Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

 

Professor:

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

 

Course Number:

ANTH 101

CRN Number:

10174

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     5:10 PM – 6:30 PM Olin 202

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Global & International Studies

Other than capitalism, what is there? How do we sense the state in our everyday lives? What can or can’t we learn from other people by talking with them? Since when is anthropology anti-racist? Questions like these inaugurate our investigation of how colonial and anti-colonial tendencies have shaped the field of anthropology for more than a century. We study how anthropologists learn about topics like race, climate, witchcraft, or kindness through the lens of grammar, gossip, lunchboxes, or driving. Across the semester we return to the ethical and political question at the heart of the field: How should anthropologists learn, think, or write about human entanglements with one another, and with the non-human? After studying different varieties of ethnography, students are equipped to conduct mini-ethnographies as part of their learning in the course.

 

Cultural Politics of Empire: the case of British India

 

Professor:

Laura Kunreuther

 

Course Number:

ANTH 207

CRN Number:

10175

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 306

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies; Global & International Studies; Historical Studies; Human Rights

This course will examine contemporary theories of colonialism and the cultural categories that emerged and changed through the colonial experience. No other colony was more prized or the object of more fantasy than the Indian subcontinent, “The Jewel in the Crown.” While the course focuses primarily on British rule in India, we will frame this particular case within broader perspectives of colonialism, including the ideology of liberalism that underwrote the colonial project. A central premise of the course is that the experience of colonialism was shared by both colonizer and colonized. Imperialism did not only profoundly change the cultures of the Indian subcontinent but also British people themselves –both those who were first-hand participants (soldiers, administrators, entrepreneurs, etc.) and those citizens who never left Britain. We will discuss political movements, like nationalism, feminism, and liberalism, not as discourses that originated in the metropole and then were exported to the colonies, but as emerging out of the colonial encounter itself. We will read historical sources, ethnographies, travelogues, literature and film in order to understand the role of ‘culture’ as an essential element in the politics of empire.

 

A Lexicon of Migration

 

Professor:

Jeff Jurgens

 

Course Number:

ANTH 224

CRN Number:

10176

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 304

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: American & Indigenous Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Middle Eastern Studies

(HRP Core Course) Migration is one of the most important and contested features of today’s interconnected world. In one way or another, it has transformed most if not all contemporary nation-states into “pluralist,” “post-migrant,” and/or “super-diverse” polities. And it affects everyone—regardless of their own migratory status. This course examines the history of migration from local, national, and global perspectives, with particular emphasis on the economic and political developments that have produced specific forms of mobility in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. The course also traces the emergence of new modes of border regulation and migration governance as well as novel forms of migrant cultural production and representation. Above all, it aims to provide students with the tools to engage critically with many of the concepts and buzzwords—among them “asylum,” “border,” “belonging,” “citizenship,” and “illegality”—that define contemporary public debates. It also encourages students to examine how migration experiences have been, and will continue to be, inflected by differences of race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religious affiliation, (dis)ability, and legal status. A Lexicon of Migration is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course that will encourage cross-campus work with similar courses at Al-Quds Bard and Bard College Berlin.

 

Language/Culture/Society

 

Professor:

Laura Kunreuther

 

Course Number:

ANTH 234

CRN Number:

10177

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 306

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Gender and Sexuality Studies

Language is one of the fundamental ways of understanding the world in culturally specific ways, and shapes our social identities like gender, race, ethnicity, class and nationality. This course begins with the assumption that language and culture are inseparable, and will introduce students to theoretical and ethnographic approaches that demonstrate this connection in a variety of ways. In class we engage in close analysis of everyday conversations as well as social analysis of broader discourses related to class, gender, and nationality. Some questions we will ask: What is considered ‘hate speech’ – and why? What is the relationship between gender ideologies and grammatical forms like pronouns? Other related topics include: how authority is established through specific forms of speech, the performative power of language, cultural translation and interpretation, the relationship between language, race, and class. We will also examine the way technology and technological metaphors in language are fundamental in shaping the way different cultures perceive their social worlds. We will also explore Bard’s online Language, Culture, Justice Hub, and students may have the opportunity to do research based on the Hub’s resources and publish their own projects on this online platform. Students will be required to do their own cultural analysis of a conversation, a written or oral narrative, or discourse on the web or other media using the conceptual tools we develop through the course.

 

Anthropology of/and Judaism

 

Professor:

Andrew Atwell

 

Course Number:

ANTH 250

CRN Number:

10178

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 305

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Jewish Studies; Study of Religions

This course explores varieties of Jewish religious experience disclosed in ethnographies of Jewish life, and the place of Jewish life in constituting anthropological praxis itself. Drawing in particular on recent ethnographies by Rachel Feldman, Lea Taragin-Zeller, Rachel Werczberger, and others, the course exposes students to the raucous heterogeneities of Jewish religious experience across differences in observance, gender and sexuality, race, class, place, and time. At the same time, the course traces threads of conceptual continuity (diaspora, nation, exile, land, messiah, tikkun) and entanglement with globalizing forces (of nationalism, empire, capitalism, secularism) that variously inflect and inform such experience. Engaging Rabbinic and non-Rabbinic Judaism across the United States, Israel/Palestine, South Africa, Europe, and beyond, the course also asks how anthropological approaches to Judaism have been shaped by the powerful influence of Jews and Jewishness on the discipline’s cultural biography. In attuning to the interface of contemporary ethnographies of Jewish life and anthropology’s Jewish roots, the course aims to situate the anthropology of Judaism as a site of generativity for students of Judaism and anthropology alike interested in the projects, violences, and possibilities of the historical juncture we inhabit.

