ANTHRO 101-6-21 First-Year Seminar: Making of the Fittest: Issues in Evolution
We recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. But what would he think of our world today? We have a sophisticated understanding of genes and the ability to trace our ancestry over generations. Yet despite this knowledge, conclusive and irrefutable proof that we have or are continuing to evolve has not been found. In this course we will address where we might have come from and where we might be going. We will cover some of the major "issues" in biological evolution ranging from those of originating in Darwin's time to the many questions that persist today.
ANTHRO 101-6-21 First-Year Seminar: Modern Plagues
At the height of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, it was often said that the fears of the disease globalized more quickly than the disease itself. These kinds of statements - and the proliferation of official efforts to control Ebola outbreak in West Africa and elsewhere - show the significance of cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of epidemics. This first-year seminar privileges a critical medical anthropology perspective on the dynamics of epidemics: from disease transmission to prevention and control. Together, we will investigate how complex interactions among social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors influence the natural history of infectious disease and public health efforts to understand and address them. The seminar focuses on contemporary problems and issues with the explicit purpose of addressing questions of equity and justice.
ANTHRO 101-6-21 First-Year Seminar: Perspectives on Primates
In the movies, lemurs dance, capuchins slap people in the face, and apes take over the world. We are faced with images of our closest living relatives everyday. But how accurate are these images? How do they affect our perspectives on primates and their place in the world? In this course we will explore the intersections between human and primate lives in an effort to understand how we view primates, what factors influence those views, and how both humans and primates are ultimately affected. Using writing and discussion, we will consider primates in the media, primates as pets, primates in research, and primate conservation, among other topics. At the end of this course you will be able to evaluate how accurately primates are portrayed in a range of contexts and understand the consequences of those portrayals. You will have a stronger appreciation for the complex relationship between humans and primates worldwide and how it affects our everyday lives. And most importantly, you will have challenged and enriched your own perspectives on primates.
Did astronauts from another planet establish ancient civilizations on Earth? Were the Americas discovered by Columbus, a Ming dynasty fleet or by Vikings much earlier? Did the Maya Aztec build their pyramids to resemble those of dynastic Egypt? Television is replete with stories of ancient aliens and archaeological mysteries. The impact of such alternative realities on society and history cannot be discounted. They have been used to support nationalistic agendas, racial biases, and religious movements, all of which can have considerable influence on contemporary society.
In this course, we will study "fantastic" stories, puzzles, hoaxes, imaginative worlds and alternative theories. We will learn when, how and what kinds of evidence these alternative theories have used to fascinate the public and illustrate their hoaxes. We will question such theories by using critical thinking and analytical tools to diagnose what is fact and fiction. We will utilize the surviving evidence that archaeologists find to understand cultural contact and interactions.
ANTHRO 101-6-22 First-Year Seminar: Ibn Battuta and the Caravans of Gold
"Caravans of Gold: Fragments of Time" is an absolutely unique exhibition at the Block Museum that focuses on the medieval caravan trade across the Sahara Desert between North Africa and West Africa. This was at the time the principal source for gold throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. The fourteenth century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta provided an eyewitness account of the trip across the desert to the West African empire of Mali. This was hardly his only journey. The most famous Muslim traveler of all time, his journeys to India and China among other lands are comparable to those of that other great medieval traveler, Marco Polo.
The first part of the seminar will focus on the fourteenth century world, particularly in Africa and Asia, through the writings of Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. To what extent did this world appear differently in the eyes of a Christian and of a Muslim traveler? The second part focuses specifically on the caravan trade, based both on written accounts including Ibn Battuta and on material objects uncovered by archaeological excavations. How did the trade operate in practice? How did the incorporation of Mali into the Muslim world structure relations between North and West Africa? The third part deals with the empire of Mali on its own terms, those of Mande culture in particular. The class will focus on the epic of Sunjata, the story of the foundation of the empire of Mali, as told by professional jeli, praise singers or "griots".
Aside from class discussion of the written sources, the class will benefit from a guided tour of the museum exhibition; from guest lectures by and archaeologist of West Africa and scholars of Islamic manuscript culture in Morocco and/or West Africa; and from films.
