CRN	14078	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	ANTH 101
Title	Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Professor	Yuka Suzuki
Schedule	Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 201

Related interest: 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.

CRN	14202	Distribution	C/E
Course No.	ANTH 116
Title	Historical Archaeology
Professor	Christopher Lindner
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 305 Approximately every 3^rd Wed. 1:30-5:30

Cross-listed: SRE

Material vestiges of past human activity are useful to complement or challenge historical information. Archaeology can also uncover transformations of the environment that were unintentionally irresponsible or purposefully planned to create illusions of power over nature. While maintaining a particular focus on the archaeology of African Americans, the course will range from the Carolinas to New England and will frequently connect to the Hudson Valley. Several Wednesday class periods will last until 5:30 to allow time for field trips to nearby sites, including recent excavations on campus, and those weeks class will not meet on Monday.

CRN	14203	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST / AADS 148
Title	African Encounters I: Culture, History, and Politics
Professor	Jesse Shipley
Schedule	Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 305

Cross-listed: Anthropology, Human Rights, SRE

CRN	14130	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	ANTH 228
Title	Disease, Medicine, and Power: Perspectives from Anthropology
Professor	Diana Brown
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 204

Cross-listed: History and Philosophy of Science, Human Rights

Related interest: LAIS

This course will focus on ways in which disease and medicine interact with inequalities of social class, gender, ethnicity/race, and age within local, national, and global hierarchies of power. Emphasis will be placed on the ways in which cultural knowledge and socially constituted relationships shape understandings of disease and configurations of its treatment. We will discuss historical and contemporary examples from Latin America and other areas of the colonial and post-colonial world. Topics to be examined will include the spread and control of specific diseases, including kuru, syphilis, malaria, cholera, ebola, HIV/AIDS, and smallpox in the recent context of 'bio-terrorism'; how concepts of health and disease figure in constructions of local and national identities; 'diseases of development' involving unintended consequences of development projects; the politics of health care delivery; and policies involving the production and distribution of pharmaceutical products.

CRN	14205	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	ANTH 246
Title	Culture, Politics, and Representations of South Asia
Professor	Laura Kunreuther
Schedule	Tu Th 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, SRE

Related interest: Film and Literature

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 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 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 Asia’s 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 we 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 read, and are examples of art that strives to be ethnographic. The course will require students to write a final research paper.

CRN	14075	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	ANTH 250
Title	Reading Baseball as Metaphor and Praxis
Professor	Mario Bick
Schedule	Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 303

Cross-listed: American Studies

Baseball has often been labeled the quintessential American sport. This course explores that claim while it examines the history and diffusion of the game, its performance and representation, and its connections to the politics of work, ethnicity, race, gender, class, region, and place. Cultural constructions are explored and contrasted in baseball as played in the United States, Japan, and Latin America. Sources in fiction, film, and analytic literature are employed, in conjunction with attendance at amateur (Little League) and professional baseball games.

CRN	14076	Distribution	C
Course No.	ANTH 256
Title	Race and Ethnicity in Brazil
Professor	Mario Bick
Schedule	Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 303

Cross-listed: AADS, Jewish Studies, LAIS, SRE

Brazil, in contrast to the United States, has been portrayed by Brazilians and others, as a “racial democracy’. The course examines the debate over the “problem of race” in its early formulation shaped by scientific racism and eugenics, especially the fear of degeneration. It then turns to the Brazilian policy of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries of branquemento (whitening) which was the basis of large-scale migration to Brazil from all major regions of Europe. These “ethnic” populations settled mainly in southern and south central Brazil leading to significant regional differences in identity politics and racial attitudes. The interplay of “racial” vs. “ethnic” identities is crucial to understanding the allocation of resources and status in Brazilian society. Inequality in contemporary Brazil is explored in terms of the dynamics of racial ideologies, the distribution of national resources and the performance of identity as shaped by “racial” and “ethnic” strategies. The groups to be discussed are: indigenous/native Brazilians, the Luso-Brazilians, Afro-Brazilians, Japanese Brazilians, Euro-ethnic Brazilians, and Brazilians of Arab and Jewish descent.

CRN	14206	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	AADS / ANTH 259
Title	Ethnographic Film and Visual Anthropology in Africa
Professor	Jesse Shipley
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 309

Cross-listed: AADS, 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. For those interested in actually making films/videos previous experience is required.

CRN	14204	Distribution	A
Course No.	ANTH 261
Title	Anthropology of Violence and Suffering
Professor	Laura Kunreuther
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights

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. Anthropology’s 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. This course fulfills a core class requirement for the Human Rights program.

CRN	14207	Distribution	A
Course No.	ANTH 327
Title	Performance, Ritual, and Symbolic Practice
Professor	Jesse Shipley
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm PRE 101

Cross-listed: AADS

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.

CRN	14077	Distribution	A
Course No.	ANTH 337
Title	Cultural Politics of Animals
Professor	Yuka Suzuki
Schedule	Fr 10:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 307

Cross-listed: AADS, ES, Human Rights

Human ideas about animals have metamorphosed 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 investigate 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? Do animals exercise agency? Where are they positioned on the moral landscapes of cultures? We will explore these shifting terrains through the angle of ‘animal geography,’ a new field that focuses on how animals have been socially defined, labeled, and ordered in cultural worldviews. Previous background in Anthropology required.