15388

ANTH 101 Intro to Cultural Anthropology

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

M . W . .

11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 204

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & Int’l Studies Anthropology is the study of ‘culture,’ a concept that has been redefined and contested over the discipline’s long development. This course will trace the history of the ‘culture concept’ from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, it will explore anthropological approaches to ‘primitive’ societies, group and personal symbols and systems of exchange. It will examine how anthropology came to focus on questions of identity, race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, colonial and post-colonial conditions. Our ethnographic gaze will be turned inward as well as outward. We will therefore consider the reasons behind, and ramifications of, anthropology’s self-reflexive turn in and around the 1980s. We will juxtapose that turn’s questioning of the discipline’s authority to represent other societies with debates about anthropologists’ engagement in activism, policy and government (e.g. the US military’s Human Terrain project). We will then examine the more recent anthropological fascination with the non-human (e.g. other animals, technology, the built environment, ‘nature’), looking at how notions of agency, materiality, and anthropology’s own methodological foundations have been transformed as a result. Class size: 22

15389

ANTH 101 B Intro to Cultural Anthropology

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

. T . Th .

11:50am-1:10pm

HEG 102

SSCI/DIFF

See above. Class size: 22

15399

ANTH 201A Gender & SOCIAL INEQualitIES in Latin america

Diana Brown

M . W . .

1:30pm-2:50pm

OLIN 205

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, LAIS Recent achievements in democratization notwithstanding, contemporary Latin American societies continue to display dramatic inequalities. This class will explore inequalities of gender, and their interface with hierarchies of social class, ethnicity and race through examination of ethnographic texts. We will examine historical sources of these inequalities in colonial structures and their expression in contemporary cultural practices, giving attention both to social groups that seek to impose and maintain inequalities, and those who challenge them. After critically evaluating Latin American gender stereotypes, we will consider how gender is practiced and gender identities formed in particular local and global contexts. We will investigate urban elites and middle classes, and a variety of subaltern populations ranging from market women, to male factory workers, to groups struggling for indigenous rights, to transgendered prostitutes. Ritual contexts to be explored will include beauty contests, Carnival, and soccer, and Catholic, Protestant evangelical and Afro-Brazilian religious practices. Texts will be drawn from Latin American societies including Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, and will be chosen to represent a variety of theoretical approaches within anthropology. Class size: 22

15347

ANTH 212 Historical Archaeology

Christopher Lindner

. . W . . . . . . F

4:40pm-6:00pm 11:50am-4:30pm

HEG 300 ROSE 108

HIST/DIFF

Cross-listed: American Studies, Environmental & Urban Studies Our excavations focus on a social and religious center in the former agricultural village of Queensbury, along the Hudson River, 9 miles north of Bard. This settlement began in 1710 as the first substantial German-speaking community in the New World. Recent evidence indicates that Native Americans visited the minister’s home or Parsonage before 1750, and that African Americans lived at the site by the early 1800s, if not a century earlier. We’ll emphasize foodways, the preparation and presentation of meals that articulated health and spiritual well-being. After emigration from the Rhineland where poverty was endemic due to military incursions, environmental catastrophe, and over-taxation, a robust economy developed around orchards and pasturage over the course of two centuries in Germantown. We’ll read case studies and write short papers for weekly seminar, and do 4.5-hour excavation and/or lab sessions on Friday or weekend afternoons. Class size: 12

15474

ANTH 220 doing ethnography: music and sound

Maria Sonevytsky

. T . Th .

3:10 pm – 4:30pm

BLUM N217

SSCI

Cross-listed: Music What are the ethical stakes, practical questions, and methodological tools that we use when we do ethnography? This course is a survey of and practicum in ethnographic field methods with a particular focus on ethnographic studies of sound and music. We will survey and critique traditional methods of ethnographic engagement such as participant-observation, interviews, archival research, visual, sonic and textual analysis, and address the challenges of doing fieldwork in a variety of contexts, including the virtual domain. Intensive writing exercises will raise important questions about how qualitative research can be ethically and effectively “translated” into written text. Students will develop an ethnographic research project of their own design throughout the course of the semester that may be connected to an ethnographically-grounded senior project. This course satisfies the field methods requirement needed for moderation into anthropology and ethnomusicology. Class size: 22

15189

FILM / ANTH 224 Ethnography in Image, Sound, & Text

Jacqueline Goss / Laura Kunreuther

. . . . F . . . Th .

