Courses of Study 2011-2012 
    
    May 05, 2024  
HELP
Courses of Study 2011-2012 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Descriptions

 

ANTHR—Anthropology
  

  • ANTHR 4258 - [Archaeological Analysis]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4258 ) (SBA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Prerequisite: archaeology course or permission of instructor. Next offered 2013-2014. Limited to 15 students. Co-meets with ANTHR 6258 .

    J. Henderson.

    An introduction to methods of recording, processing, and analyzing archaeological data. Topics include recording of excavation and survey data in the field; processing artifacts in the laboratory, storing and retrieving data; and basic methods of describing, tabulating, analyzing, and interpreting artifacts (mainly ceramic vessels), stratigraphy, and spatial distributions. Intended for those with some understanding of the uses to which archaeological data are put in regional synthesis and interpretation; previous field experience is helpful.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4260 - Field and Analytical Methods in Archaeology

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4260 , AIS 4600 ) # (SBA-AS)
    Spring. 4 or 6 credits, variable.

    K. Jordan.

    This course provides a hands-on introduction to field, laboratory, and analytical methods in archaeology, focusing on historic-period American Indian sites in the Finger Lakes region. Students collectively will generate new archaeological data, beginning the semester with study of an under-considered archaeological museum collection, and moving to survey and excavation at an archaeological site as the weather permits. Students will have an opportunity to formulate and test their own research designs in laboratory and field settings. Readings will provide an in-depth immersion into field and laboratory methodology, research design, and the culture history and material culture typologies appropriate to the site and era. In addition to laboratory and field work, students will write a 15-page term paper based on original data which can draw on museum collections, field data, documentary sources, or a combination of these sources. Most class time will be spent off-campus; transportation will be arranged by the instructor. Permission of the Instructor is required; please contact the instructor for specific information about the sites and collections that will form the basis of the semester’s work. 

  

  • ANTHR 4262 - [Catalhoyuk and Archaeological Practice]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4262 ) @# (HA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 7262 , ARKEO 7262 .

    N. Russell.

    Çatalhöyük is a famous and extraordinary Neolithic site in Anatolia. It has intrinsic interest as one of the largest sites in the world at this time, for its spectacular wall paintings and other art, and for many claims of myths of origin that have been made about it (first city, first cattle domestication, first drum, first town plan, etc.). In addition to the many fascinating aspects of the site itself, it is also the nexus of many key issues in current archaeology. The current excavations not only employ a wide range of the latest scientific methods, but they aim to forge a new humanistic approach to fieldwork, putting postprocessual archaeology into practice. The site has been adopted as a sacred place by the goddess movement, and plays a role in local, national, and international politics as well as the construction of national identity. Thus it exemplifies the intersection of politics and archaeology. Both the earlier and the current project have made explicit efforts to communicate with non-archaeologists, thus engaging the issues of public archaeology. It is a key site, in the context of other work in the region, for the understanding of animal domestication, Neolithic ritual and religion, gender relations in the prehistoric Near East, and the effects of aggregated settlement. In this course, we will use the site as a focus to examine these and other issues in archaeological practice in general and the Neolithic of the Near East in particular.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4263 - Zooarchaeological Method

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4263 ) (PBS Supplementary List)
    Fall. 5 credits.

    N. Russell.

    This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. We will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While we will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. You will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (Anthr/Arkeo 4264) offered in the spring.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4264 - Zooarchaeological Interpretation

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4264 ) (PBS Supplementary List)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Prerequisite: ANTHR 4263 , ARKEO 4263  or permission of instructor.

    N. Russell.

    This course follows from last semester’s Zooarchaeological Method. We will shift our emphasis here from basic skills to interpretation, although you will continue to work with archaeological bones. We will begin by examining topics surrounding the basic interpretation of raw faunal data: sampling, quantification, taphonomy, seasonality. We will then explore how to use faunal data to reconstruct subsistence patterns, social structure, and human/animal relations.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4267 - [Origins of Agriculture]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4267 ) # (HA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    N. Russell.

    This course will examine the origins of plant and animal domestication and the profound social transformations that accompanied this innovation in several areas of the world. While we will consider the evidence for domestication, the focus will be on critical analysis of the models offered to explain the origins of agriculture. A comparative perspective will help us to evaluate whether there is a single universal explanation for agricultural origins.

  

  • ANTHR 4268 - [Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics]


    @# (HA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 7268 .

    J. Henderson.

    Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the “empire” of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history

  

  • ANTHR 4270 - [Political Economy in Archaeology]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4270 ) # (SBA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 7270 , ARKEO 7270 .

    K. Jordan.

    Political economy is a theoretical approach that emphasizes power relations, social tensions and contradictions, and how they mediate access to wealth and basic resources. This seminar explores applications of political-economic theory in archaeological analysis. The course begins with some key approaches to political economy within sociocultural anthropology to assess how these works can (and cannot) assist the interpretation of archaeological evidence. Particular attention will be paid to questions of methodology: do certain field or analytical techniques facilitate or hinder political-economic interpretations? Case studies apply political-economic approaches to past societies at a variety of analytic and social scales, illustrating the intersection between archaeological political economy and issues of culture change, domination and resistance, ideology, gender, and agency.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4272 - Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Peoples

    (crosslisted)
    (also AIS 4720 , ARKEO 4272 , AMST 4272 ) # (HA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with AIS 7720 /AMST 6272 /ANTHR 7272 /ARKEO 7272 .

    K. Jordan.

    This seminar uses archaeology to examine the responses of nonstate indigenous peoples across the world to European expansion and colonialism over the past 500 years. Archaeology provides a perspective on indigenous lives that both supplements and challenges document-based histories. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of culture contact, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples primarily from North America with lesser emphasis on Africa and the Pacific. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4294 - [Seminar in Archaeology: The Archaeology of Human Origins]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4294 ) (HA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    T. Volman.

    An exploration of the archaeological record associated with early modern and near-modern humans as well as their nonmodern contemporaries, such as the Neanderthals. Major issues include what behaviors and capabilities are indicated for various populations, and how and why did these change over the course of the later Pleistocene? To what extent does the archaeological record support the “Out-of-Africa” hypothesis of a recent, African origin for all modern humans?

  

  • ANTHR 4311 - [From Surgery to Simulation]

    (crosslisted)
    (also BSOC 4311 , STS 4311 ) (SBA-AS)
    4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013.

    R. Prentice

    For description, see  .

  

  • ANTHR 4390 - Topics in Biological Anthropology


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Prerequisite: ANTHR 1300 , ANTHR 3390 , or permission of instructor.

    M. Small.

    Current topics in biological anthropology are explored. Topics change each semester. The topic for Fall 2011 is The Evolution of Thought, Consciousness, and Decision Making. For further information, contact the professor or department office.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4402 - Anthropology of Education

    (crosslisted)
    (also EDUC 4402 ) (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7402 /EDUC 7402 .

    S. Villenas.

    This seminar examines public schools and other educational spaces as sites where knowledge, learning/learner, and identities are produced and contested. It explores how power and cultural norms work in educational settings, and the unintended teaching and learning that happens outside the purported curriculum. Topics include issues of multiculturalism and pluralism in schools and society, the school achievement of racial/ethnic minorities, youth cultures and identities, and literacy in adult learning spaces. This course is for students interested in the advanced study of multicultural schooling and education.

  

  • ANTHR 4403 - [Ethnographic Field Methods]


    (SBA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 6403 .

