This course explores various meanings and roles of the human body in the Middle East North Africa region, as well as the connections between individual experiences of the body and the collective political "body" of the nation, society, and state. Course themes include health and medicine, sports, environment, war, gender and sexuality, religion, and politics. Drawing upon contemporary ethnographies from the region, students will examine the body's embeddedness in structures of power, such as kinship networks, political and religious movements, and government and non-government organizations. Students will apply anthropological thinking to understand how embodied experiences in these structures shapes people's sense of who they are and how they are in the world.