 

Eating Politics

 

Professor:

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

 

Course Number:

ANTH 271

CRN Number:

10179

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin 304

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Environmental Studies; Human Rights; Middle Eastern Studies

As Israel’s war on Gaza has reminded us, food deprivation and the interruption of lifeways organized around specific types, and ways of preparing, food has long been a tool of systems of domination, including settler colonialism. Calls for food sovereignty and celebrations of cultural revival through food have, in parallel, been critical responses to such systems. This course examines food stories among indigenous and other dispossessed communities in North America/Turtle Island and in Palestine/Israel to answer three central questions: 1) How do the changing materialities of food and ecologies, as well as their changing relationship to one another, reshape collective ways of being in the world? 2) How and when do food practices sever connections to land and shift the meanings of community in unexpected ways? 3) What debates around “cultural appropriation” through food reveal about changing conceptions of authenticity, time, and rights today? By tacking back and forth across the Atlantic we will consider how settler colonialism is intervened upon by forms of “eating politics.” This course is part of the Rethinking Place Initiative. No prerequisites required.

 

Doing Ethnography

 

Professor:

Sucharita Kanjilal

 

Course Number:

ANTH 324

CRN Number:

10181

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     5:10 PM - 7:30 PM Olin 301

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists: Environmental Studies; Human Rights

What are the ethical stakes, practical questions, and methodological tools involved in conducting ethnographic research? Ethnography is the primary method through which contemporary cultural anthropologists understand the world. It includes both fieldwork and the representation of such fieldwork through writing (and sometimes film and other media forms). In this course, students will gain the skills needed to understand and practice ethnographic field methods. We will study and critically assess ethnographic methods such as participant-observation, interviewing, archival research, visual, sonic, textual and spatial analysis. We will address the challenges of doing fieldwork in a variety of contexts and a range of interlocutors, including the complexities of engaging with virtual practices and communities. We will learn about various ethnographic forms and approaches, such as multi-sited ethnography, feminist and indigenous methodologies, and digital ethnography. Over the course of the semester, students will design and develop their own ethnographic research project. The course will involve a series of intensive research exercises that will help students learn, both theoretically and practically, how ethnographic research can be effectively “translated” into written text. A key aspect of this class is examining the ethical considerations of ethnographic fieldwork, including preparing for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. This course satisfies the “field methods” requirement for graduating as an Anthropology major. Prerequisites: Introduction to Anthropology 101.

 

Ethnography of Law and Gender

 

Professor:

Andrew Bush

 

Course Number:

ANTH 379

CRN Number:

10180

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      5:10 PM - 7:30 PM Olin 306

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human Rights; Middle Eastern Studies; Study of Religions

Rather than treating law as an abstract, inaccessible, distant form of power, this course studies ethnography as a method to illuminate the intimacy of law’s power in everyday life. How are categories of law and gender mutually constituted through ordinary people engaging law beyond the courtroom? What is the role of language, media, literature, or religion in mediating what counts as law? How do ethnographers marshal their study of legal texts alongside their engagement with ordinary people in everyday life? This course pairs a close reading of three full-length ethnographies with supplemental texts (collectively chosen together in class) from anthropology, legal studies and gender studies to deepen our engagement with the ethnographies. Possible topics include the prosecution of sexual violence, controversy over gender restrictions for accessing temples, or the regulation of gender through family law. Our geographic focus will be South Asia and the Middle East, with a strong emphasis on the entanglement of law and religion. This course fulfills the MES Junior Seminar requirement.

 

Cross-listed Courses:

 

Introduction to Indigenous Research Methodologies: Theory and Practice

 

Professor:

Luis Chavez

 

Course Number:

AS 202

CRN Number:

10171

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Africana Studies; Anthropology; Historical Studies; Human Rights; Literature; Study of Religions

 

Ethnography: Music & Sound

 

Professor:

Whitney Slaten

 

Course Number:

MUS 247

CRN Number:

10499

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed  Fri   11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Blum Music Center N210

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists: Anthropology

 

Indigenous Ethnomusicologies

 

Professor:

Luis Chavez

 

Course Number:

MUS 260

CRN Number:

10466

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Blum Music Center N217

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: American & Indigenous Studies; Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Experimental Humanities; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

 

Accordionology: Class, Race, and Migration in American Musics

 

Professor:

Maria Sonevytsky

 

Course Number:

MUS 387

CRN Number:

10500

Class cap:

8

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed  Fri   11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Blum Music Center HALL

 

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

 

Crosslists: American & Indigenous Studies; Anthropology