Kristin Bright
Office
Munroe Hall 103
Tel
(802) 443-2236
Email
kbright@middlebury.edu
Office Hours
Fall 2025: On sabbatical leave.

Kristin Bright is associate professor of cultural and medical anthropology at Middlebury College. Keenly committed to interdisciplinary research and advising, she also holds affiliate faculty positions in social behavioural health at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and sociocultural anthropology at Carleton University (Canada). 

In Vermont and Canada, she leads the Body Online Lab, a student-faculty ethnographic research collective focused on youth health and healthcare, cancer healthcare, relational and sexual health, holistic and integrative medicine, digital ecosystems, and end of life care. Across these areas, Bright’s lab is interested in the diverse ways people imagine and interact with emerging practices of health communication and activism.

After finishing her PhD in anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1998, Bright carried out postdoctoral work in cultural medical anthropology at the University of California Humanities Research Institute (1998-99) and Stanford University (1999-2002). She was then selected as a NIAAA fellow at the University of California Berkeley and Prevention Research Center (2002-05) where studied substance use, addiction, and youth mental health. Since then, Bright has helped to design and lead large multdisciplinary projects including clinical ethnographic research on structural inequalities in breast cancer in Egypt, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States, and a policy guidance study on access to novel therapeutics for lethal cancers in Canada and the US.

Current research: In 2024-2026, Bright is leading a grant-funded initiative Seeding the Medical Humanities: Fostering Collaborations in Community and Relational Wellbeing, with Roxanna Alvarado ‘25, Elio Farley ‘24.5, Hanna Medwar ‘25, Emily Stone ‘25, Jessica Bytautas (UofT PhD ‘25), Jayanti Singh (UofT alum ‘20), and scholar partners at the University of Auckland (Aotearoa/ New Zealand), University of Toronto (Canada), and University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Fieldwork is dedicated to three concerns: student-led pedagogies for relational and sexual health education and anti-violence; cancer patient advocacy and stories of recognition in the shadow of digital health and AI; and therapeutic landscapes of familial and household medicine. Closer to home, Bright and her students have been working with clinicians and educators at Mount Abe Unified School District and Mountain Community Health (a federally qualified health center in Bristol Vermont) on the implementation evaluation of a school based health center. In a third area, Bright has been working with health scholar Jessica Bytautas and colleagues at Dalla Lana on relationships and meanings of legacy and materiality in end of life care; with physician Anneliese Mills and colleagues at Sunnybrook Health Sciences on medical assistance in dying; and with Watson fellow Sam Gordan-Wexler ‘23.5 on what it means to die well

Advising and teaching: Bright advises student work in anthropology, global health, gender and sexuality studies, IGST, health humanities, South Asia, North America, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Areas of teaching and advising include: anthropology of the body, history of medicine, decolonizing health and medicine, therapeutic landscapes, plant medicines, kinship and relational knowledge transmission, and social cultural theory. 

Courses Taught

Course Description

Everyday Life in South Asia
This course offers an introduction to anthropological studies of South Asia. Relying on works of ethnography, journalism, memoir, and film, we examine people’s everyday lived experiences and mediations of globalization, religion, science, popular culture, gender, and the body in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. In taking a close and intersectional look at situations across the region (e.g., new expressions of gender and capitalism in India, narratives of religious pluralism in Pakistan, enactments of media, modernity, and sexuality in Afghanistan), the course aims to give students the opportunity to sharpen their cultural analysis skills as they glean a more complex understanding of people’s ways of living across South Asia and the diaspora.3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Spring 2022, Spring 2024

Requirements

AAL, CMP, SOA, SOC

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Course Description

Medical Anthropology: Approaches to Affliction and Healing
In this course, an introduction to medical anthropology, we will explore cultural and political-economic perspectives on health, illness, and disease. Topics covered include: (1) biocultural approaches to understanding health; (2) medical systems, including biomedicine and others; (3) the effects of poverty and inequality on health outcomes; and (4) the social construction of health and illness. Students will apply these concepts in understanding an aspect of health, illness, or healing in their own research project with an ethnographic component. An introductory course in anthropology or familiarity with medical or public health issues is recommended. (Juniors and Seniors register in section B) (formerly SOAN 0387) 3 hrs. lect./disc.

