91344

ANTH 101 A Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Yuka Suzuki

. T . Th .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 202

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & Intl Studies; Related interest: Gender and Sexuality Studies This course explores the intellectual angles through which anthropologists have engaged culture as a central, and yet 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 disciplines authority to represent other societies, and critiquing its participation in the creation of exoticized others.  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 and minorities in post-colonial states. Class size: 22

Class size: 22

91346

ANTH 101 B Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Yuka Suzuki

. T . Th .

11:50 -1:10 pm

HEG 308

SSCI/DIFF

See above. Class size: 22

91699

ANTH 111 Field Methods in Environmental Archaeology: Native Peoples on Bards Lands

Christopher Lindner

. . . . F

11:50 -4:30 pm

ROSE 108

SCI

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies   Weekly 5 hours of field work in the woods at the Spicebush prehistoric site, at the edge of Tivoli South Bay of the Hudson River. The excavation of this 1,300-year-old campsite uses documentation protocols and careful application of digging techniques by each of the students in their test trenches. We make maps and cross-sectional drawings for each trench, in our search for prehistoric activity areas. On-going analysis includes counting and weighing of artifacts, plus calculation and depiction of their frequencies per excavated volume in histograms, to enable contrast of deposits vertically in a given trench and horizontally across the site area grid. Such analysis also takes place in 2 or 3 sessions indoors, during inclement weather, along with replicative experimentation in the manufacture and function of prehistoric stone tools by description of use-wear traces. Students are responsible for written synthesis of their individual excavation results, as partial assessment of the whole site area, and comparison to similar areas of relevant sites in the archaeological record of the northeastern woodlands.  Course limit is 12 participants, with enrollment by permission of instructor. Class size: 12

91343

ANTH 246 South Asia and the Ethnographic Imagination

Laura Kunreuther

. T . Th .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 201

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Asian Studies Using classic texts of anthropology as well as literature, history, and films, this course looks broadly at representations of South Asia made by foreigners and South Asians alike. Throughout the course we will use the most general definition of ethnography, focusing on how particular metaphors, tropes, and ways of describing South Asia continue to shape our knowledge about South Asia. We will trace the development of certain categories which have become crucial to many ethnographic portrayals of South Asia, such as village, caste, family, religion, and gender as they are used in a variety of ethnographies. We will situate these categories and each ethnographic piece within the broader historical contexts of colonialism, the Partition of Pakistan and India, Indian nationalism, as well as South Asias postcolonial relation to global development and politics. A final section of the course will look at the relation between contemporary politics and media, exploring, for example, the relation between the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and popular T.V. and the Free Tibet activism conducted over the internet. Throughout the course, we will be looking at the representations of South Asia by two well-known Indian artists: Salman Rushdie and Satyajit Ray. Both artists complement and challenge some of the ethnographic texts we will read, and are examples of art that strives to be ethnographic. The course will require students to write a final research paper. Class size: 22

91769

ANTH 247 Cultural Politics of Religion

Abou Farman

M . W . .

11:50 - 1:10 pm

OLIN 310

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Religion Religion is undeniably an important global issue in our times, as much a force for justice as a source of conflict, as much a space of comfort as one of doubt, of conformity as well as creativity. Religion has been a central subject since Anthropology's beginnings, so the discipline has been crucial in giving shape to the concept of religion in the social sciences and in the wider sphere of Western culture. With its ethnographic method, it can get under ideological and doctrinal positions to shed light on actual practice and experience; and since it has always insisted on a holistic approach, it analyzes religion not in isolation but as part of other forces and phenomena. Indeed, religion cannot be understood or experienced outside its socio-economic context. Nor can it be analyzed without its boundary categories, those areas in contrast to which it is recognized as 'religion': science, rationalism, secularism, politics. What are the boundaries of religion and how have they been shaped? How do religion and politics articulate in the contemporary world? What is the relationship between religion and science, and other secular formations of power and knowledge? How do religion and the secular shape contemporary selves? What are new emerging forms of religion, and what is this thing called spirituality that suddenly seems to be everywhere? We will think about these issues not by judging or listing various kinds of belief, but through concepts and practices, theories and ethnographies, that relate religious and non-religious domains. We will look at cases such political action in Islam and Evangelical Christianity; religion and secular politics in India; Tibetan medicine and its incorporation of science; possession and capitalist relations; technoscientific spirituality and new materialist cosmologies.  Class size: 18

91342

ANTH 261 Anthropology of Violence and Suffering

Laura Kunreuther

. T . Th .

