331 - 337 of 337 results for: Anthropology

What does is mean for something to be 'natural', and why is a connection to nature so often seen as a good thing? Drawing on perspectives from sociology, psychology, anthropology, environmental studies, and popular culture, this course analyzes how the concepts of nature and naturalness contribute to the way we make sense of our social world, including based on race, gender, beauty, morality, and politics. Students will learn about the history of environmentalism, the sociology of bodies, the economics of consumption, and the social psychology of traditionalism. Through a combination of lectures, in-class discussions, written assignments, and group projects, students will be encouraged to interrogate their own relationships with nature in order to more intentionally act towards the natural world and towards other people. Throughout, the course will prioritize a sociological lens by considering the roles of social relationships, power, scientific evidence, and inequality in cultural conceptions of nature.

This course will examine our everyday food practices as a site of politics where culture, technology, history, and issues of ethics and justice intersect. Through a survey of academic, journalistic, and artistic works on food and eating, the course will explore a set of key analytical frameworks and conceptual tools in STS, such as the politics of technology, classification and identity, the reproduction of inequality, ethical and responsible innovation, and nature/culture boundaries. The topics covered include: the industrialization of agriculture; globalization and local foodways; food justice and ethics; new technologies in food practices (e.g., biotechnology, delivery apps); health and diet trends; and food and global challenges (e.g., climate change, COVID-19). Through food as a window, the course intends to achieve two broad intellectual goals. First, students will explore various theoretical and methodological approaches in STS and related fields (e.g., anthropology, history, sociology). Second, students will develop a set of basic skills and tools for their own critical thinking and empirical research, and design and conduct independent research on a topic related to food.

This course explores a series of foundational questions concerning the social sciences (e.g., sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, history, and applied fields of education and business). What is social science? Where did it come from and how did it emerge? What topics does it concern? Are social science topics different from topics and subject matter in other fields like the science and the humanities? Are the goals and questions of social science different from that of science and the humanities? How so? What sort of knowledge does social science try to establish? What kinds of methods does it employ? What sorts of disputes persist within the social sciences? What similarities and divisions exist among social scientific fields and why? This course is a graduate level seminar where students are asked to read challenging texts, discuss them, and offer constructive critiques in writing. Advanced undergraduates need instructor permission to register.

How do ideas about race get encoded in the design of new technology? How have science and technology shaped our understanding of race and identity? Drawing on research in anthropology, history, media studies, STS, and beyond, we will consider how technology can reinforce and amplify racial inequality. From the 'scientific' origins of the concept of race in the 18th century to contemporary algorithms that attempt to detect a person's race from their image, we will explore how social ideas about race are both embedded in and transformed by technology. We will also highlight how communities of color have resisted the encroachment of harmful technologies and developed alternatives that promote racial justice. Topics covered will include: algorithmic bias, policing and borders, surveillance, disinformation, data colonialism, and labor issues like micro-tasking and data annotation. This introductory course has no prerequisites and welcomes students of all disciplines.

This seminar offers an in-depth exploration of interactive systems through the lens of human cognition. Topics covered include: reasoning and problem-solving, skill acquisition and complex learning, language, attention and perception, interaction with intelligent and adaptive systems, and design considerations for users with special needs, such as cognitive disabilities. Students will learn advanced interaction analysis methods applicable in UX analysis and cognitive research. A useful (not required) prerequisite is a course in cognitive psychology or cognitive anthropology. As this is the last time this course will be offered, enrollment is limited to advanced Symbolic Systems students who need the course to graduate. Contact the instructor (via email) to obtain an axess key.

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.