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  • 3.00 Credits

    This course will examine major elements of Chinese culture historically and in the present-day. We will begin with a study of Chinese society in the late-imperial period (1368-1843), addressing key features of economic organization, kinship systems, popular religion and state administration. From this foundation, we will examine changes and (apparent) continuities in cultural practices over the course of China's Nationalist, Maoist and post-socialist revolutions, with particular attention to the present-day. Through the study of several recent ethnographies of conditions in rural and urban China, we will explore the ways in which the cultural conventions of the past have informed the strategies Chinese have devised in their negotiations with the global commercial economy and with an often predatory state. Global Core.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Enrollment limit is 30. First-come, first-served basis. This course investigates contemporary Central Asia as a specific context of post-socialist and postcolonial transition to newly independent statehood in the aftermath of global Cold War politics. Drawing on cultural artifacts and scholarly analyses, this course introduces students to Central Asian politics, economy, society, and culture from two distinct viewpoints. In the first half of the course, we will survey the processes related to macro-political and economic structure such as democratization, market reforms, and nation-building. The second part of the course addresses the everyday life of communities, families, and individual members of Central Asian societies. Besides scholarly accounts of Central Asia, course materials include films, artworks, and internet discussions forums. Global Core.
  • 3.00 Credits

    This course provides a broad introduction to the anthropology of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. We will explore social and cultural formations such as caste, class, marriage and the family; as well as the organization of cultural diversity by colonial rule, nationalism and modern statehood, ethnic and religious conflict, and transnational circulations. In addition to secondary sources, students will be particularly encouraged to engage with primary sources such as treatises, speeches, poetry, music, and film. Through learning about the ethnography of the South Asia region, students will also gain an understanding of contemporary theoretical debates in anthropology, which include: the legacies of colonial rule in postcolonial societies, the social power of analytical categories, and the impact of globalization Global Core.
  • 3.00 Credits

    To examine anthropological explanation as a passage from the known to the unknown that problematizes the known as well as leaving some kernel of the strange, the exotic, and the unfamiliar a mystery and does not reduce everything to an explanation. How might we master the need for mastery? What happens after we have problematized the known? Readings: accounts of fieldwork, select ethnography, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Brecht, Benjamin, Bataille.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Exploration of the social orders and cultural sensibilities that form contemporary Africa. Examining the rise of urban cultures, religious movements, informal economies, crime and corruption, this class explores the structures of African life, the sensibilities they engender and the forms of life they give rise to.
  • 3.00 Credits

    This course provides a critical overview of prehistoric archaeology in the Near East (or the Levant - the geographical area from Lebanon in the north to the Sinai in the south, and from the middle Euphrates in Syria to southern Jordan). It has been designed to appeal to anthropologists, historians, and students interested in the Ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies. The course is divided into two parts. First, a social and political history of prehistoric and "biblical" archaeology, emphasizing how the nature of current theoretical and practical knowledge has been shaped and defined by previous research traditions and, second, how the current political situation in the region impinges upon archaeological practice. Themes include: the dominance of "biblical archaeology" and the implications for Palestinian archaeology; Islamic archaeology; the impact of European contact from the Crusades onwards; the development of prehistoric archaeology.
  • 3.00 Credits

    The second of a two semester sequence intended to introduce departmental majors to key readings in social theory that have been constitutive of the rise and contemporary practice of modern anthropology. The goal is to understand historical and current intellectual debates within the discipline. To be taken in conjunction with ANTH 3040, preferably in sequence. This course replaces ANTH V 3041 - Theories of Culture: Past and Present. Required of all Barnard Anthropology majors; Limited to 40, open to other students with instructor's permission only.
  • 3.00 Credits

    This class explores the ways in which archaeologists use the dead body to explore past beliefs and social practices, critically assessing these approaches from the broader perspective of anthropological and sociological theories of the body's production and constitution. We'll look at the ways in which social status, gender and personhood are expressed through the dead body and through practices of body modification and display. In this context we'll also consider the social relations of archaeological exhumation, the conflict that can arise over the excavation of human remains, and their treatment as courtroom evidence in forensic archaeology.
  • 3.00 Credits

    This course explores 10,000 years of the North American archaeological record, bringing to light the unwritten histories of Native Americans prior to European contact. Detailed consideration of major pre-Columbian sites is interwoven with the insight of contemporary native peoples to provide both a scientific and humanist reconstruction of the past. Enrollment limit is 40. Global Core.
  • 4.00 Credits

    This course investigates the complex relationships among colonialism, psychoanalysis, and race. The first part of the course examines the impacts of colonial ideologies of race on key Freudian theories, as well as the complicity of psychoanalysis in the colonial project. It then considers specific means by which imperial regimes shaped the subjectivities of colonizers and the colonized, including the application of theories and treatments connected to ethnopsychiatry. The second part of the course looks at racialized theories of mental illness and modes of social control in current mental health practice. After considering the global circulation of Freudian concepts, the course examines contemporary schools of psychoanalysis that revise classical understandings of mental structure, psychopathology, race, and therapeutic action. The course concludes with readings of recent case studies in cross-racial psychoanalysis.
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