Results for ANTHRO

Tamil Nadu, India's southernmost state, curiously has more Hindu temples than any other Indian state but remains a stronghold against the Hindu nationalist politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party. This course will investigate the political movement to which this state owes both its major political parties as well as its secular, anti-caste, and regionalist reputation: the Dravidian movement. Students will both (a) engage with the history, cultural production, and political economy of the Dravidian movement and (b) apprehend the doctrines of Karl Marx, B.R. Ambedkar, and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy as applied to the ideology of Dravidianism. Students will leave the course with an enhanced understanding of socialism as applied in the Indian context and the complications that caste, class, gender, religion, language, and region play in the development of Indian socialism. No background in Indian politics is necessary. Student-Initiated Course.

Ethnicity is one of the most compelling and most modern ways in which people - in the midst of considerable global and local uncertainty - all across the world imagine and narrate themselves. This seminar will take an anthropological look at both the modernity and the compulsions of ethnic allegiance, and, why struggles over ethnic identity are so frequently violent. Our questions will be both historical; how, why and when did people come to think of themselves as possessing different ethnic identities - and contemporary; how are these identities lived, understood, narrated, and transformed and what is the consequence of such ethnicisation. We follow this through anthropological perspectives which ask persistently how people themselves locally narrate and act upon their experiences and histories. Through this we will approach some of the really big and yet everyday questions that many of us around the world face: how do we relate to ourselves and to those we define as others; and how do we live through and after profound violence? The seminar will take these larger questions through a global perspective focusing on cases from Rwanda and Burundi, India, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, and the countries of Former Yugoslavia among others. These cases cover a broad canvas of issues from questions of historicity, racial purity, cultural holism, and relations to the state, to contests over religious community, indigeneity, minority identities, globalization, gender, and generation.

Emphasis is on how health, illness, and healing are understood, experienced, and constructed in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Topics: biopower and body politics, gender and reproductive technologies, illness experiences, medical diversity and social suffering, and the interface between medicine and science.Waitlist sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdN6BTg4Rshq_n9Rijs3gz8O4Ppi8Ee3ya-0zd7RF65dtb_rg/viewform?pli=1.

This undergraduate seminar offers students the foundations of theory in social and cultural anthropology. Each section begins with a close reading of the work of a contemporary anthropologist and then traces the intellectual legacies that have shaped it. This is a required course for Anthropology majors. The course also fulfills the requirement for Writing in the Major (WIM). To sharpen students' critical writing skills, there will be several writing and rewriting assignments.

Practicum. Students develop independent research projects and write research proposals. How to formulate a research question; how to integrate theory and field site; and step-by-step proposal writing.

Goal is to produce an ethnographic report based on original field research gathered during summer fieldwork, emphasizing writing and revising as steps in analysis and composition. Students critique classmates' work and revise their own writing in light of others' comments. Ethical issues in fieldwork and ethnographic writing, setting research write-up concerns within broader contexts. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Independent research conducted under faculty supervision, normally taken junior or senior year in pursuit of a senior paper or an honors project. May be repeated for credit.

Required of Anthropology honors or senior paper candidates. Taken in the final quarter before handing in the final draft of the Honors or Senior Paper and graduating. This independent study supports work on the honors and senior papers for students with an approved honors or senior paper application in Anthropology. Prerequisite: consent of Anthropology faculty advisor. Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum Units: 1-5(not repeatable for credit)

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Opportunity for students to pursue their specialization in an institutional setting such as a laboratory, clinic, research institute, or government agency. May be repeated for credit. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center). F-1 international students enrolled in this course cannot start working without first obtaining a CPT-endorsed I-20 from Bechtel International Center (enrolling in the CPT course alone is insufficient to meet federal immigration regulations).

An introduction to numeric methods in Anthropology and related fields employing the Data Desk statistics package to test hypotheses and to explore data. Examples chosen from the instructor's research and other relevant projects. No statistical background is necessary, but a working knowledge of algebra is important. Topics covered include: Frequency Distributions; Measures of Central Tendency, Dispersion, and Variability; Probability and Probability Distributions; Statistical Inference, Comparisons of Sample Means and Standard Deviations; Analysis of Variance; Contingency Tables, Comparisons of Frequencies; Correlation and Regression; Principal Components Analysis; Discriminant Analysis; and Cluster Analysis. Grading based on take-home problem sets.

