Course

ANTH 101   Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Professor

Laura Kunreuther

CRN

16037

 

Schedule

Mon Wed   10:30  - 11:50 am OLIN 205

Distribution

OLD: A/C

NEW: Social Science / Rethinking Difference

Related interest:  Gender and Sexuality Studies, GISP

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." On-line

 

Course

AFR / ANTH 148   African Encounters and Diasporas

Professor

Jesse Shipley

CRN

16038

 

Schedule

Mon Wed   12:00  -1:20 pm    OLIN 202

Distribution

OLD: C

NEW: History / Rethinking Difference

Cross-listed:  ANTH,  GISP, History, Human Rights, SRE

This course introduces a global socio-historical framework within which to examine multiple modern African Diasporas. Considering the historical contexts of contact between Africa, Europe, and the Americas, we examine cultural, economic, and philosophic aspects of African peoples around the globe. We will examine how ideas of what it means to be African culturally, racially, and politically are continually produced and contested. The moment of independence of many African nation-states from European colonial rule in the mid 20th century operates as a centering point from which we will consider economics, race, politics, and artistic expressions. We will explore ideas of “tradition” and “modernity,” representations of Africa, more recent processes of commodification, as well as various cultural and political responses to them. We will consider bodily practices, aesthetics, and social movements in the creative production of African modern worlds and their relationship to contemporary movements of African peoples to the Americas and Europe. In this sense we consider different socio-historical movements in the context of Caribbean and North American history. We also explore African peoples and practices in their continuing dialogues and returns to the African continent. We will use historical, literary and ethnographic texts as well as popular musical and visual forms to understand contemporary and historical dynamics of the continent and its global reach. We will consider the nature of historical and anthropological inquiry and examine the practices through which history is continually re-produced in the present. On-line

 

Course

ANTH 212   Historical Archaeology: Early Inhabitants of the Bard Lands  and Environs, 1650-1850

Professor

Christopher Lindner

CRN

16039

 

Schedule

Mon Wed   1:30  -2:50 pm     OLIN 304

Every third Wed   1:30  - 5:30 pm       

Distribution

OLD: C/E

NEW: Social Science

Field trips on campus and in neighboring towns provide first-hand contact with diverse groups who left their vestiges here: Native Americans, African-Americans, German, and British settlers. The class will work with their artifacts  and faunal remains in the lab and visit excavations after reading background  material on their history, culture, and archaeological interpretation. Limited to 15, e-register OK by permission.   On-line

 

Course

ANTH 233  Anthropological Engagements with Human Rights

Professor

John Ryle

CRN

16481

 

Schedule

Tu Th          9:00 – 10:20 am  OLIN 101

Distribution

OLD: A

NEW: Social Science

Description to follow.

 

Course

ANTH 265  Race and Nature in Africa

Professor

Yuka Suzuki

CRN

16470

 

Schedule

Tu Th          10:30  -11:50 am   OLIN 305

Distribution

OLD: C

NEW: Social Science

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights

Western fantasies have historically represented Africa as the embodiment of a mythical, primordial wilderness. Within this evocative imagery, nature is racialized, and Africans are constructed as existing in a state closer to nature. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness perhaps best exemplifies this process, through its exploration of the ‘savage’ dimensions of colonialism in the African interior. Imperial discourses often relied on these tropes of savagery and barbarism to link understandings of natural history with ideas about racial difference. Similarly, by blurring the boundary between the human and the nonhuman, colonial policies created a zone of anxiety around racialized domestic relationships, particularly in the context of employers and their servants. Many of these representations were contradictory, as evidenced by Rousseau’s image of the noble savage: indigenous people who lived as gentle custodians of the environment, while at the same time preying upon the resources desired for exclusive colonial use. After investigating the racialization of nature under imperial regimes, we will consider the continuing legacies in post-colonial situations. How have certain ethnic identities, for example, been linked to nature? How do these associations reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities? In what ways is race invoked in struggles for land and resource rights? Through an exploration of ethnographic accounts, historical analyses, and works of fiction based in Africa, this course offers a new way of deciphering cultural representations of nature, and the fundamentally political agendas that lie within. On-line

 

Course

ANTH 267   Middle Eastern Diasporas

Professor

Jeffrey Jurgens

CRN

16040

 

Schedule

Tu Th          1:00  -2:20 pm     ASP 302

Distribution

OLD: C

NEW: Social Science

Cross-listed:  GISP, Human Rights, Jewish Studies,  Middle East Studies and 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.  On-line

 

Course

ANTH 268  Culture, Politics and History in the Sudan

Professor

John Ryle

CRN

16482

 

Schedule

Tu Th          4:00 – 5:20 pm  OLIN 303

Distribution

OLD: A

NEW: Social Science

Description to follow.

 

Course

ANTH 276   Japanimation & Culture in Post-War Japan

Professor

Yuka Suzuki

CRN

16041

 

Schedule

Tu Th          2:30  -3:50 pm     OLIN 204

Tu               7:00  -9:30 pm     PRE 110

Distribution

OLD: A/C

NEW: Humanities / Rethinking Difference

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, GISP, Science, Technology & Society

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.  On-line

 

Course

ANTH 325   Environment, Development and Power

Professor

Yuka Suzuki

CRN

16043

 

Schedule

Wed  9:30 – 11:50 am  PRE 110          

Distribution

OLD: C

NEW: Social Science

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; Environmental Studies;  GISP; Science, Technology & Society

In an age of apocalyptic narrative, the environment has taken center stage in what is constructed as an unprecedented global ecological crisis.  The endemic urgency of these discourses often serves to justify dramatic interventions imposed from the center to the periphery, from ‘developed’ nations to ‘developing’ nations, and from affluent capital cities to the marginalized hinterlands.  Taking its cue from political ecology and the principle that all resource struggles are fundamentally political, this course explores the complex, dynamic interplay between conservation, development, and power.  The first part of the course traces the historical underpinnings of contemporary inequity by examining the logics of colonial sciences in relation to ‘nature’, as well as the use of exotic species of flora and fauna as tools of imperial conquest.  We then turn to the shaping of modern environmental discourses: how environmental ‘problems’ are identified, how interventions are rationalized, and how development ‘failures’ are swept under the rug without delegitimizing the paradigm of development itself.  Finally, we examine the politics of displacement, the emergence of ‘environmental refugees’, and the imperative need for the conceptualization and practice of an environmental justice.  The course will draw on ethnographic case studies from Brazil, India, Guinea, Indonesia, and Tanzania among other nations, in both historical and contemporary contexts.  On-line

 

Course

ANTH 350   Contemporary Cultural Theory

Professor

Laura Kunreuther

CRN

16042

 

Schedule

Mon            1:30  -3:50 pm     OLIN 303

Distribution

OLD: A/C

NEW: Humanities / Rethinking Difference

(Required class for all moderated Anthropology majors)

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.  On-line