    V. Santiago-Irizarry.

    This course will provide students with practical understanding about what anthropologists actually do in the field. We will examine problems that emerge in conducting fieldwork that raise ethical, methodological, theoretical, and practical issues in the observation, participation in, recording, and representation of culture(s). Students will be expected to develop a semester-long, local research project that will allow them to experience fieldwork situations.

  

  • ANTHR 4406 - [The Culture of Lives]

    (crosslisted)
    (also FGSS 4060 ) @ (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013.

    K. March.

    This seminar will look at persons, lives, cultures, and methods in anthropological life history materials. Throughout the seminar we will attend to the evolution of interest in, forms of, and uses for life history materials in anthropology, with special attention to differences in men’s and women’s lives and life (re)presentations.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4410 - [Indigenous Peoples, Ecological Sciences, and Environmentalism]


    (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 7410 .

    P. Nadasdy.

    This course examines the long, complex, and ambivalent relationship among indigenous peoples (with an emphasis on the North American context), scientific ecology, and environmentalism. It begins by looking at the key role played by images of the “ecologically noble savage” in the historical development of the ecological sciences and the environmental movement. It then turns to an in-depth examination of several historical and ethnographic case studies in an effort to understand how the entanglement of indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and ecological scientists have shaped—and continue to shape—environmental politics and struggles over indigenous rights.

  

  • ANTHR 4415 - [Creolization, Syncretism, and Hybridity]


    (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    V. Munasinghe.

    The concepts of Creolization, Syncretism, and Hybridity all convey a state of “mixture” that assumes a diasporic situation. This course explores theories and empirical case studies of processes of racial, cultural, and religious mixture from an interdisciplinary perspective. The course explores the interconnections among concepts denoting “mixture” that have diverse originary points. The overarching line of inquiry is to explore the geneaologies of the three concepts as a necessary precursor to understanding how these terminologies may, in concert, illuminate different aspects of the dynamics structuring processes of mixture in different historical and ethnographic settings.

  

  • ANTHR 4419 - Anthropology of Corporations


    (SBA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7419 .

    M. Welker.

    This course develops an anthropological approach to corporations with a focus on large, profit-oriented, publicly-traded corporations. To denaturalize the corporation, we will consider competing cultural logics internal to corporations as well as the contingent historical processes and debates that shaped the corporate form over the past two centuries. The course will examine processes through which various social groups have sought to alter and restrain corporations as well as reciprocal corporate attempts to reshape the social environment in which they operate.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4423 - Inter-war Anthropologies


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7423 .

    C. Garces.

    Anthropologists and continental theorists have looked in recent years to turn-of-the-century American ethnology and comparative sociology for unconventional insight into political sovereignty or non-state modalities of traditional body politics. However, the wartime and inter-war era’s multiple dislocations and forms of exile also produced a variety of anthropological work speaking directly to the anxieties of today’s “global state” of perpetual armed conflict, economic insecurity, and rising xenophobic nationalism. This seminar will gather together and interrogate several key French, British, and U.S. anthropological texts, either researched or written during 1914-45, and consider them from the vantage point of their enduring critical stance towards modern political and economic belligerence.

  

  • ANTHR 4425 - Hope as a Method


    Spring. 4 credits.

    H. Miyazaki.

    In this course, we will seek to carve out a space for a new kind of anthropological engagement with philosophy and theology. Following an examination of ways in which anthropologists have engaged with philosophy and theology, we will examine a full range of philosophical and theological reflections on hope. Texts will be drawn from the following traditions: Kantian philosophy, Marxist philosophy, existentialism, pragmatism, political theology, education theory, feminism, and queer theory. The goal of this course is to confront the character of hope in the production of academic knowledge through an investigation of academics’ reflection on hope itself.

  

  • ANTHR 4426 - [Ideology and Social Production]


    @ (SBA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 7426 .

    S. Sangren.

    This course is premised on the notion that understanding social life requires understanding how social institutions are produced and sustained through time—that is to say, one must understand “society” as a process of production. By the same token, all cultures produce ideas or “representation” (e.g., about reality, nature, society, gender, authority) that serve to legitimize or validate each society’s particular social arrangements. These ideologies play an important role in social production, on the one hand, and are also products of social processes, on the other. This course focuses on the linkages between ideology and social production in readings drawn from social theory and ethnographic case studies. We discuss strongly diverging views (psychoanalytic, postmodernist, poststructuralist, practice-theory, neo-Marxist) on how best to conceive social processes. An integrating theme is that understanding ideology and its alienating operations is essential in developing a coherent understanding of what culture, in the last analysis, is.

  

  • ANTHR 4429 - Anthropology and Psychoanalysis


    @ (SBA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7429 .

    S. Sangren.

    Psychoanalysis holds that desire emerges from the clash between individuals’ predisposition and the need to accommodate to others in society. Yes anthropology has been resistant to the role that psychoanalytic theory might play in linking individual desire to culture. Does psychoanalysis have anything to offer cultural anthropology? Can understanding of collective institutions be advanced with reference to theories of individual motivation and desire? Conversely, can collective life be understood without reference to individual motivation and desire? Is desire best understood as sexual in nature, or is it better understood in more abstract and existential terms? With such questions in mind, this course surveys anthropology’s engagements with psychoanalysis. We read theoretical works as well as ethnographically grounded case studies on topics ranging from religious experience, mythic narratives, the cultural construction of gender and desire, and modern popular culture.

  

  • ANTHR 4432 - Queer Theory and Kinship Studies

    (crosslisted)
    (also FGSS 4432 ) (SBA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7432 , FGSS 7432 .

    L. Ramberg.

    For description, see FGSS 4432 .

  

  • ANTHR 4435 - [Postcolonial Science]

    (crosslisted)
    (also BSOC 4351 ) @ (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 7435 .

    S. Langwick.

    This course examines science and technology in so-called “non-Western” countries as well as the ways that science and technology are shaping new “transnational” or “global” relations. We will explore the post-colonial as a dynamic space that both plays off of and refigures the complicated dynamics of colonialism. The postcolonial challenges the dichotomies through which colonial power moved: western/indigenous, white/black, modern/traditional, global/local, developed/underdeveloped, and science/non-science. At the same time, it confronts the ways in which colonial histories are still embodied in institutions, identities, environments, and landscapes. Techno-scientific knowledge and practice have both enacted colonial divisions and been called on in post-colonial struggles. How them might we understand the work of scientific knowledge and practice in the kinds of hegemonies and struggles that shape our world today? We will explore this question by examining the way that technoscience is performed—by scientists, development workers, activists, government officials, and others. The class will pay particular attention to the located processes through which claims to the universal or global emerge. In addition by considering controversies over the environment, medicine, and indigenous knowledge, we will consider the effects of such claims.

  

  • ANTHR 4437 - [Anthropology of Development]


    @ (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 7437 .

    M. Welker.

    This course provides an anthropological perspective on international development. After reading orthodox theories of development and considering them in historical context, we will examine ethnographic accounts of postcolonial development that draw on political economy and poststructuralist traditions. The final portion of the course looks critically at the emergence of discourses such as participation, empowerment, social capital, civil society, and sustainability in mainstream development.

  

  • ANTHR 4439 - [Sovereignty and Biopolitics]


    @# (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013.