1:30 -2:50 pm

OLIN 205

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Global & Intl Studies, Human Rights (core course), Science, Technology & Society Why do acts of violence continue to grow in the modern world? In what ways has violence become naturalized in the contemporary world? In this course, we will consider how acts of violence challenge and support modern ideas of humanity, raising important questions about what it means to be human today. These questions lie at the heart of anthropological thinking and also structure contemporary discussions of human rights. Anthropologys commitment to local culture and cultural diversity has meant that anthropologists often position themselves in critical opposition to universal values, which have been used to address various forms of violence in the contemporary world. The course will approach different forms of violence, including ethnic and communal conflicts, colonial education, torture and its individualizing effects, acts of terror and institutionalized fear, and rituals of bodily pain that mark individuals inclusion or exclusion from a social group. The course is organized around three central concerns. First, we will discuss violence as a means of producing and consolidating social and political power, and exerting political control. Second, we will look at forms of violence that have generated questions about universal rights of humanity versus culturally specific practices, such as widow burning in India and female genital mutilation in postcolonial Africa. In these examples, we explore gendered dimensions in the experience of violence among perpetrators, victims, and survivors. Finally, we will look at the ways human rights institutions have sought to address the profundity of human suffering and pain, and ask in what ways have they succeeded and/or failed. Readings will range from theoretical texts, anthropological ethnographies, as well as popular representations of violence in the media and film. Class size: 22

91768

ANTH 287 Science, Technology and Culture

Abou Farman

M . W . .

3:10 -4:30 pm

OLIN 203

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society Science has become an important stage on which social, moral, ethical, and even existential dilemmas and dramas are produced and played out globally. In part, these contests and conflicts have to do with recent scientific and technological ventures that have challenged, even redefined, some previously stable and important categories categories such as life, death, nature, human, animate and inanimate. Using ethnographies, theoretical readings and overviews of several fields, whilst examining diverse sites of scientific production and dissemination around the world from hospitals to outer space, from indigenous knowledge to genetic labs we will look at how science and technology are changing perceptions of these categories and what the consequences might be for public life, including for the contested boundaries of science itself.

Class size: 22

91345

ANTH 337 Cultural Politics of Animals

Yuka Suzuki

. . W . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

RKC 200

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Human Rights, Environmental & Urban Studies Human ideas about animals have changed throughout history, giving rise to a wide spectrum of attitudes across cultures. The past century in particular has witnessed a radical reconceptualization in the nature of human-animal relations, emerging in tandem with the modern environmentalist movement. Everywhere we turn, animals have captured the popular imagination, with dinosaurs crowned as the cultural icon of the 1990s, Shamu representing the fulfillment of our romantic vision of cetaceans, and Winnie the Pooh constituting a social universe in which children are taught morality and kindness. Beneath the centrality of animals in our social, economic, and physical worlds, moreover, lies their deep implication within human cultural politics. Some of the questions we will consider throughout the semester include: how, and by whom, is the line between humans and animal drawn? What are the politics of taxonomy and classification? How do animal subjectivities contribute to the formation of human identities? Where are animals positioned on the moral landscapes of cultures? We will explore these shifting terrains through the angle of animal geography, a field that focuses on how animals have been socially defined, labeled, and ordered in cultural worldviews.

Class size: 15

91569

ANTH 350 Contemporary Cultural Theory

Neni Panourgia

. T . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

HEG 201

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Human Rights 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. Required for all moderated Anthropology majors. Class size: 15