Global Arc

Study of a selected topic in anthropology; the particular choice will vary from year to year.

Analysis of classical and contemporary sources of cultural anthropology, with particular emphasis on those writers dealing with meaning and representation. The topical focus of the course will vary with the instructor. One three-hour seminar.

Things are the staple of our lives, but they are also objects of our studies and products of our activities. We depend on things, but things also depend us. In this course, we will explore convoluted networks of relations that bring together humans, non-humans and things. Looking at things and thinking about things differently, we will try to understand why they are so irresistible to have, to use, to make, to keep, and to exchange. During the course, we will approach things as signs (semiotics), as material entities (new materialisms), as objects of affection (new materialisms), and as key agents of influence (actor-network theory).

Classic and modern theories of religion relevant to anthropologists. Students will familiarize themselves with anthropological monographs dealing with a particular aspect of religion: shamanism, witchcraft, possession and ecstasy, healing. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.

This course considers how the sciences can be studied ethnographically, how they vary culturally one from another, and how scientific knowledge is generated. It develops an understanding of the values and social contexts of Western scientific practice through the comparative study of Western and non-Western systems of knowledge, and explores the implications and validity of the assumption that the sciences are culturally produced rather than objective standards transcending culture. One three-hour seminar.

How have the modes and meanings of labor transformed across time and place? What are the significant interplays among labor, politics, subjectivity, belief, and sociality? How do cultural dimensions inflect, refract, or otherwise help to fashion these interrelationships? This course draws upon classic and contemporary anthropological, historical, and social theoretical texts. Through exemplary case studies and broader theoretical considerations, it considers central topics that illuminate the cultural forms of labor, including ideology, hegemony, dialectics, moral economy, habitus, discipline, class, post-industrialization, and casualization.

Humans have always been in multispecies relationships---to study the human effectively we need to recognize this. We will lay out the core theoretical and methodological frameworks for engaging in anthropologically centered multispecies approaches to the human. We will familiarize ourselves with relationships in the Anthropocene, pushing against (and/or reconceptualizing) nature/culture and human/nonhuman boundaries. Foregrounding anthropological perspectives in the discourse on multispecies we center the ethnographic and ecological and decenter assumptions that run through much majority mythos and perspectives on human-other entanglements.

Two major myths-about race and sex-have a negative impact on our society and inhibit an accurate understanding of what it means to be human. These myths create a false set of societally accepted "truths" that in turn cause a range of problems. Busting deeply ingrained myths about human nature requires some effort. It means breaking the stranglehold of simplicity in our view of what is natural and forcing ourselves to realize that being human is very complicated. It means challenging common sense and our reliance on generalities and popular perception, and actually delving into the gritty details of what we know humans actually are and do.

Explores issues surrounding the relation of individual memory to collective trauma, the social forms of redress to trauma, and attempts to establish accountability for harm. Takes up three major approaches to memory: social organization (Halbwachs), psychoanalysis (Freud), and associative temporalities (Sebald). Examines various genres in which the memory of loss is retained or displaced, and the landscapes and histories in which such memories are recalled and losses repaired. A better understanding of such memories will improve our approaches to cultural observation, documentation, analysis, and interpretation. One three-hour seminar.

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.