10:10am-1:10pm 5:00pm- 7:00pm

AVERY 217 AVERY 110

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities The relation between self and others, the problems and pleasures of cross-cultural encounters, the sensory aspects of culture, the relation of subjectivity to broader institutional and ideological forces - these are all themes found in a range of productions that might be called ethnographic in nature. In artistic circles there has been a turn towards work that is conceived as ethnographic in terms of deep engagement and immersion in a social world, while in anthropology there has been a turn towards representing sensory worlds in ethnographies that use media other than/in addition to traditional genres of ethnographic writing. In this course, we will use the tools of anthropology -- participant-observation, interviews, and immersion - to create ethnographies in several different media, including film, video, audio, and experimental writing. The course will introduce students to some of the basic assumptions and methods of ethnographic research while also viewing and listening to the work of filmmakers, audiographers, and anthropologists, including Jean Rouch, Raymond Birdwhistel, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Tracey Moffat, Peter Kubelka, Juan Downey, Robert Gardner, Margaret Mead, and John Marshall. The course will be co-taught by an anthropologist and filmmaker, who will each bring the expertise of their field to facilitate the making of ethnographical work in various media. Class size: 20

15348

ANTH 226 Culture & Globalization in Japan

Yuka Suzuki

. T . Th .

1:30pm-2:50pm

OLIN 205

SSCI

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies Through its mercurial transformations, from post-war devastation to rapid economic recovery and affluence, Japan has come to be seen as one of the most important non-Western countries of the 20th century. In the 1980s and 90s, as Japanese economic power and cultural influence grew worldwide, the nation's status as a global force was established beyond question. In more recent years, however, specters of economic recession, disenchanted youth, aging population, and nuclear disaster have produced new conditions of precarity, reconfiguring experiences and meanings of contemporary life. By focusing on such key transitions over the past seven decades, this course will offer an introduction to changing social, economic, and political formations in Japan from an anthropological perspective. Readings will include ethnographic works on economic recovery in the post-war period, gender in office politics, schools and disciplinary tactics, cultures of cuteness, delayed marriage and divorce, homelessness, and care for the elderly. The final section of the course will explore transnational dimensions of Japan in a global context, including the aspirations of Japanese youth in the U.S., and the globalization of popular culture genres such as anime and manga. Priority will be given to students with previous coursework in anthropology.

Class size: 22

15346

ANTH 230 The Anthropology of Palestine

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

. T . Th .

3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 204

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies, Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies Common frameworks through which Palestine has tended to be understood in the mainstream media are religious and land conflict, extremism and terrorism. But Palestine is much more rich and diverse in terms of what it can tell us about the human condition and about questions we tend to reserve for other places—for the “first world” or for the “developing” world, where categories such as development, sovereignty, gender, bureaucracy and consumption, appear to be more straightforward. Our geographical scope will extend beyond Israel/Palestine to include Palestinian refugees and the diaspora. Our goal will be double: One, to gain a better grasp of this place, its people and its problems. And two, to learn something about concepts whose meanings are either taken for granted in this context and concepts often thought to be irrelevant to modern Palestine, which is dismissed as an exceptional place. Questions will include: What is resistance? What are the politics of martyrdom? When is violence normalized? Are human rights dead? What is the relationship between journalism and statehood? Can architecture wield power? Is there a Palestinian state? What—and where—is Israeli sovereignty? What is the relationship between gender and memory? How does bureaucratic authority work? What are the politics of humanitarian aid? Class size: 22

15349

ANTH 242 Foundational Texts in Anthropology

Mario Bick

. T . Th .

10:10am- 11:30am

OLIN 303

SSCI/DIFF

The course engages seminal texts in the history of anthropology which shaped the discipline’s ideas and methods from the late 19^th century up to the present. Central to this history is the recording and interpretation of cultural similarities and differences. Among the authors we will read are Edward Tylor, James Frazer, Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Claude Levi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins. No prerequisite, but a previous course in Anthropology is recommended. Class size: 18

15351

ANTH 253 Anthropological Controversies

John Ryle

M . W . .

