Course: |
ANTH
101 A
Introduction
to Cultural Anthropology |
||
Professor: |
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |
||
CRN: |
90186 |
Schedule: |
Mon Wed 2:00 PM - 3:20
PM Hegeman 308 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap: |
18 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: 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 "Ëœculture 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 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. Difference and Justice: This
course will examine how anthropologists have understood difference and
hierarchies among humans and between humans and their animate and inanimate
surroundings. In doing so it will explore the logics according to which
anthropologists have understood and advocated for justice.
Course: |
ANTH
101 B
Introduction
to Cultural Anthropology |
||
Professor: |
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |
||
CRN: |
90187 |
Schedule: |
Tue Thurs
2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Reem
Kayden Center 102 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap: |
20 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: 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 "Ëœculture 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 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. Difference and Justice: This
course will examine how anthropologists have understood difference and
hierarchies among humans and between humans and their animate and inanimate
surroundings. In doing so it will explore the logics according to which
anthropologists have understood and advocated for justice.
Course: |
ANTH
211
Ancient
Peoples before the Bard Lands: Archaeology Methods and Theory |
||
Professor: |
Christopher Lindner |
||
CRN: |
90188 |
Schedule: |
Thurs 3:50 PM - 5:10
PM Rose Laboratories 108
Fri 2:00 PM
- 5:00 PM Rose Laboratories 108 |
Distributional Area: |
LS Laboratory Science |
Class cap: |
12 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: American Studies; Environmental & Urban
Studies
Excavations at the Forest site, between the Admissions Office and Honey
Field at Bard, while unearthing chipped stone knives in abundance, have their
focus on discovering evidence of ceremonies for healing and world renewal:
pottery with potential ritual usages, exotic chipped stone, pits where
sacrificial fires burned, and possibly a shelter for daily life and the visit
of pilgrims. Contextual scales range from broadly regional, thru riverine
reaches, to the Tivoli embayment and an anonymous rivulet with cascades and
meanders, a promontory and its fire pits, to microscopic traces on artifacts
& invisible chemical soil compositions. We'll explore far-flung connections
to earthworks in Ohio of two millennia ago and Indigenous travel from their
celestial observatories there to the central Hudson Valley with its flinty
mountains & underwater monsters. Field methods include basic excavation and
replicative experimentation. We share our learning experiences with descendants
of ancient peoples, the Munsee Mohican nation. Seminars for weekly writing on
Thurs 3:50-5:10, field/lab Fridays 2-5. Please speak with the professor before
request of enrollment in this Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences course. An
extra way to prepare is the Bard Archaeology Field School this August that
likely will encounter ancient artifacts through similar techniques of
excavation and contextualization; for info, go to http://www.bard.edu/archaeology.
Course: |
ANTH
219
Divided
Cities |
||
Professor: |
Jeffrey Jurgens |
||
CRN: |
90190 |
Schedule: |
Tue Thurs
10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Reem
Kayden Center 102 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap: |
20 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies
This class offers an introduction to modern
cities and everyday urban life, with a central focus on cities that are both socially
and spatially divided. On the one hand, we will examine how political-economic
inequalities and collective differences (organized in relation to race, color,
gender, sexuality, class, [dis]ability, and other social categories) are
expressed in geographic boundaries and other aspects of the built environment.
On the other, we will explore how state agencies, real estate developers,
activists, residents, and other social actors make and remake city spaces in
ways that reinforce, rework, challenge, and refuse the existing terms of
inequality and difference. The class will revolve around case studies of cities
around the world (e.g., Berlin, Johannesburg, Kunming, and Rio de Janeiro) as
well as cities in the US (e.g., Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York
City). More broadly, we will trace the history of urban segregation from a
perspective that is both transnational and committed to the pursuit of racial
justice (as well as other forms of societal transformation). This class builds
on assigned reading in anthropology and other disciplines, critical writing and
discussion, and focused film viewing. At the same time, it provides students
with an opportunity to reflect on urban theorizing through collaborations with
community partners in Kingston and other cities. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an
interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the
understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and
beyond.
Course: |
ANTH
238
Anthropology
of Religion |
||
Professor: |
Naoko Kumada
|
||
CRN: |
90506 |
Schedule: |
Mon Wed 5:40 PM - 7:00
PM Hegeman 204 |
Distributional Area: |
MBV Meaning, Being, Value |
Class cap: |
20 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: Asian Studies;
Religion
Anthropologists have been provoked by the phenomenon of
religion from the very beginnings of the discipline. Some of the formative
ideas and approaches of the discipline have emerged from this engagement. From
an early interest in what the religious practice of 'primitive' societies might
reveal about the origin of society and the constitution of human thought and
language, to accounts of the continuing vitality of religion in often
unexpected contemporary contexts, to the ways in which religious practice, rhetoric
and symbolism articulate gender and power, hierarchy and class, the
anthropological study of religion offers a trove of data and insight. In this
introductory survey we will look at how successive generations of
anthropologists have studied and theorized practices such as ritual and
sacrifice, magic and witchcraft, gift and exchange as observed in social
formations from hunter-gatherer societies to the modern state, from 'animism'
to 'world-religions.' As we do so we will learn to think anew about such
questions as the relationship between the religious and the secular and about
the enduring power of practices and concepts birthed in 'religion.'