ANTHRO 101-6-23 First-Year Seminar: Tourism of Trauma
One way people work through trauma—understood as major ruptures in human experience such as mass violence and death, natural catastrophe, or forced displacement—is by visiting its locations and re/creating narratives about it. Representations of fear and suffering serve as forms of therapy, prevention, civic education, and even entertainment. Memorials to traumatic human experience are often offered as symbols of hope for transformation and the future deterrence of further trauma (“never again”). In this seminar, we analyze these sites and practices, asking whose trauma is remembered, and whose forgotten? What power inheres in different forms of remembering through travel, and in the aesthetic and material shape of memorials? What do culture and heritage mean to those who produce it and for those who consume it as tourists? How can sites, objects, and histories of trauma simultaneously “belong” to a local community, a nation, and all humanity? Topics include museums, genocide, colonialism, slavery, the Holocaust, and war, among others. We examine tourism from an anthropological perspective, using local and global case studies such as: the representation of slavery at Colonial Williamsburg, the role of community museums in post-apartheid South Africa, visiting Holocaust sites in Europe, and genocide tourism sites in Cambodia and Rwanda.
ANTHRO 101-6-24 First-Year Seminar: Biological Thought and Action WITH BIOL_SCI 115-6-20
Science is a process by which people make sense of the world. Scientists examine evidence from the past, work to understand the present, and make predictions about the future. Integral to this process are the methods they use to collect and analyze data, as well as the ways in which scientists work together as a community to interpret evidence and draw conclusions. In this class, we will take a multidisciplinary approach to examining biological thought and action and their social ramifications. We will seek to understand science as a social pursuit: the work of human beings with individual, disciplinary, and cultural differences, and requiring tremendous investments in training and equipment. Does it matter that participation in science is more accessible to some than to others? How do biases, assumptions, uncertainty, and error manifest in scientific work? What is the history of scientific values such as objectivity and reproducibility? The course will conclude by investigating current topics of public debate, including stem cell research and global climate change.
This course is an introduction to cultural anthropology. Our focus is on understanding what qualitative social science is and how it is done. You will read three contemporary ethnographies and several articles and book chapters and watch some documentaries. These will cover a wide range of topics from contemporary life: from shopping to nightlife, immigration to menstruation; they will also introduce you to the social lives of people including drag queens and sex workers, children and moms, hoarders and mushroom pickers. During the quarter, you will try your hand at doing some qualitative social science yourself through two small projects, one of which will become part of your final paper for the class.
Anthropology is a holistic analysis of the human condition. The study of human origins, or paleoanthropology, is a subfield of physical anthropology that focuses on the biological history of the human species including their evolution, emergence and radiation. We will explore the scientific method and how theories like evolution have come about and expanded over time. We will learn about our closest living relatives - primates - and how an appreciation of their life history and behavior reflect the modern human condition. Many of the principles and concepts that comprise our understanding of how humans have evolved and adapted over time involve an appreciation of ecology, genetics, physiology, adaptation and cultural development that will also be explored. Lastly we will look at modern human diversity and discuss how we are continuing to evolve today.
The Pyramids, Stonehenge, Cahokia, and Great Zimbabwe: who built these monuments, and why? They are often associated with buried treasure, lost civilizations, and a forgotten past. But archaeologists look beyond a Romantic view and ask questions about why they were built, and what they tell us about humankind. By learning about past cultures, what made them different and what made them similar, we gain a better understanding of human history and the state of the world today. People in the past were very different, but they shared one thing in common -- they left behind stones and bones, pottery fragments, great monuments and burial offerings. These fragments of the past are used by archaeologists to build an understanding of what it means to be human. In this class, you will be introduced to the questions, theories, and methods of archaeology. You will learn about how archaeologists locate, survey and excavate the great monuments of the past; how they study artifacts in the lab; and how they use the stuff they find to piece together stories about the past, and test those stories against the evidence. You will learn about the diversity of ancient and modern peoples, their cultures, and the past they inhabited. You will also learn about the place of archaeology in the modern world -- how archaeologists engage with questions such as long-term climate change and human response, sustainability, and inequality.
ANTHRO 215-0-1 *The Study of Culture Through Language
Language is universally practiced by humans, but commonsense understandings about language, its appropriate use, and its inherent qualities vary widely both between and within societies. Using the anthropological method of comparative, cross-cultural, qualitative analysis, this course looks outside our own society to ask basic questions about the relationship between language, culture, and society. We explore the dynamics of everyday talk as well as the social and political forces that shape the ways we talk and evaluate others\' speech. How does language shape collective culture and individual thought, and how do culture and thought shape language? How do adults use language to help children become culturally competent? Why have some languages disappeared altogether while others have spread? How have forces like colonialism and economic globalization brought about changes in the ways small-scale societies use language?
