Professor Salguero will teach a course called “Religion and Medicine in Asia” during the Fall 2013 semester.  He hopes to enroll a blend of students interested in the humanities and those interested in health sciences (and students interested in both).  The content will cover both a historical survey of medicine in Asia and an exploration of the role of traditional Asian medicine in the contemporary globalized world.  The class will give students the opportunity to think about connections between religion and wellbeing, between history and contemporary culture, and between divergent ideas about the body and mind. The goal will be to engage with these big questions through explicitly interdisciplinary approaches that incorporate perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and health professions.

Professor Salguero empowers his students to customize their own blend of assignments in order to learn fundamental humanistic skills while pursuing their own interests and professional goals.  In addition, as Asian healing traditions such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi are practiced at Duke and in Durham by multiple groups and organizations, there will be ample opportunity for students to do field study or to become participant-observers in the traditions of healing they are studying.

Professor Richard Jaffe notes that “few other scholars have Professor Salguero’s in-depth knowledge of Chinese Buddhism, East/Southeast Asian traditional medical practices, and contemporary hands-on experience (literally, as he does Thai therapeutic massage) of the practice of Southeast and East Asian medicine.”  Professor Salguero’s research interests in contemporary medical applications of Buddhist practice and the medicalization of Buddhism fit well with the work being done in Duke’s religion department by Professors Jaffee, Hwansoo Kim, Leela Prasad, and others with interest in religion and modernity.  In addition, Professor Salguero will have much to offer to faculty members and students involved with the Global Health Institute and the history of medicine in the Department of History as both these units are largely Euro-American-centric in their approach to medicine.

Professor Salguero earned undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Cognitive Science and an MA in East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia, and a PhD in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.  In between college and graduate school, he spent four years studying the practice of traditional medicine in Thailand and India.  As a graduate student, he took a broad array of courses in Asian History, Art History, and History of Medicine in Europe, India, and China, and spent time doing research abroad in East Asia (including a year in Taiwan on a Fulbright fellowship).