|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
This is an advanced undergraduate seminar for variable topics in sociocultural anthropology. The topic of the course may also vary by section number. Be sure to check with the instructor who is offering the given course and section to find out the specific course description any given semester.Note: Be sure to read course description above carefully. This is a variable topics course in advanced sociocultural anthropology. Be sure to contact course/ section instructor for the specific topic any given semester.
-
3.00 Credits
Far from being hidden or “dying,” folklore thrives in public and private spheres both in everyday life and in extraordinary situations. It is invoked in nationalist and post-colonialist practices and, lately, also in global cultural productions. This course will explore the cultural attributes and functionings of folklore in its own terms and as a part of anthropology in various spaces, times, and groups. We will begin with a brief theoretical discussion on the connection between folklore, nationalism, and ethnic and regional identity, as well as popular and mass culture. Placing special emphasis on the emergent, unofficial aspects of vernacular culture, we will then examine how different groups communicate and construct their identity through folk narratives, proverbs, and jokes; folk art; spontaneous memorials; displays of the body, yards; the exchange of food; and the performance of music and dance during festivals, parades, and processions. In light of the currency of “tradition” and “heritage” in the public sphere—in school curricula, state sponsored programs, advertisement and museums—we will also look critically at the production of culture in the context of multiculturalism and identity politics, and the often ambiguous relation established between dominant or elite cultures and unofficial, vernacular cultures. Class discussions will be conducted in a seminar style and complimented with audio-visual materials. Short research exercises will provide students with first hand experiences with the cultural-anthropologist’s craft of documenting and analyzing current folklore materials. Mode: A combination of short lectures, class discussions, screenings, and students’ presentations.
-
3.00 Credits
Economic Anthropology is the study of how economic systems articulate with culture on a variety of scales. This class examines basic paradigms of study in economic anthropology, theories of money and value, and ethnographies of exchange. We will look at how the commodification, production and/or sale of goods in formal, informal and black markets affect people in very different ways. We think through the role of the state, of religion, power struggles and advertising in shaping these markets. Format includes readings, lectures, film screenings, and discussions.
-
3.00 Credits
This course examines the anthropology of art and “artworlds.” While its emphasis is on non-western art, it maintains a comparative stance between unfamiliar and familiar visual traditions. Thus, by implication it raises questions about western arts and their cultural contexts. Specific topics and cultures vary according to the interests and expertise of the instructor. Topics can include comparative aesthetics, authenticity and “primitiveness,” the commodification of art, tourist art, gender in the production and consumption of art, the influence of non-Western art objects and performances on European and North American cultures, conceptual systems and modes of viewing, the circumstance of encounter with objects, the modes of production and how objects are shared and valued, both in the culture in which they are initially made and in the culture they may be in now. Cultural contexts may include people and art from Aboriginal Australia, Africa, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Native America. Mode: Seminar.
-
3.00 Credits
This course will examine anthropological approaches to political structure, political organization, and political action. We will begin by familiarizing ourselves with some of the basic attributes and cultural commitments of Enlightenment projects as well as liberal political theory. Topics may include anthropological analyses of colonialism, nationalism, state formation, development, corruption, social movements, and human rights. We will consider the culture of politics and the politics of culture in disparate contexts around the world. Throughout the course we will remain attentive to how anthropologists historically have studied politics, and how anthropological notions of politics have changed through time. Mode: Seminar.
-
3.00 Credits
This course examines Creole religions in the Americas and the Caribbean, focusing on the often-misunderstood practices of Cuban Santería, Haitian Voodoo, Brazilian Candomblé, and U.S Orisha-Voodoo. By exploring their colonial, national, and transnational trajectories, differences in Portuguese, Spanish, and French colonial rule will become evident as we look at the historical, political, and religious conditions shaping processes of syncretism and mimesis. The unique multi-channeled, performative aspects of these creole religions will be explored in great detail and illustrated through video and music recordings of spiritual events in which divination, drumming, myth, dance, trance and healing come to life. Confronting practitioners’ insider experiences with outsiders’ exoticizing perceptions—stemming from either frightening Hollywoodian representations or romanticizing state and tourist productions—we will critically address the problematic, highly contested place that these heterodox religions and their practitioners occupy in contemporary societies. Mode: Seminar with short lectures, class presentations, video screenings and class discussions.
-
3.00 Credits
This course addresses issues of theory and method by means of an examination of cultural globalization processes and current debates about their effects on local cultures- -one of the key tropes shared by both anthropological and nationalist projects. One of the main aims of this course is to question the unidirectionality implied in most global theories, and assess via combined macro and micro lenses not only the impact of global processes on particular local histories, but also how the sets of voices that are marginalized by global discourses re-enter them, speaking in them and to them. In other words, we will explore the relation between structured choices and agency. From this vantage point we will examine selected issues on nationalism, postcolonialism, modernity, transnationalism, and diaspora, as well as consumption, technology, tradition, heritage, ethnicity, and tourism. The first part of this course will examine the relation between theory and method in anthropological research on cultural globalization, especially the challenges for fieldwork in complex societies. The second part will test their applicability and validity through a close reading of ethnographic works and the screening of videos that examine various dilemmas arising from processes of cultural contact in complex societies. In addition to exploring globalization and localization issues in anthropology, this course should enable students to think through and apply different methodologies in writing their research projects for the course.
-
3.00 Credits
An introduction to the various social categories and groups found in human societies including: variation in marriage and the family, the role of kinship in establishing spatial and temporal links among human beings, age groups, castes, and class. Mode: Seminar.
-
3.00 Credits
For the last three centuries, intellectual and popular discourses have advanced conflicting ideas about culture change as either a welcome sign of progress or a detrimental process of irremediable loss. Considering this tension as constitutive of the topic at hand, the first part of the course will critically examine various theoretical explanations for culture change, its causes and results, as well as the social currency of “culture” and “change” in various social projects; for example in social, religious, and artistic movements. This examination will also include the testing the conceptual vigor of terms such as acculturation, syncretism, creolization, and transculturation, some of which have been recently revamped by some social theorists to depict the flux, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity of the world under globalization, while ignoring their past use within discriminatory social tactics. Contemporary ethnographic case studies will offer an opportunity to examine these issues, particularly the ways in which flows of, as well as restrictions upon, capital, people, commodities, media, and ideologies are affecting the lives of diverse social groups in different parts of the world, some of which eagerly embrace change while others strategically resist it. Mode: Seminar.
-
3.00 Credits
This course explores both biocultural and sociocultural approaches within the rapidly expanding intersubdisciplinary anthropological field of critical medical anthropology (CMA). Topics addressed include evolutionary approaches to understanding health and disease (including diet and nutrition), as well as sociocultural CMA approaches to such topics as ethnomedicine, medicine and social control, international health development, medical pluralism, science and technology studies, and the anthropology of the body. Mode: Lecture and seminar.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Privacy Statement
|
Terms of Use
|
Institutional Membership Information
|
About AcademyOne
Copyright 2006 - 2024 AcademyOne, Inc.
|
|
|