Results for ANTHRO

Aims, methods, and data in the study of human society's development from early hunters through late prehistoric civilizations. Archaeological sites and remains characteristic of the stages of cultural development for selected geographic areas, emphasizing methods of data collection and analysis appropriate to each.

Secularism is often taken to be a necessary prerequisite for democracy in the modern world. The separation of religion and politics is often written into constitutions as a fundamental priority. Yet around the world, growing numbers of religious movements have sought to dispute the legitimacy of secularism. Social scientists, including anthropologists, are beginning to research the forms of domination and political violence that have been justified in the name of secularism. This course seeks to make sense of this global debate about secularism. It does so by taking up an anthropological perspective: much as anthropologists might study culture, religion, or kinship, we will interrogate secularism as a comparative social artifact, constituted by historically specific repertoires of signs, identities, everyday practices, and institutional powers. The course focuses on case studies in the United States, Western Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.

This course examines the life of places as shaped by environmental events and projects aimed towards rural or urban development. Drawing methodological insights from anthropology, cultural geography and environmental studies, we examine the forces that generate place problems for humans and nonhumans. Each encounter with place and displacement sets up a particular issue for us to grapple with: How would we address issues created by natural disasters, the seizure of land through legal means that fall under eminent domain or gentrification projects? Through a critical dialogue with interdisciplinary fields that inform the readings, the seminar aims to bring theoretical and methodological insights to inform our practical suggestions for how to address placeness and displaceness at different scales.

In this course we will examine the meaning, processes, and challenges of urbanization. Through a series of targeted readings across history and geography and through the study of varied means of representation (anthropology, literature, cartography, film, etc), the class will analyze the ways in which urban forms have come into being and created, met, and/or ignored challenges such as disease, water, transport, religious and class conflict, colonialism, labor, and trade. Students will read anthropology in conjunction with other disciplines (literature, urban planning, public health, architecture, and economics) to learn the ways in which ethnographies of immigration, urban poverty, class disparity, economic development and indicators, noise, and transportation substantively augment our understandings of how people live within globalization.

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.

This course provides a broad introduction to various ways of designing anthropological questions and associated methods for collecting evidence and supporting arguments. We review the inherent links between how a question is framed, the types of evidence that can address the question, and way that data are collected. Research activities such as interviewing, participant observation, quantitative observation, archival investigation, ecological survey, linguistic methodology, tracking extended cases, and demographic methods are reviewed. Various faculty and specialists will be brought in to discuss how they use different types of evidence and methods for supporting arguments in anthropology.

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.

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.

Taken in the final quarter before graduation. Independent study and work on senior paper for students admitted to the program. Prerequisite: consent of program adviser and instructor.

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).

Archaeological analytical techniques appropriate for data recovered during archaeological fieldwork in Chavin de Huantar, Peru. Open to all interested students; fieldwork participants are expected to take the course. Students work on data from the previous field season to produce synthetic written reports, focusing on specific methodological issues.

This course investigates the field of environmental archaeology. Its goals are twofold: 1) to critically consider the intellectual histories of environmental archaeology, and, 2) to survey the various techniques and methods by which archaeologists assess historical environmental conditions through material proxies. The course will include lab activities.

Archaeologists rely on an understanding of stone tools to trace much of what we know about prehistoric societies. How to make, illustrate, and analyze stone tools, revealing the method and theory intrinsic to these artifacts.

This course explores the cultural, political economic, and environmental status of contemporary Hawaiians. What sorts of sustainable economic and environmental systems did Hawaiians use in prehistory? How was colonization of the Hawaiian Islands informed and shaped by American economic interests and the nascent imperialsm of the early 20th centrury? How was sovereignty and Native Hawaiian identity been shaped by these forces? How has tourism and the leisure industry affected the natural environment? This course uses archaeological methods, ethnohistorical sources, and historical analysis in an exploration of contemporary Hawaiian social economic and political life.