    M. Fiskesjo.

    This seminar course’s starting point is Agamben’s widely discussed ideas about “bare life” in relation to modern state sovereignty and to continuities with earlier forms of sovereignty. The course unfolds as a political-legal anthropology of sovereignty and citizenship, the exclusion of undesirables, and modern biopolitical control mechanisms. Readings will draw on classics from the anthropology and other literature on sovereignty and kingship, as well as case studies dealing with the modern Chinese state, the US, the Soviet Union, etc.

  

  • ANTHR 4444 - [God(s) and the Market]


    @ (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 7444 .

    H. Miyazaki.

    One of the oldest and most powerful insights of anthropology is that different domains of society such as religion and economy shape and condition each other. We will discuss a variety of old and new anthropological explorations into the intersections of religion and economy, from Max Weber’s classical study of the relationship between Protestantism and the rise of capitalism to recent studies of the work of faith in financial markets. This seminar is intended to bring together students interested in religion and students interested in business and economy.

  
  

  • ANTHR 4453 - Political Anthropology


    @ # (SBA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7453 .

    A.T. Smith.

    This course is an exploration of major theoretical approaches to the study of political institutions, structures, and processes in different societies, with special reference to the nature of power, the role of symbolism and ideology in politics, the problem of sovereignty, and representations of the state. We will explore the constitution of political authority in reference to both ethnographic and archaeological investigations that will take us from the problems of early state origins to the transformations of the post-colonial. Throughout, our discussions will attempt to bring forward problems of structure and process, history and practice that animate anthropological approaches to political life.

  

  • ANTHR 4467 - Self and Subjectivity


    (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7467 .

    A. Willford.

    This course examines theories of subjectivity and self-formation from a comparative, ethnographic perspective. We begin by examining classic and contemporary phenomenological, psychodynamic, semiotic, structuralist, and post-structuralist theories of self and/or subject formation. Moving into the ethnographic literature, we assess the utility of these models for understanding the selves of others, particularly in critical juxtaposition to multiple and alternate theories of the self and/or person as understood in different cultures. By examining debates in the anthropology of emotion, cognition, healing, and mental health we bring into sharper focus the particular theoretical and empirical contributions (and/or limits and failures) of anthropologists towards developing a cross-cultural psychology.

  

  • ANTHR 4478 - Taboo and Pollution


    @# (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    M. Fiskesjo.

    This course introduces students to the anthropology of taboo, dirt, cleanliness and purification. We’ll examine the latest attempts to re-think and understand these classic topics through a range of cases, including sexual and blood taboos; ideas of racial or ethnic purity and purification; taboos governing food choices or religious practices; “primitive” fear and avoidance; as well as contemporary conceptions of filth and waste and their treatment in Western societies. We’ll survey a wealth of writings on these topics, from anthropology (Douglas, Valeri, and others) as well as from psychology and literary studies (Freud, Kristeva, etc.).
     

  

  • ANTHR 4479 - Ethnicity and Identity Politics: An Anthropological Perspective

    (crosslisted)
    (also AAS 4790 ) (SBA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7479 , AAS 7479 .

    V. Munasinghe.

    The most baffling aspect of ethnicity is that while ethnic sentiments and movements gain ground rapidly within the international arena, the claim that ethnicity does not exist in any objective sense is also receiving increasing credence within the academic community. How can something thought “not to exist” have such profound consequences in the real world? In lay understandings, ethnicity is believed to be a “natural” disposition of humanity. If so, why does ethnicity mean different “things” in different places? Anthropology has much to contribute to a greater understanding of this perplexing phenomenon. After all, the defining criterion for ethnic groups is that of cultural distinctiveness. Through ethnographic case studies, this course will examine some of the key anthropological approaches to ethnicity. We will explore the relationship of ethnicity to culture, ethnicity to nation, and ethnicity to state to better understand the role ethnicity plays in the identity politics of today.

  

  • ANTHR 4480 - [Anthropology and Globalization]


    (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 6480 .

    A. Willford.

    This course examines anthropological perspectives on globalization and assesses the cultural, political, and social implications of contemporary global processes. In exploring the factors that are contributing to the production of diasporic consciousness, the intensity and variety of transnational flows of culture, commodities, corporations, and people are considered in order to assess challenges these processes pose to the modern nation-state. Has culture been liberated from the control of the nation-state through the emergence of new cultural networks created by immigration, electronic media, tourism, and multinational corporations and organization? Or, has the acceleration of global processes within the modern world system created new tools of domination within an increasingly stratified global economy? This course addresses these and related questions utilizing both anthropological theories of and ethnographic studies on globalization, ethnicity, diaspora, and nationalism.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4495 - Rice and Language: Geography, Movement, and Exchange

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 4495 , IARD 4495 , LING 4495 ) @# (HA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Prerequisite: some foundation in at least one of the disciplines involved, such as an introductory course or equivalent in either introductory genetics, linguistics, anthropology, archeology, or agricultural economics. Co-meets with ANTHR 7495 /ARKEO 7495 /LING 7495 .

    M. Fiskesjö.

    In recent years numerous breakthroughs have been made in the study of early human history and the formidable role of agriculture in that story. New insights in several disciplines have cast new light on areas previously believed to lie outside of the reach of science. Taking early crop domestication and agricultural expansions and parallel socio-cultural and linguistic developments such as migration and language diversification among early peoples of Asia as a special focus, we will consider evidence from the study of geography, water, rice domestication, plant genetics, human genetics, language, and identity and social change. We will pay special attention to the conversation between disciplines, to how data and insights can be compared from different disciplines, and how the significance of new insights can be enhanced in the light of the theories and methods in different academic disciplines. The focus is Asian rice, but geographically the course has numerous, worldwide comparative dimensions.

  

  • ANTHR 4513 - [Religion and Politics in Southeast Asia]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ASIAN 4413 ) @ (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013.

    A. Willford.

    This course explores how religious beliefs and practices in Southeast Asia have been transformed by the combined forces of colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. By examining both diversity and resurgence in one of the world’s most rapidly modernizing regions, we aim to understand the common economic, social, and political conditions that are contributing to the popularity of contemporary religious movements. At the same time, we also consider the unique ideological, theological, and cultural understandings behind different religions and movements. Through this process we also rethink conceptions of modernity.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4523 - [Making History on the Margins: The China - SE Asia Borderlands]


    # @ (HA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 7523 .

    M. Fiskesjo.

    This seminar course is a new in-depth look at classical issues regarding the making of history, revisiting the mountain borderlands in between China and Southeast Asia made famous by anthropologists (Leach, Lévi-Strauss, Kirch, and Friedman) attempting to understand structure, history, and center-periphery transformations. Are the peoples of this region (Kachin, Wa, Naga, etc predetermined by fateful forces and processes beyond their control, as prisoners of geography and circumstance, or what role do they have in the making of their own history? The course addresses themes from regional ethnography as well as theoretical issues, and forms an introduction to field research in this fertile region.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4542 - Violence, Symbolic Violence, Terror, and Trauma in South Asia and the Himalayas


    @ (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 6542 .

    D. Holmberg.

    This working seminar will focus on violent conflict in South Asia. Key texts on social, ethnic, religious, and political violence in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and Pakistan as well as theoretical literature on violence, trauma, and human rights will provide the basis for general reassessment of the anthropological study of violence.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4682 - [Healing and Medicine in Africa]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ASRC 4682 ) (CA-AS)
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    S. Langwick.

