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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Introduces scholarly debates about the socio-cultural practices through which individuals and societies create, sustain, recall, and erase memories. Emphasis is given to the history of knowledge, construction of memory, the role of authorities in shaping memory, and how societies decide on whose versions of memory are more "truthful" and "real." Other topics include how memory works in the human brain, memory and trauma, amnesia, memory practices in the sciences, false memory, sites of memory, and the commodification of memory.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Approaches to the sociocultural study of religion. Provides conceptual tools for analyzing the resilience and diversity of religious experience in the face of large socioeconomic and political change. Traces the connections between contemporary religious resurgence and violence, displacement, globalization, economic insecurity, and ethnic and national identity. Cases include Catholic conversion via mass media in the Philippines; a rise in witchcraft in post-apartheid South Africa; underground Protestantism in the atheist Soviet Union; "spiritual shopping" in the United States.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Explores connections between what we eat and who we are through cross-cultural study of how personal identities and social groups are formed via food production, preparation, and consumption. Organized around critical discussion of what makes "good" food good (healthy, authentic, ethical, etc.). Uses anthropological and literary classics as well as recent writing and films on the politics of food and agriculture.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. Investigates this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Covers traditional and contemporary anthropological themes, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Considers the cultural organization of play in different communities and societies. Explores why all people play, how different cultures experience fun, and what particular games mean, if anything. Surveys major theories of play in relation to a variety of play phenomena, such as jokes, video games, children?s fantasies, sports, and entertainment spectacles. As a final project, students develop their own case study.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Enhances cross-cultural understanding through discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. Includes research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. Open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines through comparative case studies how cultural, moral, and political values give meaning to human reproductive events and inform people's uses of medical technologies. Focuses on how technological mediations of fertility, pregnancy and birth (e.g., contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization, prenatal testing, etc.) offer opportunities for the formation of gender and kinship, the reproduction of social inequalities, and the implementation of national population and international development agendas. Considers how bioethical evaluation of reproductive technologies might take into account the motivations and experiences of actual users.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines cultural impact of communication technologies, from basic literacy to cell phones, and computer-based social networks on patterns of verbal interaction. Introduces theories and methods of linguistic anthropology pertinent to technologies that make it possible for people to communicate across distances in space and time. Students develop their own research projects exploring the cultural dimensions of technologically enhanced communication. Enrollment limited.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Introductory exploration of documentary film theory and production, focusing on documentaries about science, engineering, and related fields. Students engage in digital video production as well as social and media analysis of science documentaries. Readings drawn from social studies of science as well as from documentary film theory. Uses documentary video making as a tool to explore the worlds of science and engineering, as well as a tool for thinking analytically about media itself and the social worlds in which science is embedded. Class includes a lab component devoted to digital video production in addition to class time. Enrollment limited.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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2.00 Credits
Examines the intersections of technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from 19th-century factories to 21st-century techno dance floors, from Victorian London to anything-goes Las Vegas. Discussions and readings organized around three questions: what cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology; how computers have changed the way we think about ourselves and others; and how politics are built into our infrastructures. Explores the forces behind technological and cultural change; how technological and cultural artifacts are understood and used by different communities; and whether, in what ways, and for whom technology has produced a better world.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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