COURSE DESCRIPTION

Enrich your understanding of everything from the environment to personal health by learning the perspective of indigenous and non-Western cultures. We’ll examine indigenous views of the landscape and Chinese concepts of health and the body, reveal how these systems incorporate knowledge about the world, and ask how and why these ways of seeing differ so profoundly from our own.

Image: B. B. Olshin, “‘Talking Drum’, Manhyia Palace Museum, Kumasi, Ghana”, graphite on paper, 2004

SYLLABUS

• Syllabus: A Look at Non-Western Thinking

LECTURES

• LECTURE 1: Non-Western Thinking: Definitions and Starting Points

• LECTURE 2: Other Maps: Indigenous Views of the Landscape

• LECTURE 3: Different Body, Different Treatment: Chinese Traditional Medicine

• LECTURE 4: Contemporary Issues: "Noble Savages", Fake Natives, and Inscrutable Asians