Professor: M. Dominy
CRN: 92352
Distribution: A/C
Time: Tu Th 10:30 am - 12:00 pm OLIN 201
Cross-listed: MES
Adopting a
crosscultural, historical and interpretive perspective, we explore the idea that anthropology is an
attempt "to understand how human beings understand themselves and see their actions and
behavior
as in some ways the creations of those understandings." We examine the core of the
anthropological
approach in our conceptualization of the concept of the cultural as negotiated, dynamic and
contested, in our method of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, and in our spatial
and historical comparativist approach. We begin with the study of small-scale societies as an
analytically productive frame for understanding the dynamics of the nation state, processes of
environmental transformation, and the global commodification of culture.
Professor: M. Bick
CRN: 92354
Distribution: A/C
Time: M W 10:30 am - 12:20 pm OLIN 306
Cross-listed: Jewish Studies, MES
This
course will explore the many forms of Jewish culture found in the past and in the present.
Readings
explore the lost or transformed cultures of the Eastern European shtetl, the Sephardic
communities
of the Moslem world, and the Jews of India and Ethiopia. We will also explore some of the
worlds
of American, European and Brazilian Jews, as well as the new constructions of Jewishness in the
State of Israel--from kibbutz to city. Finally we will explore the phenomenon of Christian
communities which converted to Judaism, and historically and critically analyze the myth that
Jews
form a race.
Professor: M. Bick
CRN: 92356
Distribution: A/C
Time: Tu Th 1:20 pm - 2:40 pm OLIN 306
Cross-listed: AADS
of related interest: MES
The emergence of modern British anthropology is closely
connected
to research in Africa. We will study the history of British anthropology largely through an
examination of the major Africanist ethnographic and theoretical texts of this school (some
produced
by African scholars). It is through these texts that much of our understanding of precolonial,
colonial
and postcolonial Africa has been constructed, especially in the areas of political and social
structure
and organization, ritual and religion, the urban transformation, and belief systems. Classic studies
of
the Nuer, Azande, Tallensi, Kikuyu, Nyakusa, Bemba and other cultures will lead us into the
descriptive and analytic richness of this school. Later texts will be read which explore issues of
resistance to colonialism, and the transformation of cultures which have come with
independence.
Professor: C. Lindner
CRN: 92357
Distribution: C/E
Time: Tu Th 2:50 pm - 4:10 pm OLIN 306
Cross-listed: American Studies, CRES,
History
Material remains are useful to complement or challenge historical information.
Archaeology can also uncover transformations of the environment that were unintentionally
irresponsible or planned to create illustrations of power over nature. We will focus on change in
the
urban and rural landscapes of the Middle Atlantic states and New England respectively.
Colonization
and slavery on the Southeastern coast will be examined in forts and plantations.
Professor: A. Klima
CRN: 92353
Distribution: A/C
Time: Tu Th 2:50 pm - 4:50 pm OLIN 201
Cross-listed: MES
A study of how
anthropological knowledge is created and expressed through moving images, in comparison to
textual
representation. Ranging from classic ethnographic films to recent innovations that strive to break
with convention, we will explore the possibilities of film as knowledge about cultural others but
also
as indicative document of our own discourses for staging the reality of Nature, Culture, Man,
Woman, Self, Other, and the Primitive. Questions of ethnographic authority and the power
relations
involved in gazing upon the Other will be explored alongside questions of aesthetic values.
Recent
theories of ethnographic representation, and examples of textual ethnography, old and new, will
accompany films. The course may also touch upon the genres of documentary,
quasi-ethnographic
yarns, photojournalism, surveillance, "Real TV," and film generally. Weekly readings and
frequent
writing assignments (response papers), sometimes read in class. Prerequisite: one course in
Anthropology or moderation in Film.
Professor: M. Dominy
CRN: 92358
Distribution: A/C
Time: W 10:30 am - 12:30 pm OLIN 307
Core Course: PIE
Cross-listed: AADS, MES
of related interest: Asian Studies
Spatially and historically comparative perspectives in
anthropology (with its focus on the ways in which people construct and manipulate their
boundaries
of identity and diversity) provide insights into the rise of new nationalisms, localisms, and
assertions
of indigenous sovereignty. Many theorists are committed to linking interpretive examinations of
representation and practice with political economy as they explore the transcultural discourses
evoked
by colonial and postcolonial encounters. In the Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii)
anthropologists have examined these processes in terms of ethnotheories of similarity and
difference,
the politics and construction of tradition, and engagement in identificatory discourses of custom
or
rhetorics of tradition as symbolic capital. This upper-college seminar examines these processes of
identity formation primarily, but not exclusively, in Quebec and Brittany, Eastern Europe
(Germany,
Romania and Bulgaria) and South Africa against the Pacific backdrop. We also examine
ethnographic
case studies of anthropological advocacy and native land claims in order to test Arthur Danto's
assertion that "cultural identity is a matter less of ethnographic fact than of political contest--of
rhetoric, litigation, lobbying and terrorism." Prerequisite: PIE status or moderated status in
anthropology.
Professor: A. Klima
CRN: 92359
Distribution: A/C
Time: M 3:40 pm - 5:20 pm OLIN 204
Cross-listed: Asian Studies, MES
This
course
examines
Buddhism as a mobile formation between cultures, embodied in such diverse phenomena as Thai
forest monks, New Age religion and "Dharma bums," Sri Lankan Protestant Buddhism, and
Western
meditation centers. In Asia no less than in the West, Buddhism is a product of social-historical
production and, perhaps, also of an essential spiritual insight. We will explore the cultural politics
of representing Buddhism through emphasis on the tension between trying to understand
expressions
of Buddhist wisdom and weighing the historical consequences of conflicting ways to portray it,
crossing the worlds of Orientalist Euro-America, to Buddhist reformations in modern Asian
States,
to Thai forests and caves of meditating saints and their foreigner disciples, to "Western
Buddhism"
and other popular incarnations in global culture.