What does it mean to claim we are all cyborgs ¿ a hybrid of human and machine? Cyborgs have long captured the popular imagination of people around the world, appearing in various forms of media including films, books, and video games. In these instances, cyborgs are typically imagined as futuristic entities, portrayed as products of anticipated technological advancements yet to come. This course takes a different approach, employing the cyborg as a framework to understand human existence and experience across space and time, and explore the relationship between the body, culture, and technology. Drawing from anthropology and other relevant fields, this course emphasizes how humans and tools co-construct each other, blurring the boundaries between natural and artificial, human and machine. The first section of the course will present different theoretical perspectives for understanding human-machine interactions and relationships. In the second section, we will spend each week examining various types of technological embodiments. Specific technologies explored include smartphones and wearables; biohacking and prostheses; virtual reality; and artificial intelligence. And in the last section, we explore the tensions between narratives of technological pessimism and optimism, comparing the ways different individuals and communities perceive and evaluate emergent technologies' consequences for society, now and in the future. This course will provide students with the opportunity to conduct limited, small-scale ethnographic fieldwork on human-machine interactions. The data collected during these ethnographic exercises will inform the in-class presentation and final paper for the course.

Core course for Urban Studies majors. A majority of the world's population now live in urban areas and most of the rapid urbanization has taken place in mega-cities outside the Western world. This course explores urban cultures, identities, spatial practices and forms of urban power and imagination in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Participants will be introduced to a global history of urban development that demonstrates how the legacies of colonialism, modernization theory and global race thinking have shaped urban designs and urban life in most of the world. Students will also be introduced to interpretative and qualitative approaches to urban life that affords an understanding of important, if unquantifiable, vectors of urban life: stereotypes, fear, identity formations, utopia, social segregation and aspirations. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

The Indian Ocean has formed an enduring connection between three continents, countless small islands and a multitude of cultural and ethnic groups and has become the focus of increasing interest in this geographically vast and culturally diverse region. This course explores a range of topics and issues, from the nature and dynamics of colonization and cultural development as a way of understanding the human experience in this part of the world, to topics such as religion, disease, and heritage The course guides studies in the many ways in which research in the Indian Ocean has a direct impact on our ability to compare developments in the Atlantic and Pacific. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

This course introduces contemporary anthropological perspectives on the phenomenon of addiction with a focus on mental health and incarceration. In the first part, the course will introduce the making of addiction in the history of drug policing and public health through shifting discourses of the legal and cultural significance of drugs and drug scenes. Then, it will situate drugs at the heart of dispossession of specific communities over generations and geographies in the 20th century. In the final part, the course will invite students to go beyond common analytical categories to historically situate drug use on the links between therapeutic approaches and penal mechanisms. Readings and discussion will focus on the centrality of drugs to regimes of violence and dispossession, while developing a theory of illicit drug economies crucial to the development of modern state and medicine across geographies. The course will make use of philosophical, historical and anthropological literature and video clips and films.

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing number of social and political upheavals around the world. With new organizational principles, diversified ways of participation and mediation, and expanding themes and goals, these cases, in bringing the political near to us, also challenge our familiar ways of thinking and doing politics. They are testing the limit of our imagination of a bounded social movement in the forms such as street protest and civil disobedience, as well as the limit of analysis. This course explores the uses of anthropological theories in engaging with a politically animated world.

In recent decades, there has been a surge in archaeological research related to the African diaspora. What initially began as plantation archaeology and household archaeology to answer questions of African retention and identity, has now developed into an expansive sub-field that draws from collaborations with biological and cultural anthropologists. Similarly, methodological approaches have expanded to incorporate geospatial analysis, statistical analysis, and, more recently, maritime archaeological practices. The growth of African diaspora archaeology has thus pushed new methodological and theoretical considerations within the field of archaeology, and, inversely, added new insights in the field of Africana Studies. This course covers the thematic and methodological approaches associated with the historical archaeology of Africa and the African diaspora. Students interested in Africa and African diaspora studies, archaeology, slavery, and race should find this course useful. In addition to an overview of the development of African diaspora archaeology, students will be introduced to the major debates within the sub-field as well as its articulation with biological and socio-cultural anthropology. The course covers archaeological research throughout the wide geographical breadth of the African diaspora in Latin America, North America, the Caribbean, East, and West Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The themes covered include gender, race, identity, religion, and ethics in relation to the material record. Lectures will be supplemented with documentary films and other multimedia sources.

