Anthropology

 

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

 

Professor:

Andrew Bush

 

Course Number:

ANTH 101 A

CRN Number:

90239

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 204

 

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.

 

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

 

Professor:

Andrew Bush

 

Course Number:

ANTH 101 B

CRN Number:

90240

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 204

 

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.

 

Socialist Musical Imaginaries

 

Professor:

Maria Sonevytsky

 

Course Number:

ANTH 209

CRN Number:

90317

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Music; Russian and Eurasian Studies

What is the relationship between musical culture and political ideology? Taking examples from China, Cuba, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, this course surveys the cultural policies of socialist states and their effects on the lives, listening habits, and creative output of musicians and music consumers. From the politics of Ukrainian punk, to the invention of Uzbek opera, to the performance of masculinity in Chinese and Cuban pop music, we will investigate how political ideologies generated state support for certain kinds of music while suppressing other forms of unofficial, underground and protest music. Students will develop an understanding of how socialist cultural policy models in diverse regions of the world have understood the uses and the threats posed by musical culture in daily and symbolic life. Furthermore, we will evaluate what happens when the ideological imperatives of a regime transform, fade away, or are suddenly replaced with a new political ideology. Readings include historical, anthropological, and musicological texts that examine the relationship of musical sound to publics, counterpublics and states. Students do not need to read musical notation to take this class.

 

Archaeology at Montgomery Place

 

Professor:

Christopher Lindner

 

Course Number:

ANTH 210

CRN Number:

90556

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue     1:30 PM - 5:20 PM Montgomery Place and Ecology Field Station Teaching Lab

 

Distributional Area:

LS Laboratory Science  

 

Crosslists:

Africana Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies; Historical Studies

This course concentrates on Alexander Gilson’s residence at the Conservatory, its location confirmed by discovery in 2021 of domestic pottery in the African American’s yard, along with a gardening tool. The next stage of subsurface testing aims to identify key architectural features of his dwelling and the placement of its exterior garden beds. Archival research about ornamental flora may complement our quest, through fine sifting of earth, to recover information about the plants Gilson grew for personal reasons. Reading and brief writing for seminar participation will provide information on the archaeology of landscapes. We’ll engage with land access groups in Kingston, as part of the ELAS component of the course. Enrollment limited to 12, through approval by the professor.

 

Archaeology Laboratory Methods

 

Professor:

Christopher Lindner

 

Course Number:

ANTH 213

CRN Number:

90557

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs     1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Hegeman 201

 

 

    Fri     1:30 PM - 4:30 PM Hegeman 201/ Ecology Field Station Teaching Lab

 

Distributional Area:

LS Laboratory Science  

 

Crosslists:

Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies

Bringing to fruition 12 past seasons of carefully limited excavations, lab analysis will seek to identify, among 1,000s of manufacturing flakes, flint tools that might substantiate a theory: people from the mound-building cultures of southern Ohio visited the Hudson Valley around 2,000 years ago. We will further address the hypothesis that some firepits at the Forest residence (next to the Honey ball field behind Admissions) formed part of religious-philosophical rituals to maintain well-being. We will fine-sift earth from these hearths and other pits in search of culinary &/or medicinal plant vestiges. Our reading for seminar discussion will focus on comparable evidence of the period in southern Ohio, as regards the Adena and Hopewell peoples. We’ll engage with herbal education groups in the local area, as part of the ELAS component of the course. Enrollment limited to 12, through approval by the professor.

 

The Rift and The Nile: Nature, Culture and History in Eastern Africa

 

Professor:

John Ryle

 

Course Number:

ANTH 218

CRN Number:

90318

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Albee 106

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Africana Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies; Historical Studies; Human Rights

The Great Rift Valley runs through Eastern Africa to the Red Sea, dividing the African continent in two; and the Blue Nile and the White Nile both flow through the region. Between them, they transect a vast area of spectacular natural diversity, where modes of existence range from hunter-gathering and pastoral nomadism to the way of life of modern city-dwellers. Fossil evidence indicates that the emergence of humanity took place in the Rift Valley 200,000 years ago. Today, Eastern Africa exemplifies many of the challenges that confront the continent: the legacy of colonialism, the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources, accelerating environmental change, armed conflict and the decay of states. The response of communities in the region – cultural and political – demonstrates the inventiveness of human adaptation and the drama of survival. The class offers an interdisciplinary approach to these layers of natural and human history, deploying scholarly research, reportage, music and documentary film to examine the diverse ways of being that endure, and the versions of modernity emerging from economic and demographic transformation.