    Therapeutic knowledge and practice in Africa have changed dynamically over the past century. Accounts of healing and medicine throughout the continent reveal struggles over how to define social and physical worlds, identify dangers, determine ethical practice, and prioritize some ways of living and of dying. Contemporary therapies embody the tensions and inequalities, the novelties and potentialities, that inhere in broad historical shifts propelled by colonialism, nationalism, civil war, environmental change and globalization. Our readings and discussions will explore the ways in which healing and medicine are simultaneously intimate and political, biological and cultural. During the semester, we will examine conceptions of body and well-being; “traditional medicine” and intersections of Islamic, Chinese, and biomedical ways of healing; humanitarianism and the health “crisis” in Africa; colonial and postcolonial forms of governance through medicine and new possibilities of citizenship through therapeutic identities. We will look at Africa not only as a site of epidemics, but also as a site of innovation and as central to the biopolitics of an emerging global order.

  

  • ANTHR 4710 - Cuisine, Production, and Biodiversity in Peru: From Local to Global, Part 1

    (crosslisted)
    (also IARD 4710 , LATA 4710 )
    Fall. 2 credits.

    B.J. Isbell.

    This six week course focuses in part on the current efforts by Peruvian chefs to train Andean young people in the culinary arts and restaurant management at the Pachacutec cooking school as a form of economic development and a pathway to social justice.
    The course also examines the economic and political assumptions of development efforts and how those assumptions and practices have changed over 50 years. The course will use the historic Cornell-Peru Project initiated in 1952 in the community of Vicos, Peru as a case study in Anthropology and Development. Vicos is located in the Callejón de Huaylas, Peru in the center of the UNESCO Huascarán World Heritage site and State Park. Peru is recognized as one of the twelve mega-diverse regions of the world where agriculture and domestication originated. Communities are active in preserving this diversity and students will be introduced to the complexity of the cultural and the environmental interactions in this mountain habitat in the fall semester. The community of Vicos is located at the base of Huascarán, the largest tropical glacier in the world, a major source of water. One of the issues to be examined is the rapid disappearance of Peru’s Glaciers due to global warming.

  

  • ANTHR 4712 - Cuisine, Production, and Biodiversity in Peru: From Local to Global, Part 2

    (crosslisted)
    (also IARD 4712 , LATA 4712 )
    Spring. 2-3 credits, variable.

    B.J. Isbell.

    The second segment of this course will be conducted as a research seminar. Those students who participate in the field school will return to campus and review their Peruvian experience and complete their individual research projects on the local issues they encountered. The class will contextualize the issues of development and the environment in Peru to larger global issues. The students who do not participate in the field school will write papers on global issues and critique the research of their colleagues who participated in the field school.

  

  • ANTHR 4725 - American Indian Lands and Sovereignties


    (CA-AS)
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 7725 .

    P. Nadasdy.

    The relationship between North American Indian peoples and the states of Canada and the US is in many ways unique, the product of centuries of trade compacts, treaties, legislation, warfare, land claim negotiations, and Supreme Court (both US and Canadian) decisions. Those trying to make sense of the cross-cultural terrain of Indian-State relations find that apparently straightforward political and legal concepts such as “land,” “property,” “sovereignty,” and “identity” often seem inadequate, based as they are on European cultural assumptions. These terms tend to take on new – and often ambiguous – meanings in the realm of Indian-State relations. In the first part of this course, we will explore some of these ambiguous meanings, paying attention to the cultural realities they reflect and the social relationships they help shape. In the second part of the course, we will get a sense of the complex interplay of legal, political, and cultural forces discussed earlier in the semester by taking an in-depth look at several selected case studies.

  

  • ANTHR 4900 - Field Research Abroad


    Fall, spring. Credit TBA.

    Enrollment limited to: undergraduate students.

    Staff.

    Field research abroad as part of the Cornell-Nepal Studies Program, the Cornell-Honduras Program, or other departmentally approved programs. Topics are selected and project proposals prepared by student in consultation with faculty. Fieldwork typically involves extended research (usually 4-6 weeks) in a foreign setting with faculty supervision, culminating in a major paper or report.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4910 - Independent Study: Undergrad I


    Fall, spring. Credit TBA.

    Enrollment limited to: undergraduate students.

    Staff.

    Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

  

  • ANTHR 4920 - Independent Study: Undergrad II


    Fall, spring. Credit TBA.

    Enrollment limited to: undergraduate students.

    Staff.

    Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.
     

  

  • ANTHR 4983 - Honors Thesis Research


    Fall. 3 credits.

    Prerequisite: permission of Honors Committee.

    Staff.

    Research work supervised by the thesis advisor, concentrating on determination of the major issues to be addressed by the thesis, preparation of literature reviews, analysis of data, and the like. The thesis advisor will assign the grade for this course.

  

  • ANTHR 4984 - Honors Thesis Write-Up


    Spring. 2 credits.

    Prerequisite: permission of Honors Committee.

    Staff.

    Final write-up of the thesis under the direct supervision of the thesis advisor, who will assign the grade for this course.

  

  • ANTHR 4991 - Honors Workshop I


    Fall. 1 credit.

    Prerequisite: permission of Honors Committee.

    Staff.

    Course will consist of several mandatory meetings of all thesis writers with the honors chair. These sessions will inform students about the standard thesis production timetable, format and content expectations, and deadlines; expose students to standard reference sources; and introduce students to each other’s projects. The chair of the Honors Committee will assign the grade for this course.

  

  • ANTHR 4992 - Honors Workshop II


    Spring. 2 credits.

    Prerequisite: permission of Honors Committee.

    Staff.

    Course will consist of weekly, seminar-style meetings of all thesis writers until mid-semester, under the direction of the honors chair. This second semester concentrates on preparation of a full draft of the thesis by mid-semester, with ample time left for revisions prior to submission. Group meetings will concentrate on collective reviewing of the work of other students, presentation of research, and the like.

  

  • ANTHR 6000 - Proseminar: Culture and Symbol


    Fall. 6 credits.

    S. Sangren.

    Focuses on an appreciation of symbolic, expressive, and representational forms and processes both as producers and products of social activities. Through the study of symbolic anthropology, structuralism, exchange, myth and ritual, religion, gender, personhood, linguistics, semiology, etc., the course investigates how identity and meaning are linked to the practical exigencies of social life. While emphasizing aspects of the discipline generally associated with cultural anthropology, the course endeavors to set the stage for a dialectical understanding of social, political, economic, and symbolic activities as interrelated phenomena. The works of de Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Dumont, Geertz, Victor Turner, Sahlins, among others, as well as contemporary theories are given careful attention.

  

  • ANTHR 6010 - Proseminar: Social Organization


    Spring. 6 credits.

    P. Nadasdy.

    Focuses on linkages between culture and social institutions, representations, and practices. The nature of these linkages is debated from strongly contesting points of view in social theory (structuralist, poststructuralist, utilitarian, hermeneutic, Marxist). Unlike debates in critical theory where the form of contestation has been mainly philosophical, in anthropology these issues have developed in ethnographic analyses. The course briefly surveys kinship theory and economic anthropology with a focus on implications for general issues in social theory. Discussion of attempts to develop dialectical syntheses around the motion of “practice” follows. The issues addressed in this section carry over into the next, colonialism and post-colonialism, in which poststructuralist readings of history are counterposed to Marxist ones. Finally, Lacanian and Marxist visions of ideology as they relate to anthropological theory and ethnographic analysis are examined with particular emphasis on the cultural and social production of persons.

  

  • ANTHR 6102 - Political Culture

    (crosslisted)
    (also AMST 6202 , GOVT 6202 )
    Spring. 4 credits.

