Through a fellowship grant from the American Scandinavian Foundation (ASF), I have been fortunate to be given the opportunity to be part of SMU’s Anthropology Department through my wonderful colleague here at SMU, Professor Kelly McKown.
Here at SMU I have been in charge of teaching a course on Health as a Human Right for 30 wonderful undergrad students all of whom have put in an extraordinary effort in the class. We gather three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for class, and we go for one hour each day we meet. Mondays and Wednesdays we engage in more traditional teachings such as lectures and open discussions while on Fridays the students are given various scenarios which they are to solve in groups. In this way, our Fridays become problem based or scenario-based teaching labs wherein we tackle various issues connected to health, human rights and sustainability. Teaching this class has been a wonderful experience and a great way of being part of a very open and generous academic climate in which academic hospitality really has come to the fore.
Teaching in the U.S. is both similar and different to teaching back home in Oslo, and yet, at its core, student involvement and engagement is in both contexts key. The class while focusing on Health as a Human Right, has also contained a large focus on sustainability, climate and systems thinking and have allowed us in class, to explore how human rights paradigms evolve and change focus as climate change impacts health. We have worked a lot on issues of structural violence as professed by the late Paul Farmer and have connected structural violence to climate, health, and issues of equity. Moreover, the students have been exemplary in connecting the syllabus to their own lived experiences in the U.S. ranging from poultry farms in Arkansas and the issue of zoonotic diseases there, to ‘Shingle Mountain’ in Dallas and the pollution caused by it and the effects it has had on human health. Other examples the students have draw attention to are issues of racial disparities in health, and how issues of class and gender play out and creates inequal health outcomes.
It’s been very rewarding and indeed impressive to see undergrad students work so diligently and immersive with the material provided. Through student centered teaching and problem and scenario based learning, the students have been at the center of the teaching and so far its been an amazing journey.
While teaching have been at the center of my fellowship, I have also connected with several other researchers and been given the opportunity to hold talks for the anthropology department as well as the PhD graduate students have been a very rewarding and interesting part of my stay here at SMU. As my stay draws to an end, I will be traveling to New York to visit ASF and give a talk at Scandinavia House and later, towards the end of April, I will be visiting San Francisco and old friends at UC Berkeley and UCSF in an effort to continue the collaboration between SHE and other research entities in the U.S. – very much in line with the collaborative and academic hospitality spirit of both my grant from ASF and SHE at home.
Through the fellowship provided by ASF, the academic hospitality shown by SMU, and the generous support of SHE, my stay has been very rewarding and has already created synergies between research, teaching and academic institutions in Norway and in the U.S. The hope and goal is that this stay is only the beginning of a sustainable and long lasting collaboration and academic hospitality across disciplines and nations. And that the experiences gained here in the U.S. will carry over to my day-to-day work once I am back in Oslo.
All the best from Dallas, New York and San Francisco and see you all back in Oslo and at SHE!
Tony
Editors note: Tony Joakim Ananiassen Sandset is one of the researchers in SHE. Read more about him and his work here.