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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. The image is both a device and an experience that dominates, seduces, or liberates us. This course will investigate the role and nature of the image in the development of new subjectivities and social relations found in the world today. This course will investigate that contested sensory field we call the "image," and ways in which it has been utilized, constructed, and experienced in diverse cultural settings. We will cover a wide range of social practices that cannot exist without the influence, manipulation, and the power of the image: from healing to sorcery, from mass mediation to ideology, from war to intimacy. Students will be introduced to classical and current readings in the anthropology of sensation. There will also be several screenings of ethnographic and "fictional" material that will complement and inform weekly discussions. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211 or consent of the instructor
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course examines the social and cultural systems of selected Melanesian groups, with a focus on those from Papua New Guinea. The course begins with a consideration of the difficulties anthropologists have faced in their attempts to apply traditional models of social structure in the region. In the face of the weakness of traditional approaches, anthropologists have developed new models of how Melanesians construct their societies. This course looks at several of these innovative models, using ethnographic studies to illustrate how exchange practices, ritual, notions of gender, and conceptions of the body and of the person serve, in different societies, as the basis of social organization. Attention is also paid throughout the course to colonialism, social change, and the millenarian movements these have often brought in their wake. While the course focus is on Melanesia, consideration is also given to the contributions Melanesian anthropology has made to anthropological theory more generally. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
See Linguistics 334 for description. Linguistics 334 Description
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course is intended to provide an introduction to fieldwork by combining practical exercises in participant observation and archival research with theoretical and ethnographic writings that illuminate the field experience. Practical issues to be discussed in the shaping of classic ethnographic studies relying on participant observation include the situatedness of the researcher, relations with informants, analysis of interviews, the nature of field notes, and the writing of ethnography. Ethnographies read in conjunction with field exercises are intended to relate the difficulties of the novice in the field to the ethical and methodological issues that typically emerge in the context of fieldwork. The focus will then shift to relatively recent innovations in the discipline that attempt to either redefine the nature of the field itself, reconfigure ethnographic authority, or rethink the political and ethical stakes of fieldwork itself. The emphasis of the class, however, will be practical, and students will be expected to base their final papers on firsthand research and/or primary archival sources. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. Since the 1920s, Morocco has been a repeated site for ethnographic investigation, a locus classicus for the elaboration of social theory, and a central region in what Bernard Cohn has famously termed "Anthropologyland." This course explores the conditions underwriting such centrality, examining the history of ethnographic writing on Morocco from Arab socio-geography through European travel narratives to colonial ethnology and American anthropology. Through a close reading of key ethnographies from different time periods, students will not only achieve a nuanced understanding of the culture, social structure, religion, politics, and history of Morocco, but will also review key movements in anthropological thought: structural functionalism, structuralism, symbolic anthropology, political ecology, post-structuralism, reflexive postmodernism, and globalization. Prerequisites: Anthropology 211 or consent of instructor. Full course for one semester. Conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. In this course, we will explore contemporary anthropological debates about African urban centers and cultural production with a special focus on the postcolonial city. African metropolitan centers have become destinations for large-scale migration, dense and diverse population centers, as well as global economic, cultural, and political intersections. In conjunction with new sources of identity such as nationality, religion, ethnicity, consumption, and migration, we will explore a wide range of cultural forms such as photography, film, and literature (studio photography in Mali, the Nigerian novel, fashion and lifestyle blogs as well as the Ivorian graphic novel). The course will take a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural approach to the exploration of urban society by exploring themes such as modernity, mimesis, resistance as well as gender and sexuality. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. Recent media and celebrity attention has focused on the African continent as a locus of endemic humanitarian and political emergency. This is reflected in Hollywood blockbusters such as Blood Diamond or The Constant Gardener as well as in Vanity Fair's recent "Special Africa Issue." Stereotypical representations of Africa have thus (re)entered Western popular culture. In the first part of the course, we will ask questions about these representational issues and reflect on the ways excess attention to crisis limits our analytical perspective. In the second part, students will be introduced to the history of Africa through classical anthropological texts as well as explore the role of ethnography in the making of colonial Africa. We will then turn to postcolonial Africa to critically and comparatively engage with contemporary issues facing African societies including oil and mineral extraction, extralegal economies, human rights, and transnational migration. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. The course explores different, overlapping forms of social and political organization in North Africa and France. It examines the long historical relationship between France and North Africa from colonial conquest to the present regimes of immigration and transnational flows. It provides a basic introduction to North African and French societies, their histories, and their cultural makeups, while at the same time presenting key concepts in social theory, including segmentary lineage structure, ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization, all grounded in a common set of ethnographic and literary data. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course will consider the ways in which medical anthropology has historically been influenced by debates within the discipline of anthropology as well as by broader social and political movements. We will read texts from the genealogy of theory and evidence for contemporary medical anthropology, and situate them within the historic and theoretical contexts in which they emerged. Particular emphasis will be placed on the importance of viewing biomedicine as one among many cultural systems of healing. Some key issues we will explore include: concepts of health, healing and illness; the political economy of disease; the role of medicine in the state and citizenship; medicine's role in the assignment and mediation of deviance; applied medical anthropology; medical anthropology as ambassador, translator and adjunct for biomedicine; and contemporary global health crises including the HIV and TB pandemics. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. What is the difference between sex and gender And why is this important in today's world This course introduces students to an anthropological perspective on the relationship between sex (the biological attributes by which a person is deemed "male" or "female") and gender (the norms and ideals associating appropriate roles, behaviors, and sexualities with men or women). In order to understand the various debates and their stakes, we will read anthropological accounts of cultures in which sex and gender are construed very differently from our own and combine these with discussions of documentary and popular movies and video clips. The course will provide students with ways to understand how we come to consider and express ourselves as "men" or "women," the social forces that constrain us to act and think as gendered persons, and the potential consequences for not conforming to those norms. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Conference. Not offered 2
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