What is a more important predictor of how long you will live, the genes you inherit from your parents, or the zip code of where you grew up? This course aims to answer this question, as well as others, regarding the origins of social disparities in health in the U.S. The course will also consider the broader global context, and ask why the U.S. spends so much money on health care but lags behind many nations in key indicators of population health. It will examine how social stratification by race/ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, education, and neighborhood quality shapes our biology and the health status of individuals, families, and populations; and, conversely, how health itself can be a fundamental determinant of key social outcomes such as educational achievement.
This course is an introduction to three of the leading theories about the nature and meaning of myth: psychoanalytic, functionalist, and structuralist. Each of these three approaches will be considered primarily through the writings of their respective founders: Sigmund Freud, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lectures will be primarily concerned with explaining these three theories. Examples of how these theories can be applied to the analysis of specific myths will largely be drawn from the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
This course introduces life history theory as an integrated framework for understanding the biological processes underlying the human life cycle and its evolution. After constructing a solid foundation in life history theory and the comparative method, the class will address questions such as: Why do humans grow and develop much more slowly than other primate species? Why do we have so few offspring? What is the significance of puberty? What is the function of menopause? In-depth analysis of several case studies will allow the class to examine in detail the utility of life history theory for explaining aspects of human development and behavior from an evolutionary perspective.
Knowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bio-archeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains. Through this course you will be exposed to techniques for identification and classification of human skeletal anatomy through hands-on, dry laboratory sessions. Additional time outside of class is available and may be required to review practical materials.
Knowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bio-archeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains. Through this course you will be exposed to techniques for identification and classification of human skeletal anatomy through hands-on, dry laboratory sessions. Additional time outside of class is available and may be required to review practical materials.
In this course we will examine human growth and development. By its very nature this topic is a biocultural process that requires an integrated analysis of social construction and biological phenomena. To this end we will incorporate insight from evolutionary ecology, developmental biology and psychology, human biology and cultural anthropology. Development is not a simple matter of biological unfolding from birth through adolescence; rather, it is a process that is designed to be in sync with the surrounding environment within which the organism develops. Additionally we will apply these biocultural and socio-ecological insights to emerging health challenges associated with these developmental stages.
How do Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness? This course will examine the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing in diverse cultural contexts. In addition, we will analyze various kinds of medical practices as cultural systems, examining how disease, health, body, and mind are socially constructed, how these constructions articulate with human biology, and vice versa. The course will provide an introduction to the major theoretical frameworks that guide anthropological approaches to studying human health-related behavior. Theory will be combined with case studies from a number of societies, from India, Japan, Brazil, and Haiti to the U.S. and Canada, enabling students to identify similarities across seemingly disparate cultural systems, while at the same time demonstrating the ways in which American health behaviors and practices are socially embedded and culturally specific. The course will emphasize the overall social, political, and economic contexts in which health behavior and health systems are shaped, and within which they must be understood.
Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level anthropology or sociology course, or consent of instructor.
This course provides a broad overview of forensic anthropology - an applied subfield of biological anthropology. Forensic anthropology focuses traditional skeletal biology on problems of medicolegal significance, primarily in determining personal identity and assisting in the cause of death assessment from human remains. In this course we will discuss the full range of issues associated with human skeletal identification from trauma analysis to the identification of individuals in mass disasters. These problems will serve as a model for understanding the broader aspects of applied anthropology.
This course introduces students to major themes in the anthropological study of Africa, the world area that most inspired the development of anthropology as a discipline. Examining the diversity of contemporary African societies and moments in the colonial past, we will explore in depth several related themes that derive from the classics as well as the contemporary anthropological corpus. These themes center on the creation of social ties, making a living, and managing health and uncertainty in volatile times. Specific topics will include kinship and marriage, production and exchange, health, population, economic development, corruption, political patronage, war, and the dynamics of movement and transnationalism.
ANTHRO 322-0-20 Introduction to Archaeology Research Design and Methods
This class is fundamentally about how—and why—we do archaeology. Over the course of the quarter, we will take what interests you about archaeology and build a scaffold for how you think about these interests and how you might examine them in depth in the future. The main goal is to produce a high quality NSF proposal by the end of the course (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program proposal for undergraduates; NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for graduate students). To that end, we will spend time reviewing successful proposals to decipher how scholars link theory, data, methods, and analysis in their research projects. We will work our way through the main methods in every archaeologists\' tool kit: regional survey, excavation, and materials analysis. Upon completion of the course, students should feel comfortable writing grant proposals and be ready to design their own independent archaeological research project.
