Global Arc

Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Studies have shown how critiques of capitalism were based on a provincial account of western history. Postcolonial studies, in turn, was based on analysis of places that were directly colonized. In this course, we will critically read and compare approaches based on Marx, subaltern studies, and orientalism to think about the case of the former Ottoman Empire, which was not colonized. Readings will draw on social theory, political economy, postcolonial studies, critical infrastructure studies, history of the Middle East, and ethnography and are appropriate for students of any region or discipline.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) argued that «theory is done at the center; color comes from the margin.» Anthropology offers knowledge and insights into the lived worlds of humanity at large. Calls to «decolonize anthropology» are by no means new. But anthropology continues to be a discipline dominated by Western scholars and institutions, and overwhelmingly white. This course will offer an introduction to post- and de-colonial literature and scholarship, and important scholars of and from the `Global South', and/or of indigenous or racialized minority background from the `Global North.'

This seminar focuses on the social institutions and symbolic meanings of gender, sexuality, family, and the household through the lenses of race, culture, and historical contexts. We will study how understandings of masculinity and femininity, the orientation of desire, sexual acts, and sexual identities impact gender roles in the household across various cultural and social contexts. We will ground our work in historical and ethnographic research on the connections between colonialism, chattel slavery, capitalism, and gender, sexual relations, and the family.

An exploration of the reciprocal influences of anthropology and gender studies, considering both classic and recent contributions; an evaluation of key interpretive categories (for example, "nature,'' "domestic,'' "woman'') specifically in the context of cross-cultural translation; and comparison of various approaches to questions about the universality of gendered power hierarchies. One three-hour seminar.

Nothing in the lifespan of humans is as revealing on the interface of culture and biology as is death and the experience of death. This course will explore DEATH from a bio/cultural perspective, including the evolution of life history (ageing, demography - mortality), as well as an archaeological perspective (prehistory) and early history of mortuary practices. This course is concerned not specifically with how an individual experiences death, but in the ways in which culture and biology have come to define and deal with physical death and the death experience.

We think about ruins as belonging to the past, but they do not. They are that detritus that stays with us into the present. They can be sources of melancholy, inspiration, wonder, and horror; or lingering toxins in the soil, racist legacies of colonialism, nationalistic points of collective sentiment, and the remnants of past cities bleeding through into the present-day urban landscape. This course will examine ruins anthropologically. Students should come out of this class with an introduction to the anthropology of aesthetics, the relationship between space and place, and a new appreciation for urban infrastructures and their legacies.

How do global engagements with nuclear things affect latent colonization in contemporary and future ecologies and generations? How are toxic effects of nuclear things (re)presented through scientific, technological, political or cultural intervention? We explore material, technoscientific, and cultural transmutations of nuclear things (radioisotopes, bombs, medical devices, energy) and the work of (re)making those transmutations (in)visible. The course draws from a variety of theoretical frameworks / case studies in science and technology studies, the social sciences, art and environmental and digital humanities to think with nuclear things.

What is revolutionary change today? Present discontents have been attributed to heightened inequality and worker exploitation, expanded global trade and permeable national borders, increased circulation of ideas through new media, and the undermining of forms of traditional authority. Revolutionary programs (e.g., as led by Marx, Lenin, Mao) exist as social projects of political and sexual emancipation, but they tend not to be informed by theories of ritual and everyday culture. In this course we will consider these theories as we explore revolutionary impulses from the Arab Spring, Ukraine, and the 1960's Americas.

Explores the theories and methods of ethnographic filmmaking. This seminar introduces students to the pioneering work of filmmakers including Robert Flaherty, Jean Rouch, and Fred Wiseman in order to address questions of documentary authenticity, knowledge, methods, ethics, and audience. One three-hour seminar.

Protestors against climate change increasingly identify economic growth as a key culprit of the climate crisis. But what is the alternative to economic growth? To imagine a world 'after growth' we need to consider how the imperative of growth emerged in the first place. In this course, we read strands of thought about 'alternative economies' that disappeared from the canon in order to think ethnographically, analytically, and politically about calls for a future after endless growth. We will focus on entanglements of the concept of growth with colonialism, nature, social equity, and 19th century liberal ideas of the 'perfectability of man.'