This course explores the cultural, political economic, and environmental status of contemporary Hawaiians. What sorts of sustainable economic and environmental systems did Hawaiians use in prehistory? How was colonization of the Hawaiian Islands informed and shaped by American economic interests and the nascent imperialism of the early 20th century? How was sovereignty and Native Hawaiian identity been shaped by these forces? How has tourism and the leisure industry affected the natural environment? This course uses archaeological methods, ethnohistorical sources, and historical analysis in an exploration of contemporary Hawaiian social economic and political life. Students participate with field base in Hawaii via Skype and through classroom lecturers, readings, and media.

Core course for Urban Studies majors. We will study urban space both historically and cross-culturally. Urban Studies, by definition, is an interdisciplinary field, where the methodological approaches draw upon a diverse set of analytic tools. Disciplines that occupy a prominent place in this class are geography, cultural anthropology, sociology, history, media studies, and literature. In this context, we will discuss the importance of cities around the world to the economic, cultural, and political well-being of modern societies and examine how forces such as industrialization, decentralization, and globalization affect the structure and function of cities.

This course focuses on anthropologists¿ engagement with photographs as part of their research and writing. In thinking about the relationship between text and image, we will consider how photographs have been used as documentation, data, evidence, art, illustration, and research tools. The course examines some ethical and aesthetic issues anthropologists have struggled with when producing, analyzing, writing about, investigating with and publishing photographs. Students in this course will take and display photographs, as well as discuss, analyze, read about and write about them.

The course explores archaeological GIS and the techniques adopted to acquire, evaluate and manage spatial data. The students will be provided both with theoretical and practical principles of GIS for archaeological use and site management.nnStudents will learn a complete GIS workflow, from data acquisition to decision making. They will use Venice, a multilayered site, as a test case. The course will examine practical evaluation processes in consideration of current and future development projects in the Venetian lagoon, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The politics of producing knowledge in and about Africa through the genre of ethnography, from the colonial era to the present. The politics of writing and the ethics of social imagination. Sources include novels juxtaposed to ethnographies.

This course aims to explore various aspects of the contemporary debate over the compatibility of Islam with human rights. As a class, we will examine the contours of various human rights debates as they surface in the writings of Islamic thinkers, as well as emerge in Muslim societies today. What is/are Islamic conceptions of human rights? How is this discourse activated, used and challenged by people living in Muslim Societies? How do Islamic conceptions and articulations of human rights relate to western/universal, conceptions? Where do they intersect and diverge from one another?

This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities, medicine and bio-science and technology to explore the ways that health and illness are made through complex social forces. We aim for informal, interactive sessions, full of debate and good will. Dates of meetings will be listed in the notes section in the time schedule.

Do you know what an anthropological perspective is? Can you describe some of the key assumptions and questions within the discipline? nA major in Anthropology is composed of many specialized courses in different tracks, different emphases and seemingly a never-ending multiplication of perspectives and ethnographies. However, Anthropology is also an ongoing intellectual conversation with foundational questions, some of longstanding and some new. These foundational questions have stimulated different responses and answers and thus have also led to constant renewal of the discipline in the midst of profound disagreement. In this Anthropology Capstone course students across tracks and emphases will address some of the critical debates that have been central to the discipline as it has developed. We will feature three debate questions in the class. Preparation for each debate will be through class discussion of critical readings as well as extra-mural reading and preparation with one¿s debating partners.

This course investigates the field of environmental archaeology. Its goals are twofold: 1) to critically consider the intellectual histories of environmental archaeology, and, 2) to survey the various techniques and methods by which archaeologists assess historical environmental conditions through material proxies. The course will include lab activities.

Archaeologists rely on an understanding of stone tools to trace much of what we know about prehistoric societies. How to make, illustrate, and analyze stone tools, revealing the method and theory intrinsic to these artifacts.

