Course
|
ANTH
101 A
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
|
|
|
Professor |
Yuka Suzuki |
|
|
CRN |
97123 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 205 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science /Rethinking
Difference |
|
Related interest:
GISP; Gender and Sexuality Studies
During the past few decades, ‘culture’ has suddenly
become pervasive in popular discourses, with phrases such as ‘internet,’
‘fetish,’ and ‘corporate cultures’ automatically conjuring certain sets of
images and assumptions. This course explores the intellectual angles through
which anthropologists have engaged culture as a central, and yet often elusive
concept in understanding how societies work. The analysis of culture has undergone
many transformations over the past century, from arguing for the existence of
integrated systems of thought and practice among so-called ‘primitives’, to
scrutinizing the cultural values of colonial subjects, to attempting to
decipher the anatomy of enemy minds during World War II. In recent years, anthropology has become
more self-reflexive, questioning the discipline’s authority to represent other
societies, and critiquing its participation in the creation of exoticized
others. Thus, with our ethnographic
gaze turned inward as well as outward, we will combine discussions, lectures,
and films to reflect upon the construction of social identity, power, and
difference in a world where cultures are undergoing rapid reification. Specific topics we will examine include the
transformative roles of ritual and symbol; witchcraft and sorcery in historical
and contemporary contexts; cultural constructions of gender and sexuality; and
nationalism and the making of majorities/minorities in post-colonial states.
Course
|
ANTH
101 B
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
|
|
|
Professor |
Yuka Suzuki |
|
|
CRN |
97124 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:00 -2:20 pm ASP 302 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
|
Related interest:
GISP; Gender and Sexuality Studies
During the past few decades, ‘culture’ has suddenly
become pervasive in popular discourses, with phrases such as ‘internet,’
‘fetish,’ and ‘corporate cultures’ automatically conjuring certain sets of
images and assumptions. This course explores the intellectual angles through
which anthropologists have engaged culture as a central, and yet often elusive
concept in understanding how societies work. The analysis of culture has undergone
many transformations over the past century, from arguing for the existence of
integrated systems of thought and practice among so-called ‘primitives’, to
scrutinizing the cultural values of colonial subjects, to attempting to
decipher the anatomy of enemy minds during World War II. In recent years, anthropology has become
more self-reflexive, questioning the discipline’s authority to represent other
societies, and critiquing its participation in the creation of exoticized
others. Thus, with our ethnographic
gaze turned inward as well as outward, we will combine discussions, lectures,
and films to reflect upon the construction of social identity, power, and
difference in a world where cultures are undergoing rapid reification. Specific topics we will examine include the
transformative roles of ritual and symbol; witchcraft and sorcery in historical
and contemporary contexts; cultural constructions of gender and sexuality; and
nationalism and the making of majorities/minorities in post-colonial states.
Course
|
ANTH
101 C
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
|
|
|
Professor |
Megan Callaghan |
|
|
CRN |
97125 |
|
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 3:00 – 4:20 pm OLIN 205 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
|
Related interest:
GISP; Gender and Sexuality Studies
During the past few decades, ‘culture’ has suddenly
become pervasive in popular discourses, with phrases such as ‘internet,’
‘fetish,’ and ‘corporate cultures’ automatically conjuring certain sets of
images and assumptions. This course explores the intellectual angles through
which anthropologists have engaged culture as a central, and yet often elusive
concept in understanding how societies work. The analysis of culture has undergone
many transformations over the past century, from arguing for the existence of
integrated systems of thought and practice among so-called ‘primitives’, to
scrutinizing the cultural values of colonial subjects, to attempting to
decipher the anatomy of enemy minds during World War II. In recent years, anthropology has become
more self-reflexive, questioning the discipline’s authority to represent other
societies, and critiquing its participation in the creation of exoticized
others. Thus, with our ethnographic
gaze turned inward as well as outward, we will combine discussions, lectures,
and films to reflect upon the construction of social identity, power, and
difference in a world where cultures are undergoing rapid reification. Specific topics we will examine include the
transformative roles of ritual and symbol; witchcraft and sorcery in historical
and contemporary contexts; cultural constructions of gender and sexuality; and
nationalism and the making of majorities/minorities in post-colonial states.
