Anastasia Karakasidou

Professor of Anthropology

Social anthropologist doing research,  writing and teaching on the topics of health, illness and cancer.

Anastasia Karakasidou was born in Greece and studied chemistry, archaeology and anthropology in the U.S. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University (1992) where she received training in social theory and historical anthropology. She conducted her dissertation fieldwork in Northern Greece, where she examined issues of ethnicity. national consciousness and agrarian transformations. Dr. Karakasidou's book Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990 (University of Chicago Press, 1997) is a historical ethnography that offers an analysis of nationalism and ethnic rivalry in the Balkans, in general, and in Greek Macedonia, in particular. Topics such as the role of intellectuals, women, and the Greek Communist Party in national ideology construction in Greece were also explored in her published articles. She also published a series of essays that trace the competing nationalist ideologies that divided the ethnically diverse communities in an area of Greece that border Yugoslavia and Albania.. In this work, Anastasia Karakasidou, through the use of both governmental archival sources, and archival sources, and oral historical reconstructions, examines such important issues as administrative goals, policing and conscripting policies, staging of national holidays and the veneration of national heroes.

Since 2001, Professor Karakasidou is researching, writing and teaching on the topics of health, illness and cancer. She has conducted multi-sited ethnographic research in the Chine province of Yunan, in the Greek island of Crete, and in the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts. A book entitled "Cultures of Cancer" aspires to bring the history and analysis of cancer narratives and social experiences in these three societies.

Professor Karakasidou is also very interested in her teaching at Wellesley. She has offered courses that range from evolution and diversity, to ethnographic writing, to contemporary anthropological theory, to Orientalist discourse, the vulnerable body and the cultures of cancer. She enjoys student-teacher interaction and she encourages independent and critical thinking. Combining teaching with research and writing, Professor Karakasidou offers a view of anthropology as living practice to her students.

Education

  • B.A., The College of Wooster
  • M.A., Brandeis University
  • M.A., Bryn Mawr College
  • M.Phil, Columbia University in the City of New York
  • Ph.D., Columbia University in the City of New York

Current and upcoming courses

  • Epidemics and Pandemics: Biopolitics, and disparities in historical and cultural perspective

    ANTH220

    The course will examine epidemics and pandemics and how they shape society and culture. It will explore catastrophic disease events such as the 4th century BC Ancient Greek plague, the Black Death of Medieval Europe, the European infectious diseases that killed native populations of the Americas, the Spanish flu of 1918, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the late 20th century, and the present-day coronavirus pandemic. Key questions that will guide the course are: 1. Who holds the bio-political power to guide the population through the danger of widespread morbidity, and how is this power used and/or abused? 2. What kind of socioeconomic, gender, ethnic ,and racial disparities are perpetuated and constructed in times of disease? 3. How do individual political entities cooperate and coordinate in their efforts to curtail disease? 4. How is the rhetoric of “war” employed to describe epidemic and pandemic diseases? 5. What are the effects of actual war, violence, and genocide that often follow epidemics? 6. What are the uses and the limitations of international public health organizations in addressing pandemics? (ANTH 220 and PEAC 220 are cross-listed courses.)
  • Epidemics and Pandemics: Biopolitics, and disparities in historical and cultural perspective

    ANTH220H

    The course will examine epidemics and pandemics and how they shape society and culture. It will explore catastrophic disease events such as the 4th century BC Ancient Greek plague, the Black Death of Medieval Europe, the European infectious diseases that killed native populations of the Americas, the Spanish flu of 1918, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the late 20th century, and the present-day coronavirus pandemic. Key questions that will guide the course are: 1. Who holds the bio-political power to guide the population through the danger of widespread morbidity, and how is this power used and/or abused? 2. What kind of socioeconomic, gender, ethnic ,and racial disparities are perpetuated and constructed in times of disease? 3. How do individual political entities cooperate and coordinate in their efforts to curtail disease? 4. How is the rhetoric of “war” employed to describe epidemic and pandemic diseases? 5. What are the effects of actual war, violence, and genocide that often follow epidemics? 6. What are the uses and the limitations of international public health organizations in addressing pandemics? (ANTH 220H and PEAC 220H are cross-listed courses.)
  • Nationalism, Politics, and the Use of the Remote Past

    ANTH319H

    This seminar critically examines the use of prehistory and antiquity for the construction of accounts of national origins, historical claims to specific territories, or the biased assessment of specific peoples. The course begins with an examination of the phenomenon of nationalism and the historically recent emergence of contemporary nation-states. It then proceeds comparatively, selectively examining politically motivated appropriations of the remote past that either were popular earlier in this century or have ongoing relevance for some of the ethnic conflicts raging throughout the world today. The course will attempt to develop criteria for distinguishing credible and acceptable reconstructions of the past from those that are unbelievable and/or dangerous.