ANTHR 6777 - [The United States]

(crosslisted) AMST 6777, LSP 6777

Fall. Not offered: 2021-2022. Next offered: 2022-2023. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with AMST 3777/ANTHR 3777/LSP 3777.

V. Santiago-Irizarry.

The anthropological inquiry into one’s own culture is never a neutral exercise. This course will explore issues in the sociocultural construction of the United States as a pluralistic society as well as on-going debates over its anthropologization. We will look at the historical and ideological contexts that have produced a sociocultural profile predicated upon ideas intrinsic to the U.S. national imaginary such as individualism, freedom, and equality as well as the ways these are, in practice, applied within a capitalist order. We will draw upon a variety of historical and ethnographic material for our anthropological examination of the paradoxes involved in the construction of the United States, including scholarly and popular accounts.