In this course, we will explore the ways archaeology and disability relate to each other, including both the ways archaeologists interpret disability in the past and how ableism shapes the practice of archaeology in the present. We will examine a variety of theoretical frames drawn from Disability Studies and other disciplines and consider how they can be usefully applied to archaeology. Case studies from a variety of geographic and temporal contexts will provide the basis for imagining an anti-ableist archaeology. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to: 1. Articulate several major ideas from disability studies and apply them to archaeological case studies; 2. Explain how disability studies and disabled self-advocates are reshaping the practice of archaeology; 3. Demonstrate improvement in the research and writing skills that they have chosen to develop through the flexible assignment structure of the course.

If you wish to enroll, please use the linked form to request instructor consent: https://tinyurl.com/AncientMaterials - This course examines how concepts and methods from materials science are applied to the analysis of archaeological artifacts, with a focus on artifacts made from inorganic materials (ceramics and metals). Coverage includes chemical analysis, microscopy, and testing of physical properties, as well as various research applications within anthropological archaeology. Students will learn how to navigate the wide range of available analytical techniques in order to choose methods that are appropriate to the types of artifacts being examined and that are capable of answering the archaeological questions being asked. ----- If you wish to enroll, please use the linked form to request instructor consent: https://tinyurl.com/AncientMaterials For full consideration, this form must be submitted by Monday, September 4th.

An introduction to numeric methods in Anthropology and related fields employing the Data Desk statistics package to test hypotheses and to explore data. Examples chosen from the instructor's research and other relevant projects. No statistical background is necessary, but a working knowledge of algebra is important. Topics covered include: Frequency Distributions; Measures of Central Tendency, Dispersion, and Variability; Probability and Probability Distributions; Statistical Inference, Comparisons of Sample Means and Standard Deviations; Analysis of Variance; Contingency Tables, Comparisons of Frequencies; Correlation and Regression; Principal Components Analysis; Discriminant Analysis; and Cluster Analysis. Grading based on take-home problem sets.

The Indian Ocean has formed an enduring connection between three continents, countless small islands and a multitude of cultural and ethnic groups and has become the focus of increasing interest in this geographically vast and culturally diverse region. This course explores a range of topics and issues, from the nature and dynamics of colonization and cultural development as a way of understanding the human experience in this part of the world, to topics such as religion, disease, and heritage The course guides studies in the many ways in which research in the Indian Ocean has a direct impact on our ability to compare developments in the Atlantic and Pacific. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

In recent decades, there has been a surge in archaeological research related to the African diaspora. What initially began as plantation archaeology and household archaeology to answer questions of African retention and identity, has now developed into an expansive sub-field that draws from collaborations with biological and cultural anthropologists. Similarly, methodological approaches have expanded to incorporate geospatial analysis, statistical analysis, and, more recently, maritime archaeological practices. The growth of African diaspora archaeology has thus pushed new methodological and theoretical considerations within the field of archaeology, and, inversely, added new insights in the field of Africana Studies. This course covers the thematic and methodological approaches associated with the historical archaeology of Africa and the African diaspora. Students interested in Africa and African diaspora studies, archaeology, slavery, and race should find this course useful. In addition to an overview of the development of African diaspora archaeology, students will be introduced to the major debates within the sub-field as well as its articulation with biological and socio-cultural anthropology. The course covers archaeological research throughout the wide geographical breadth of the African diaspora in Latin America, North America, the Caribbean, East, and West Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The themes covered include gender, race, identity, religion, and ethics in relation to the material record. Lectures will be supplemented with documentary films and other multimedia sources.

