Course |
ANTH 101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology |
|
Professor |
Laura Kunreuther |
|
CRN |
15107 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 11:30 - 12:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Social
Science / Rethinking Difference
|
Related
interest: Gender and Sexuality Studies
A course in “culture,” or, the social power of
imagination. This course will trace the historical development of anthropological
theories and visual studies of culture from the Nineteenth Century to the
present, with special emphasis on how the concept of culture functions
critically in understanding group and personal symbolism, in understanding
different economic systems, and how culture effects understandings of race,
gender, and sexuality. The course begins with basic analytical readings on the
relation of language to the cultural construction of reality. This sets the
framework for understanding how culture studies can function to unsettle
certainties and provide a basic method for critical thinking and reflection.
Visual anthropology and ethnographic film will be explored for the additional
dimensions in method which they may provide. Then, we look at the political
meaning of “culture” in relation to the historical encounter between
Euro-America and its “others.” We will examine the interplay between the
representation of selves and cultural others within inter-cultural spheres of
exchange, particularly tourism and representational media, which share certain
characteristics with anthropology itself.
Finally, we examine the cultural construction of gender and sexuality
and explore the limits of human imagination in the study and performance of
these... “things.”
Course |
ANTH 206 Human Variation: The Anthropology of Race, Scientific Racism, and other Biological Reductionisms |
|
Professor |
Mario Bick |
|
CRN |
15206 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:00 - 11:20 am OLIN 107 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Social
Science / Rethinking Difference
|
Cross-listed:
SRE
Related
interest: Victorian Studies
The relationship of human biology to behavior and
the nature of cultures couched in terms of putative biological differences between
human groups and subgroups has characterized scientific discourse since the
late eighteenth century. This has been especially true in anthropology as the
discipline has sought to answer questions of race (human variation), gender,
sexuality, and some forms of compulsive behavior. This course examines
scientific racism, sexism, criminology, and other biological phobias,
reductionisms, and rationalizations. It does so by studying the contexts,
claims, achievements, and failures of normal science (especially physical
anthropology and human biology and genetics) in regard to the significance of
the real and assumed variations among individuals and among human populations.
Central to the discussion are concepts of race and the scientific evidence that
is used to support these concepts. By permission of the instructor.
Course |
ANTH 212 Historical Archaeology |
|
Professor |
Christopher Lindner |
|
CRN |
15040 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 - 2:50 pm OLIN 304 Alternate Wed
1:30 - 5:30 pm |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C / E
|
NEW: History
|
Cross-listed: American Studies, ES, History
Material remains are useful to complement or
challenge historical information. Archaeology can also uncover transformations
of the environment that were unintentionally irresponsible or planned to create
illustrations of power over nature. We will focus on change in the urban and
rural landscapes of the Middle Atlantic states and the Northeast, respectively. Colonization and slavery on
the southeastern coast will be examined in regard to plantations. While it will
include several field trips, Historical Archeology will concentrate on
laboratory study of artifacts for practical experience. Limited to 15 students,
by permission of the instructor.
Course |
ANTH 248 British Colonials in Africa |
|
Professor |
Mario Bick |
|
CRN |
15043 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:00 - 11:20 am OLIN 309 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Humanities /
Rethinking Difference
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies
This course will focus on the British African
colonies of the early 20th century to explore the social political
and ideological everyday lives of colonists. These “outsiders” will be studied
through history, biography, fiction and film, as well as through the responses
of Africans. Hypocrisy/idealism, brutality/bravery, racism/humanism,
asceticism/corruption, repression/sexuality, sobriety/addiction will be among
the realities encountered. The course seeks to develop an ethnographic portrayal
of the rulers and the cultures they created in these colonial spaces; not
British, not African, but something very much “other”.
Course |
ANTH 261 The Anthropology of Violence and Suffering |
|
Professor |
Laura Kunreuther |
|
CRN |
15207 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Humanities /
Rethinking Difference
|
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.
Course |
ANTH 263 Language and Mass Media |
|
Professor |
Jesse Shipley |
|
CRN |
15111 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: Humanities / Rethinking
Difference
|
20th century politics and culture were
intimately linked to the rapid development of radio, television, and film.