ANTHRO 332-0-1 The Anthropology of Reproduction WITH GNDR_ST 332-0-20
The goal of sociocultural anthropology, the largest subfield of anthropology and the core of the discipline, is to understand the dynamics of human variation in social action and cultural thought. A key question is how these variations are produced and reproduced, whether we speak of society (subsistence, ideas) or individuals (biology, psychology, social identity). Conversely, what happens when reproduction fails to occur, or does so when and how it should not. Because reproduction is so strongly associated with biology in our society, viewing it through a cultural lens poses significant challenges to some of our most basic tenets. Tensions arise in questions of agency vs. control, nature vs. culture, identity construction, reproducing under varying conditions, and so on. The study of reproduction, therefore, offers a window into the heart of anthropology itself. The goals of this course are (1) to expose students to just a few of the many sociocultural approaches to reproduction by ranging broadly across topics, time, and place; and (2) to identify and evaluate concepts and theories embedded in writings on the dynamics of reproduction. While the concept of "reproduction" can refer to societal reproduction, emphasis will be on the reproduction of children. To this end, possible topics may include fostering/adoption, AIDS orphans, fatherhood, technologies of fertility control, assisted reproduction, obstetrics, gender imbalances in Asia, debates over abortion, etc.
Did you know that all the microbes on and in your body weigh as much as your brain? And they can influence your body almost as much as your brain? They can determine how much weight you gain on a certain diet or whether you develop the symptoms of an autoimmune disease, and they can even affect your mood and behavior. Although we have long known the importance of microbes in the context of disease, recent advances in technology have opened up an entirely new field of research that is transforming perspectives on human health. In this course, we will explore the human microbiome beginning with an overview of different types of microbes and the methods we use to study them. Following that, the majority of the course will be dedicated to exploring new research on the microbes of the skin, mouth, gut, and uro-genital tract and their impacts on human health. We will also consider the influence of geography, politics, social structures, and culture on global patterns in the human microbiome and health.
ANTHRO 365-0-1 Language, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States WITH ASIAN_AM 365-0-1 and ANTHRO 490-0-22
This upper-level undergraduate/ graduate seminar examines relationships between language, race and ethnicity in the contemporary United States. It pairs major theoretical concepts from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and critical race and ethnic studies to examine ethnographic case studies about identity, subjectivity, racism, and institutions. The course will focus on language use among Asian Americans but also examine language practices by Latinos and Blacks by comparison. Topics include: language in media; bilingualism in schools and workplaces; the English Only movement; social media activism; names and naming; colonialism and postcolonialism; and transracial formations. Students will also be asked to apply course concepts to analyze relevant contemporary issues, including presidential malapropisms; controversies about place names and sports team names/ mascots; the 2018 elections; racial crossing and passing; and Yellow English today.
ANTHRO 368-0-1 Latino & Latina Ethnography - Cancelled
The sociocultural analysis of U.S. Latina/o communities. Examines ethnographies by and about Latina/os based in the United States. Draws on a broad disciplinary basis, to critique and elaborate on ethnographic methods and epistemologies. Prerequisite: 211, Latin AM 251, or consent of instructor.
ANTHRO 370-0-20 *Anthropology in Historical Perspective
Rather than attempting the impossible--an overview of the whole history of the discipline of anthropology-this course will focus on one particular problem: the relationship between theory and ethnographic description in cultural Anthropology. The course will attempt to survey the development of certain schools of thought in the discipline since the mid-nineteenth century: evolutionism; historical particularism; structural-functionalism; culture and personality; cultural materialism; interpretive anthropology. In order to examine the ways in which each of these theoretical approaches affects the ways in which anthropologists choose to describe what they observe, the class will read a series of ethnographies (or excerpts from larger works) written at different times from different points of view.
This course introduces the field of Psychological Anthropology - the study of the relationship between culture and the human mind. Psychological Anthropology seeks to understand the ways in which cultural and social contexts fundamentally shape psychological processes such as personality, motivation, cognition, and emotion. In this class we will operate from the assumption that explanations of psychological processes must take culture into account, and that adequate conceptions of cultural processes need to address what we know about the general functioning of the human psyche. In this context, we will explore the role of child development, socialization, and language in shaping human psychology, explore several of the main theoretical paradigms dominant in Psychological Anthropology, and finally, examine the interactions of mind and body, culture and mental health, self and narrative, language and emotion.
