Holly Walters
Assistant Teaching Professor in Anthropology
Links
Dr. Holly Walters is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor of the practice in anthropology at Wellesley College. Her ethnographic work focuses on Shaligram (sacred ammonite) veneration in Nepal, in India, and among the global South Asian Diaspora. Her previously published work includes her first book, Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) as well as a second book on Shaligram interpretive practice (TLS, 2024). She also has multiple article publications on ritual and divine personhood in South Asia discussing topics such as fossil folklores, deity darshan, digital Hinduism, and robot ritual performance.
Education
- B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
- M.A., Brandeis University
- Ph.D., Brandeis University
Current and upcoming courses
Divine Madness: Dreams, Visions, Hallucinations
REL236
This course explores anthropological, religious, and psychiatric perspectives on mental health and mental illness, with careful attention to varied constructions of "madness", treatment, and healing across human cultures. We begin with comparative questions: are there universal standards of positive mental and emotional functioning? Are there overall commonalities in approaches to psychic and emotional disturbances? What is the role of spirituality? After considering the history of ‘madness’ in the West, we consider early anthropological and religious models of "madness" elsewhere. We next turn to ritualized therapeutic interventions in small-scale indigenous societies and consider a range of case studies from around the world. We conclude with a unit on culture and mental health in the United States and the ‘globalization” of American models of the psyche
(ANTH 236 and REL 236 are cross-listed courses.)