These electronic media have creatively engaged with local cultural practices
around the world in reshaping the nature of artistic expression, national and
racial difference, and political power. This course uses anthropological
notions of language to examine cultures of electronic media around the globe.
We will look at radio, video/film, television, the internet, and mobile phone
technologies as forms of social mediation. Mass media will be considered in
relation to the formation of new types of embodiment, value, production, and
consumption. In particular we will trace how actor-centered performance
approaches to language, reference, and authority give insight into the making
of contemporary, electronically-mediated ways of understanding the world. Topics will include: radio and state power
in Africa, mobile phones and political change in east Asia, South African television and internet, mass
media and the Rwandan genocide, video/film industry on west Africa, television
and radio in the Soviet Union. This class is intended for students with some anthropological
or linguistics background.
Course |
ANTH 276 Japanimation and Culture in Post-War Japan |
|
Professor |
Yuka Suzuki |
|
CRN |
15208 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 3:00 -4:20 pm Olin L.C. 115 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A/C |
NEW: Humanities /
Rethinking Difference
|
Cross-listed: Asian
Studies, GISP
Related interest: Film
Japanese animation, also
known as ‘Japanimation’ or anime, constitutes one of the most dynamic
sites of cultural production in contemporary Japan. One of the objectives of
this course will be to trace the history of anime and its relationships
to the nation’s social, political, and economic transformations over the past
century. We begin by exploring the origins of Japanese animation, which emerged
in the 1930s as a form of government propaganda to educate children about the
imperialist project in Asia. The focus then shifts to the post-war decades,
when animated films depicted the national trauma of the atomic bombs, while
others created a new, utopian vision of a modern Japan that centered around industry
and technology. Next, we investigate the many different sub-genres that emerged
beginning in the 1960s, including ‘Tokyo cyberpunk,’ the supernatural and
occult, romantic shojo ‘cute young girl’ anime, and
post-apocalyptic fantasy. By examining these categories, we engage larger
issues of nationalism, gender, modernity, crisis, and urban terror in Japanese
society. The final section of this course considers the globalization of the
genre in recent decades. Sensations such as Pokemon and Spirited Away
have radically reconfigured Japan’s relationship with global popular culture,
heightening the prestige and cachet of Japanese artistic production, even as
the nation’s political and economic influence wanes. This course therefore aims
to provide an in-depth exploration of historical and contemporary landscapes in
Japan through the cultural lens of anime.
Course |
REL / ANTH 320 Sacred Pursuits: Seminar in the Study of Religion |
|
Professor |
Paul Murray |
|
CRN |
15007 |
|
Schedule |
Mon 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Humanities
|
Cross-listed: Religion
The modern study of
religion is an eclectic field, drawing upon many other disciplines in its attempt
to circumscribe and comprehend the diversity of human religiosity. This course
examines critically various approaches to the study of religion in the 20th
century, including psychological, sociological, anthropological, and
phenomenological. The class considers where this field of study may be heading
in its postmodern present. Required for religion majors, open to others.
Course |
ANTH 337 Cultural Politiucs of Animals |
|
Professor |
Yuka Suzuki |
|
CRN |
15212 |
|
Schedule |
Th 10:30 - 12:50 pm OLIN 303 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Social
Science / Rethinking Difference
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies, 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.
Course |
ANTH 360 Anthropology of the Body |
|
Professor |
Diana Brown |
|
CRN |
15211 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 305 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A / C
|
NEW: Social
Science / Rethinking Difference
|
Cross-listed:
Gender Studies, HR
Anthropology has long been concerned with bodies as sources of symbolic representations of the social world and as vehicles for expressions of individual and collective identities. More recently, interest has centered on the individual body as a site of situated knowledge. It has become a target for the production of consumer desires, and as a site of commodification and political control. This course will explore a range of different issues raised by these perspectives through readings theorizing the body, supplemented by comparative ethnographic studies of bodily knowledge and practice. Topics to be examined will include the gendering of bodies and other culturally constructed markings of age, social class and race; mind-body relations; the manipulation of bodily surface and form to establish boundaries and identities through techniques such as tattooing, piercing, dieting, sculpting and cosmetic surgery; commodification of the body through the selling and transplantation of body parts; and the blurring of body/non-body boundaries under the impact of new body technologies.