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 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)
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