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

Requirements

CMP, SOC

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Course Description

The Research Process: Ethnography and Qualitative Methods
The aim of this course is to prepare the student to conduct research, to analyze and present research in a scholarly manner, and to evaluate critically the research of others. Practice and evaluation of such basic techniques as observation, participant-observation, structured and open-ended interviews, and use of documents. Introduction to various methodological and theoretical frameworks. Thesis or essay prospectus is the final product of this course. Strongly recommended for juniors. One-hour research lab required. (Any 100 level ANTH or SOCI course, or by permission) 3 hrs. lect./disc./1 hr. research lab

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

Requirements

CW

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Course Description

Anthropological Theory
This course gives an introduction to some important themes in the development of anthropological thought, primarily in the past century in anglophone and francophone traditions. It emphasizes close comparative reading of selections from influential texts by authors who have shaped recent discourse within the social sciences. 3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Spring 2026

Requirements

SOC

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Course Description

Love, Sex, and Marriage
What are the social terms for sexual agency in countries around the world? How is marriage understood through idealizations of romance as well as familial expectations of duty or status? In this course we consider how other cultures’ views on love, sex, and partnership are made legible and illegible within broader cultural, moral, and state interests. The course asks for in-depth participation, short weekly writings, and a longer final paper that each engage ethnographic works on a range of topics, from critical studies of love and globalization to queer kinmaking, rituals of the ‘lavish wedding,’ and everyday ways of hooking up and breaking up online. 3 hrs. lect. (GloDeFem)

Terms Taught

Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024

Requirements

CMP, SOC

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Course Description

The Traveling Tonic: Geographies of Medicine, Science, and the Body
Medical practice does not operate within bounded systems but moves in highly transactional and molten ways—from the circulation of classical Chinese and Indian manuscripts to transnational movements of genes, gametes, and drugs. In this seminar we draw on ethnographic examples to grasp the importance of migration in producing science. The metaphor of travel enables us to pivot from Eurocentric histories of science to disrupt what we mean by global medicine. At the same time, the figure of the tonic enables us to think about the many sorts of life (plants, distillates, vectors, etc.) that make up medicine today. (ANTH 0103 or ANTH 0287 or ANTH 0302 or ANTH 0306) 3 hrs. sem.

Terms Taught

Spring 2026

Requirements

SOC

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Course Description

The Traveling Tonic: Geographies of Medicine, Science, and the Body
Medical practice does not operate within bounded systems but moves in highly transactional and molten ways—from the circulation of classical Chinese and Indian manuscripts to transnational movements of genes, gametes, and drugs. In this seminar we draw on ethnographic examples to grasp the importance of migration in producing science. The metaphor of travel enables us to pivot from Eurocentric histories of science to disrupt what we mean by global medicine. At the same time, the figure of the tonic enables us to think about the many sorts of life (plants, distillates, vectors, etc.) that make up medicine today. (ANTH 0287) 3 hrs. sem. (Formerly ANTH 0340) (Not open to students who have already taken ANTH 0340.)

Terms Taught

Spring 2023

Requirements

SOC

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Course Description

Prior to registering for ANTH 0500, a student must enlist the support of a faculty advisor from the Department of Anthropology. (Open to Majors only) (Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026

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Course Description

One-Semester Senior Project
Under the guidance of a faculty member, a student will carry out an independent, one-semester research project, often based on original data. The student must also participate in a senior seminar that begins the first week of fall semester and meets as necessary during the rest of the year. The final product must be presented in a written report of 25-40 pages, due the last day of classes.

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026

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Course Description

Multi-Semester Senior Project
Under the guidance of a faculty member, a senior will carry out an independent multi-semester research project, often based on original data. The student must also participate in a senior seminar that begins the first week of fall semester and meets as necessary during the rest of the year. The final product must be presented in a written report of 60-100 pages, due either at the end of the Winter Term or the Friday after spring break.

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026

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Course Description

The Roaring Twenties
What will relationships look like at Middlebury and beyond, post-pandemic? Drawing on fiction, film, theory, and art, we will produce a collaborative exhibit on American sex and sociality in the 2020s. Our goal will be to depict the ideas and desires of Gen Zers, a generation more racially diverse, gender fluid, and well-educated than older Americans but facing higher social and economic uncertainty. What do Gen Z dreams and concerns look like in the context of #MeToo, BLM, and other movements? This course will be a place to study and understand shifts in dating, sex, solidarity, and citizenship—what those shifts are, and what they could be.

Terms Taught

Winter 2022

Requirements

SOC, WTR

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Course Description

East Asian Studies Senior Thesis
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Fall 2025, Winter 2026

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Publications