Global Arc

This seminar introduces foundational works in media theory and practice. It discusses representational strategies, technologies, ideology, and the political faculties of film, television, online, and print media. Through the ethnography of analog and digital media production and circulation, the seminar also examines various techniques that shape political contestation and social reproduction of subordinated groups.

This upper-level seminar examines how ideas about language, disability, and science shape each other in contexts ranging from everyday life to expert medical practice. We look at how anthropologists and historians of science and technology have (or have not) considered disability and language in their research and, conversely, how scientific and technological innovations, like new media technologies, can change practices of communication and conceptions of disability.

The seminar examines a variety of settler colonial contexts in North America and Oceania. After exploring a range of theoretical approaches to the study of colonialism, gender, and sexuality, the course will feature three main case studies: M¿ori, Oneida, Cherokee, Diné, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). We will then assess how nationalist self-determination struggles negotiate gender and sexual decolonization, focusing on the growing body of work on gender liminality, contested masculinities, Native and Indigenous feminisms, debates regarding same-sex sexuality and marriage, as well as Two-Spirit, M¿h¿, LGBT, and `Indigiqueer¿ identities.

This class offers an overview of the history, pharmacology, cultural uses and changing attitudes about psychedelic and other psychoactive substances around the world. After introducing the field of ethnobotany and its role in drug ¿discovery,¿ the course surveys shamanism from various perspectives: transcultural psychiatry, altered states of consciousness, New Age spirituality and the science of ¿plant intelligence.¿ Readings investigate the legal and scientific repercussions of the ¿psychedelic revolution,¿ while providing a critical assessment of questions around criminalization, commodification and appropriations of Indigenous knowledge.

This class introduces students to anthropological approaches for understanding science and related forms of knowledge production as forms of cultural practice. Does scientific knowledge production transcend social and cultural contexts, or is it always situated in a milieu? To what extent is science shaped by its broader social contexts and how should this lead us to understand the nature of objectivity? In answering these questions, the class will equip students to produce sensitive analyses of diverse forms of knowledge production and reflect on anthropological ways of knowing.

Today, over 120 million refugees, internally displaced, and stateless persons seek refuge, the most ever recorded. The contemporary refugee is a liminal figure whose being lays bare the limits of the nation-state, the supranational, and human rights. While transnational laws aim to protect those who flee their home countries, the nation-state remains the primary site of durable refuge. This course contemplates the enduring figure of the refugee and asks, Why must we live in a world of refugees? The topics we explore, the nation-state, colonialism, armed conflict, the global economy, hospitality, and camps, go towards answering that question.

This course brings an anthropological perspective to the law and politics of justice in post-conflict institutions, including the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, truth and reconciliation commissions, and the International Criminal Court. How do domestic and international institutions address the specific challenges of seeking accountability for human rights violations? It also evaluates international reparations programs, the gender aspects of international crimes, and the effectiveness of international courts in writing a history of mass crimes.

What does anthropology have to do with economics? How can we make sense of drastic changes in how we work, pay for things, rely on each other, and imagine the future? Taught by a former Prof. of Economics and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank, this course shows the distinctive approach of anthropology to matters economic, and how anthropology creates such knowledge through ethnography and archival research. By reading debates about "economy" in different cultures, historical periods, and moral philosophy, this course shows the many ways people have organized economic affairs in the past and might in the future.

How is memory shaped through museums and archives? What can anthropology teach us about the centrality of art, artifacts, museums, and knowledge-making in the violence of colonialism? In this course, we will read about the making of Palestine as an object of knowledge, a source of cultural production, and a field of contested memory practices. We will see what is specific about the relation of knowledge and culture to power, and what this teaches us about the workings of colonialism and resistance to it. We will also look at the various ways, means and methods that Palestine confronts colonial violence, domination, and other forms of power.

This year's course focuses on a two week trip in January 2026 to the Mpala Wildlife Research Centre in Kenya, where we will visualize relationships among animals, plant life and humanity. We prepare for Mpala with critical analyses of wildlife films and their environmental impacts and then compare them to anthropological depictions. Students also learn techniques of documentary production and data visualization in order to experiment with visualizing complex multispecies relations in Mpala. In that setting, we will include scientific research and Mpala itself as multispecies interventions into problems of biodiversity and the climate crisis.