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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Research or service in the developing world can generate questions about our own role as "the elite" and "privileged" in contexts where our very presence marks us as "outsiders." In such situations we frequently grapple with balancing our research objectivity with the often-times stark realities we have witnessed and experienced. This course is designed especially for students returning from service projects or study abroad programs in the developing world to help make sense of these experiences. This process will be achieved through additional scholarly research (frequently self-directed) to better understand the sites that the students visited during their overseas projects, orienting them in relation to broader global, regional, and national patterns; the eventual outcome will be the analysis of each student's data that is framed by the larger context. Course readings will cover such topics as world systems theory, globalization, development, NGOs, various understandings of "human rights," applied anthropology, activism, and the relation between cultural relativism and service. Through discussions, readings, presentations, and writing students will develop an analysis based on their overseas experience, and will focus on the site where they worked, a problem that they observed in cross-cultural perspective, and an examination of strategies for redressing this sort of problem. The overall goal of the course will be for students to gain an understanding of how social science analysis might help to understand and confront problems in cross-cultural contexts. Students can only enroll with the permission of the instructor.
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3.00 Credits
How are episodes of mass killing experienced, survived, and remembered? In this course we consider political, social and cultural trauma as expressed in memoir, documentary, fiction, and academic text. Witness as an ethical stance is examined; the role of memory in shaping morality is questioned. (Does "Never Again" actually work?) We also look at the perpetrators of genocidal killing: who are they? What prompts their actions? Moreover, are any of us incapable of this kind of violence?
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3.00 Credits
This course offers an multi-disciplinary approach to studying one of the oldest forums for inter-continental trade and interactions: the Indian Ocean. This geographical entity has linked peoples of Africa, Europe and Asia through the exchange of technology, ideas, goods and peoples from the dawn of the first systematic inter-continental trade between the Bronze Age polities of Egypt, Mesopotamia and India-Pakistan, ca. 4th millennium B.C. to the present era. The class has two objectives: a) to understand the nature of trade and exchange mechanisms in the Indian Ocean world from both temporal and spatial perspectives and, b) to underscore the interdependency between trade/exchange and political-economy, climate, society and history. The required readings include works from various disciplines, including economics, history, political sciences, and geography as well as archaeology and cultural anthropology. Students will be encouraged to add to the broader understanding of Indian Ocean trade provided by the course by undertaking comparative research projects that examine two periods, two areas or two processes within this larger interactional complex.
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3.00 Credits
This course will survey the rich and varied past of South Asian societies and cultures including those of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from an archaeological perspective. The topics surveyed and discussed through lectures, readings, films and group projects will include the rise and fall of the Bronze Age Civilizations of South Asia, the emergence of Buddhism, and the invasion of Alexander the Great during the Imperial period in the 4th century BC. This course will also cover recent archaeological efforts to understand the historical period in South Asia, from the Indo-Roman trade to the rise and decline of the Mogul (Mughal) Empire.
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3.00 Credits
This course explores the theoretical and methodological challenges faced by archaeologists excavating ancient households, one of the most common contexts encountered in archaeological excavations throughout the world. With the household as the unit of analysis, household archaeologists believe that the archaeology of single households are essential elements in reconstructing the greater community in which the household was situated. Students will explore topics which include the social, economic, political and physical characteristics of households, the relationship between households and communities, and the contribution of household archaeology to architectural, artifactual, and social analyses of ancient communities.
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3.00 Credits
Environments and human use of them have both changed dramatically over time. This course explores the relationships between past societies and the ecosystems they inhabited and constructed. It will show how archaeologists investigate the relations between past societies and their environments using concepts from settlement archaeology, human geography, and paleoecology (the study of ancient ecosystems). We will review theories and techniques used in environmental archaeology and will learn about new approaches for the study of prehistoric human ecology. Modern data processing techniques such as geographical information systems, data base software, spatial statistics, and computer-aided mapping programs will be introduced, along with new theoretical approaches that attempt to decode the social meanings of built environments. The materials will be presented through a mixture of lectures, demonstrations, and assignments designed to introduce you to the basic concepts and techniques presented in the course. The term paper will explore some aspects of environmental archaeology of interest to the student.
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3.00 Credits
Our species is unique because it is the only species that deliberately buries its dead. Mortuary analysis (the study of burial patterns) is a powerful approach that archaeologists use for the study of prehistoric social organization and ideology. This course explores the significance of prehistoric human mortuary behavior, from the first evidence of deliberate burial by Neanderthals as an indicator of the evolution of symbolic thought, to the analysis of the sometimes spectacular burial patterns found in complex societies such as ancient Egypt and Megalithic Europe. We will also examine the theoretical and practical aspects of the archaeology of death, including the applications of various techniques ranging from statistics to ethnography, and the legal and ethical issues associated with the excavation and scientific study of human remains.
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3.00 Credits
Death is a universal human experience; yet how individuals, families, and communities understand death varies through time and across space. In this course, we will examine how death is treated or has been treated cross-culturally. Among the topics to be covered will be conceptualizations of death; the dynamic relationship between the deceased and the community of the living; material manifestations of status, class, gender, ethnicity, and other social relations as reflected in funerary treatment; symbolic dimensions of dead bodies and mortuary ritual; ancestors and kinship; emotions, mourning, and commemoration; and ritual violence, such as cannibalism and sacrifice.
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3.00 Credits
The 12th and 13th centuries were a dynamic period in world history as civilizations across the globe experienced significant growth, reorganization, and even collapse. Trade, wars, missionary work, and exploration fostered extensive and far-reaching interactions among neighboring and more distant cultures. Genghis Khan, the Crusades, the Khmer Empire, the end of the Toltec Empire, and the peak of the ancestral Pueblo occupation of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are but a few of the forces and civilizations shaping the world at A.D. 1200. Traditionally, these civilizations and events are studied diachronically and in relative isolation from contemporaneous global developments. This course departs from tradition and adopts a synchronic analysis of the dramatic changes experienced across the globe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By examining these cultural shifts in light of simultaneous transitions in other areas of the world, new questions and answers can be generated concerning the activities and processes that shape people's lives in past and present civilizations.
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3.00 Credits
No course description available.
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