REPRODUCTION, CULTURE AND IDENTITY

ANTH-E400/600  -  REPRODUCTION,  CULTURE  AND  IDENTITY

Prof. Joëlle Bahloul

Spring 2012

 Do babies play a role in defining their parents’ cultural, national, ethnic, or religious identity? Is the female womb a battleground in national politics?  This course will take a positive approach to these questions, with the assumption that both women and the societies in which they live use their reproductive capacities as a fertile terrain for establishing the politics of identity. Students will explore the question of biological reproduction as being in direct relation to social and culture reproduction.  They will study fertility and childbirth within different cultures, as well as the experience of infertility and its social responses in diverse cultural and political contexts.

Requirements

            Undergraduate: Class diary (40%); Fieldwork project (40%);

                                       Class participation (20%)

            Graduate:          Class diary (40%); In-class presentations (20%);

                                       Fieldwork project (40%)

           

            Selected Bibliography

             -  Bonaccorso M., 2009, Conceiving Kinship.

             -  Ginsburg F., Rapp R., (eds.), 1995, Conceiving the New World Order.

             -  Inhorn and Van Balen (eds.), 2002, Infertility around the Globe.

             -  Kahn S., 2000, Reproducing Jews.

             -  Martin E., 2001, The Woman in the Body.