Course: |
ANTH
275
Post-Apartheid
Imaginaries |
||
Professor: |
Yuka Suzuki
|
||
CRN: |
90191 |
Schedule: |
Tue Thurs
12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Olin
101 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap: |
18 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Global & International
Studies; Human Rights
South
Africa and Zimbabwe both have been marked by one of the most
brutal systems of racial segregation ever seen in the world. Before Independence, the distinction between white and
black signaled the stark difference between a life of guaranteed comfort and
privilege on the one hand, and a life of limited access to inferior land,
education, housing, and employment on the other. Following decades-long
struggles for liberation, each country worked to reinvent itself, crafting new national narratives of
cross-racial, cross-ethnic unity. This course explores what it means to imagine
postcolonial nationhood in the context of clearly visible, radical
inequalities. We consider the politics of land redistribution and resettlement
in contexts where the vast majority of arable land remains under white
ownership after Independence. We look closely at the charismatic authority of
politicians like Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe, alongside the intensification of
ethnic discourses that culminated in genocide in Zimbabwe. Other topics we
explore include intersections between race and gendered violence, the rise of
witchcraft and the occult, racialized economies of rooibos tea, and paradoxes
of white African belonging. This is a D&J-designated course because it
examines the ongoing effects of apartheid in southern Africa. This course is part of the Racial Justice
Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to
further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United
States and beyond.
Course: |
ANTH
350
Contemporary
Cultural Theory |
||
Professor: |
Yuka Suzuki
|
||
CRN: |
90193 |
Schedule: |
Fri 10:20 AM - 12:40
PM Olin 301 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap: |
15 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: 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 socieities,
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 seminar will involve guest presentations
from several faculty in the anthropology program on their research. The course
aims to inspire critical engagement with an eye towards developing theoretical
tools and questions for the senior project. This is a D&J-designated course
because it 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 instructor.
Course: |
ANTH
363
Asia and America: Imperial Formations |
||
Professor: |
Naoko Kumada
|
||
CRN: |
90556 |
Schedule: |
Thur 2:00 PM - 4:20
PM Olin 301 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis |
Class cap: |
12 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: American Studies; Asian Studies; Global &
International Studies
The Atlanta shooting and the sharp
increase in anti-Asian violence have taken racial politics in the US to a new
level. These attacks echo the anti-China rhetoric spread by mainstream and
social media, corporations, and policymakers. Taking an anthropological
approach, this course attempts to offer historical, cultural, and geopolitical
contexts for understanding the racial tension surrounding Asian communities in
the US and abroad today. It takes into account the long-standing historical and
systemic factors in US society as well as new global challenges brought by the
pandemic and the rise of China. Seeing the US as an empire, the course explores
how its imperial formations and practices shaped, and were shaped by, Asia and
its interactions with Asia. It examines how America continued its westward
capitalist and militarist expansion, shifting its frontier as it added
territories, colonies, and military bases across the globe, in the islands in
the Pacific and Asia (Hawaii, Samoa, Marshall Islands, Okinawa, and Diego
Garcia). Moving beyond the clear-cut boundaries of sovereign nation-states, we
explore layered forms of sovereignty, nationhood, and (extra)territoriality
between Asia and America. Topics include racial and gendered forms of Asian
labor and migration (‘coolies’ and ‘prostitutes’), the practices of building
and maintaining US military bases, America’s wars on Asia (the Philippines,
Vietnam), and local responses. Students do not need to have taken courses on Asia before to
take this course. This
course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary
collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial
inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.
Cross-listed
courses:
Course: |
HIST
3103
Political
Ritual in the Modern World |
||
Professor: |
Robert Culp
|
||
CRN: |
90162 |
Schedule: |
Thurs 10:20 AM - 12:40
PM Olin 303 |
Distributional Area: |
HA Historical Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap |
15 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: Anthropology; Asian Studies; Experimental
Humanities; Global & International Studies; Human Rights
Course: |
MUS
185
Introduction
to Ethnomusicology |
||
Professor: |
Whitney Slaten |
||
CRN: |
90437 |
Schedule: |
Tue Thurs
12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Blum
Music Center N210 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap |
20 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: Anthropology
Course: |
SOC
262
Sexualities |
||
Professor: |
Allison McKim |
||
CRN: |
90007 |
Schedule: |
Tue Thurs
12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Olin
202 |
Distributional Area: |
SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and
Justice |
Class cap |
18 |
Credits: |
4 |
Cross-listed: American Studies; Anthropology; Gender and
Sexuality Studies; Human Rights