This course will introduce students to different ways in which anthropologists (and others) have sought to understand the human mind in its social and cultural context. It will survey a range of classic and contemporary theoretical perspectives within psychological anthropology and cognate disciplines, including psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic social theory; cognitive and evolutionary anthropology; phenomenological approaches in anthropology; scientific and folk theories of mind; and other anthropological engagements with the psy disciplines. Students will learn to assess the value and limits of such perspectives by placing them in dialogue with ethnographic studies of selected mental phenomena and mediating social practices. Specific topics addressed in any given year will reflect the current research interests of the course teacher, but indicative themes could include: mental health and illness; neurodiversity; theories of emotion and affect; empathy and the opacity of other minds; perceptions of time; comparison; will, trance and hypnosis.