    R. Bensel.

    For description, see GOVT 6202 .

  

  • ANTHR 6232 - [Politics of the Past]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 6232 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 3232 , ARKEO 3232 .

    N. Russell.

    Archaeology has never operated in a vacuum. This course examines the political context of the study of the past, and the uses to which accounts of the past have been put in the present. Archaeology is often implicated in nationalist claims to territory, or claims of ethnic, racial, or religious superiority. Museum exhibits and other presentations to the public always have an agenda, consciously or otherwise. Archaeologists are increasingly required to interact with descendent communities, often in the context of postcolonial tensions. The antiquities trade and the protection of archaeological sites connects archaeologists to commercial and law enforcement sectors. We will also consider the internal politics of the practice of archaeology in various settings, including the implications of the funding sources that support archaeological work. This course is open to students of archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, history, and other disciplines with an interest in the past.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6248 - [Iroquois Archaeology]

    (crosslisted)
    (also AIS 6248 , AMST 6248 , ARKEO 6248 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with AIS 3248 /AMST 3248 /ANTHR 3248 /ARKEO 3248 .

    K. Jordan.

    This course surveys the long-term development of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) culture from an archaeological perspective. Issues examined will include the geographic origins of the Iroquois; material culture, settlement, and subsistence; the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois responses to European-borne diseases, the fur trade, and territorial encroachment; the practicalities of doing Indian archaeology in New York State; and contemporary Haudenosaunee perspectives on archaeology. The Six Nations Iroquois will be emphasized, with some material drawn from surrounding Northern Iroquoian groups. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6256 - Maya History

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 6256 , LATA 6256 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4216 /ARKEO 4216 /LATA 4215 .

    J. Henderson.

    This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

  

  • ANTHR 6258 - [Archaeological Analysis]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4258 /ARKEO 4258 .

    J. Henderson.

    An introduction to methods of recording, processing, and analyzing archaeological data. Topics include recording of excavation and survey data in the field; processing artifacts in the laboratory, storing and retrieving data; and basic methods of describing, tabulating, analyzing, and interpreting artifacts (mainly ceramic vessels), stratigraphy, and spatial distributions. Intended for those with some understanding of the uses to which archaeological data are put in regional synthesis and interpretation; previous field experience is helpful.

     

  

  • ANTHR 6269 - [Gender and Age in Archaeology]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 6269 , FGSS 6700 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 3269 , ARKEO 3269 , FGSS 3700 .

    N. Russell.

    In recent years, feminist theory has begun to have an impact on archaeological thought. It is now recognized that gender is likely to have been a relevant dimension of social organization in past societies. Some archaeologists are also trying to take into account the differing interests and experiences of children, adults of reproductive age, and the elderly. This course will not be limited to any period or geographical area, but will range widely in examining how feminist theory has been applied to archaeological data and models. We will consider whether it is necessary to identify women and men, adults and children in the archaeological record in order to take gender and age into account. We will also examine the uses of archaeological data by contemporary feminists.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6270 - Environmental Archaeology

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 6270 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 3270 , ARKEO 3270 .

    T. Volman.

    A survey of selected topics in paleoenvironmental analysis and reconstruction, with emphasis on how they inform interpretations of the archaeological record. The course ranges broadly from a general consideration of human ecology and the role of environment in culture change to detailed study of specific techniques and approaches.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6272 - Hunters and Gatherers

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 6272 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 3272 , ARKEO 3272 .

    T. Volman.

    A survey of contemporary and recent peoples with economies based completely or mainly on hunting and gathering. Selected societies from various parts of the world will be examined to compare aspects of technology, subsistence practices, organization and beliefs. The impact of contact with more economically advanced societies will be considered.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6403 - [Ethnographic Field Methods]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 4403 .

    V. Santiago-Irizarry.

    This course will provide students with practical understanding about what anthropologists actually do in the field. We will examine problems that emerge in conducting fieldwork that raise ethical, methodological, theoretical, and practical issues in the observation, participation in, recording, and representation of culture(s). Students will be expected to develop a semester-long, local research project that will allow them to experience fieldwork situations.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6420 - [Ritual and Myth: Structure, Process, Practice]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    D. Holmberg.

    This seminar focuses on theories of ritual and myth, engaging first classic formulations as found in Durkheim, Weber, and Evans-Pritchard, then the contributions to what converged as symbolic anthropology and structuralism including Levi-Strauss, Geertz, and Victor Turner. In the second part of the semester we engage new directions in anthropology of ritual and myth considering psychoanalytic approaches, practice theory, and deconstruction. Everyone in the seminar is expected to write a term paper on a topic of their choice.

  

  • ANTHR 6421 - [Gender and Culture]

    (crosslisted)
    (also FGSS 6310 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    K. March.

    This seminar is intended for advanced students planning further study or research on gender issues and desirous of an anthropological perspective on them. It explores the topics, questions, and readings of Anthropology/Women’s Studies 3421 in greater depth and with attention to the special research interests of the participants each year
     

  

  • ANTHR 6422 - Culture, Politics, and Environment in the Circumpolar North

    (crosslisted)
    (also AIS 6422 )
    Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

    Co-meets with AIS 3422 /ANTHR 3422 .

    P. Nadasdy.

    This course examines the cultures and histories of the circumpolar North. The primary emphasis is on the North American Arctic and Subarctic with some attention to northern Eurasia for comparative purposes. The focus is on the indigenous peoples of the region and the socio-political and ecological dimensions of their evolving relationships with southern industrial societies.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6424 - Ethnoracial Identity in Anthropology, Language, and Law

    (crosslisted)
    (also AMST 6424 , LAW 7231 , LSP 6424 )
    Spring. 4 credits.

    V. Santiago-Irizarry.

    This course examines the role that both law and language, as mutually constitutive mediating systems, occupy in constructing ethnoracial identity in the United States. We approach the law from a critical anthropological perspective, as a signifying and significant sociocultural system rather than as an abstract collection of rules, norms, and procedures, to examine how legal processes and discourses contribute to processes of cultural production and reproduction that contribute to the creation and maintenance of differential power relations. Course material draws on anthropological, linguistic, and critical race theory as well as ethnographic and legal material to guide and document our analyses.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6430 - [Concepts and Categories in Theory and Practice]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013.

    P. Nadasdy.

    Concepts and categories form the basis of much human thought and action, and anthropologists have long been fascinated by how humans categorize the world. Yet, concepts and categories shape anthropological thought and practice as well. The conceptual tools we bring to bear in the study of socio-cultural phenomena profoundly shape our understandings of them. Despite this, however, many of the concepts and categories that anthropologists and other social scientists use are implicit in their work rather than consciously theorized. The goal of this course is to make students aware of the role that concepts and categories play in the practice of social science and to provide them with the theoretical tools needed to evaluate conceptual frameworks in the social sciences.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6440 - Research Design


    Spring. 4 credits.

    M. Welker.

    This seminar focuses on preparing a full-scale proposal for anthropological fieldwork for a dissertation. Topics include identifying appropriate funding sources; defining a researchable problem; selecting and justifying a particular fieldwork site; situating the ethnographic case within appropriate theoretical contexts; selecting and justifying appropriate research methodologies; developing a feasible timetable for field research; ethical considerations and human subjects protection procedures; and preparing appropriate budgets. This is a writing seminar, and students will complete a proposal suitable for submission to a major funding agency in the social sciences.

