African Studies Center

University of Pennsylvania

SCHOLAR FOR A DAY

Scholars:  AboutThe Scholar for a Day is a day-long seminar, organized by Penn graduate students of all disciplines, designed to provide students and faculty with exposure to a leading scholar in African Studies. The event allows for intensive engagement with authors of significant theoretical approaches to Africanist scholarship as well as providing an opportunity to gain insight into the professional process--the evolution of new empirical and theoretical interests, the methodologies of research and writing, and the process of collaboration between scholars. |2012 | 2011 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1994


2009 Scholar: PROF. SUSAN RENYOLDS WHYTE
Institute of Anthropology, Copenhagen University, Denmark
21 September 2009, 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Terrace Room, Cohen Hall

Susan Whyte Image

Event Schedule:

9:00 – 9:15 AM
Registration and Refreshments

9:15 – 9:30 AM
Opening Remarks: Dr. Lee Cassanelli, ASC Director

9:30 – 11:00
Panel 1: "Practicing Medicine and Social Science Research: Medical Student Perspectives"
Moderators:
Rachael Bonawitz, 4th year medical student
Sushila Murphy, 3rd year medical student
Aaron Greenblatt,3rd year medical student
Faculty Moderator: TBA

11:00 – 11:15
Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45
Panel 2: "The Social Lives of Medicines"
Moderators:
Erica Dwyer, MD/PhD Candidate, History and Sociology of Science
Gavin Steingo, PhD Candidate, Musicology
Micheal Joiner, PhD Candidate, Anthropology
Faculty Moderator: Adriana Petryna, Associate Professor, Anthropology

12:45 – 2:15 PM
Lunch

2:15 – 3:45 PM
Panel 3: "Methods and Approaches"
Moderators:
Joanna Radin, PhD Candidate, History and Sociology of Science
Marissa Mika, PhD Candidate, History and Sociology of Science
Elizabeth Dyer, PhD Candidate, History
Faculty Moderator: Steven Feierman, Professor, History and Sociology of Science and History

3:45 – 4:00 PM
Break

4:00 – 5:30 PM
Dr. Whyte Keynote Address:
"Living with ART: The First Generation in Uganda"

5:30 – 6:00 PM
Reception

Susan Reynolds Whyte is a professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She has carried out fieldwork in Kenya and Tanzania, but has returned most frequently to Uganda, where she and her husband Michael did their first ethnographic research from 1969-1971. For 13 years, she led a research capacity strengthening project linking anthropology and social medicine departments in Denmark with the Child Health and Development Centre, a multi-disciplinary research unit at Makerere University in Kampala. Together with other Danish colleagues, she is now involved in a similar undertaking at Gulu University in northern Uganda with a focus on recovery after armed conflict.

Her research interests revolve around: the pragmatic management of uncertainty in situations of everyday life; relations between generations under changing historical conditions; composite health care systems, health interventions and social differences; changing conceptions of body and person; and the movement of ideas and technology exemplified in the social lives of medicines.

She received her PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle, and has had visiting affiliations at Harvard University’s Department of Social Medicine, the Centre for the Cross-Cultural Study of Women at Oxford University, the Department of History at Nairobi University, and Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda

Selected Books by Dr. Whyte:

  • Generations in Africa: connections and conflicts (2008)
  • Disability in Local and Global Worlds (2007)
  • Social Lives of Medicines (2003)
  • Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda (1998)
  • Popular pills: community drug use in Uganda (1996)
  • Disability and Culture Disability and Culture (1995)
  • Injection use and practices in Uganda (1994)
  • The Context of Medicines in Developing Countries, Studies in Pharmaceutical Anthropology (1988)
  • Social implications of the interpretation of misfortune in Bunyole (1973)

For inquiries please contact:
Dr.Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D, aadinar@sas.upenn.edu
(215) 898-6610

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