Authorship and authority over matters of health, illness, the body and the self, are negotiated through a complex layering of voices – medical institutions, physicians, legislators, patients, caregivers, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. This seminar traces and analyzes the network of disparate and often contradictory stories that coalesce around bodies and health from a global perspective. Drawing on different cultural traditions-the US, 20th-century Russia, and modern Japan, we explore the productive tensions between universal concepts and phenomena that are part of the human condition and their social and cultural specificities.