 

Captured Voices: Ethnographic Listening

 

Professor:

Laura Kunreuther

 

Course Number:

ANTH 223

CRN Number:

90316

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed  Fri   11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin 303

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

American & Indigenous Studies; Experimental Humanities; Human Rights

This course examines the intersection between ethnographic research and the emergence of modern recording technology.  Drawing inspiration from critical indigenous studies, sound and media studies, we will examine different technologies of voice that have been central to the ethnographic recording and circulation of indigenous folktales, language, and songs in anthropology.  How have such technologies shaped ethnographic listening?   At the center of these technologies and ethnographic practices lie modern ideologies of voice - deployed in politics, social movements and cultural productions – that tend to naturalize the relationship between voice and the self, agency, or empowerment.  But as we will see, the immediacy of the voice often depends upon specific technologies (eg. sound recording, amplification, broadcasting) and human labor (eg. interpreters/translators or stenographers) through which particular voices are made audible. Throughout the class, we will explore critical and indigenous approaches to voice and listening, along with the notion of ethnographic refusal, to consider new models for ethnographic practice.  Students will be required to focus on a specific technology of voice or listening practice from within or beyond the course syllabus, and will produce a paper and a listening project that may be showcased at the EH share event.

 

Lost Recipes

 

Professor:

Sucharita Kanjilal

 

Course Number:

ANTH 232

CRN Number:

90315

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 309

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

American & Indigenous Studies; Experimental Humanities; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

This course explores how food cultures and histories are shaped, contested and preserved by examining the recipe as a cultural artefact. It invites students to ask: What is a recipe, and how does it relate to questions of place and territory, memory and archive? In the contemporary food media and restaurant industries, the showcasing of ‘lost recipes’, as they relate to particular peoples and places, is an enchanting and lucrative practice that promises both cultural representation and culinary reclamation. This raises the question: How and why are some recipes thought to be ‘lost’, and by whom and in what form are they considered to be found? What happens when the preservation of culinary knowledges becomes unmoored from the material questions of dispossession and land loss? How does the growing global interest in food history relate to ongoing struggles for food sovereignty and food justice? Lost (and found) recipes, then, provide a unique entry point into questions of land and conquest, representational politics and cultural contestation, media and memorialization. Throughout this course, we will draw on scholarly and multimedia resources from across anthropology, food history, anti-caste and indigenous studies in order to take a capacious look at the recipe form and its related archives. By examining recipes embedded in oral histories and narrative-based records, colonial and community cookbooks, television programming and digital media, we will consider the kinds of conservation projects and imagined futures to which recipes contribute. And, by taking a global and feminist perspective, we will foreground indigenous and Dalit efforts towards culinary revitalization that confront the colonial-capitalist culinary archive.

 

Introduction to Media

 

Professor:

Sucharita Kanjilal

 

Course Number:

ANTH 258

CRN Number:

90314

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin Languages Center 118

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

Experimental Humanities; Global & International Studies

(EH Core Course) This course explores the complex ways in which media animate our social, sensory and political worlds, and enable particular relationships between people, places, bodies and things. A key focus of this class will be to de-Westernize our understanding of media theory and practice, and critically evaluate what media “do” in time and space. We will tackle questions such as: Under what historical and social circumstances do people consume, produce and distribute media? How have people appropriated global, national and local media, especially in the Global South? How do power relations produced by race, gender, class, caste and capital shape encounters with media and media industries? Our class will engage with a range of media forms, from colonial cookbooks to movie theatres, community radio stations to the YouTube industry. We will read scholarly works from across the fields of media studies, feminist theory, anthropology and digital geography, putting key media theorists (such as Stuart Hall, Marshall McLuhan, Laura Marks, Lila Abu-Lughod, Lev Manovich and Charles Hirschkind) in conversation with contemporary media practitioners, artists and organizers. We will also prioritize working on media projects ourselves, in order to assess our own positions as producers as well as users and consumers of media.

