ANTHRO 111: Archaeology of Gender and Sexuality (ARCHLGY 129, FEMGEN 119)
How archaeologists study sex, sexuality, and gender through the material remains left behind by past cultures and communities. Theoretical and methodological issues; case studies from prehistoric and historic archaeology.
Last offered: Winter 2025
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
ANTHRO 111C: Muwekma: Landscape Archaeology and the Narratives of California Natives (ARCHLGY 111B, NATIVEAM 111B)
This course explores the unique history of San Francisco Bay Area tribes with particular attention to Muwekma Ohlone- the descendent community associated with the landscape surrounding and including Stanford University. The story of Muwekma provides a window into the history of California Indians from prehistory to Spanish exploration and colonization, the role of Missionaries and the controversial legacy of Junipero Serra, Indigenous rebellions throughout California, citizenship and land title during the 19th century, the historical role of anthropology and archaeology in shaping policy and recognition of Muwekma, and the fight for acknowledgement of Muwekma as a federally recognized tribe. We will visit local sites associated with this history and participate in field surveys of the landscape of Muwekma.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
ANTHRO 112: Music in Psychic and Social Life (MUSIC 110, PSYC 110, TAPS 110M)
Students at Stanford and students at a community mental health site co-learn theories and co-create songs in this community-engaged course. From memes to magazines, "psychoanalysis has returned" - perhaps partly in response to crises of the twenty-first century with no easy, rational answers. How do the participatory arts and music align with contemporary psychoanalytic approaches that act at the level of the psychosocial and institutional? We explore in theory and practice how the psychic is social and the social is psychic. The course culminates in a community song-sharing celebration. Note: no musical training is required to take this course. This is a Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center for Public Service.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 9 units total)
ANTHRO 114E: Aesthetics of Trauma: Designing for Ghosts, Memory, and Afterlives in East Asia (EALC 114)
What does it mean to design and imagine a space of memory, haunting and historical trauma? How might we curate images that encapsulate and engender both pain and hope for the future? This course explores the aesthetic traces of trauma in contemporary East Asia through the investigation of cultural spaces of war, ruins, monuments and memorials as sites of critical inquiry. Taking an anthropological approach to understanding both the enactment of war and its cultural consequences, this course focuses on the legacies of the 20th century historical trauma in the present by questioning the symbolic significance of historical space, aesthetics, and memory in human societies. How does historical trauma take shape through a form of contemporary aesthetic? How is it felt within the lived experiences of contemporary Asia? What does it mean to live in the aftermath of the Cold War in Asia, or similarly, in anticipations of future war? By delving into various case studies from China, Japan, Korea,
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What does it mean to design and imagine a space of memory, haunting and historical trauma? How might we curate images that encapsulate and engender both pain and hope for the future? This course explores the aesthetic traces of trauma in contemporary East Asia through the investigation of cultural spaces of war, ruins, monuments and memorials as sites of critical inquiry. Taking an anthropological approach to understanding both the enactment of war and its cultural consequences, this course focuses on the legacies of the 20th century historical trauma in the present by questioning the symbolic significance of historical space, aesthetics, and memory in human societies. How does historical trauma take shape through a form of contemporary aesthetic? How is it felt within the lived experiences of contemporary Asia? What does it mean to live in the aftermath of the Cold War in Asia, or similarly, in anticipations of future war? By delving into various case studies from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, this course invites students to read and experiment with hands-on design and curation at the conjunction of applied aesthetics and historical reflection and aspires to begin to understand how aesthetic environments, objects, and interpretations become fundamental modes of existing with and within history.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Chan, C. (PI)
ANTHRO 116: Data Analysis for Quantitative Research (ANTHRO 216)
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.