3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 203

SSCI

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Human Rights The history of anthropology is punctuated with arguments over the interpretation of data, the ethics of research, rival theories of social behaviour, the question of appropriate genres for writing anthropology, and the nature and boundaries of the discipline itself. What is to be learned from these disputes? Are they distractions from the real work of anthropology? Or are they constitutive of the discipline? This class will focus on controversies that bring distinctive features of anthropological practice into critical focus. It will examine key disputes in the history of the discipline and more recent arguments between its practitioners. Topics will be selected by class decision from Derek Freeman’s critique of Margaret Mead, Colin Turnbull’s The Forest People and The Mountain People, the many-sided controversy over the Yanomami of the Amazon basin, divergent representations of the Nuba people of Sudan, the involvement of anthropologists in military campaigns and espionage, the invented ethnography of Carlos Castaneda and ethnographically-informed reportage. Class size: 22

15390

ANTH 275 Post-Apartheid Imaginaries

Yuka Suzuki

. T . Th .

11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 202

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Global & Int’l Studies; Human Rights As one of the few regions on the continent charted for permanent European settlement, southern Africa has been marked by histories of violence that far surpassed normative applications of colonialism. In the wake of such intense turmoil, nations struggled to reinvent themselves at the moment of Independence, scripting new national mythologies and appeals for unity. This course explores these contests over nationhood in the post-apartheid era, focusing primarily on the experiences of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Some of the main themes we will address include the politics of commemoration and the symbolic capital of liberation war veterans, the charismatic authority of individuals such as Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe, sexual violence and the trial of Jacob Zuma, the role of sport in reimagining national identity, and the paradox of white African belonging. We will examine memories of ethnic genocide in Matabeleland documented by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, and track new anxieties in the media precipitated by the influx of immigrants into South Africa. In the final section of the course, we will turn to recent alliances between Africa and China, and possibilities for the emergence of an alternate global order. Class size: 22

15323

ANTH / THTR 321 SocialLY Engaged Theater-Making

Aaron Landsman

. . W . .

1:30pm-4:30pm

FISHER RESNICK

PART

See Theater section for description.

15503

ANTH 332 Cultural Technologies of Memory

Laura Kunreuther

. . W . .

10:10am- 12:30pm

RKC 200

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: History, Human Rights This course is organized around several practices and technologies that produce collective and personal memory. The class will explore a distinction commonly made between 'memory' and 'history', asking on what basis this distinction is made and how it maps on to our ideas about foreign places and people. The techniques and technologies of public memory we will examine may include ancient "memory palaces," historical writing, oral narrative, ritual, myth, monuments, museums and archives. We will also explore how radio and photography are used to produce national and familial representations of the past. The focus in each section will be on how the particular medium of remembering shapes the content of what is remembered. We will address who has access to memory practices, stressing the link between the production of particular memories and their political uses. The class will give students a theoretical base to write a final research paper that situates a contemporary memory practice in its specific cultural and historical context: the recent proliferation of family genealogies, Holocaust testimonies and/or museums, the truth commissions, local histories are among a few possible examples.

Class size: 15

15350

ANTH 335 LOCAL RealitIES AND GLOBAL Ideology in THE SudanS

John Ryle

. T . . .

4:40pm-7:00pm

HEG 308

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies An inter-disciplinary class that examines indigenous societies and cultures in the lands now comprising Sudan and South Sudan—and their relation to world history. Before the late nineteenth century, Sudan was host to numerous non-states and near-states. Indigenous political organization prior to conquest ranged from acephalous societies in south Sudan to sultanates in the centre and west and—in the 1890s and 1890s— the short-lived Mahdist theocratic revolutionary state, the first in modern history. A legacy of this is a great diversity of cultures, language-worlds and modes of life. The class will focus on encounters between Sudanese social and cultural formations and the moral worlds of the Middle East and the West. It will look at the ways in which successive global belief systems and other incursions from outside the Sudans have been resisted and/or assimilated by Sudanese social forces. It will analyse the many levels of interaction between the local and the global, between fast and slow-track modes of life, between indigenous cultural worlds and incursions from the outside, through a number of case studies drawn from recent history including anti-slavery, female genital cutting, the Darfur campaign, the International Criminal Court and the question of human rights documentation and transitional justice in the renewed conflict following the independence of South Sudan. Class size: 15

15391

ANTH 337 Cultural Politics of Animals

Yuka Suzuki

M . . . .

10:10am- 12:30pm

OLIN 309

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