Reading the Archive is an online feature of Medical Anthropology Quarterly that aims to expand our understanding of contemporary theoretical and social formations by thinking both laterally and historically.
Each issue of Reading the Archive hones in on a central thematic–including thematics that might seem peripheral or orthogonal to the conventional concerns of medical anthropology–and offers a curated collection of articles from the MAQ archive that help us generate new insights, and new questions, both about the thematic and about the nature and scope of medical anthropology itself.
Each issue is curated by a guest editor, and offers collection of 5-8 contemporary and classic articles drawn from the MAQ archive, along with an original critical introduction, and a set of additional resources to facilitate further thinking in the classroom and beyond. The articles in each issue will be made open access for 6 months.
Rather than solidifying a canon, Reading the Archive attunes to unexpected resonances across the shifting history of medical anthropological knowledge and practice, reading contemporary theoretical or analytical formations or timely issues of scholarly and public attention backwards into the MAQ archive. Our first two issues focus on disability anthropology (Molly Bloom) and the politics of water (Nadia Gaber).