Course
|
ANTH
111 Archaeological
Field Methods: Native Americans on the Bard Lands
|
|
|
Professor |
Christopher Lindner |
|
|
CRN |
97126 |
|
|
Schedule |
Fr 10:00 -3:00 pm ROSE 108 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
|
Cross-listed:
American Studies, Environmental Studies
The Field Methods course offers an introduction to
prehistory by basic hand excavation, using GIS technology (Geographic
Information Systems) to situate our discoveries, and through laboratory
processing of artifacts. This season we will continue test excavations from
last fall that discovered a 1500-year-old site, with spearpoints and pottery
sherds along the Hudson River shore. Nearby, chipped stone projectile points or
knives have come to light in past explorations that indicate foraging
activities nine millennia in the past. This year we also hope to find more
evidence of the Esopus Indians, who camped not far away after their wars with
the Dutch of Kingston around 1660. A few artifacts in our area of focus, the
Locust Point site, indicate the presence of the first settlers from the Old
World on the Bard lands, ca. 1725, the Van Benthuysen family and their slaves
of African ancestry. Lunchtime discussion will contextualize our findings with
archaeological and ethnohistorical comparisons. Limited to 12, by permission.
Interested students should contact Professor Lindner prior to
registration.
Course
|
ANTH
201A Gender
and Social Inequalities in Latin America
|
|
|
Professor |
Diana Brown |
|
|
CRN |
97457 |
|
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 201 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science /
Rethinking Difference |
|
Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies; GISP; Human Rights; LAIS
Recent achievements in democratization
notwithstanding, contemporary Latin American societies continue to display
dramatic inequalities. This class will
explore inequalities of gender, and their interface with hierarchies of social
class, ethnicity and race through examination of ethnographic texts. We will examine historical sources of these
inequalities in colonial structures and their expression in contemporary
cultural practices, giving attention both to social groups that seek to impose
and maintain inequalities, and those who challenge them. After critically evaluating Latin American
gender stereotypes, we will consider how gender is practiced and gender identities
formed in particular local and global contexts. We will investigate urban elites and middle classes, and a
variety of subaltern populations ranging from market women, to male factory
workers, to groups struggling for indigenous rights, to transgendered
prostitutes. Ritual contexts to be
explored will include beauty contests, Carnival, and soccer, and Catholic,
Protestant evangelical and Afro-Brazilian religious practices. Texts will be drawn from Latin American
societies including Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, and will be chosen to
represent a variety of theoretical approaches within anthropology.
Course
|
ANTH
259 Film
and Visual Anthropology in Africa
|
|
|
Professor |
Jesse Shipley |
|
|
CRN |
97130 |
|
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 4:30 – 5:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; GISP; SRE
This
course addresses the visual aspects of culture and cultural production with a
particular focus on postcolonial Africa.
How are the arts and the visual aspects of society made meaningful in
and for contemporary Africa? We will
look at how Africa has been represented through film and the display of African
peoples and “primitive” art for Western audiences, showing the ways in which
African enters global circuits of representation and mass media through its
visual representation. We will examine
the artistic and visual aspects of culture as they are made socially meaningful
both within African cultural contexts as well as when they are displayed for
art worlds and cinema audiences outside of the continent. Through these examinations we will introduce
some of the basic concerns and paradigms of anthropology, in particular ideas
of racial and cultural difference. This
class is for those interested in historical/anthropological examinations of the
visual as well as students producing film/videos, installations, and
performance pieces especially in relation to the politics of
representation. In terms of film
production we will examine the political and social messages embedded within
aesthetic decisions made by artists from choosing themes, to modes of
narration, to editing decisions. Not open to first-year students. For those
interested in actually making films/videos previous experience is
required.