 

Contemporary Cultural Theory

 

Professor:

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

 

Course Number:

ANTH 350

CRN Number:

90320

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Reem Kayden Center 200

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Human Rights

This course is intended as an introduction to advanced theories of culture in contemporary anthropology. In contrast to early anthropological focus on seemingly isolated, holistic societies, more recent studies have turned their attention to the intersection of local systems of meaning with global processes of politics, economics and history. This course will be designed around influential theorists, including Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Taussig, Arjun Appadurai, and Eduardo Kohn. The course aims to inspire critical engagement with an eye towards developing theoretical tools and questions for the senior project. This course examines how power works in the production of history, gender, language, global economies, and definitions of the nonhuman. Required and open only for moderated anthropology students, or by permission of the instructor.

 

Global Indigenism

 

Professor:

Maria Sonevytsky

 

Course Number:

ANTH 366

CRN Number:

90319

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 304

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

American & Indigenous Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

Does the global Indigenous rights movement amount to a “subtle revolution” that has the potential to reform and improve our world order, as Prof. Sheryl L. Lightfoot (Anishinaabe/Lake Superior) argues? Or is it a movement that entraps Indigenous peoples from around the world in expectations of primitivism, “settler time,” eco- spiritualities, or performances of authenticity, as others contend? This seminar investigates the prolific tensions—the pitfalls and potentials—inherent in the global movement for Indigenous rights. Centering on anthropological accounts of Indigenous peoples’ movements, the seminar will begin with two books: Indigenous Peoples and Borders (Lightfoot and Stamatopoulou), and The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Niezen). We will then move to situated ethnographic accounts of Indigenous movements in various states, from intergenerational memory politics in post-Soviet Ukrainian Crimea (Greta Uehling), to competing visions of Indigenous modernity in Colombia (David D. Gow), the rise of “indigenous elites” among Kenya’s Maasai (Serah Shani), the contradictory imperatives of liberal recognition in Australia (Elizabeth Povinelli), the class dimensions of indigenous rights activism in India (Alpa Shah), the politics of Indigenous refusal across the settler Canada/US borders (Audra Simpson), and more. In addition to weekly reading responses, students will be asked to conduct a semester-long independent research project on a course subject to approval by the instructor.

 

Senior Project Colloquium

 

Professor:

Laura Kunreuther

 

Course Number:

ANTH 403

CRN Number:

90321

Class cap:

15

Credits:

0

 

Schedule/Location:

    Thurs       5:00 PM – 7:30 PM  Olin 202

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

The Senior Project Colloquium is required of all anthropology seniors registered for ANTH 401. This one- semester colloquium provides a collaborative space for students beginning their senior projects in the fall. The course guides students through developing their topics and refining the anthropological questions that inform their research and writing. We will read anthropological texts, including past senior projects, to think about the scope of the senior project, and how to synthesize and integrate relevant scholarship. We will produce short pieces of ethnographic writing as well as project outlines that will be incorporated into midway board chapters. Throughout the semester, students will have multiple opportunities to workshop their ideas and writing in progress, and to support each other through the challenges of working on a senior project. Please note that the colloquium does not replace individual meetings with senior project advisors. Students will be graded P/D/F based on attendance and active participation in the colloquium.

 

Cross-listed Courses:

 

After Chinua Achebe: Reading contemporary African Literature

 

Professor:

John Ryle

 

Course Number:

LIT 2023

CRN Number:

91095

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue   Thurs      3:30 PM – 4:50 PM Olin 302

 

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English  

 

Crosslists:

Africana Studies; Anthropology; Human Rights; Written Arts

 

Introduction to Ethnomusicology

 

Professor:

Whitney Slaten

 

Course Number:

MUS 185

CRN Number:

90043

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed  Fri   10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Blum Music Center N210

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Anthropology

 

Improvisation:Social Science

 

Professor:

Whitney Slaten

 

Course Number:

MUS 251

CRN Number:

90044

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:

Africana Studies; American & Indigenous Studies; Anthropology; Experimental Humanities

 

Field Methods:Ethnomusicology

 

Professor:

Whitney Slaten

 

Course Number:

MUS 334

CRN Number:

90045

Class cap:

10

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Blum Music Center N210

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

Anthropology; Sociology