17401

ANTH 101

Intro to Cultural Anthropology

Michele Dominy

T Th 3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 201

D+J

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & International 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

17402

ANTH 212

Historical Archaeology: early african americans near Bard

Christopher Lindner

T 4:40pm-6:00pm

F 11:50am-4:30pm

HEG 300

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Historical Studies Refocused due to our important discoveries over the last two years, this course now centers on the ritual practice of concealment, for protective or therapeutic purposes, of artifacts in spatial relation to physical structures. Its historical context revolves about the interactions between African Americans, Mohicans, colonial Germans, and 19th-Century Americans. Our excavations are in and around the 1746 and ca. 1780 Reformed Church parsonages in Germantown NY. Our various presentations contribute to growth of understanding in the local area, the Mid-Hudson region, and the nation. Anthropology 211 [Archaeological Field Methods] is recommended but not a requirement. Some students continue for another month in summer on the Bard Archaeology Field School, for 4 more credits; see www.bard.edu/archaeology. Class meets in seminar Tues 4:40-6. Field/Lab sessions meet Fridays 11:50-4:30 except class will be split during Feb & Mar in two groups of 6, to enable excavation in a restricted area. Enrollment by permission of professor. Class size: 12

17405

ANTH 216

The Modern Dinosaur

Yuka Suzuki

M W 1:30pm-2:50pm

OLIN 205

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; Science, Technology & Society Since their ascendancy in global popular culture, dinosaurs have come to constitute a category of charismatic animals unmatched by contemporary living species. Dinosaurs appear everywhere—as plush toys and chicken nuggets, as corporate mascots and public monuments, and as metaphorical critiques of nuclear weapons. In this course, we will explore the figure of the modern dinosaur both as object of scientific inquiry and as popular culture icon. We will focus on competitive exploration for dinosaur fossils at the turn of the 20th century; rivalries between paleontologists such as Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh; and the rise of dinosaur philanthropy in natural history museums. We will also consider how new paleontological discoveries provoked parallel shifts in meaning and representation. How are dinosaurs articulated and brought back to life from a distant geologic past? How are they employed as metaphors for dominance, size, dim-wittedness, and obsolescence? What role do they play in the making of power and nationhood? Through the close examination of scientific and cultural histories, museums, and popular media, this course will address our fascination with dinosaurs, and how the reemergence of these prehistoric creatures helped shape our modern world.Class size: 22

17406

ANTH 219

Divided Cities

Jeffrey Jurgens

M W 3:10pm-4:30pm

HEG 102

SSCI

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; Human Rights This course examines modern cities and everyday urban life, with a central focus on cities that are spatially and socially divided. On the one hand, we will investigate how cultural differences and political economic inequalities are reflected in geographic boundaries and other aspects of the built environment. On the other, we will explore how state agencies, real estate developers, activists, and residents make and remake city spaces in ways that create, reinforce, and challenge existing forms of difference and inequality. Much of the class will revolve around case studies of Berlin (Germany), Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (Brazil), Shanghai and Kunming (China), and Johannesburg (South Africa), although we will engage with recent developments in the U.S. as well. "Divided Cities" builds on intensive reading in anthropology and related disciplines, critical writing and discussion, and focused film viewing. It culminates in a substantial essay on a topic of the student's choice. Class size: 22

17408

ANTH 220

Doing Ethnography

Jonah Rubin

T Th 3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 204

D+J

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies This course is designed to provide an orientation for students in the methods, ethics, and concerns that guide anthropologists when we conduct our research. We do not conceive of methods as simply a means to an end, or the application of established techniques for generating answers to prior problems developed in anthropological theory. Rather, students will be encouraged to think about the types of data that various ethnographic techniques can produce, the epistemological and theoretical assumptions embedded in them, and, most importantly, the ways different strategies for data collection can be combined to form an anthropological research project. To that end, students will develop and execute a short fieldwork-based anthropological research project over the course of the semester. Readings and discussions will guide students through the process of developing research questions, choosing a field site, generating data, and re-presenting that field site in writing. To complement the fieldwork projects, we will also read exemplary – and sometimes controversial - texts of ethnography in practice. Class size: 18

17407

ANTH 231

Crime in Latin America: an ethnographic approach

Jonah Rubin

T Th 10:10am-11:30am

HEG 201

D+J

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American & Iberian Studies From San Salvador to Rio de Janeiro and from Mexico City to Bogotá, a number of Latin American cities now frequently proclaim themselves to be “the most violent city in the world.” In this course, we examine the recent wave of violence perpetrated by non-, para-, and state actors in Latin America through an ethnographic perspective and place these ethnographies into conversation with social scientific approaches to crime, violence, and human rights. Examining law breaking in the 21st century provides a lens through which to work through the meanings of states, citizenship, and identity. In this context, we ask: What constitutes criminal activity and who decides the answer to this question? How and when does crime threaten the state? What is the relationship between the violence of state and non-state actors? How can we rethink globalization through the lens of criminal activity? Readings will examine the experience of crime in post-Civil War San Salvador, criminality resulting from the securitization of the U.S.-Mexico border, the mirroring of criminal and state enterprises in Brazil, and surveillance technologies in Mexico City.

