Global Arc

Students will be introduced to anthropological and cross-disciplinary studies of multiple, divergent ways in which the Circumpolar populations experience, perceive and respond to environmental, political and socio-economic changes from within distinct horizons of knowledge & modes of sociality. By focusing on social and historical processes as well as current/emerging practices, worlds/cosmologies, the course will analytically evaluate such notions as Anthropocene, the Fourth World, indigeneity and decolonisation as well as examine attempts of various scholars to better understand complex interconnections of climate, environment and society.

Language determines our expressive capacities, represents our identities, and connects us with each other across various platforms and cultures.This course introduces classical and contemporary approaches to studying language, focusing on three main areas: 1) language as a system of rules and regulations ("structure"), 2) language as a symbolic mechanism through which individuals and groups mark their presence ("identity") and 3) language as a means of communication ("sign"). In addition to this, the course examines various ways through which language molds our individual selves: from organizing dreams and desires to shaping autobiographies.

In this course, we try to understand how people in different societies and in different historical periods link value and money in order to structure their exchanges and communities. We explore contexts in which concepts of the good and the desirable are first constructed and associated with money. We examine how money brings desire and meaning together, creating a possibility of social exchange. Then, we trace practices of exchange that "translate" different qualitative and quantitative values into comparable (monetary) units. Finally, we look at how monetary values are transformed into an indicator of non-economic qualities.

Using American Indian sovereignty, Australian Aborigine land claims, the Canadian Bill of Rights, the Maori Treaty of Waitangi, and various international conventions, students will consider whether there is a fundamental right to cultural integrity, and the historical, legal, and ethical implications posed by the relations between modern states and their indigenous populations. One 90-minute lecture, one 90-minute class.

This seminar engages the sensorium -- our apparatus of sense perception -- to explore the worlds people make and inhabit. How can our senses become avenues of learning, imagination, and connection with others? We study ethnographic texts and multi-modal works thematizing sensory faculties and synaesthesia, as well as movement, orientation, and temporality. We consider how "sensory impairment" and neurodiversity may and should affect cultural norms of personhood and well-being. We pay special attention to synergies between medical anthropology and sensory anthropology in research on pain, addiction, psychoactive substances, and ritual healing.

This course explores the entanglements of culture, science, and politics in China, with a concentration on "China's short 20th Century," especially the cultural, technological, and political worlds of Reform China, from 1978 to present. Topics include debates over Chinese modernity and international relation, population politics, minority governance, environmental concerns, and China's diasporas.

Every culture has norms around speaking and policing speech. This class focuses on what anthropologists call language ideologies and how they legitimate institutional forms such as law, medicine, kinship, and exchange. Rules around language also shape who can speak, how they can speak, and how their speech is received based on identities such as race, gender, sexuality, and/or social status. Students in the course will learn why language is far more than words alone which is why people are able to call out disingenuous speech or BS.

The significant impact of peoples of particular regions on the development of anthropological theory, method, and sensibility. Special attention to the dynamic precolonial history of the region and to political and religious movements in the contemporary context of rapid socioeconomic change.

The goal of this course is to understand what queer lifeworlds are like in diverse cultural and sociopolitical contexts. What is the relationship between queerness and larger factors like culture, coloniality, global capitalism, religion, and the state? What counts as queer and whose recognition matters? How do people carve queer spaces for themselves and what resources do they draw upon in doing so? What factors influence and curtail these possibilities? Is queer always radical and against the norm? We will answer such questions by reading ethnographies, theories, and biographies that focus on queer lifeworlds across the world.

In almost every human society, women are expected to perform different tasks than men. Was there a biological or cultural reason for this? True - women are the only sex to give birth to date, but does that mean there is no escape from traditional sex roles? In this class we will explore female behavioral biology from an evolutionary and biocultural perspective. We will pair physiology and life-history theory with cultural outcomes to engage with feminism and social and political debates. Topics include menstrual taboos, sexual differentiation and gender identity, reproduction, contraception, women's health, workplace equality, etc.