In this course, we will explore the ways archaeology and disability relate to each other, including both the ways archaeologists interpret disability in the past and how ableism shapes the practice of archaeology in the present. We will examine a variety of theoretical frames drawn from Disability Studies and other disciplines and consider how they can be usefully applied to archaeology. Case studies from a variety of geographic and temporal contexts will provide the basis for imagining an anti-ableist archaeology. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to: 1. Articulate several major ideas from disability studies and apply them to archaeological case studies; 2. Explain how disability studies and disabled self-advocates are reshaping the practice of archaeology; 3. Demonstrate improvement in the research and writing skills that they have chosen to develop through the flexible assignment structure of the course.

If you wish to enroll, please use the linked form to request instructor consent: https://tinyurl.com/AncientMaterials - This course examines how concepts and methods from materials science are applied to the analysis of archaeological artifacts, with a focus on artifacts made from inorganic materials (ceramics and metals). Coverage includes chemical analysis, microscopy, and testing of physical properties, as well as various research applications within anthropological archaeology. Students will learn how to navigate the wide range of available analytical techniques in order to choose methods that are appropriate to the types of artifacts being examined and that are capable of answering the archaeological questions being asked. ----- If you wish to enroll, please use the linked form to request instructor consent: https://tinyurl.com/AncientMaterials For full consideration, this form must be submitted by Monday, September 4th.

Emphasis is on how health, illness, and healing are understood, experienced, and constructed in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Topics: biopower and body politics, gender and reproductive technologies, illness experiences, medical diversity and social suffering, and the interface between medicine and science.Waitlist sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdN6BTg4Rshq_n9Rijs3gz8O4Ppi8Ee3ya-0zd7RF65dtb_rg/viewform?pli=1.

Required of Anthropology Ph.D. students. The history of cultural and social anthropology in relation to historical and national contexts and key theoretical and methodological issues as these inform contemporary theory and practices of the discipline. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

The history of archaeological thought emphasizes recent debates. Evolutionary theories, behavioral archaeology, processual and cognitive archaeology, and approaches termed feminist and post-processual archaeology in the context of wider debate in adjacent disciplines. The application and integration of theory on archaeological problems and issues. Prerequisite: By consent of instructor. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Methodological aspects of field and laboratory practice from traditional archaeological methods to the latest interdisciplinary analytical techniques. The nature of archaeological data and inference; interpretive potential of these techniques. Prerequisite: By consent of instructor. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Required graduate seminar. The history of anthropological theory and key theoretical and methodological issues of the discipline. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Language, as a cultural resource for shaping our identities, is central to the concepts of race and ethnicity. This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. We begin with an examination of the concepts of race and ethnicity and what it means to be "doing race," both as scholarship and as part of our everyday lives. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations (Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, etc.) participate in similar, yet different, ways of drawing racial and ethnic distinctions. The seminar will draw heavily on scholarship in (linguistic) anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. We will explore how we talk and don't talk about race, how we both position ourselves and are positioned by others, how the way we talk can have real consequences on the trajectory of our lives, and how, despite this, we all participate in maintaining racial and ethnic hierarchies and inequality more generally, particularly in schools.

In recent decades, the emergence and proliferation of transnational Indigenous movements have foregrounded the socio-cultural survival and legal-political resurgence of Indigenous peoples in contemporary global society. Many Western academic disciplines and fields, including anthropology, understand Indigeneity as a historical positioning situated within particular regimes of governance under the sovereignty of the modern state in the liberal international order. Scholars debate the limits and possibilities of Indigenous resistance to decolonize entrenched power structures and dynamics of colonial rule that continue into the present. This graduate seminar introduces students to current interdisciplinary scholarship on Indigenous peoples, with a focus on anthropological research and engagement. Students will examine the evolution of anthropological theory and method for academic knowledge production on the situation of colonized peoples across contexts, scales, and processes. Students will also consider enduring and contentious questions on whether and how anthropologists should intervene in and shape native formations, particularly Indigenous communities with collective status and rights to territory, autonomy, and self-determination. The course will review case studies from different world regions.