Class size: 22

17400

ANTH 233

Problems in Human Rights

John Ryle

M W 4:40pm-6:00pm

HEG 308

D+J

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Human Rights This course approaches a set of practical and ethical human rights issues through the study of historical and contemporary rights campaigns: the British anti-slavery movement of the 18th and 19th centuries (and later campaigns against slavery and slave-like practices); the negotiations for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II; the campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines in the 1990s; and the ongoing campaign against Female Genital Cutting. The emphasis is on questions of strategy and organization and how these relate to wider ethical and philosophical issues. What were the challenges that campaigners faced? How did they resolve them? What alliances of interest did they confront? And what coalitions did they form to combat them? The course also considers the questions that emerge from consideration of these campaigns: how have human rights campaigners have engaged with—and been part of—wider political, religious and economic changes? Have the successes of the human rights movement—particularly the expansion of international human rights legislation—changed its character? When, if ever, are indigenous values more important than universal principles? What is the relation of human rights to religious values? Is human rights itself a quasi-religious belief system? Or just a political language? Finally the course considers the question of animal rights and the challenges this poses for the concept of rights and the extent of proper moral concern. Class size: 22

17404

ANTH 246

South Asian Modernities

Laura Kunreuther

W F 10:10am-11:30am

OLIN 202

D+J

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Asian Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Global & International Studies Through an emphasis on the lived experience of modernity in several countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), students will explore the varied, and often contradictory, forms of social life in the region. The course is structured around three themes: personhood, community and difference, and South Asia's relation to the global world. We trace the development of certain categories that have become central to many ethnographic portrayals of South, such as village, caste, family, and gender as they are used in a variety of texts. We will explore key conceptual problems, such as the ‘modernity of tradition,’ the legacy of the colonial construction of social scientific knowledge, and the politics of representing the Third World' that have relevance beyond South Asia. 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. Class size: 22

17399

ANTH 280

The Edge of Anthropology

John Ryle

M W 11:50am-1:10pm

HEG 308

SSCI

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Global & International Studies; Literature Anthropological writing is diverse and innovative in both style and subject. Although “ethnography” and “fieldwork” are terms that have become widely used in other disciplines, writers identifying themselves as anthropologists are still at the cutting edge of research-based factual writing, usually about small-scale societies, both those on the periphery of the world system and those at the heart of it. The course examines the range of genres and techniques that anthropologists and others have used to convey the lived experience of other cultures. It examines the tension within the discipline between making these cultures comprehensible, respecting their difference and rendering them in a framework of theory. And it considers the aesthetic problems and ethical controversies that arise from writing at the limits of academic discourse. The genres addressed include classic field-based ethnographic monographs, travel narratives, historically-informed indigenous critiques of earlier ethnographies, reflexive accounts of the process of field work, journalistic reportage, visual documentation and works of fiction. The course takes the form of close readings of outstanding examples, drawn mainly from the anthropology of Africa and Latin America. These are set in context by accounts from other media. Texts to be studied will be drawn from the following: Bronislaw Malinowski A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term; Claude Levi-Strauss Tristes Tropiques; Oscar Lewis The Children of Sanchez; Ruth Landes City of Women; Sharon Hutchinson Nuer Dilemmas; Carlos Castaneda’ Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge; Adam Ashforth Madumo; Don Kulick Travestí; Michael Taussig My Cocaine Museum; Leni Riefenstahl The Last of the Nuba; V.S.Naipaul A House for Mr Biswas; Katherine Boo Behind The Beautiful Forevers; Charles Doughty Travels in Arabia Deserta and Alma Guillermoprieto Samba. Class size: 22

17409

ANTH 350

Contemporary Cultural Theory

Yuka Suzuki

W 10:10am-12:30pm

OLINLC 206

MBV

HUM

DIFF

Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies; 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. Required for all moderated Anthropology majors. Class size: 15

17410

ANTH 356

Culture, Mediation, Media

Laura Kunreuther

W 1:30pm-3:50pm

OLIN 310

SSCI

DIFF

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities Studies As people around the world engage on a daily (and even hourly) basis with a variety of different media and technology, anthropologists have turned their attention to way new and old media shape people's perception of time, space, social and personal identity. Just as culture is being reshaped by everyday media practices, media itself has reshaped our idea of culture and humanity. Looking broadly at the concept of 'mediation,' this course will discuss contemporary theories and ethnographies of media and technology. We will look at examples such as: the use of cellphones to organize political protest, the use of photography to link national with personal identity, the use of gramophones and sound recording to record voices of the dead, the use of radio to produce national and intimate subjects, social networking sites that produce new forms of public intimacy. We will do a collective ethnography on one internet site, and students will be required to do their own ethnographic project of one media or technological form. Class size: 15

Cross-listed course:

17216

LIT 336

Extinction

Alexandre Benson

T 4:40pm-7:00pm

OLINLC 208

D+J

ELIT

Cross-listed: Anthropology; Environmental & Urban Studies