the everyday preeminently, storytelling in conversation--as key to folk genres--the folktale, the legend, the epic, the myth. Theories of Narrative: Read More [+]

Summer: 6 weeks - 10 hours of lecture per week 8 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week

Additional Format: Three hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks. Seven and one-half hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks. Ten hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.

Also listed as: FOLKLOR C261

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ANTHRO C262A Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021 This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities. Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]

Prerequisites: Graduate standing or consent of instructor

Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit with instructor consent.

Also listed as: FOLKLOR C262A

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ANTHRO C262B Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023 This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities. Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]

Also listed as: FOLKLOR C262B

ANTHRO 270A Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Semantics 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2010 Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Semantics: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 270B Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Fundamentals of Language in Context 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2017, Fall 2014 Intensive introduction to the study of language as a cultural system and speech as socially embedded communicative practice. This is the core course for students wishing to take further coursework in linguistic anthropology. Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Fundamentals of Language in Context: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO C273 Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015 This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work. Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar: Read More [+]

Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.

Also listed as: ESPM C273/HISTORY C251/STS C250

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ANTHRO 280B Seminars in Area Studies: Africa 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Fall 2012 Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester. Seminars in Area Studies: Africa: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 280C Seminars in Area Studies: South Asia 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2013, Fall 2010 Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester. Seminars in Area Studies: South Asia: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 280D Seminars in Area Studies: China 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2012 Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester. Seminars in Area Studies: China: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 280X Seminars in Area Studies: Special Topics in Area Studies 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2008, Fall 1999, Spring 1998 Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester. Seminars in Area Studies: Special Topics in Area Studies: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 290 Survey of Anthropological Research 1 Unit

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024 Required each term of all registered graduate students prior to their advancement to Ph.D. candidacy. Survey of Anthropological Research: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 8 weeks - 2 hours of colloquium per week

Additional Format: Two hours of colloquium per week for 8 weeks.

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ANTHRO 291 Professional Development in Anthropological Archaeology 1 Unit

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024 Required each term of all registered graduate students in Anthropology specializing in archaeology prior to their advancement to Ph.D. candidacy. Professional Development in Anthropological Archaeology: Read More [+]

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ANTHRO 292 Experiments in Collaboration and Reciprocal Transformation 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021 Collaboration in ethnographic praxis on a local and global scale in folkloristics, sociocultural, linguistic, media, and medical anthropology, producing projects grounded in meaningful engagement with communities. Graduate students, working with lay mentors and faculty, will design and begin implementation of projects that break through infrastructures of theory, research, pedagogy, and practice that reproduce racial hierarchies and that erase anti-racist alternatives. Experiments in Collaboration and Reciprocal Transformation: Read More [+]

Additional Format: Three hours of seminar per week.

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ANTHRO C292 Experiments in Collaboration and Reciprocal Transformation 4 Units

Terms offered: Prior to 2007 Collaboration in ethnographic praxis on a local and global scale in folkloristics, sociocultural, linguistic, media, and medical anthropology, producing projects grounded in meaningful engagement with communities. Graduate students, working with lay mentors and faculty, will design and begin implementation of projects that break through infrastructures of theory, research, pedagogy, and practice that reproduce racial hierarchies and that erase anti-racist alter natives. Experiments in Collaboration and Reciprocal Transformation: Read More [+]

Also listed as: FOLKLOR C292

ANTHRO 296A Supervised Research 2 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015 Practice in original field research under staff supervision. One unit of credit for every four hours of work in the field. Supervised Research: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-12 hours of fieldwork per week

Additional Format: Variable units for field research per week.

Supervised Research: Read Less [-]

ANTHRO 296B Supervised Research 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Fall 2017 Analysis and write-up of field materials. Supervised Research: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of independent study per week

Additional Format: Two hours of consultation per week.

ANTHRO 298 Directed Reading 1 - 8 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2020, Spring 2019 Individual conferences intended to provide directed reading in subject matter not covered by available seminar offerings. Directed Reading: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-8 hours of independent study per week

Additional Format: One to eight hours of conference per week.

Directed Reading: Read Less [-]

ANTHRO 299 Directed Research 1 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session Individual conferences to provide supervision in the preparation of an original research paper or dissertation. Directed Research: Read More [+]

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-8 hours of independent study per week

Additional Format: Two to eight hours of conference per week.

Directed Research: Read Less [-]

ANTHRO 301 Professional Training: Teaching 1 - 6 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2018 Group consultation with instructor. Supervised training with instructor on teaching undergraduates. Professional Training: Teaching: Read More [+]

Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit up to a total of 12 units.

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-18 hours of independent study per week

Additional Format: Three to eightteen hours of independent study per week.