  

  • ANTHR 6450 - [Social Studies of Economics and Finance]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013.

    H. Miyazaki.

    This course has two purposes. The first is to examine recent efforts to extend theoretical insights from the social studies of science to studies of the market. The second is to consider the implications of these efforts for anthropological critiques of capitalism and neoliberal reforms. Topics of investigation include the relationship between theory and practice in the market, the emergence of risk as a calculable entity and the place of the category of the social in knowledge about the market.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6452 - [Evidence: Ethnography and Historical Method]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    H. Miyazaki.

    Is anthropoligists’ recent turn to history destiny, as Evans-Prtichard once said? Or is it simply a temporary oscillation from an emphasis on systematization to an emphasis on process? Are there any potentially productive incommensurabilities between ethnography and history as two distinct forms of knowledge production? In this seminar, we will explore these questions by examining the uses of archival records as evidence in the two disciplines. We will read some of the most well-known texts in historical anthropology and anthropological history side by side with some influential reflection on the uses of evidence in history and a wide range of recent studies of evidential practices in various sites of knowledge production such as archives, court rooms, and laboratories. The ultimate purpose of the seminar is to carve out a space for a new kind of ethnographic engagement with historical method. Graduate students from programs of study other than anthropology are welcome.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6453 - The State in Anthropological Perspective


    Fall. 4 credits.

    P. Nadasdy.

    The state figures critically - if sometimes implicitly - in most contemporary anthropological analyses. In this course we will examine the history of anthropological (and related) treatments of the state with an eye to destabilizing the received view of the state as a unified entity capable of coherent action. We then engage with recent ethnographic work that views the state more as a process than an entity and grapple with the theoretical and methodological involved in studying the constellation of government agents, institutions, ideological projects, and processes that together constitute what we think of as the state.

  

  • ANTHR 6460 - [Language Ideologies and Practices]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013.

    V. Santiago-Irizarry.

    Cultural identity and citizenship in the United States have often been organized around linguistic difference and the issues this raises in an English-dominant society. Drawing from anthropological theories on language, this course will look at the place of language as a signifying practice in the United States by focusing on the experience of Latino communities. Topics to be explored include linguistic diversity and change, accommodation and resistance, language maintenance and shift, linguistic ideologies, the production of language hierarchies, and institutional applications of language.

  

  • ANTHR 6461 - Anthropology of Organizations


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 3461 .

    D. Greenwood.

    Organizations are at once economic/social/political/cultural entities and organizational studies are found in all these social science fields. Anthropology’s approaches to the study of organizational behavior, cultures, and political economies approaches to organizations are holistic, integrative, multi-method and emphasize ethnographic fieldwork. This course emphasizes both the analysis of organizations and change-oriented strategies to transform organizations. Cases from manufacturing, service organizations, and educational institutions are used.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6462 - Democratizing Research: Participation, Action, and Research


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 3462 .

    D. Greenwood.

    This course centers on a family of research approaches variously known as activist research, engaged research, community-based research, public scholarship, and action research. These are both alternatives to and critiques of the common forms of university-centered research that separate “expert” researchers from the subjects of research and claim that the quality of research can be determined only by trained academics. Participants in engaged research view research as a means of social learning. Most importantly, they are guided by democratic ideals and values, in pursuit of public purposes and interests. No course can cover the full range of approaches and so this course brings the different approaches to the attention of the students, shows what the strengths and weaknesses of each are, and exhibits the various strategies and methods that typify them. A subset of the students will be participating in an ongoing community service activity of their own creation. The internships/community projects will be supported and overseen by the course supervisor, a faculty board, and the director of the Cornell University Public Service Center.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6465 - [Anthropology of the Body]

    (crosslisted)
    (also STS 6460 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 3465 / .

    S. Langwick.

    This course examines a range of texts that treat the body as the subject and object of cultural, technological, political, and ethical processes. Students investigate the cultivation of physical and social bodies through ethnographic and historical materials concerning healing and medicine, discipline and labor, governance and religion, aesthetics and desire. The production and reproduction of bodies and embodied practices have long been central to the way that power works. In this class, we will read and discuss a range of approach to the body. There is much contention over how work, politics, environment, technologies, and violence shape the body and the senses. We will debate how histories of the body are intertwined with histories of gender, race, class, sexuality, (post)coloniality, modernization, science, transnationalism, and the webs of institution, ideas, and capital that comprise these phenomena. Some readings will investigate the complex mediations that account for the body as icon, text, metaphor, commodity, and raw material. Others will contend that serious attention to the production and reproduction of the body across different times and spaces challenge traditional notions of materiality and physicality. Because every examination of the body rests—implicitly or explicitly—in a theoretical and methodological approach to experience, we will also explore the histories of bodily senses, appetites, and capabilities. Ultimately, our inquiry into contests over and reflections on “the body,” as well as specific bodies, aims to open up broader anthropological questions about authority, agency, sovereignties, and material life.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6479 - [Technocracy: Anthropological Approaches]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014.

    A. Riles.

    In recent years, anthropologists have begun to turn their attention to the character of bureaucratic and technical knowledge at play in diverse contexts, from indigenous activist organizations to scientific laboratories and even the academy. This new turn has brought anthropologists into renewed debate with scholars in science and technology studies, sociology, law, cultural studies, and architecture. Topics of concern to anthropologists include the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the practices of technocracy, the forms of agency that produce and are produced by the technocratic, the temporality of bureaucratic practices, and the nature of innovation. There are methodological questions as well: How should such practices be studied ethnographically? What kinds of interpretive frames should anthropologists deploy where categories such as “the social” or “culture”, or oppositions of global to local, or symbolic to material seem already displaced by the subjects of study? What is the relationship of anthropological understanding to critique? This seminar aims to explore these themes as they present themselves in contemporary ethnographic work.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6480 - [Anthropology and Globalization]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 4480 .

    A. Willford.

    This course examines anthropological perspectives on globalization and assesses the cultural, political, and social implications of contemporary global processes. In exploring the factors that are contributing to the production of diasporic consciousness, the intensity and variety of transnational flows of culture, commodities, corporations, and people are considered in order to assess challenges these processes pose to the modern nation-state. Has culture been liberated from the control of the nation-state through the emergence of new cultural networks created by immigration, electronic media, tourism, and multinational corporations and organization? Or, has the acceleration of global processes within the modern world system created new tools of domination within an increasingly stratified global economy? This course addresses these and related questions utilizing both anthropological theories of and ethnographic studies on globalization, ethnicity, diaspora, and nationalism.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6482 - Perspectives on the Nation


    Spring. 4 credits.

    V. Munasinghe.

    This course will critically examine the key texts that have informed our understanding of the nation and nationalism. Beginning with some of the founding texts such as Hahn Kohn’s “The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Backgrounds” (1994), Plamenatz’s “Two Types of Nationalism” (1976), and Renan’s “What is a Nation” (1939), we will then move on to more contemporary writings by Gellner, Hobsbawm and Anderson and end with alternate analytical approaches that have been informed by the “national question” in the “Third World” such as Partha Chatterjee’s “Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World.” A central theme will be how notions of culture, power, and history are implicated in constructions of “the Nation.” We will also explore the possibilities of an ethnographic approach to the nation and ask if such an analytical/methodological move may help us better grapple with the perplexing emotive dimension of nationalisms. The intersection of gender and nation will also form a section of this course.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6542 - Violence, Symbolic Violence, Terror, and Trauma in South Asia and the Himalayas


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4542 .