Concepts of emancipation have been treated in a wide variety of historical, political, regional and social perspectives. In the US, emancipation and post emancipation societies are primarily understood around histories of enslavement. In the class, while taking inspiration and also covering work on enslavement and emancipation, we will endeavor to discuss theories, ideas and experiences that have been understood as potentially emancipatory from a globally and historically wide-ranging set of ideas. Issues of race, caste, class and gender are axiomatic themes within the class.Emancipation has frequently been understood as an emancipation from oppression and an impetus towards a form of freedom or new order. While theoretically this is formally understood and discussed, often with historical examples that use experiences to illustrate failures or successes, in this class we will try to understand the texture of practices as the primary means by which ideas about emancipation circulate, imagined, are discussed, are disappointed and so on. We will try and see what an anthropological and historically textured discussion can bring to theoretical discussions of emancipation. We will examine theoretical, historical, sociological and anthropological writings on emancipation, freedom, enslavement and servitude, political mobilization and revolution. Fundamentally this course tries to get students to think globally about multiple and different systems of persisting and enduring oppression and inequality through an emphasis on political thought, political imaginations and concrete political organizations and movements. Prerequisite: consent of instructor

Science and technology are important cultural products that often dramatically reorganize various aspects of human life. In this course we will explore how recent innovations in the life sciences and biomedicine may reconfigure crucial elements of social institutions, lend new structures to identity politics, and often change the way we interact with and conceive of nature. We will examine these issues in various global settings to explore how everyday politics shape politics of life in different locales.

This graduate colloquium is a foundational and intensive course in the field of modern South Asian history. It is a course in historiography and weekly discussions will be structured around a key monograph in a specific thematic sub-field. The colloquium will begin with discussions on the impact of the Subaltern Studies collective in shaping the field; and through the quarter we will engage with monographs from various sub-fields such as studies of the transition to colonial rule; the relationship between labor and capital; agrarian history; caste society under colonial rule and Dalit resistance; studies of bureaucratic objects such as the official document; new research in feminist history and the emerging field of trans history.

For fifth-year Ph.D. students returning from dissertation field research and in the process of writing dissertations and preparing for professional employment. Prerequisite: By consent of instructor. This course will take place Jan 10th and 24th, Feb 7th and 21st and March 6th from 10am - 12pm.

Required of second- and third-year Ph.D. students writing the qualifying paper or the qualifying written examination. May be repeated for credit one time.

Required of second- and third-year Ph.D. students writing the qualifying paper or the qualifying written examination. May be repeated for credit one time.

Supervised experience teaching in Anthropology

Supervised work for terminal and coterminal master's students writing the master's project in the final quarter of the degree program. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Graduate student reading group on a thematic topic of interest. Intended for first or second-year cohort PhD students.

Medical Humanities is a humanistic approach to the topic of medicine. The approach generally emphasizes the subjective experience of health and illness as captured through the expressive arts (painting, music and literature), expressed across historical periods and in different cultures, and interpreted by humanistic scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Its goal is to give students and scholars an opportunity to explore a more holistic and meaning-centered perspective on medical issues. It draws attention not only to diagnosis, but to the meaning and experience of diagnosis, to the way that medicine is an art form as well as a science, to the way institutions and culture shape the way illness is identified, experienced and treated. This workshop includes four sessions per quarter focused on scholarly or artistic presentation and professional development. This quarter it will be held on four Wednesdays from 5:30-7pm: Jan 10th, Jan 31st, Feb 21st, Feb 28th, and March 6th in the Stanford Humanities Center Boardroom.

Department Colloquia Lecture Series. Lectures presented on a variety of anthropological topics. Colloquium is intended for the Department of Anthropology's under graduate majors and graduate students. May be repeated for credit.

Current topics and trends in cultural/social anthropology, archaeology, and environmental and ecological anthropology. Enrollment in this noon-time series is restricted to the Department of Anthropology Masters students and First and Second-year PhD students.

Supervised work on a research project with an individual faculty member. May be repeated for credit.

Supervised work for a qualifying paper, examination, or project with an individual faculty member.

Provides graduate students with the opportunity to pursue their area of specialization in an institutional setting such as a laboratory, clinic, research institute, or government agency. F-1 international students enrolled in this course cannot start working without first obtaining a CPT-endorsed I-20 from Bechtel International Center (enrolling in the CPT course alone is insufficient to meet federal immigration regulations).