Medical Anthropology Major
Fall 2023 Research Methods Courses (some will need a Tar Heel tracker adjustment):
ANTH 190 – From Ayahuasca to Zoloft: Anthropological Perspectives on Drugs and Drug Use (register for 3 credit hours)
ANTH 318 – Human Growth and Development (will only count for RM for this semester – new requirements have been added to the class to make it count for RM)
ANTH 390.001 – ANTH of Fitness
ANTH 414/414L – Human Osteopathy
Spring 2024 Research Methods courses that are planned to be offered (this could change, so please plan ahead):
ANTH 326 – Practicing Medical Anthropology (cap of 16)
ANTH 390 – Anthropology of Fitness (cap of 24)
ANTH 582 – Fieldwork with Social Models of Well-Being (cap of 20)
ANTH 676 – Research Methods in Human Biology (cap of 15)
Learn what Medical Anthropology can do for pre-med students here!
Medical anthropology addresses the biological, cultural, and political-economic dimensions of health, illness, and healing historically and at present. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary character of its parent field of anthropology, medical anthropology deploys quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the body as a site of evolutionary processes and cultural symbols, and healing as interpretive processes at macro, meso, and micro levels.
This program provides students with the fundamental knowledge and exposure needed to pursue careers and post-graduate studies in fields related to global health, public health, allied health care and health and human services, medicine, dentistry, and other emerging disciplines.
For students seeking a career in the health professions, the program in medical anthropology complements training in the natural sciences. Courses in medical anthropology explore population variations in health outcomes due to the influence of culture. The curriculum also equips students with ways to understand the meanings people find in illness and healing and the moral stakes of medical decisions. Additionally, courses in medical anthropology give students awareness of the formal institutions and social relations that become the channels and limitations of technical knowledge about illness and healing.
Upon completion of the medical anthropology program, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of the relationships between humans’ health and historical, biocultural, and societal dynamics
- Demonstrate understanding of the ways comparative cultural and historical experiences impact health-related values and practices, definitions of illness, and methods of healing
- Demonstrate competence in reading, analyzing, and communicating social science research on health
- Gain experience conducting and/or applying research using medical anthropology’s methods
- Gain an understanding of medical anthropology’s relationships to the holistic, parent discipline of anthropology and its contributions to applied professional fields such as medicine and global health.
Medical Anthropology BA Degree, as of 8.15.2022
Below is the list of required categories of coursework and courses that fulfill the various categories, arranged in a chronological plan of study, for the major in Medical Anthropology (UNC-CH’s Department of Anthropology).
The UNC Undergraduate Catalog listing of courses that count towards the Research Methods and Experiences requirement contains errors that are in the process of being corrected. Please refer to the list below for the accurate listing.
Years 1 and 2 | ||||||||||||||||||
FOUNDATIONAL COURSES (2 REQUIRED)
|
||||||||||||||||||
Years 2 and 3
|
||||||||||||||||||
RESEARCH METHODS AND EXPERIENCE COURSES (2 REQUIRED)
|
||||||||||||||||||
Years 3 and 4
|
Other Department Courses that count for Research methods Med ANTH Requirement Sociology:
251 MEASUREMENT AND DATA COLLECTION
251 MEASUREMENT AND DATA COLLECTION
252 DATA ANALYSIS
318 COMPUTATIONAL SOCIOLOGY
Geography:
391 Quantita Methods
392 Research Methods in Geography
410 Modeling Env. Systems
456 Geovisualizing Change
477 Intro Remote Sens Env
491 Intro to GIS
592 GISCI Programming
Epidemiology:
700 SAS and Data Management
Biostatistics:
600 Principles of Statistical Inference
661 Probability and Statistical Inference
668 Design of Public Health Studies
669 Working with Data in a Public Health Research Setting
In addition to the 2 foundational and 2 methods /experiences courses, students must take 5
total elective courses, including at least 1 from each of the following two groups,
Biological/ecological and Sociocultural (listed below). These courses can be taken at any time during the student’s tenure at UNC. No more than 2 of the 5 courses can be at the 100- level. Students may count up to 2 ANTH courses not included in this list, or up to 2 courses from outside the Department that relate to the student’s area of interest in Medical Anthropology.
Biological and Ecological Electives for the Medical Anthropology Major
Course No. | Course Title |
ANTH 143 | Human evolution and adaptation |
ANTH 148 | Human Origins |
ANTH 217 | Human Biology |
ANTH 315 | Human Genetics |
ANTH 318 | Human Growth and Development |
ANTH 437 | Evolutionary Medicine |
ANTH 446 | Poverty, Inequality and Health |
ANTH 471 | Maternal and Child Health |
ANTH 538 | Disease and Discrimination |
ANTH 623 | Disease Ecology |
ANTH 151 | Food and Culture |
ANTH 175 | Intro to Food Studies: From Science to Society |
ANTH 237/ENEC 237 | Food, Environment and Sustainability |
ANTH 252 | Archaeology of Food |
Sociocultural electives for the Medical Anthropology Major
Course No. | Course Title |
ANTH 272/ENGL 264 | Healing in Literature and Ethnography |
ANTH 278 | Women in Science |
ANTH 280/PWAD 280 | Anthropology of War and Peace |
ANTH 320 | Anthropology of Development |
ANTH 325 | Emotions and Society |
ANTH 328 | Anthropology of Care |
ANTH 422 | Anthropology and Human Rights |
ANTH 426 | Making Magic |
ANTH 430 | War, Medicine and Military |
ANTH 442 | Health and Gender After Socialism |
ANTH 443/WGST 443 | Cultures and Politics of Reproduction |
ANTH 445 | Migration and Health |
ANTH 448 | Health and Medicine in the American South |
ANTH 470 | Medicine and Anthropology |
ANTH 473 | Body and Subject |
ANTH 474 | Anthropology of Disability |
ANTH 582 | Fieldwork with Social Models of Well-Being |
ANTH 585 | Anthropology of Science |
ANTH 624 | Anthropology and Public Health |
ANTH 649 | Politics of Life and Death |
AAAD 300 | Cultures of Health and Healing in Africa |
AAAD 387 | HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Diaspora |
ARAB 214 | Medicine and Modernity in the Arab World |