This course will provide an overview of the logic and method underlying empirical research in human biology and health. The course will introduce students to the scientific method, as well as the process of research design, data analysis, and interpretation. The course emphasizes hands-on laboratory experience with a range of methods for assessing human nutritional status, physical activity, growth, cardiovascular health, endocrine activity, and immune function.
This course is designed to prepare students to design and carry out an independent ethnographic research project. Students will complete several in-class and field exercises related to a collaborative ethnographic project, culminating in a short ethnographic report and presentation of findings. Weekly reading assignments will complement fieldwork and form the basis for in-class discussions about ongoing research. In addition, students will be expected to develop a short concept paper for a future independent ethnographic research project.
ANTHRO 390-0-28 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity with ANTHRO 490 and GBL_HLTH 390
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity and the appropriateness of potential solutions.
ANTHRO 390-0-21 Anthropology of Human Rights WITH Legal_St 376-0-20
Anthropology (and particularly cultural and linguistic anthropology) has long been concerned with questions of social justice and inequality to counter balance its earlier advocacy for cultural relativism. This ethnography-based course focuses on human rights discourses, documents, and actors who seek individual or collective rights and recognition through legal and paralegal means, and the social processes and changes that affect them through a broad, cross-cultural approach. Case studies concern categories of people who have been situationally and historically marginalized (refugees and migrants, prisoners, children, women, LGBT, religious minorities, etc). The course considers the concept and practice of human rights through local-level organization, legal advocacy, humanitarianism, and law at multiple scales (local, state, global), including international institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations.
Humans display great variation in many aspects of their biology, particularly in terms of physical growth and development, nutrition, and disease patterns. These differences are produced by both current ecological and environmental factors as well as underlying genetic differences shaped by our evolutionary past. It appears that many diseases of modern society, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and various cancers, have resulted from change to a lifestyle that is quite different from that of our ancestors. These diseases thus reflect an imbalance between modern life conditions and those which shaped most of our evolutionary history. This course will explore the evolutionary dimensions of variation in health and disease pattern among humans. We will first review key concepts in evolutionary biology, and their application to human evolution. We will then examine bio-cultural and evolutionary models for explaining variation in specific human diseases.
ANTHRO 390-0-22 Anthropology of Food Security and Sustainability
Food security is one of the wicked problems of our time, an issue so complex that it seems to defy resolution. One camp suggests that if only the world could produce more food, everyone could be fed. The other camp claims that we already produce more than enough food to feed the world's growing population, and that food insecurity arises from unequal access to resources. At the crux of these perspectives are different understandings of how we might achieve social and environmental sustainability—should we produce more or consume less? In this class, we'll approach these complex issues from a social and historical perspective rooted in anthropology. The class is divided into three parts. The first will consider the different definitions of food security, the ways hunger is measured, and the commonly discussed causes of food insecurity. We will historically situate the emergence of chronic food insecurity to show the different situations in which insecurity arises, and show how a long-term view complicates traditional understandings of the causes of food insecurity. This portion will also help students develop skills to think about long-term consequences, which is essential for evaluating the sustainability of solutions proposed to ameliorate food insecurity. The third portion of the class will review some of these proposed solutions. Finally, the last portion of the class will examine how we can achieve long-term food sustainability, ending with student-designed research proposals and ideas on how to realize that goal.
Food is a universal requirement for humans to survive, yet different cultures have developed radically divergent cuisines. In this course, we will use archaeology to explore the diversity of human foodways, and the various roles food has played throughout time. You will learn about topics like the 'real' Paleo diet, how the Incas used beer at parties to build social alliances, and how Columbus's discovery of the Americas spurred global scale shifts in food and agriculture. The course begins with an overview of how anthropologists and archaeologists study food, and then moves through time, beginning with our hunting and gathering ancestors and ending with colonialism.
ANTHRO 390-0-23 Porous Borders: Geography, Power and Tactics of Movement with MENA 301-2-20
At the advent of increased globalization some scholars have argued that the movements of capital, commodities and people across nation-states have rendered their borders increasingly more porous. The death of the nation-state and the birth of the multinational corporation heralded this new epoch. Yet, in the epoch of offshored refugee processing centers and border walls, this assumed porosity of borders begs a reexamination of broader geographies of power and tactics of movement. In this course, we examine the historically and geographically specific constellations of borders and ask: How does the border become an architecture of regulation that extends access to mobility to some and denies it to others? What is a border? Is it the physical line drawn between two states? Who gets to draw these lines? Is a state border a given result of a natural and ethnic contract or the terrain of constant contestation or negotiation in global and international affairs? This course examines these questions by proposing to reconceptualize border as equally the product of mobile social actors, contraband commodities and fluctuating values as they are of state policies aimed at managing these movements.