Subject/Course Level: Anthropology/Professional course for teachers or prospective teachers

Professional Training: Teaching: Read Less [-]

ANTHRO 375 Graduate Pedagogy Seminar 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022 Training in both the logistics and the pedagogical issues of undergraduate teaching. Graduate Pedagogy Seminar: Read More [+]

Instructor: Agrawal

Formerly known as: Anthropology 300

Graduate Pedagogy Seminar: Read Less [-]

ANTHRO 602 Individual Study for Doctoral Students 1 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Fall 2017 In preparation for Ph.D. examinations. Individual study in consultation with adviser. Intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare themselves for the various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D. May not be used for unit or residence requirements for the degree. Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]

Additional Format: One to eight hours of consultation per week.

Subject/Course Level: Anthropology/Graduate examination preparation

Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read Less [-]

Contact Information

Department of anthropology.

232 Anthropology and Art Practice Building

Phone: 510-642-3391

Co-Director, Equity Advisor

Charles L. Briggs, PhD

307 Anthropology & Art Practice Bldg

[email protected]

Co-Director, Head Graduate Advisor

Lawrence Cohen, PhD

319 Anthropology & Art Practice Bldg

[email protected]

Graduate Student Affairs Officer

Tabea Mastel

213 Anthropology & Art Practice Bldg

Phone: 510-642-3406

[email protected]

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• Medical Anthropology

The Department of Anthropology's Social Anthropology program offers a Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a special emphasis on Medical Anthropology.

Students are regular members of the graduate program in social anthropology, and all requirements for the Ph.D. in anthropology pertain to those specializing in medical anthropology. In addition to selecting required and elective courses in anthropology, students join a group of faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows working in medical and psychiatric anthropology. They participate in a weekly seminar in medical anthropology, take courses offered by the faculty in the program, may participate in specialized research activities with faculty and fellows, and may serve as teaching fellows in courses in medical anthropology.

Medical anthropologists and other faculty at Harvard work on a variety of theoretical and ethnographic issues, including: violence, urban anthropology, mental illness and cross-cultural psychiatry, subjectivity and culture, social suffering, stigma, ethics and bioethics, human rights, pharmaceuticals, substance abuse, infectious disease and epidemics, aging, governmentality, transnationalism and borders, and history of medicine and science. Participants in the Medical Anthropology program are united by a shared commitment to long-term ethnographic engagement with local cultural and social worlds, by a common concern with the practical relations between ethnographic research, medical knowledge, and public health policies, and finally by a common emphasis on the importance of social theory in medical anthropology.

The faculty works in close association with physicians and researchers at the Harvard Medical School and its Department of Social Medicine, as well as with public health practitioners at Harvard and in the community. While most of the anthropologists at Harvard deal in some way with these issues, the Medical Anthropology program is comprised of a group of faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students, divided between Anthropology and Social Medicine. This group meets once a week for guest lectures by some of the most preeminent thinkers in the field of medical anthropology. At Harvard, the program is directed by Arthur Kleinman, Rabb Professor of Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology. 

Application to the Ph.D. program in follows usual procedures for application for the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. You should indicate your medical anthropology interest in the statement of purpose when applying to the Ph.D. in Social Anthropology.

Application information is available on the  Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences  website.

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Medical Anthropology Joint PhD (With UCSF)

 handbook for the medical anthropology program  .

The Joint UCB/UCSF Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology is one of the pioneering programs in the discipline both nationally and globally. The program provides disciplinary leadership and an outstanding and comprehensive training leading to the Ph.D. degree. No other program offers the Joint Program's combination of excellence in critical medical anthropology; psychiatric and psychological anthropology; gender and queer theory; disability studies; health, citizenship, immigration and the global; violence in wartime and peacetime as a medical topic; studies of science, technology and modernity; intersections of medicine and social theory; and innovative ethnographic scholarship.

The core faculty on the Berkeley side of the Joint Program form an organized research group called Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body. This group links medical anthropology, science and technology studies, postcolonial anthropology, disability studies, critical development and humanitarianism studies, psychological and psychoanalytic anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. There are six faculty in the group: Lawrence Cohen , Co-director of Medical Anthropology; Stefania Pandolfo , Graduate Advisor of Medical Anthropology; Charles L. Briggs , Co-chair of Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, Equity Officer of Medical Anthropology,;   Cori Hayden ; Seth Holmes , Co-chair of Berkeley Center for Social Medicine and Co-director of MD/PhD Track in Medical Anthropology (UCB and UCSF); and Karen Nakamura , Director of Disability Studies Lab.

Together with medical anthropology colleagues at UCSF, sociocultural colleagues at Berkeley and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the Joint UCB-UCSF Medical Anthropology Program and in the Department of Anthropology, these scholars have created both the most diverse and the most contemporary program in the field.  Alumni from this program have moved on to leading positions across the country and the world and continue to move the field in new directions.

