AN285 Half Unit
Mind and Society
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Laura Bear
Availability
This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study, Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is available with permission to General Course students.
Requisites
Additional requisites:
Unless granted an exemption by the course teacher, students taking this course from departments other than Anthropology should have completed EITHER an introductory course in anthropology such as AN100 or AN101 OR have completed an AN200 course in their second year of study
Course content
This course will introduce students to different ways in which anthropologists (and others) have sought to understand the human mind in its social and cultural context. It will survey a range of classic and contemporary theoretical perspectives within psychological anthropology and cognate disciplines, including psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic social theory; phenomenological approaches in anthropology; scientific and folk theories of mind; and other anthropological engagements with the psy disciplines. Students will learn to assess the value and limits of such perspectives by placing them in dialogue with ethnographic studies of selected mental phenomena and mediating social practices. Specific topics addressed in any given year will reflect the current research interests of the course teacher, but indicative themes could include: mental health and illness; the uncanny; the unconscious and freedom; will, trance and hypnosis; psychedelics; dreams; neuroscience and its discontents; neurodiversity; hallucinations and visions; trauma; healing practices; multisensory ethnography; perceptions of time; emotions and affect. Classroom teaching will involve some experiential exercises.
This course will use Cadmus for submitting assessments. This platform is currently being evaluated by LSE for AI-resilient assessment. For more information, visit Cadmus Assessment Edit Tracking - Guidance for Students.
Teaching
10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
Essay (1500 words)
Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.
Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 3 of term.
Indicative reading
Abi-Rached, J. and Rose, N. 2022. Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lepselter, Susan. The Resonance of Unseen Things: poetics, power, captivity, and UFOs in the American uncanny. University of Michigan Press, 2016.
Langlitz, Nicolas. Neuropsychedelia: The revival of hallucinogen research since the decade of the brain. Univ of California Press, 2013.
Mittermaier, Amira. Dreams that matter: Egyptian landscapes of the imagination. Univ of California Press, 2010.
Beatty, A. 2019. Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chodorow, N. 1999. The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Grinker, R. 2007. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. Philadelphia: Basic Books.
Jenkins, J. 2015. Extraordinary conditions: culture and experience in mental illness. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mageo, J., & Sheriff, R.E. (eds.). 2020. New Directions in the Anthropology of Dreaming. Routledge.
Murphy, Keith M., and C. Jason Throop, eds. Toward an Anthropology of the Will. Stanford University Press, 2010
Mitchell, J. and Petty, K. (eds.). 2020. Uncanny Landscapes. Special Issue of Material Religion 16(4).
Hollan, Douglas W. 2022."Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: The Looping Effects of Persons and Social Worlds." Annual Review of Anthropology 51
Desjarlais, Robert, and C. Jason Throop. 2011. "Phenomenological approaches in anthropology." Annual review of anthropology 40
Rutherford, Danilyn. 2016 "Affect theory and the empirical." Annual Review of Anthropology 45
Bear, Laura. 2016. "Time as technique." Annual Review of Anthropology 45
Porcello, T., Meintjes, L., Ochoa, A. M., & Samuels, D. W. 2010. “The reorganization of the sensory world.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 39.
Howes, David. 2019 "Multisensory anthropology." Annual Review of Anthropology 48.
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 480 Minutes in the January exam period
Key facts
Department: Anthropology
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 5
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 36
Average class size 2024/25: 12
Capped 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills