This course introduces students to the four subfields of anthropology: cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology. It emphasizes a set of fundamental concerns: the nature of culture, human variation and universals, cultural relativism, and how the study of evolution and pre-history inform our understanding of what it means to be human. Specific topics include primate (monkey and ape) behavior, evolution, and the concept of race; the origins of agriculture and the rise of social complexity; language and culture, kinship and family, sex and gender roles, ethnicity, and religion; and the emergence of the world system, culture and political economy, and globalization. This course is intended to help students develop a coherent view of the essential concepts, structures, and intellectual methods that characterize the discipline. It stresses the unifying principles that link the subdisciplines and thereby create anthropology’s comprehensive, holistic world view. Students are taught new ways of learning and thinking about the world’s many designs for living in time and space. The course prepares students to integrate and interpret diverse kinds of information, to evaluate conflicting claims about human nature and diversity, and to think critically. Required readings include an introductory text and several paperbacks. Format: lectures and discussion sections. Format: lectures and discussion sections. (Chivens)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”101. Introduction to Anthropology”]: (Choose a discussion section from 003-017 and you will be auto-enrolled in lecture 001)
This introductory course exposes and explores the structures of inquiry characteristic of anthropology and surveys the field’s four subdisciplines (biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology), providing a first glimpse of the field’s overall context, history, present status, and importance. The principal aim of the course is to help students develop a coherent view of the essential concepts, structures, and intellectual methods that typify the discipline. In doing so, the course lays stress on concrete examples of human cultural and ethnic diversity and the interactions leading to structures of dominance, inequality, and resistance. In order to understand and counter negative assessments of diversity, it stresses unifying principles that link the subdisciplines and thereby create anthropology’s comprehensive, holistic world view. It teaches students various ways of learning and thinking about the world’s many designs for living in time and space. It prepares them to integrate and interpret information, to evaluate conflicting claims about human nature and diversity, and to think critically. Topics covered include: the nature of culture; human genetics, evolution and the fossil record; the concept of race; primate (monkey and ape) behavior; language and culture; systems of marriage, kinship and family organization; sex-gender roles; economics, politics, and religion in global perspective; the cultural dimension of economic development and contemporary social change, and the emergence of a world system. Required readings come from one introductory text and additional paperbacks. Lectures and discussion-recitation. Two objective exams (multiple choice and true or false questions) cover the two halves of the course. The second exam is given on the last day of class. There is no final exam and no term paper. Section leaders require quizzes and, perhaps a short paper (Fricke)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”222. The Comparative Study of Cultures”]Why do people do things in different ways? Why do they sometimes understand and value the things they do so differently? What do these cultural differences mean? What are the ways in which we think about and understand difference? How can we think about and understand cultural change and the meaning of cultures in a world where people and societies constantly collide and commingle? This course has two aims: first, to introduce students to the concept of culture and to a small sampling of the great diversity of cultures that exist around the world; second, to learn about some approaches to understanding this cultural diversity—and, along the way, to learn a bit of the history of social and anthropological theory. Classes will be organized around the discussion of readings and materials that span several cultures and diverse approaches to studying, thinking about, and describing culture, from ethnographic accounts (both classic and recent), to theoretical statements, to fictional writing and documentary film. Grades will be based on regular attendance at lecture, participation in discussion sections, and three papers. (Frye)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”254. The Anthropology of Food”]Do you eat to live, or live to eat? If the latter, this course may be for you. As anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote, the plants and animals around us are not just good to eat, they are good to think with and through. Anthropologists study the human condition in all its forms, including how we evolved as a species, how we communicate, how we lived in the historic and prehistoric past, and how we organize our lives in different parts of the world today. In the realm of food, we thus pay close attention to the ways in which humans hunt, fish, gather and grow food, how we get enough calories to survive in differing environments, how food helps us to constitute families, religious identities and other social networks, and even how food comes to be a source and a symptom of social inequality. We will address all of these issues, as well as the symbolic uses and meanings of food in sacred and everyday contexts. Students read articles and chapters that are the result of all of the listed methods, and they evaluate which ones are most effective at making different sorts of arguments. Students are also introduced to readings from history, neuroscience and human geography, allowing them to see different ways that the study of human culture and society draws sociocultural anthropologists into conversation with people working in other anthropological subfields and neighboring disciplines.
Course Requirements:
A midterm test will count for 25% of the grade. A paper before the midterm will count for 25% of the grade and an ethnographic paper due near the end of the semester will count for 35%. Attendance in class and section, and participation in section will count for 15% of the grade.
Intended Audience:
This class should appeal to undergraduate students from all social science and humanities disciplines. It is open to students from all majors, has no prerequisites, and would not put non-majors at any disadvantage.
Class Format:
The class will meet for two 1 hour 30 minute lectures each week, and one hour-long discussion section. It will require one GSI for section and grading. (McGovern)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”314. Cuba & its Diaspora”]This course examines Cuban history, literature, and culture since the Revolution, both on the island and in the United States diaspora. In political and cultural essays, personal narratives, fiction, poetry, drama, visual art, music, and film, we will seek a comprehensive and diverse view of how Cubans on the islands and Cubans in the diaspora understand their situation as people of the same nation divided for fifty years by the Cold War, revolution, and exile. Topics to be considered include the meaning of diasporas in our time, Fidel Castro and the making of the Cuban Revolution, masculinity and gay sexuality in the Revolution and Cuban diaspora, women’s dreams, everyday life under communism, Afrocuban culture and religion, Jewish-Cuban revitalization, the Cuban visual arts movement, and the construction and deconstruction of exile identity. (Behar)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”319. Introduction to Latin American Society & Culture”]This course examines the cultures and societies of contemporary Latin America, a vast and varied region with more than twenty countries spread over one and a half continents that have developed over more than 500 years of history. We will cultivate an awareness of the particularities of local ways of life while searching for shared themes and histories that in some ways unite the many societies of this vast region. Topics covered include: race, ethnicity, and national identity; indigenous rights and citizenship; religion and religious change; gender issues; class and economic development; and immigrant communities within Latin America. As a student, you will be expected to keep up with reading and writing assignments and to participate actively in lectures and discussions. By the end of this course you should have a grasp of the various countries and regions that make up Latin America; the most important social divisions within those regions; and the nature of current developments in Latin American societies. This is an introductory course on the region, with no prerequisites other than a desire to learn new things. Grades will be based on regular attendance at lecture, participation in discussions (including student group presentations), two short papers, and one final essay. (Frye)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”325. Childbirth & Culture”]This course examines childbirth from an anthropological perspective, focusing on the distinctive sociocultural configurations of childbirth practices and beliefs in several different societies. The cross-cultural study of childbirth not only provides the basis for an understanding of the cultural logic underlying these practices and beliefs, but also expands our knowledge of women’s perspectives on social change and on the medicalisation of childbirth. The course considers a range of childbirth-related topics including conception, the birthing process, childbirth rituals, postpartum care of mothers and newborns, fathers’ participation, miscarriage and infant mortality, changing childbirth practices, and the politics of childbirth relating to hospitalization and reproductive technologies. Based on reading and videos from studies of childbirth in African, Asian, European, Latin American, and North American societies, students’ work will be evaluated through one short paper, a book review, class participation, and a mid-term and a final exam. (Renne)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”327. Critical Theory in Medicine and Healing”]This writing intensive lecture course introduces upper division undergraduates to the critical anthropological analysis of illness, health, healing and medicine. Our investigation will be comparative, examining how different systems of meaning and power make sense of bodily states, historically and cross-culturally. We will explore current and past medical anthropological approaches – political economic, symbolic, feminist, post-structuralist – in order to critically evaluate how well these frameworks convey the lived experience of bodies in their local worlds. The intellectual excitement of medical anthropology comes from its ability to challenge categories and boundaries that seem natural and fixed. Ultimately, my goal is for students to think differently about the embodied relations of health and affliction as produced through the natural “order of things”. (Roberts)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”328. Globalizing Consumer Cultures”]This course addresses the global spread of forms of consumer culture in places as similar and diverse as Hungary, the United States, Ghana, Vietnam, Sweden and Nepal. “Consumer culture” will be placed in the context of the political and economic changes that have attended globalization, including widening social inequalities and the rise of global standards for middle class respectability. Drawing on anthropological approaches to economic exchange and material culture, we will cover how consumer goods can materialize social relations, redefine local and national identities, and confuse consumption with citizenship. We will also examine the role of advertising, branding and the power of multinational corporations to influence local practices. Students will complete the course with an ethnographic project. (Fehervary)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”330. Culture, Thought, & Meaning”]This course is an intensive, upper-division introduction to Cultural Anthropology and Cultural Studies. Concentrators and non-concentrators are welcome; the course is closed to first year students. This course is about ideas anthropologists have developed to understand human difference and human relationships, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. We explore a rich variety of texts in philosophy, psychology, and cultural anthropology from different historical periods and regions, including Papua New Guinea, Bali, and the US. Students will develop a basic understanding of theoretical movements in cultural anthropology, a set of tools for analyzing and understanding cultural phenomena, and a stronger appreciation of cultural difference in all its forms. (Mueggler)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”333. Non-Western Legal Systems, I”]The anthropological study of law. The nature, function and development of law. The cultural background of law. The behavior of law in society. The universal characteristics of law. Dispute settlement procedures and the judicial process; civil and criminal law; principles of liability for legal wrongs; law and human rights. What Americans want from their legal system and why. The impact of Western law on non-Western societies and law: customary, tribal or aboriginal law. Case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas. A good introduction to comparative law from an anthropological perspective. Requirements: three 6-8 page student papers. Lecture/discussion format. Regular class attendance essential. (Owusu)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”346. Latin America: The Colonial Period”] How were the peoples and cultures of the early modern Atlantic world transformed by the encounters between Portuguese missionaries and Amerindians, African slaves and Dutch merchants, Spanish conquistadors and indigenous leaders in colonial Latin America? This course will examine the history of this dynamic region by looking at the nature of these interactions from pre-Columbian times through early European overseas exploration and settlement up to the nineteenth-century wars of independence. We will address how class, gender, racial and ethnic identities took on particular meanings as peoples, ideas, and commodities circulated and intermingled between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. We will look at documents such as court cases to explore the ways in which human dramas were transformed into written records, and the means historians use to reconstruct those dramas. Through close readings of primary sources, we will come to understand how plantation slavery, mining, and other colonial institutions shaped peoples’ experiences and how these same individuals struggled to adapt these imposed institutional structures to suit their own needs. Finally, we will seek answers to why European colonial domination lasted as long as it did, what the primary causes were of its demise, and in what ways modern Latin American nations can be seen as heirs to the legacies of the colonial system. (Scott)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”352. Anthropology of the Body”]Advanced seminar on approaches to the study of embodied experience. Themes include: classic theories that offer ways of thinking about and “with” the body; the cultural and historical constitution of bodies, particularly their differentiation from bodily “others”; and transformations of bodily experience via contemporary mass media, commodities, and globalization. (Fehervary)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”356. Child Health in Africa (Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology) (Meets with AAS 358.001)”]This course focuses on the health of children in several sub-Saharan African countries. Selected recent readings from medical anthropology and public health will be discussed. Specific health problems covered include the effects of wood smoke pollution on infant and child respiratory health; the use of pesticides and the consequences of indoor residual spraying on infant health; water, sanitation, and diarrheal diseases; the effects of mercury and lead pollution on children’s health; polio; malnutrition and kwashiorkor; zoonotic diseases such as the Ebola virus; infectious diseases such as measles, malaria, trachoma, and HIV-AIDS; and former child soldiers’ mental health. Students’ work will be evaluated through class participation, a 5-page essay on African children and health issues, a midterm exam, a 3-page essay analysis of African newspaper articles which discuss infant/child health issues, and a final exam. (Renne)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”356. Filming the Future of Detroit (Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology) (Meets with AAS 358.005)”] This course is a rare opportunity to engage Detroit simultaneously from theoretical and practical perspectives, from the perspectives of music history, social history, architectural history, cultural anthropology, literature, and film…. We will read, we will write, and we will learn how to make films with the help of an award winning filmmaker from Berlin. We will approach Detroit from the perspectives of race, gender, sexuality, democracy, urbanization, suburbanization, industrialization, de-industrialization, emergency management, and the future. In thinking about the future, we will think about the extent to which Detroit is representative of American and other urban futures, and to what extent is the exception. We will also examine Detroit’s place in the world. How does it compare to Mumbai in India, Johannesburg in South Africa, and how does it compare to Berlin in Europe? Finally, we will work with a group of young people who live in and are growing up in Detroit. We will learn not only how to see Detroit from their perspectives, but also how to collectively produce films about it. The course will end in public screenings in Ann Arbor and Detroit. (Partridge)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”357. Undergrad Seminar in Sociocultural Anthropology: Art, Science, and Technology”] (Meets with HISTART 393.012) (3) (1 Crse in Anth) TTh 1-2:30 (Robertson) [/toggle]
[toggle title=”374. Language and Culture”]This course surveys a century’s worth of research and reflection on language as a part of “culture,” drawing on literature in anthropology, linguistics, and related fields. In exploring language in cultural context, some have approached language as if it were a mere window into cultural diversity. Perhaps culture, they reason, can be discovered in a community’s distinctive repertoire of words, or in its grammatical categories, or in its styles of face-to-face interaction. Included here are those who see culture as primarily cognitive—group-relative ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘thinking’, such as how people conceive of putatively universal categories like space and time, or how they classify people and things. Others suggest that language is no innocent medium at all, that it does not passively disclose facts about a preexisting social, cultural, and cognitive world, but may help actively constitute it, even transform it. We explore these and other issues through classic and contemporary readings and through examples culled from across the globe. This course does not assume any background in linguistics and has no prerequisites. (Keane)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”398. Honors in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology”]This honors course sequence in anthropology is designed for undergraduate anthropology or evolutionary anthropology majors who have applied for senior honors in the Department of Anthropology. This course is divided into two parts. In the Fall Term, the students will meet once a week in seminar to read and discuss a selection of significant monographs and papers in cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic anthropology and a selection of writings on research methods and strategies in these fields. This seminar provides background for the students to define their own senior honors thesis project. By the end of the term, the students will have decided on a project and begun preliminary work on it. In consultation with the honors advisor, the student may request any member of the Anthropology Department to serve as a main thesis advisor or second reader. In the Winter Term, the students will convene periodically in seminar with the honors advisor to discuss their research projects and get feedback from the group, as well as staying in contact with the honors advisor and second reader. By the end of the term, each student should have completed the research and write-up for their thesis so that they can make a formal summary presentation of it for the group. (Mueggler)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”414. Introduction to Caribbean Societies and Cultures, I”]This course provides an introduction to the peoples and cultures of the Caribbean. Topics covered include: the history of the cultures social structure and social organization of contemporary Caribbean states; family and kinship; religion, race, class, ethnicity, and national identity; Caribbean immigration; politics and policies of socioeconomic change. The course is open to both anthropology concentrators and non-concentrators. Films and videos on the Caribbean will be shown when available. Requirements: three 6-8 page typewritten papers, which ask students to review/synthesize reading and lecture materials; participation in class discussions; regular class attendance. (Owusu) [/toggle]
[toggle title=”446. Sex and the City: Urban Geography and Sexual Locations”] (WOMENSTD 446) (3) (1 Crse i (Rubin) [/toggle]
[toggle title=”458.001. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: Nonverbal Communication”] Speech is undeniably central to communication, but what about all the embodied signs that occur with it, signs that may express, or even betray, what one means? This course explores the multi-modality of face-to-face communication. Topics include gesture, especially manual gestures that co-occur with speech; gaze and bodily orientation; posture mirroring and rhythmic integration; how people stand in small groups and navigate the built environment. While we’ll read scholarly literature each week, the course is data-centered and designed to give you the chance to develop skills in observation and analysis. For part of the semester, you’ll use a multimedia annotator (ELAN, developed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) to work directly with videodata that you choose, record, and transcribe. This course does not assume any background in linguistics or anthropology. (Lempert)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”458.002. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: Ethnography Lab: The Drug War, NAFTA and Environmental Health in Mexico City”]This is an small intensive lab seminar in ethnographic research and analysis methods using materials from a collaborative medical anthropology environmental health study in Mexico City conducted by the course instructor. Students will spend the first weeks learning about contemporary Mexico City, environmental health research, food and water systems and ethnographic analysis methods. In the second part of the course students will develop individualized projects based on course materials using methods learned throughout the course. Spanish reading comprehension a plus. Enrollment through the consent of the instructor. (Roberts)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”458.003. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: Religion, Media, and Politics (Meets with Comm 405.003)”]This course examines configurations of politics, publics, and power at the nexus of religion and media. Religious activists and groups have increasingly framed media technologies as central to their projects of sustaining existing social worlds, constructing alternatives, or resisting competing ones. Whether the Christian Right in the United States, Pentecostals in Latin America and Africa, Orthodox Jews in Israel/Palestine and North America, Hindu nationalists in South Asia, or Muslims of diverse orientations in the Middle East and beyond, radio, photography, television, and the internet have emerged as important terrains of cultural and political mediation by self-identified religious actors. We will delve into some of the most interesting ethnographic accounts of media as sites of shared (and contested) religious and political experience across diverse contexts. We will look beyond media content to consider the ways in which the materiality, infrastructure, and circulation of media structure the political implications of religious community, practice and belief. Throughout the course, we will explore the theorizations that ground this emergent field of inquiry, problematizing conventional understandings of “religion,” “media,” and “publics.” (Moll)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=” 458.004. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: Anthropology of Islam (Meets with INTLSTD 401.007 and MENAS 591.001)”]This course is about how ordinary Muslims negotiate varieties of religious experience intheir everyday lives. We will examine ethnographies set of three countries – Egypt,Indonesia and France – that illuminate in contrasting ways the intersections of Musli religiosity with a plethora of hot-button transnational issues, including bio-ethics and medical technologies; preaching, media and globalization; and secularism, gender and religious minorities. In addition to delving into specific ethnographic contexts, we will consider how we can think about “Islam” as a historically situated religion, a moral and legal tradition, and an object of academic study. Throughout the course we will discussISIS and both popular and academic debates around how to understand its use of violence. (Moll)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”458.005. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: Japanese Culture and Society”]Robots, anime, cosplay, cat cafes, sushi. These are some of the things that are marked as “Japanese” in the global mass media today. Utilizing a variety of media, including ethnographies, films, short stories, songs, and works of art, we will explore their backstory in this class. Sushi, for example, was a fermented dish before the advent of refrigeration made eating raw fish possible—and safe. What social changes occasioned the transformation of sushi from an elite cuisine to the fast-food of today? Our exploration of the past and present of Japan will be deeper and broader than the history of sushi per se! We will review the Chinese discovery and naming of Japan in the 3rd century, explore the world of the samurai and beginnings of popular culture in the 17th century, and track the country’s emergence in the late-19th century as an imperialist power. Our main focus however, is on postwar (1945-present) institutions and social practices, including marriage, household and family, religions and ancestor worship, illness and wellness—all of which allow us to properly contextualize, and to better understand, robots, anime, cosplay, cat cafes and sushi.
Activities: regular attendance and class discussion, weekly discussion questions, several short quizzes, a research paper, a short presentation in class on the research paper.
(Requirements: students should have taken 202 or 302, or an equivalent (non-language) course on Japan. This course is especially designed for juniors and seniors, and is open to graduate students.) (Robertson)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=” 458.006. Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology: The Anthropology of Infectious Disease”]In 2014, when Guinea’s Ebola epidemic began to cross international borders, public health officials called anthropologists to the scene to investigate the relationship between Guinean cultural practices, local understandings of Ebola, and disease transmission. As transnational travel and changing climate patterns transform the globality of infectious disease into a plurality of local realities, the task of examining infectious disease through an anthropological lens has never been more timely nor more urgent. The aim of this course is to explore the sociocultural, geopolitical, and historical dimensions of infectious disease in order to better understand how infectious disease is differentially experienced and practiced in the United States and abroad.
Objectives: By the end of this course, students will have a strong understanding of anthropological ideas and concepts related to illness, health, and medicine and how these ideas and concepts can be brought to bear on infectious disease. In particular, they will also be able to describe and identify important sociocultural, geopolitical, and historical dimensions of infectious disease in a range of geographic locations. (Dumes)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”473. Ethnopoetics: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Verbal Art”]How do we listen to the verbal arts of nonwestern peoples without imposing our preconceived folk ideas about form, performance, authorship, and textuality? And if we do manage to hear and study these arts in their own “terms,” can we translate and represent them without making a caricature of these sources? This course will consider efforts by anthropologists, linguists, poets, folklorists, and literary theorists to address these questions at several levels: (1) working our methodologies which allows us to see the poetics in others’ arts; (2) critically assessing the methodologies; and (3) exploring theories about differences between oral literatures and written traditions as well as the cultural shaping of literatures. We will also consider what ways this work contributes to reshaping anthropology itself. (Mannheim)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”499. Anthro Undergrad Reading and Research in Anthropology”]Independent reading and research under the direction of a faculty member. Ordinarily available only to students with background in anthropology. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title= “COURSES FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS below”][/toggle]
[toggle title=” Anthro Cul.501.001 Social Scientific Studies of Historical and Contemporary China”]CCS 501 is part of a two-semester Interdisciplinary Seminar in Chinese Studies intended for M.A. and Ph.D. students from all disciplines. Disciplinary departments create barriers between shared problems, methods, and sources. ISCS is designed to recover and highlight the connecting links of Chinese Studies: the multidimensional study of China encompassing all social groups and the entire range of human experience, from literature and the visual arts to politics and economics. There are no formal prerequisites, except permission of the instructors.CCS 501 will introduce graduate students to current issues in social scientific studies of China, emphasizing different methodological approaches drawn from multiple disciplines. The course will address four common themes — family and social organization, poverty, social stratification and social mobility, and political economy — that intersect the multiple social science disciplines. Each class will discuss one or more disciplinary approaches to a common subject through class discussion of exemplary studies of China. We will discuss the existing state of the field on each subject and emphasize the different research design and data available for such studies. (Gallagher)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=” Anthro Cul.519.001 Principles and Methods of Historical Linguistics”]This course is an introduction to the theories and methods that enable linguists to describe and explain processes of linguistic change and historical relationships among languages. The major topics to be covered are the emergence of language families and means of establishing family relationships; sound change; grammatical change, especially analogy; language change caused by culture contacts; the Comparative Method, through which prehistoric language states can be reconstructed with an impressive degree of accuracy; internal reconstruction, a less powerful but still important method for gaining information about linguistic prehistory; and ways in which the study of current dialect variation offers insights into processes of change. Course requirements: regular homework assignments (45%), final exam (45%), class participation (10%). (Thomason)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”Traditions of Ethnology I”]The course presents the major schools and traditions in anthropology, particularly sociocultural anthropology, from the nineteenth-century through the 1950s. It is the first part of a year-long sequence. (McGovern)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=”Anthro Introduction to Ethnomusicology”]This course is divided into two parts. The first surveys major theories of the discipline; the second discusses in detail several current and key concepts, such as sound culture, music as discourse, and music as national heritage.
In addition to substantial reading assignments, students will conduct term research projects on topics that they choose with the instructor’s approval. They will also write formal papers reporting on factual data and theoretical interpretations developed in their research projects.Graduate only. (Lam)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
[toggle title=” Anthro Current Issues in Sociocultural Anthropology: Anthropologies of Law and Regulation”]This course is a graduate seminar focusing on anthropological (and non-anthropological) engagements with law and regulation. We will read widely from both classic and contemporary legal anthropology, theoretical and historical reflections on law and regulation, and finally legal cases, literary texts, and media artifacts in order to focus on a series of overarching and intersecting themes.
First, we will highlight the development and transformation of legal anthropology as a specific sub-field within the broader history of the discipline. From within this archive the course moves to a set of themes where questions of law, legality, and regulation have been contested ranging from incarceration, gender, financial and corporate regulation, human rights and property. Within each of these categories we juxtapose anthropological texts, legal scholarship and historical and contemporary case-studies in order to reflect on broader questions about the role of law in society, including the relationship between law and domains of kinship, economy and well-being. The final set of readings highlights spaces and practices of “non-law” in order to explore the possibilities and problematic of a world without law and regulation. (Dua)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Introduction to Sociolinguistics”]In this course we examine language as a social phenomenon, exploring the relationships between variation in language use and social processes. We will work with quantitative and qualitiative methods in discussing language variation and change in a range of situations. Broad themes will include linguistic styles, registers and varieties aligned with different contexts, e.g., region, class, gender, ethincity, identity, age, power; the concept of “standard” languages; and social practises in, and outcomes of, multilingualism and languages in contact. Students will under[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology”]This course is an intensive introduction to theoretical issues in linguistics of special relevance to anthropologists, most of whose primary interests are outside of language. Think of language as a special kind of semiotic or cultural system. Our subject matter, then, consists of ways of approaching its formal description and the general issues (for the most part, about the nature of culture) that are raised by those approaches. Several such issues will continually crop up: (1)The nature of cultural patterning, its representation, and the means we use to describe it; (2)The possibility of cross-cultural comparison and typology using culturally-meaningful (or “emic”) patterns as a basis; can general “laws of structure” of cultural form be constructed from descriptions of particular cultural systems? (3) Are there true universals of culture? Are they biologically determined, determined by the nature of the cultural code, or some combination of the two? What evidence is required to make sense of the question? (4)What does it mean for individuals to share a culture? Does “sharing a culture” require collective representations? Are there any? (5)How do languages, and other aspects of cultural patterning, map onto populations of speakers? (6)Is language best viewed as an especially complex cognitive system, or as socially-situated practices? Are these views mutually exclusive? No background whatever in linguistics or linguistic anthropology is assumed, although familiarity with one of the other fields of anthropology is expected. The course is designed for graduate students. (Irvine)(Mannheim) (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=” Anthro Semiotic Anthropology”]Signs and representations have come to play a central role in current understanding of society, culture, and politics. This seminar explores the genealogy of contemporary approaches to signs through the close reading of selected theoretical works, from such foundational figures as Peirce and Saussure, to more recent writings across a range of post-structuralist, cognitive, and practice-oriented approaches. The seminar raises questions about the assumptions and implications of these approaches for the empirical study of society and culture. This course is not a survey–the syllabus is intentionally limited, and is intended to provide an opportunity for careful and critical approaches to the texts. Students interested in social and cultural theory are welcome from any department. (Keane)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=” Anthro Ethnographic Writing”]This course considers the history, politics, and possibilities of ethnographic writing with some attention to ethnographic filmmaking. We will discuss a variety of ethnographic genres, including literary journalism, experimental ethnography, feminist ethnography, travel accounts, the memoir, poetry of witness, investigative reporting, documentary image-texts, the ethnographic novel, and autobiographical criticism. Our focus will be on the dilemmas of writing narratives of place and voice. We will analyze a range of textual strategies, including monologue, dialogue, first person narrative, third person narrative, flashback, different methods of quoting or paraphrasing informants and descriptive accounts of other places. In addition to familiarizing ourselves with these literary genres and textual strategies, I want to provide a workshop environment for members of the class to strengthen their own writing and embark on ethnographic projects of their own. Students often say they don’t get opportunities to try their hand at ethnographic writing before embarking on fieldwork. I hope this course will fill that need by providing a foundation for the production of more creative, daring, and original writing that can speak to and beyond the academy. (Behar)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Topics in Anthro. Linguistics: Discourse in Face-to-Face Interaction”]This is a lab-based introduction to the study of face-to-face interaction as a window onto social and cultural processes. The course equips students with methods that can then be incorporated into research projects in anthropology and in linguistics, including those that use ethnographic methods. While students are expected to read and report on outside literature every week, the course is data-centered and designed to hone skills in observation and analysis. For at least half the term, you will use ELAN (a multimedia annotator developed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) to make different types of observations on the same stretch of video data, data that you select and transcribe. Topics include the interactional significance of pauses and speech overlap; laughter and dysfluencies; pacing and speech rate; “poetic” structure and rhythmic integration; the patterning of deictic expressions across turns-of- talk; cross-modal sign behavior, especially co-speech gesture; and the built environment in which interaction unfolds. (Lempert)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=” Anthro Sentiment/Affect/Structures of Feeling”]Anxiety and angst. Despair, disdain, boredom. Schadenfreude and sympathy. Love and lust. Conflicts over how to define, spark, or manage “emotions,” “feelings,” or “affects” have fueled projects from “colonialism” and “liberalism,” to “market capitalism” and “modern socialism,” to “feminism” and “peace movements.” And yet we frequently confront discourses claiming that matters of sentiment are folded away into the recesses of individual psyches or biological organisms, as “unspeakable” islands of primal realities–albeit realities deemed smaller and lesser than those assigned to, say, “geopolitical scales.” In this seminar, we will contrast several approaches to thinking about sentiment that have been relevant within anthropology (semiotic, interdiscursive, linguistic, psychological, biological, social, reflexive, political economic…), and work to recognize both the promises and limiting presuppositions of each. (Lemon)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Seminar in Anthropology and History II”]The Core Seminar of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History provides a context in which to examine the categories, theories, methods and craft of social research and writing, focusing on the interplay of anthropology and history, ethnography and historiography. The seminar addresses the intersections and mutual engagements between anthropology and history as regards their research methodologies, conceptual concerns and modes of analysis. It inquires into the history of these engagements and into the emergence of inter and trans-disciplinary work. The Core Seminar is organized as a year-long program that runs from the Winter term through the following Fall term. The Winter term is dedicated to the intensive discussion of writings, both monographs and articles, that illuminate significant issues and debates within and across these disciplines. The Fall term is organized as a “research seminar” that provides a space for attention to the crafts of analysis and writing and for the discussion of research papers being prepared for the seminar by its members. Papers written within the Fall term seminar satisfy the Department of History’s Research Seminar requirement. Dissertation writers may find this a particularly useful forum for the development of their own writing. The Core Seminar is a required sequence for students in the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History. However it is also open, by permission of instructors, to graduate students in the Departments of Anthropology and History who are interested in developing studies and research that involve the integration of anthropological and historical perspectives or who are in conversation with some of the developments associated with the unfolding of historical anthropology and anthropological history. The Core Seminar may be taken as a two-term sequence or as independent units. (Lemon)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Sociocultural Workshop”]Presentations of work-in-progress by faculty, students, and guests on topics relevant for the sociocultural subfield, with work-shopping of papers and discussion of talks. (Roberts)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.777.001 Linguistic Anthropology Laboratory”] Linguistic Anthropology Lab Linguistic anthropology is a laboratory field. The reasons for it were several. First, we regard graduate training in linguistic anthropology to much more closely resemble an apprenticeship model than in cultural anthropology. Second, there are new technologies being developed that are increasingly being used in data analysis, including sound and visual analysis of face-to-face interaction. These require special training and resources. And third, but perhaps most importantly, a laboratory model provides a framework for encouraging research collaboration among graduate students and between students and faculty, rather than a model of research as done by a solitary ethnographer. This aspect of the lab framework has worked very well. A single lab-group has met on a regular basis for almost 10 years, discussing papers by visitors, discussing each other’s works in progress, and practicing talks for professional meetings and for job interviews. We have succeeded in creating a strongly supportive, cooperative, and nurturing environment for within which students have been able to try out first ideas and first critiques of work by many of the leading figures in the field. (Lempert)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Sociocultural Lab: (This course meets every other week beginning Sept. 9, 2015)”] For anthropology graduate students returning from fieldwork. Sociocultural anthropology is based on fieldwork, which is usually conducted independently. The ethnography lab is a context in which graduate students who have completed fieldwork and are engaged in writing their dissertations can meet in a structured fashion to discuss their research and writing. The instructor for the course will work with these graduate students by providing relevant readings and exercises. Students will also read and critique each other’s work. The ethnography lab will also invite guests to present their work, with a special emphasis on the practical aspects of moving between ethnographic observation and theory through analysis. The ethnography lab will also provide a forum for these graduate students to present conference papers and practice job talks; the major advisors of these students will also be invited to participate in these events. Students will also receive guidance and direction on the process of turning conference papers and dissertation chapters into published articles. (Partridge)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.830.001Anthropology & History Workshop/Reading Group”]This one-credit course is to support a workshop/reading group of students in the Anthro/History program. It will be a seminar in format with the purpose of discussing works-in-progress and especially significant pieces of scholarship in the field. Presentations will be circulated and read in advance. The two hour session is dedicated fully to discussion of the work among all those present. (Lemon)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Research Practicum in Anthropology”]The course provides students with the opportunity to design and to conduct fieldwork or laboratory analysis of original anthropological data. A faculty member may undertake it as a special aspect of a research project under investigation or the student under the supervision of a faculty member may initiate it. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.958.001 Anthropological Research”]This course requires a substantial research paper or an extensive exploration and critical evaluation of relevant sources on a particular topic. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.959.001 Survey of Literature on Selected Topics”]This course requires an annotated bibliography. A written statement detailing a program of readings and objectives is to be submitted to the instructor. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.990.001 Dissertation, Precandidacy”]Election for dissertation work by doctoral student not yet admitted as a Candidate. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.993.001GSI Training”]A seminar for all beginning graduate student instructors, consisting of a two day orientation before the term starts and periodic workshops/meetings during the Fall Term. Beginning graduate student instructors are required to register for this class. (Peters-Golden)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle] [toggle title=”Anthro Cul.995.001 Dissertation, Candidacy”]Graduate School authorization for admission as a doctoral Candidate. N.B. The defense of the dissertation (the final oral examination) must be held under a full term Candidacy enrollment period. (Staff)() (Cost: Wait:)[/toggle]
NO TAUGHT THIS SEMESTER
[toggle title=”African Cultures”]Africa is considerably more important, more interesting and certainly more complex than its popular image suggests. The course provides an introduction to the peoples and cultures of tropical (sub-Saharan) Africa. Topics covered include: the historical geography of Africa; pre-colonial and colonial roots of contemporary African state-societies; case studies of changing systems of kinship, marriage, family and gender relations; race, ethnicity, language, class and the dynamics of cultural, national and pan-African identity; religion, music, dance and the arts in contemporary Africa; globalization and the challenge of African development. The course is open to both anthropology concentrators and non-concentrators. Grades are based on four 5-6 page or three 7-8 page type-written,take-home papers, and contributions to class discussion. Film/videos shown in class when available.
Basic Texts: Vincent Khapoya, “The African Experience, An Introduction” Third Edition, and R. Olaniyan, ed “African History and Culture”. (Owusu)() (Cost:
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