ANTH154 - Medical Anthropology of Alcohol Use

The morality, rights, and responsibilities of alcohol use are hotly debated in the United States. The rhetoric of appropriate use ranges from Puritan-inspired abstinence campaigns, through health-promoting moderation arguments, to discourses legitimizing hedonism. The result of a lack of clear cultural paradigms for intoxicant use is clearly seen on college campuses, where movements for zero-tolerance alcohol bans coexist with social rituals that include binge drinking. This course will utilize medical anthropology theory to: 1) contextualize the phenomenon historically and cross-culturally; 2) encourage students to critically analyze existing paradigms which determine acceptable usage and treatment modalities; 3) use the University of Pennsylvania campus as a local case study/field site to investigate alcohol use. Students will move from theory to action through creation of a feasible proposal addressing alcohol-use education on Penn's campus, or will participate in the modification and implementation of existing proposals to promote rational and low-risk use of alcohol in the college community.