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