Pain can be a particularly complex and morally charged object of biomedicine. The interiority of pain- the deeply private nature of pain experience- complicates its communication. Pain, particularly its chronic form, defies purely biological explanation, troubling fundamental biomedical distinctions between mind and body, subject and object. And decisions about analgesia are fraught, as doctors and patients pursue relief from pain amidst a widespread epidemic of opiate abuse that infuses their interaction with concerns about addiction, drug seeking, culpability, and responsibility. This seminar seeks to shed light on these issues by using concepts from linguistic and medical anthropology to explore how we experience, think about, and talk about pain. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, the course is of relevance not only to anthropology but also to medical sociology, medical ethics, public health, health policy, and science and technology studies.