The expansion of traditional medical anthropology at Berkeley into Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body reflects several disciplinary breakthroughs associated with our faculty. Though variants of "medical anthropology" are almost as old as the parent discipline of anthropology, the field of Medical Anthropology emerged in post-war North America as an effort to link international public health, ethnomedicine, and allied social science in the service of the anthropology of development. The field shared both the promise and the limits of modernization theory more generally. Both the critical Marxist and symbolic/phenomenological/interpretive challenges of the 1970s and 1980s thickened debate, along with closer links to historical analyses of the scholarly medical traditions and the development of qualitative methodologies concurrent with the expansion of NIH, NIMH, and other governmental programs of research support.

Despite the rapid growth of the field at this time, most research remained auxiliary to the categorical if not the political and economic imperatives of biomedicine. With the arrival of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Berkeley became a leader in defining "critically interpretive medical anthropology." Critical medical anthropology refused the theory/applied divide that characterized so many departments and programs, arguing the impossibility of separating "theoretical" debate in cultural anthropology and the human sciences on the one hand and more engaged commitment to the health and survival of communities and groups, on the other. Scheper-Hughes's articulation of a critical anthropology of hunger, as well as the violence continuum in times of war and of peace, offer powerful examples of the change in the field she was instrumental in creating.

The rise of this movement at Berkeley led to a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s with two dominant programs in graduate training, critical medical anthropology in the Joint Program at Berkeley and UCSF and interpretive medical anthropology at Harvard. Lawrence Cohen came from Harvard in 1992 to join Scheper-Hughes. Their teaching and joint research produced a critical and ongoing conversation bringing together the leading formations in the field. Cohen has worked to link debates between critical, interpretive, and biocultural medical anthropologies to broader theoretical questions of materialization that have emerged in feminist and queer scholarship.  Cohen has worked at this intersection on diverse topics, including aging, organ transplant and donation, gender and bodies.

The rapid growth of science studies and the increasing centrality of both science and the body to contemporary debate in the academy posed new challenges to medical anthropology. Paul Rabinow has studied the new genomics intensively, leading to multiple books and to the development of what he has termed an anthropology of reason. Against too-easy criticism of scientific and medical practices that did not question what Michel Foucault called the "speaker's benefit" of the critic, Rabinow offered a method and a form of analysis that offered a way out of the endless battles of the "Culture Wars." Berkeley anthropology emerged as the most powerful alternative to the dominant approaches to the sociology of science and science studies. From the mid-1990s and on, these two streams of medical anthropology and the anthropology of reason have been in closer and sharper interaction. Far from pushing students towards either pole, the debate constituted a space for encouraging students to link critical, interpretive, and genealogic analysis.

In a world of linking new genomics, bioinformatics, and pharmacotherapy to corporate medicine and public-private hybrid structures internationally, "bioethics" has become ever more ubiquitous and empty a critical practice. The question of ethics and more generally of human and non-human futures links the current work of Cohen, Rabinow, Scheper-Hughes, and Hayden. Cori Hayden (former Director and current core faculty member of the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society), along with colleagues at Berkeley and UCSF, has continued to develop new approaches to the social studies of science, including bioethics.  Her work on global and Latin American pharmaceutical politics, intellectual property, and the ethics of clinical trials has led to new understandings of privatization and “public-ization”, the “popular” and populism, and relationships between distinction and copying.

To the question of ethics and to the related investigation of trauma, loss, and healing, Stefania Pandolfo brings a rigorous anthropological conversation incorporating contemporary philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and her field research in a Moroccan psychiatric hospital.  Pandolfo's work provides a bridge allowing for analysis linking medical anthropology and recent social theories of language, melancholy, and the body. Pandolfo has offered extensive training to graduate students in the anthropology of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine, linking a reexamination of existential psychiatry and a close engagement with the work of scholars from Benjamin and Blanchot to Freud, Lacan, and Binswanger to both Mahgrebi and European clinical and theoretical work. 

The strong center of gravity in psychological and psychiatric anthropology is expanded by the work of Scheper-Hughes on emotions and critical psychiatry as well as of Karen Nakamura on mental illness and related social movements.  Nakamura’s work has served as a nexus for gender and queer theory, psychological anthropology, and disability studies at Berkeley.  Along with others in the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s Disability Studies Cluster, she has helped build one of the world’s most active, engaged and diverse networks for disabilities studies. 

