Syllabus, Medicine, Culture, and Society.doc

Office Hours: Mon 4.30-6.30pm, 391 Uris Hall (sign-up sheet posted on the office door) Responsible for course design and delivery, guidance on your learning and writing, supervision of grading.

Office Hours: Th 4.30-6.30pm, 213 McGraw Hall

Syllabus: Remaking Bodies, Rethinking Social Movements Wesleyan University, Middletown/Connecticut, 2015

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

2017

This course emerges out of a research project that I began a few years ago as a Faculty Research Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute (University of Toronto) in 2015-16.

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, with an emphasis on historical methods, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

Syllabus "Disability, Health, and Normality"

We use words like disability, health, and illness every day, and yet we rarely pause to consider how our understanding of what is normal influences how we understand the present and how we imagine futures. This course centers the experiences of multiply-marginalized disabled people and introduces students to a transnational framework that considers how our thinking about disability is anchored in settler colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. From an intersectional, interdisciplinary perspective and based on narratives and knowledges created by disabled people-ranging from scholarly works and life writing to vlogs, television shows, and art-students will learn to critically examine the history of Western medicine, law, politics, and culture. This class offers a space in which we approach disabilities, from depression and anxiety to autism to spina bifida, as well as Deaf culture, chronic illnesses, body size, sexual orientation and gender identity, and many other forms of difference as complex sites of social expectations, personal experiences, state interventions, knowledge production, and exuberant life.

In this course we will explore the intriguing and manifold roles that wine and beer have played in the history of human civilization from their first appearance to our days, with a particular focus on the various places these two alcoholic beverages have occupied in the practices and speculations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims over the centuries. In line with the interdisciplinary nature of the field of Religious Studies, we will combine anthropological, sociological, and psychological theories and methods with historical and textual analysis as we embark upon this intoxicating exploration.