    D. Holmberg.

    This working seminar will focus on violent conflict in South Asia. Key texts on social, ethnic, religious, and political violence in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and Pakistan as well as theoretical literature on violence, trauma, and human rights will provide the basis for general reassessment of the anthropological study of violence.
     

  

  • ANTHR 6543 - [Chinese Ethnology]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013.

    S. Sangren and M. Fiskesjo.

    This seminar is designed for graduate students specializing in the study of Chinese culture and society and for advanced undergraduates who plan to pursue careers in the academic study of Chinese culture. The course focuses on close readings on theoretical and conceptual problems and issues in the study of Chinese culture and society, with an emphasis on perspectives provided by cultural anthropology. Among topics that may be included are the social production of gender, ideology in myth and ritual, the cultural uses of history, and political culture; however, the particular emphases of the seminar may vary from year to year. Those with a reading knowledge of Chinese will be encouraged to explore Chinese sources, but use of such sources is not a requirement of the course.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7000 - Development of Anthropological Thought


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4000 .

    H. Miyazaki.

    Examination of the history and development of anthropological theory and practice. Focuses on the differences and continuities among the various national and historical approaches that have come to be regarded as the schools of anthropology.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7220 - Inkas and their Empire

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 7220 )
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4220 , ARKEO 4220 .

    J. Henderson.

    In little more than a century the Inkas created an empire stretching thousands of kilometers along the Andean spine from Ecuador to Chile. This course focuses on the political and economic structure of the empire and on its roots in earlier Andean prehistory. Archaeological remains, along with documents produced in the aftermath of the Spanish invasion, will be used to trace the history of Inka territorial organization, statecraft, and economic relationships and the Colonial transformation of Andean societies.

  

  • ANTHR 7262 - [Catalhoyuk and Archaeological Practice]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 7262 )
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4262 , ARKEO 4262 .

    N. Russell.

    Çatalhöyük is a famous and extraordinary Neolithic site in Anatolia. It has intrinsic interest as one of the largest sites in the world at this time, for its spectacular wall paintings and other art, and for many claims of myths of origin that have been made about it (first city, first cattle domestication, first drum, first town plan, etc.). In addition to the many fascinating aspects of the site itself, it is also the nexus of many key issues in current archaeology. The current excavations not only employ a wide range of the latest scientific methods, but they aim to forge a new humanistic approach to fieldwork, putting postprocessual archaeology into practice. The site has been adopted as a sacred place by the goddess movement, and plays a role in local, national, and international politics as well as the construction of national identity. Thus it exemplifies the intersection of politics and archaeology. Both the earlier and the current project have made explicit efforts to communicate with non-archaeologists, thus engaging the issues of public archaeology. It is a key site, in the context of other work in the region, for the understanding of animal domestication, Neolithic ritual and religion, gender relations in the prehistoric Near East, and the effects of aggregated settlement. In this course, we will use the site as a focus to examine these and other issues in archaeological practice in general and the Neolithic of the Near East in particular.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7268 - [Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 4268 .

    J. Henderson.

    Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the “empire” of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history
     

  

  • ANTHR 7270 - [Political Economy in Archaeology]

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 7270 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012–2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 4270 , ARKEO 4270 .

    K. Jordan.

    Political economy is a theoretical approach that emphasizes power relations, social tensions and contradictions, and how they mediate access to wealth and basic resources. This seminar explores applications of political-economic theory in archaeological analysis. The course begins with some key approaches to political economy within sociocultural anthropology to assess how these works can (and cannot) assist the interpretation of archaeological evidence. Particular attention will be paid to questions of methodology: do certain field or analytical techniques facilitate or hinder political-economic interpretations? Case studies apply political-economic approaches to past societies at a variety of analytic and social scales, illustrating the intersection between archaeological political economy and issues of culture change, domination and resistance, ideology, gender, and agency.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7272 - Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Peoples

    (crosslisted)
    (also AIS 7720 , AMST 6272 , ARKEO 7272 )
    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with AIS 4720 /AMST 4272 /ANTHR 4272 /ARKEO 4272 .

    K. Jordan.

    This seminar uses archaeology to examine the responses of nonstate indigenous peoples across the world to European expansion and colonialism over the past 500 years. Archaeology provides a perspective on indigenous lives that both supplements and challenges document-based histories. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of culture contact, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples primarily from North America with lesser emphasis on Africa and the Pacific. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7402 - Anthropology of Education

    (crosslisted)
    (also EDUC 7402 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4402 /EDUC 4402 .

    S. Villenas.

    This seminar examines public schools and other educational spaces as sites where knowledge, learning/learner, and identities are produced and contested. It explores how power and cultural norms work in educational settings, and the unintended teaching and learning that happens outside the purported curriculum. Topics include issues of multiculturalism and pluralism in schools and society, the school achievement of racial/ethnic minorities, youth cultures and identities, and literacy in adult learning spaces. This course is for students interested in the advanced study of multicultural schooling and education.

  

  • ANTHR 7410 - [Indigenous Peoples, Ecological Sciences, and Environmentalism]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4410 .

    P. Nadasdy.

    This course examines the long, complex, and ambivalent relationship among indigenous peoples (with an emphasis on the North American context), scientific ecology, and environmentalism. It begins by looking at the key role played by images of the “ecologically noble savage” in the historical development of the ecological sciences and the environmental movement. It then turns to an in-depth examination of several historical and ethnographic case studies in an effort to understand how the entanglement of indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and ecological scientists have shaped—and continue to shape—environmental politics and struggles over indigenous rights.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7415 - Art in the Modern World


    Summer. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 3415 , ARTH 3915 .

    B.J. Isbell.

    This course offers students an opportunity to learn from the visual and performing arts by attending music, theatre, and dance performances, and visiting museums and galleries. The program is open to any student interested in developing a feeling for different forms of expressive art. We examine how artistic expression introduces values that correspond to socially construed notions of color, sensation, ritual, and tradition.

  

  • ANTHR 7419 - Anthropology of Corporations


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4419 .

    M. Welker.

    This course develops an anthropological approach to corporations with a focus on large, profit-oriented, publicly-traded corporations. To denaturalize the corporation, we will consider competing cultural logics internal to corporations as well as the contingent historical processes and debates that shaped the corporate form over the past two centuries. The course will examine processes through which various social groups have sought to alter and restrain corporations as well as reciprocal corporate attempts to reshape the social environment in which they operate.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7422 - Advanced Topic in the Anthropology of Law

    (crosslisted)
    (also LAW 7081 )
    Spring. 3 credits. Grade option TBA.

    A. Riles.

    For description, see LAW 7081 .

  

  • ANTHR 7423 - Inter-war Anthropologies


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4423 .

    C. Garces.

    Anthropologists and continental theorists have looked in recent years to turn-of-the-century American ethnology and comparative sociology for unconventional insight into political sovereignty or non-state modalities of traditional body politics.  However, the wartime and inter-war era’s multiple dislocations and forms of exile also produced a variety of anthropological work speaking directly to the anxieties of today’s “global state” of perpetual armed conflict, economic insecurity, and rising xenophobic nationalism.  This seminar will gather together and interrogate several key French, British, and U.S. anthropological texts, either researched or written during 1914-45, and consider them from the vantage point of their enduring critical stance towards modern political and economic belligerence.

  

  • ANTHR 7426 - [Ideology and Social Production]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4426 .