By tracing genealogies of the unexamined imbrication of theories of language, knowledge, performativity, and representation with research on biomedicine, public health, and traditional medicine, the Joint UCB-UCSF Medical Anthropology Program enables students to critically synthesize linguistic and critical medical anthropology in such a way as to transform both realms of anthropological inquiry. Charles L. Briggs has explored these connections through research on narrative and statistical representations of epidemic disease in Latin America; urban violence and its problematic representations; and a five-country study of how understandings of health, disease, citizenship, and the state are profoundly shaped by media coverage of health, all in collaboration with Clara Mantini-Briggs.

In addition, Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs study challenges to neoliberal health policies and new understandings of health, citizenship, and the state emerging from revolutionary healthcare in Venezuela.  Also at the intersection of health and citizenship, Seth Holmes studies labor, health, and healthcare in the context of transnational im/migration and food systems.  Against this background, he has explored the ways in which perceptions of race, class, and citizenship play into (and, at times, challenge and resist) the naturalization and normalization of social and health inequalities. In addition, Holmes studies the ways in which health professionals come to understand and respond to social difference and the ways race and racialization function differently in the lives of indigenous Mexican immigrant youth depending on spatial and social context.

Other Berkeley anthropology faculty bring important resources to graduate student training in the critical analysis of medicine, science, and psychiatry. Laura Nader was instrumental in helping to define the field and remains a leading scholar of medicine and the state. Stanley Brandes has studied many topics of relevance to the field, including alcohol and culture and questions of death and the body.  Aihwa Ong helped define the field of global anthropology and continues to work on biotechnology in various sites in North America, Southeast Asia, and China.  Marianne Ferme has analyzed and written on global health and development, including epidemics, outbreaks and their responses. 

Our program is deepened by strong relationships with colleagues asking related questions across the Berkeley campus in units including History, English, Political Science, Sociology, City and Regional Planning, Comparative Literature, Gender and Women Studies, Critical Theory, Public Health and beyond.  In addition, our colleagues on the UCSF side of the Joint Program contribute cutting-edge anthropological work on global health, humanitarianism, critical studies of racialization, metrics in the health sciences, urban health, social studies of science and genetics, gender and health, aging and death, dental health, ethics of research and care, and medical history.  The breadth and depth of our core faculty at Berkeley, our links with colleagues across the Berkeley campus, and our close educational and research collaboration with faculty on the UCSF side of the Joint Program make this one of the broadest and most dynamic contexts for medical anthropology in the country and in the world. 

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THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

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Medical Anthropology

Degree requirements.

Learn more about the program by visiting the Department of Anthropology

See related Interdisciplinary Clusters and Certificates

Degree Types: PhD/MPH

The combined PhD/MPH  Program in Medical Anthropology prepares graduates for leadership in academic and government institutions requiring expertise in biocultural approaches to the study of human health and disease. Drawing on the broader strengths of our department in political-economic analysis, global health, and human biology, Medical Anthropology at Northwestern focuses on the intersection of health with various forms of social and political inequality. The program provides rigorous interdisciplinary training linking the fields of medical anthropology and public health in both domestic and international settings.

Students pursing the combined PhD/MPH degree fulfill all requirements for both the Doctorate in Anthropology and the Master of Public Health through a selected interdisciplinary curriculum. A full three years of credit-bearing courses (18 units) is required in addition to the PhD dissertation. In the MPH curriculum, students complete the coursework requirements for the "Generalist Concentration". In addition to the MPH coursework, students also complete an Applied Practice Experience (APEx) and a Culminating Experience paper. 

Applicants apply to the combined PhD/MPH degree program at the time they apply for admission to the graduate program in Anthropology. 

Additional resources:

• Department website
• Program handbook(s)

Program Statistics

Visit Master's Program Statistics and PhD Program Statistics for statistics such as program admissions, enrollment, student demographics and more.

Program Contact

Contact Tracy Tohtz Graduate Program Administrator 847-491-4817

The following requirements are in addition to, or further elaborate upon, those requirements outlined in  The Graduate School Policy Guide .

Total Units Required:  MPH requires a total of 16 units and Anthropology PhD requires a minimum of 9 units. Three Anthropology courses can be double-counted towards the MPH. These include: (1) a methods course (either ANTHRO 386-0 Methods in Human Biology Research or ANTHRO 389-0 Ethnographic Methods and Analysis ), and (2) two other elective courses from the list below.  All MPH/PhD candidates in Medical Anthropology complete the requirements for the "Generalist Concentration" in the MPH Program. 

MPH Course Requirements

Phd course requirements.

Students are required to complete PhD course requirements based on the chosen subfield.

Required Papers and Proposals

Students are required to complete a Second Year Qualifying Paper, an Applied Public Health Experience (APEx), Culminating Experience Paper,  a Dissertation Proposal, and a PhD Dissertation. 

Last Updated: September 6, 2024