Course
|
ANTH
262 Colonialism,
Law, and Human Rights in Africa
|
|
|
Professor |
Jesse Shipley |
|
|
CRN |
97129 |
|
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm OLIN 204 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; GISP; Human Rights (core course)
This course examines the colonial and missionary legacies
of contemporary discourses of human rights and development. We will take a
rigorously critical eye to examining how why and to what effect Western donor
agencies, states, and individuals unwittingly draw on centuries old tropes of
poverty, degradation, and helplessness of non-Western peoples. Specifically we
will use historical descriptions of the encounters between Europeans and
Africans in West Africa and South Africa to show how Western assumptions about
African societies reveal the contradictions at the root of liberal discourses
of aid and development. In this way we will interrogate how “aid” implies the
idea of a Western individual, rights-bearing economic subject which has
implications for the development of global capitalism. We will also look at
case studies from Ghana, Nigeria, and post-Apartheid South Africa to examine
the real legacies of human rights and development causes for the people
involved. We will look at the dual legacy of British colonial law, and the
relationship between customary law and state courts as a primary site for
understanding conflicts over rights, citizenship, and the role of the
individual in society. We will posit
complex historical and cultural ways of understanding particular
cases.
Course
|
ANTH
267 Middle
Eastern Diasporas
|
|
|
Professor |
Jeffrey Jurgens |
|
|
CRN |
97128 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:00 -2:20 pm OLIN 305 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science /
Rethinking Difference |
|
Cross-listed: Human Rights; Jewish Studies; Middle
Eastern Studies; SRE
This course examines the past and present
experiences of Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and Kurds who reside in Europe and North
America, as well as of Jews of diverse backgrounds who live in Israel and
abroad. At the same time, we will
explore how and why these groups are commonly regarded as “diasporas,” a term
that is itself closely connected with the displacement and dispersion of Jews
from their homeland in the sixth century BCE.
Such an investigation demands that we critically investigate not only
the history of “diaspora” as a concept, but also the contemporary circumstances
that have encouraged its recent prominence in public and scholarly
discussions. After all, it was not that
long ago that the aforementioned groups often characterized themselves (and
were regularly characterized by others) not as “diasporic,” but as “immigrant,”
“expatriate,” “refugee,” “exile,” and “ethnic.” What has brought about this shift in terms? What assumptions about geographic territory,
human movement, and social connection does “diaspora” imply, and what insights
might it allow that other concepts (like “immigration” or “transnationalism”)
do not? How do contemporary diasporas
differ from past ones, especially those that emerged before the advent of
nationalism and the nation-state? And
finally, what might specific diasporic experiences reveal about broader
cultural processes? To address these
and other questions, this course will work comparatively across national
contexts and historical eras, relying on readings and films from cultural
anthropologists, sociologists, and “diasporans” themselves.
Course
|
ANTH
269 Ireland
and the Anthropological Imagination
|
|
|
Professor |
Megan Callaghan |
|
|
CRN |
97127 |
|
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 304 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science |
|
Cross-listed:
GISP, Irish and Celtic Studies
Ireland has long captured the anthropological
imagination, producing classic depictions of kinship and community,
controversial accounts of rural decline and disorder, and current work on the
country’s shifting position in European and world politics. This course
includes a range of ethnographic exploration in both the Republic of Ireland
and Northern Ireland. We will consider the multiple and contested meanings of
Irish identity in contexts as varied as the increasingly diverse city of Dublin,
nomadic or semi-nomadic Traveller communities, politically divided Northern
Ireland towns, and rural Gaeltacht, or Irish language regions. Furthermore, we
will consider various lenses through which to examine contemporary and
historical Ireland. For example, does it make sense to apply postcolonial
theory to Ireland? How might we understand the Troubles differently through an
inclusion of women’s or young people’s perspectives and participation? What is
the relationship of ethnoreligious symbolism, violence, and ritual practice?
