India: Traditional Medicine and Healthcare Practices (Summer)

Coursework

The India: Traditional Medicine and Healthcare Practices program aims to acquaint students with socioeconomic, politico-cultural, and institutional dimensions and paradigms of healthcare in India. By learning about the institutions, methodologies, and practitioners of traditional medicine, students compare and contrast India’s traditional and modern healthcare systems. The structure of the program enhances students’ capacity to think critically in terms of the multidimensional perspectives on healthcare and health delivery systems.

Students on this program enroll in two separate seminar courses: Traditional Indian Medicine: Theory and Context and Field Study of Traditional Indian Healthcare Practices.

The syllabi can be useful for students, faculty, and study abroad offices in assessing credit transfer. Read more about credit transfer.

Because courses develop and change over time to take advantage of dynamic learning opportunities, actual course content will vary from term to term.

Traditional Indian Medicine: Theory and Context - syllabus (PDF)
(ASIA 3010 / 5 credits / 75 class hours)
This six-week seminar provides a framework for the investigation of several traditional healthcare systems in India by examining some of the country’s basic social, economic, cultural, and legal paradigms. It considers India’s rich and ancient philosophical traditions pertaining to theories of health, healing, and medicine. These traditional healthcare systems are both widely practiced and receive government support today. The course introduces students to the origins of these wellness theories and systems through lectures, readings, and field visits designed to facilitate direct observation.The primary focus is on the systems of Ayurveda, yoga, Unani, Siddha, Amchi, folk medicine, and ethnic-traditional healing in the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

Field Study of Traditional Indian Healthcare Practices - syllabus (PDF)
(ASIA 3020 / 3 credits / 45 class hours)
This six-week course complements the Traditional Indian Medicine: Theory and Context seminar. The course emphasizes field study methods that give students a foundation for engaging in basic ethnographic approaches to studying and understanding the practice of traditional medicine. Through visits to and interaction with organizations and individuals working in India’s traditional healthcare system, students gain firsthand exposure to the practices and environments of these alternative methods of wellness. Though observation, note-taking, and interviewing, students gain experience with primary sources, thereby increasing their knowledge of traditional medicine in India.