ANTHRO 390-0-23 Breaking the Law in the Middle East: The Illicit with MENA 390-3-20
Are some laws meant to be broken? Are those who break them all criminals? Where does the boundary between the legal and the criminal, the legitimate and the illicit, lie? Who gets to draw, manage and enforce that boundary that produces categories of crime out of illicit practices? How do licit and illicit networks and activities intersect to form different constellations of power and ideas of legitimacy? How do ideas and regimes of legality inform our ideas of what is morally right, criminal, and valuable? Drawing on political anthropology and cultural history, this course examines many careers of the illicit in the MENA region to answer these questions. In so doing the course invites you to study the politics of legal and discursive constructions of crime and illicit action, and how these practices interrelate with processes of law, governance, cross-border commerce and regimes of morality in order to reveal categories of crime and many careers of the illicit as historical and political constructs rather than as pre-existent and static categories of analysis.
ANTHRO 390-0-24 Political Ecology with ENVR_POL 390-0-22
This class is an introduction to Political Ecology, a multidisciplinary body of theory and research that analyzes the environmental articulations of political, economic, and social difference and inequality. The key concepts, debates, and approaches in this field address two main questions: (1) How do humans' interactions with the environment shape power and politics? (2) How do power and politics shape humans' interactions with the environment? These questions are critical to understanding and addressing the current issues of climate change, the Anthropocene, and environmental justice. Topics discussed in this class will include environmental scarcity and degradation, sustainability and conservation. Readings will come from the disciplines of geography, anthropology and archaeology. Case studies will range from the ancient, to the historical and the present-day. No prior background in the environmental sciences is needed to appreciate and engage in this course.
ANTHRO 390-0-24 Ecology of Infant Feeding with GBL_HLTH 390-0-21
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that babies are fed around the world, including breastfeeding, bottle feeding, and complementary (non-milk) foods. We will discuss the health and social consequences of each mode, and what the international recommendations, i.e. best practices are. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in infant feeding worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which biological and psychosocial characteristics of the individual, household, community, and national policy are considered. Indeed, influences on infant feeding will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, evolution, and public policy. We will also consider the representation of infant feeding in popular culture and visit a local breast milk bank. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities, using a literature review, in-depth interviews, and other research techniques to reflect on the consequences of infant feeding have for society at large.
ANTHRO 390-0-25 Environmental Anthropology with ENVR_POL 390-0-25
Anthropology has had a long, storied relationship with questions of nature and culture, society and environment, during which time a variety of theoretical approaches have been developed. This class will review these intellectual developments and recent trends with the aim of giving students toolkits for analyzing present-day environmental concerns.
ANTHRO 390-0-26 Race Across Time in Latin America with SPAN 397-0-1
This seminar will track both the shifts and continuities in racial ideologies operating in Latin America since the colonial period, following the work of historians and anthropologists. The course will consider their impact on subject formation by reviewing their progression over time through theoretical arguments and evidence from case studies. Because race has been central to the forms of power and authority that first undergirded the colonial system and later birthed the many Latin American nations, we can trace a continued line of transmission of racialized ideologies that structure inequality in the region. Using a cultural and linguistic anthropological framework, we will approach these racial categories as composites of markers of otherness that include skin color, clothing, kin affiliations, occupation, among others. The course moves progressively from research about the early colonial period and forward chronologically until the 20th century, with a final discussion of migrant trajectories to the US. Topics covered will include variations in how race is defined and invoked in context, identity as a performative effect, coloniality as an ongoing process, and the role of historical memory in post-colonial Latin America. Taught in English.
ANTHRO 390-0-27 Migrant Sexualities, Queer Travelers: Translocations with MENA 390-3-21
This course draws together scholarship from queer migration studies, queer diasporic critique and critical race and feminist studies in order to examine the historical and contemporary conditions for the intersections of sexuality and mobility. In this course, we will attend to the formation of "gender" and "sexuality" as categories of anthropological, historical and social analysis, surveying the major shifts within the intellectual history of studies in gender and sexuality. At the same time, however, we strive to keep in analytical view the politically pressing ways in which race, class, and nationality complicate studies of mobility and those of gender and sexuality alike. In other words, if one major question that animates the course is what studies of mobility have to contribute to historical and anthropological studies of gender and sexuality, the other is what kind of new analytical ground studies of gender and sexuality could open up in anthropology of mobility, migration and transnationalism.