Students will be expected to supplement assigned ethnographic texts and films
with material on current events in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Course
|
ANTH
281
Biology and the Imagining of the Jews: Science and the Jews as a Race
|
|
|
Professor |
Mario Bick |
|
|
CRN |
97134 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 9:00 - 10:20 am OLIN 303 |
|
|
Distribution |
Social Science |
|
Cross-listed: Human Rights; Jewish Studies; STS;
SRE
This course uses the history of the persistent
biological / racial classification of the Jews since about the 15th
century as a window onto the sciences of race as they have flourished and
floundered / failed, including the recent reemergence of scientific
justification for the race concept, and its application to the Jews. The course
will explore social constructions of race as applied to the Jews, and the
critiques of these constructions, as represented in the writings of both
non-Jews and Jews. It will also examine some non-Euro-American efforts to
account for Jewish difference in Brazil, India, Africa and elsewhere.
Course
|
MUS
285 Introduction
to Ethnomusicology
|
|
|
Professor |
Mercedes Dujunco |
|
|
CRN |
97425 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu Fr 10:30 - 11:50 am Blum N210 |
|
|
Distribution |
Analysis of Arts |
|
See Music section for description.
Course
|
ANTH
327
Ritual Performance and Symbolic Practice:Africa
|
|
|
Professor |
Jesse Shipley |
|
|
CRN |
97132 |
|
|
Schedule |
Tu 9:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 305 |
|
|
Distribution |
Humanities /Rethinking
Difference |
|
Cross-listed:
Africana Studies; GISP
This course examines public performance
and various types of theatricality. Our goal will be to analyze how lived
experience relates to politics, change, and social power. The course addresses
the tension between these theories to highlight key philosophical issues
within anthropology and social thought more generally: power and its illusory
enactment; the relationship between personal experience and broader
social processes; the nature of consciousness; structure versus agency; stasis
and change. We begin by examining classic anthropological conceptions of ritual,
symbolic meaning, and social transformation. We will then explore
various linguistic, sociological, poststructuralist, and theatrical
theories. We will look at different ways to think about space and the social
body. The second half of the course draws on particular ethnographic,
theatrical, philosophic, and literary examples from West Africa which address
the relationships between historical memory, specific kinds of performance, and
the local experience of power. We will ask in particular how African theories
of performance reflect their social and personal contexts. We will examine the
social processes through which certain symbols and practices become central
locations for the production and contestation of meaning and identity. Students
will be encouraged to consider the tension between "performance" as a
theoretical frame and an "object" of analysis. The course is
designed for students with a background in anthropology/sociology, history,
performance studies, ethnic studies, or literary and social theory. This
course can be taken in conjunction with HIST 3103 as complementary issues will
be addressed.
Course
|
ANTH
350 Contemporary
Cultural Theory
|
|
|
Professor |
Yuka Suzuki |
|
|
CRN |
97133 |
|
|
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 305 |
|
|
Distribution |
Humanities /Rethinking
Difference |
|
(Required
class for all moderated Anthropology majors)
This course is intended as an introduction to
advanced theories of culture in contemporary anthropology. Required of all anthropology majors, this
course will also be of interest to students wishing to explore critical
innovations in the study of local, national, and mass culture around the
world. In contrast to early
anthropological focus on seemingly isolated, holistic cultures, more recent
studies have turned their attention to contest within societies and the
intersection of local systems of meaning with global processes of politics,
economics and history. The class will
be designed around an influential social theorist, such as Bourdieu, Bakhtin, or
Marx, and the application of their theories by anthropologists, such as Aihwa
Ong, Judith Irvine, or Michael Taussig.
The seminar will involve participation from all of the faculty in the
anthropology department. It aims to
inspire critical engagement with an eye towards developing theoretical tools
and questions for a senior project that makes use of contemporary theories of
culture.