    S. Sangren.

    This course is premised on the notion that understanding social life requires understanding how social institutions are produced and sustained through time—that is to say, one must understand “society” as a process of production. By the same token, all cultures produce ideas or “representation” (e.g., about reality, nature, society, gender, authority) that serve to legitimize or validate each society’s particular social arrangements. These ideologies play an important role in social production, on the one hand, and are also products of social processes, on the other. This course focuses on the linkages between ideology and social production in readings drawn from social theory and ethnographic case studies. We discuss strongly diverging views (psychoanalytic, postmodernist, poststructuralist, practice-theory, neo-Marxist) on how best to conceive social processes. An integrating theme is that understanding ideology and its alienating operations is essential in developing a coherent understanding of what culture, in the last analysis, is.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7429 - Anthropology and Psychoanalysis


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4429 .

    S. Sangren.

    Psychoanalysis holds that desire emerges from the clash between individuals’ predisposition and the need to accommodate to others in society. Yes anthropology has been resistant to the role that psychoanalytic theory might play in linking individual desire to culture. Does psychoanalysis have anything to offer cultural anthropology? Can understanding of collective institutions be advanced with reference to theories of individual motivation and desire? Conversely, can collective life be understood without reference to individual motivation and desire? Is desire best understood as sexual in nature, or is it better understood in more abstract and existential terms? With such questions in mind, this course surveys anthropology’s engagements with psychoanalysis. We read theoretical works as well as ethnographically grounded case studies on topics ranging from religious experience, mythic narratives, the cultural construction of gender and desire, and modern popular culture.
     

  
  

  • ANTHR 7435 - [Postcolonial Science]


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4435 /BSOC 4351 .

    S. Langwick.

    This course examines science and technology in so-called “non-Western” countries as well as the ways that science and technology are shaping new “transnational” or “global” relations. We will explore the post-colonial as a dynamic space that both plays off of and refigures the complicated dynamics of colonialism. The postcolonial challenges the dichotomies through which colonial power moved: western/indigenous, white/black, modern/traditional, global/local, developed/underdeveloped, and science/non-science. At the same time, it confronts the ways in which colonial histories are still embodied in institutions, identities, environments, and landscapes. Techno-scientific knowledge and practice have both enacted colonial divisions and been called on in post-colonial struggles. How them might we understand the work of scientific knowledge and practice in the kinds of hegemonies and struggles that shape our world today? We will explore this question by examining the way that technoscience is performed—by scientists, development workers, activists, government officials, and others. The class will pay particular attention to the located processes through which claims to the universal or global emerge. In addition by considering controversies over the environment, medicine, and indigenous knowledge, we will consider the effects of such claims.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7437 - [Anthropology of Development]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ANTHR 4437 .

    M. Welker.

    This course provides an anthropological perspective on international development. After reading orthodox theories of development and considering them in historical context, we will examine ethnographic accounts of postcolonial development that draw on political economy and poststructuralist traditions. The final portion of the course looks critically at the emergence of discourses such as participation, empowerment, social capital, civil society, and sustainability in mainstream development.
     

  

  • ANTHR 7444 - [God(s) and the Market]


    Fall. 4 credits.

    Next offered 2013-2014. Co-meets with ANTHR 4444 .

    H. Miyazaki.

    One of the oldest and most powerful insights of anthropology is that different domains of society such as religion and economy shape and condition each other. We will discuss a variety of old and new anthropological explorations into the intersections of religion and economy, from Max Weber’s classical study of the relationship between Protestantism and the rise of capitalism to recent studies of the work of faith in financial markets. This seminar is intended to bring together students interested in religion and students interested in business and economy.
     

     

  
  

  • ANTHR 7453 - Political Anthropology


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4453 .

    A.T. Smith.

    This course is an exploration of major theoretical approaches to the study of political institutions, structures, and processes in different societies, with special reference to the nature of power, the role of symbolism and ideology in politics, the problem of sovereignty, and representations of the state. We will explore the constitution of political authority in reference to both ethnographic and archaeological investigations that will take us from the problems of early state origins to the transformations of the post-colonial. Throughout, our discussions will attempt to bring forward problems of structure and process, history and practice that animate anthropological approaches to political life.

  

  • ANTHR 7467 - Self and Subjectivity


    Spring. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4467 .

    A. Willford.

    This course examines theories of subjectivity and self-formation from a comparative, ethnographic perspective. We begin by examining classic and contemporary phenomenological, psychodynamic, semiotic, structuralist, and post-structuralist theories of self and/or subject formation. Moving into the ethnographic literature, we assess the utility of these models for understanding the selves of others, particularly in critical juxtaposition to multiple and alternate theories of the self and/or person as understood in different cultures. By examining debates in the anthropology of emotion, cognition, healing, and mental health we bring into sharper focus the particular theoretical and empirical contributions (and/or limits and failures) of anthropologists towards developing a cross-cultural psychology.

  

  • ANTHR 7479 - Ethnicity and Identity Politics: An Anthropological Perspective

    (crosslisted)
    (also AAS 7479 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4479 , AAS 4790 .

    V. Munasinghe.

    The most baffling aspect of ethnicity is that while ethnic sentiments and movements gain ground rapidly within the international arena, the claim that ethnicity does not exist in any objective sense is also receiving increasing credence within the academic community. How can something thought “not to exist” have such profound consequences in the real world? In lay understandings, ethnicity is believed to be a “natural” disposition of humanity. If so, why does ethnicity mean different “things” in different places? Anthropology has much to contribute to a greater understanding of this perplexing phenomenon. After all, the defining criterion for ethnic groups is that of cultural distinctiveness. Through ethnographic case studies, this course will examine some of the key anthropological approaches to ethnicity. We will explore the relationship of ethnicity to culture, ethnicity to nation, and ethnicity to state to better understand the role ethnicity plays in the identity politics of today.

  

  • ANTHR 7495 - Rice and Language: Geography, Movement, and Exchange

    (crosslisted)
    (also ARKEO 7495 , LING 7495 )
    Fall. 4 credits.

    Co-meets with ANTHR 4495 /ARKEO 4495 /IARD 4495 /LING 4495 .

    M. Fiskesjö.

    In recent years numerous breakthroughs have been made in the study of early human history and the formidable role of agriculture in that story. New insights in several disciplines have cast new light on areas previously believed to lie outside of the reach of science. Taking early crop domestication and agricultural expansions and parallel socio-cultural and linguistic developments such as migration and language diversification among early peoples of Asia as a special focus, we will consider evidence from the study of geography, water, rice domestication, plant genetics, human genetics, language, and identity and social change. We will pay special attention to the conversation between disciplines, to how data and insights can be compared from different disciplines, and how the significance of new insights can be enhanced in the light of the theories and methods in different academic disciplines. The focus is Asian rice, but geographically the course has numerous, worldwide comparative dimensions.

 

Page: 1 <- 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 … Forward 10 -> 90
  Courses of Study Home
  Course Descriptions

  Colleges, Schools, and Units
  Agriculture and Life Sciences
  Architecture, Art, and Planning
  Arts and Sciences
  Athletics and Physical Education
  Biological Sciences|
  Computing and Information Science
  Continuing Education and Summer Sessions
  Engineering
  Graduate School
  Hotel Administration
  Human Ecology
  Industrial and Labor Relations
  Johnson Graduate School of Management
  Law School
  Nutritional Sciences
  Officer Education
  Veterinary Medicine
  My Favorites