This course provides a capstone experience for senior anthropology majors working on their senior thesis. It is intended to provide students with a forum for finalizing research and writing the thesis. The course is an opportunity for you to develop your own original research on a topic of your choice within anthropology. A range of issues will be considered, including research and writing styles characteristic of all four subfields, clarifying research goals and developing research problem statements, preparing a critical literature review, data analysis and presentation and, most importantly, writing processes. The goal for this class is to produce a 20 page Capstone Paper that defines your research and presents an analysis of this problem using material from field research, laboratory work, data sets or library research.
ANTHRO 401-2-01 Logic of Inquiry in Anthropology (Archy)
In this course, students will learn about the logic of inquiry in archaeology - key theories, concepts and approaches; characteristic habits of thought; techniques and intuitions.. We will approach the subject through the basic dimensions of archaeological enquiry (and, arguably, most enquiry in the human sciences): space, time, materiality, and the relationship between present and past. Student will write a final paper applying what they have learnt to a specific topic in their research.
This course will attempt the impossible--to survey the development of anthropological theory in a single quarter. Needless to say, it will not and cannot be exhaustive. Instead, it will focus on the careful scrutiny of a few primary sources by prominent individuals who have contributed to the development of the discipline, but who will also be taken as "representative" of various historical trends. The first part of the course will rapidly outline the prehistory of the discipline and focus more extensively on the notion of evolution central to 19th century social theory. The second part of the course will deal with the individual contributions of three "founding fathers": Marx, Durkheim and Weber. The final part of the course will cover a few of the numerous trends of 20th century cultural anthropology.
Raymond Williams wrote, "a definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world." This graduate seminar in linguistic anthropology explores the ways in which people conceive of and impose particular visions of human beings and their rightful relations onto language use. Language ideologies are the processes and seemingly common sense beliefs through which people make linkages between social forms and language expression, whether verbal or written. The comparative and ethnographic study of language ideologies focuses on the historical and political economic experiences that shape these mediations. This seminar considers language and its relationship to nation, subjectivity, aesthetics, and morality as embodied in religion, gender, law, politics, education, and colonialism. We consider group-internal consistencies and divergences in looking at cultural conceptions of, for instance, "pure" and "good" language, the power of writing, speech and silence, the human capacity for self-expression, and the moral imperative of perpetuating minority languages.
This course covers a range of linguistic anthropology and semiotic anthropology topics, including narrative, affect, materiality, indexicality, qualia, performativity, citationality, scale, interdiscursivity, chronotope, enregisterment, and other areas. The course is intended to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of linguistic and semiotic anthropology in ways that directly support the development of their doctoral research. Graduate students outside of Anthropology should contact instructor with their interest and request permission.
ANTHRO 486-0-1 Evolution and Biological Anthropology
This graduate-level seminar is designed for students interested in the historical development of evolutionary theory and current debates within the field. We will begin with a brief survey of the intellectual precursors to Darwin, the legacy of Darwin and Wallace, and the intellectual threads that coalesced in the Modern Synthesis. We will then trace subsequent controversies within evolutionary biology, with a prominent focus on the role of developmental biology, plasticity and behavior as forces of evolutionary change. Controversies in the study of human evolution and the origins of modern human diversity will be used as lenses to explore these evolutionary themes. This will be a reading intensive course.
This class examines how ‘things', including commodities, precious objects and ordinary goods connected worlds and shaped the everyday life of people. The course is structured between theoretical framings of global goods that consider scale, context, and materiality and the practical considerations of tracing objects through human networks of exchange, commerce, colonialism and consumption. As such methods addressed in this class include object histories, compositional analysis, and commodity chain analysis. By focusing on material exchanges through the archaeological record, this class provides a venue to explore three interrelated questions: what systems of the world objects carry within them, how do these objects shape human circuits of commerce and trade; how objects mediate between global economic forces and the fluid identities of individuals as they are drawn into global circuits.
Imagine the scientific impact of discovering a new organ. Advances in DNA technology and big data analysis have allowed us to do just that by uncovering the complex microbial communities that live in and on our bodies. Microbiome research is transforming the natural and social sciences by revealing new mechanisms through which human physiology and health are influenced. In this course, you will learn to use two major computational tools for exploring the microbiome and its interactions with the human body. After a brief introduction to sample processing for DNA sequencing, we will use QIIME2 to describe microbiome composition and HUMANn2 to describe microbiome functional potential. Foundational microbiome research focused mainly on the gut will be discussed throughout the course, and the final product of the course will be a meta-analysis of publicly available microbiome data.