The course explores archaeological GIS and the techniques adopted to acquire, evaluate and manage spatial data. The students will be provided both with theoretical and practical principles of GIS for archaeological use and site management.nnStudents will learn a complete GIS workflow, from data acquisition to decision making. They will use Venice, a multilayered site, as a test case. The course will examine practical evaluation processes in consideration of current and future development projects in the Venetian lagoon, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The politics of producing knowledge in and about Africa through the genre of ethnography, from the colonial era to the present. The politics of writing and the ethics of social imagination. Sources include novels juxtaposed to ethnographies.

This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities, medicine and bio-science and technology to explore the ways that health and illness are made through complex social forces. We aim for informal, interactive sessions, full of debate and good will. Dates of meetings will be listed in the notes section in the time schedule.

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.

The purpose of this course is to introduce key themes in social theory - the social, the modern subject, reason, autonomy, civility, interests, exchange, morality, life, the senses - through a reading of classic texts from Descartes up to psychoanalysis and phenomenology. nnEach section has original texts, commentaries, and background readings that place these texts in their deeper historical setting. Many of these commentaries trace how practical theories of 'lower' or minor selves - the subject people of the colonies, slaves, and other - were integral to the very development of ideas of the modern, autonomous and reasonable self in the western world. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

Required of ANTHRO Ph.D. students; open to all graduate students. Research methods and modes of evidence building in ethnographic research. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

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.

Iconic discipline-building works of the last three decades; readings that lay out and intervene in contemporary debates. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

What does it mean to want to help, to organize humanitarian aid, in times of crisis? At first glance, the impulse to help issui generis a good one. Helping is surely preferable to indifference and inaction. This does not mean that humanitarian interventions entail no ethical or political stakes or that they are beyond engaged critique. We need to critique precisely that which we value, and to ask some hard questions, among them these: What are the differences among humanitarianism, charity, and philanthropy? What of social obligations and solidarities? How does the neoliberal world order currently create structural inequalities that ensure the reproduction of poverty and violence? How does the current order of things resemble or differ from the colonial world order? This course examines the history of humanitarian sensibilities and the emergence of organized action in the cause of humanity. In the early years of humanitarian intervention, political neutrality was a key principle; it has now come under ever greater analytical and political scrutiny. We will examine the reasons for the politicization and militarization of aid -- be it humanitarian aid in natural disasters or political crises; development programs in the impoverished south (¿the Third World¿), or peace-keeping. We will end with a critical exploration of the concept of human rights, humanity, and personhood. The overall methodological aim of the course is to demonstrate what insights an ethnographic approach to the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of humanitarianism can offer. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

This seminar offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of landscape, noting the various processes and projects that have help create them. Readings draw together a broad range of theoretical approaches that are attentive to human-non-human interactions and the overlapping and divergent spatial and temporal questions of the exchanges between landscapes and humans. The readings will also draw attention to representational and non-representational ways that material and symbolic aspects of landscapes help constitute the making of place. The aim of the seminar is to explore the various methodologies for what they offer for the study of place.

This seminar course will cover cognitive and evolutionary approaches to understanding religion. The class features cutting edge research on the cognitive science of religion from anthropology and psychology. Why is religious belief so powerful and resilient in human history? This course explores the new cognitive and evolutionary approaches to understanding religion that have recently attracted such widespread attention. Readings come from anthropology and psychology and include Boyd, Richerson, Henrich, Sperber, Barrett, McCauley, Boyer, Atran, Sosis, Norenzayan, Astuti, Harris, Legare and others.

Advanced graduate seminar focused on the archaeology of colonial and postcolonial contexts, both prehistoric and historic. Emphasis on intersections between archaeological research and and subaltern, postcolonial, and transnational feminist/queer theory. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required of fifth-year Ph.D. students returning from dissertation field research and in the process of writing dissertations and preparing for professional employment. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

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

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 as assistant in one undergraduate course.

Graduate student reading group on a thematic topic of interest.nIntended for first or second-year cohort PhD students.nSections: Liisa Malkki, Sylvia Yanagisako, Thomas Hansen, Paulla Ebron, andnMiyako Inoue

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.