This course will provide an overview of current theory, methods and research directions in human population biology. The course will specifically focus on the influence of ecological and social factors on various aspects of human biological variation. The adaptation concept will first be presented, discussed and critiqued. We will then examine the history of the field of human biology/adaptability, highlighting how early landmark studies have shaped current research directions in the field. Finally, we will explore how adaptation to different ecological stressors (temperature, solar radiation, high altitude, diet/nutrition, and lifestyle changes) promotes human biological diversity. The central theoretical issue is that of natural selection in human populations: how has it operated in the past, and what is the evidence for ongoing selection and adaptation in humans today?
ANTHRO 490-0-22 Language, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States WITH ASIAN_AM 365-0-1 and ANTHRO 365-0-1
This upper-level undergraduate/ graduate seminar examines relationships between language, race and ethnicity in the contemporary United States. It pairs major theoretical concepts from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and critical race and ethnic studies to examine ethnographic case studies about identity, subjectivity, racism, and institutions. The course will focus on language use among Asian Americans but also examine language practices by Latinos and Blacks by comparison. Topics include: language in media; bilingualism in schools and workplaces; the English Only movement; social media activism; names and naming; colonialism and postcolonialism; and transracial formations. Students will also be asked to apply course concepts to analyze relevant contemporary issues, including presidential malapropisms; controversies about place names and sports team names/ mascots; the 2018 elections; racial crossing and passing; and Yellow English today.
Who owns the past? Why and for whom do we study the past? Archaeology is performed in a variety of political and economic settings and for a variety of reasons. In this class, we will examine the multiple stakeholders involved in the archaeological enterprise, and the often conflicting demands they place on archaeologists as academics and citizens, with the goal of developing tools and strategies that can improve diversity in the subfield and communication to non-academic groups. We will consider calls for diverse "archaeologies" which incorporate alternate models and experiences of the past, but sometimes challenge our basic notions about the field. We will also consider the responsibilities that archaeologists have to communities, and how we might envision future, collaborative community archaeologies. Finally, we will focus on the different publics at home and abroad that impact and consume archaeological research, and how we might better reach diverse audiences.
This is an intensive workshop on how to write ethnography. There are three elements to the class: (1) discussion of classic examples of good ethnographic writing and key concepts like ‘thick description'; (2) taking apart some elements of an academic ethnography, including writing vignettes, describing people and places, constructing an argument, and engaging other writers; and (3) workshopping papers, in which the class discusses a pre-circulated example of your ethnographic writing, with a focus on construction and style, not content.
In order to take this class, you must come with some ethnographic field materials of your own, that you plan to write up into either an article for journal publication or a chapter of a dissertation or book.
Although biopolitics is taken as a central preoccupation and analytic for this course, it is also understood as one of many ways to conceptualize or theorize about life -- keeping in mind that many of the most recent deliberations about “life itself” are carried out in dialogue with, or acknowledgement of, various theorizations on biopolitics. In this graduate seminar, we will examine the following questions: what constitutes a life? A death? We will review theoretical positions and anthropological debates concerning life itself, and the various negotiations related to what it means to live a life, to evaluate lives worth living, embracing, regulating, and killing. At the root of many of these questions is our concern with structure and agency: who reserves the right to ‘make live and let die.’ The course is organized around several themes related to anthropological and humanistic inquiry about the numerous ways that life takes on value and becomes the object of and subject to discipline and regulation, deliberation and imagination, fulfillment and meaning.
ANTHRO 490-0-25 Producing Territory: People, Commodities, and Value
What is territory? Is it simply the physical space (land, air or sea) over which a state exercises sovereignty? How does this presumed alignment of territory and sovereignty come about and get maintained in modern nation-states and internationally? Is territory a given and static contract or the terrain of constant contestation or negotiation in global and international affairs? This course examines these questions by proposing that territories products of mobile social actors, contraband commodities and fluctuating values as much as they are of state policies aimed at managing these movements. Through reading anthropological and historical monographs as well as theoretical essays drawn from geography and social theory more broadly, in this course we explore the spatial production of social worlds and trace how this process has come to unfold at local, national and regional scales. By the end of the course students are expected to be well versed in diverse theories of space and able to articulate what an attention to space and the relations of power inscribed in particular processes of territorial production can contribute to ethnographic and historical inquiry.
ANTHRO 490-0-25 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity with ANTHRO 390, AFST 390 and GBL_HLTH 390
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity and the appropriateness of potential solutions.