Last offered: Autumn 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-AQR
ANTHRO 116B: Anthropology of the Environment (ANTHRO 216B, ARCHLGY 116B)
This seminar interrogates the history of anthropology's approach to the environment, beginning with early functionalist, structuralist, and Marxist accounts of human-environment relationships. It builds towards more recent developments in the field, focusing on nonhuman and relational ontologies as well as current projects on the intersections of nature, capital, politics, and landscape histories. At the end of this class, students will be familiar with the intellectual histories of environmental anthropology and contemporary debates and tensions around questions of ethics, agency, environment, and historical causality.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
ANTHRO 118: Ghosts, Gods, Spirits, and Companion AI: Talking with Non-Human Others Across the World (PSYCH 118A, RELIGST 118X)
Throughout history and across cultures, people have interacted with invisible others. They have called them gods, ghosts, spirits, the dead and so forth. Humans have also experienced invisible others as responding in ways that are often (but not always) experientially consistent across time and space. They hear voices, see visions, feel presence and force. This class explores the relationship between specific psychological experiences and specific social practices through which these experiences are interpreted and cultivated. Often, these practices and ideas are intertwined with human health and medical healing, with loneliness, pain and death. We will not presume that invisible others are real or not real: the goal of the class is to understand them as real experiences. And we will ask: how do new forms of interacting with AI characters seem like and unlike these older forms? Students will explore these questions by using the practices themselves, and by reading a combination of ethnographic literature, medical science and psychological experiments.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Luhrmann, T. (PI)
ANTHRO 120C: Kinship, Citizenship, and Belonging from an East Asian Perspective (EASTASN 220C)
Why does the state and the economic market care about who we love, how we build families, and whether we reproduce? This course introduces students to the important events, processes, and debates with respect to the interrelation between kinship, citizenship, and social-political belonging in modern and contemporary East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). We will read ethnographies, anthropological theories, and literary critiques, supplemented by clips of movies, TV dramas, and interviews. The key issues to explore include: How might inclusion and exclusion be created along the lines of class, gender, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity? How might practices of love, gender, family, and reproduction come to condition political sovereignty, economic production, and everyday norms? How might discourses about love, belonging and care anchor the ideologies and practices of modernity, nationalism, socialism, or neoliberalism?
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Zhao, S. (PI)
ANTHRO 120H: Introduction to the Medical Humanities (DLCL 120, FRENCH 120E, ITALIAN 120)
Medical Humanities is a humanistic and interdisciplinary approach to the topic of medicine. It explores the experience of health and illness as captured through the expressive arts (painting, music and literature), across historical periods and in different cultures, and as interpreted by humanistic scholars in the humanities and social sciences as well as in medicine and policy. 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 illness and healing, to the way that medicine is an art form as well as a science, and to the way institutions and culture shape illness.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Maitra, A. (PI)
ANTHRO 120S: Contested Virilities: Ethnographies/Anthropology of Manhood and Masculinity in the Digital Age
What is to be a "virile" man in the current digital age? Is masculinity in a crisis today, as "virility" is contested by feminism, Queer lifestyles, and social change? For some, masculinity is associated with social toxicity as much as it is with physical strength, domination, and power, but can it also be related to vulnerability? What is fragile masculinity? While some cultures tie virility more with (sexual and industrial) productivity, warfare, and spiritual power, others identify it with stoicism, dignity, and charismatic leadership. How do current forms of manhood deal with myriad socio-political challenges when these connections break up and reveal fragility? How does socio-cultural anthropology approach manliness and manhood in these turbulent times? From underground fighting clubs to active baGlefronts and their aftermaths, to the fitness hype of gym bros to dating apps, this course situates virility and its anxieties as a cultural terrain where ideals of productivity, strengt
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What is to be a "virile" man in the current digital age? Is masculinity in a crisis today, as "virility" is contested by feminism, Queer lifestyles, and social change? For some, masculinity is associated with social toxicity as much as it is with physical strength, domination, and power, but can it also be related to vulnerability? What is fragile masculinity? While some cultures tie virility more with (sexual and industrial) productivity, warfare, and spiritual power, others identify it with stoicism, dignity, and charismatic leadership. How do current forms of manhood deal with myriad socio-political challenges when these connections break up and reveal fragility? How does socio-cultural anthropology approach manliness and manhood in these turbulent times? From underground fighting clubs to active baGlefronts and their aftermaths, to the fitness hype of gym bros to dating apps, this course situates virility and its anxieties as a cultural terrain where ideals of productivity, strength, morality, and belonging are continually produced, tested, and reworked. The purpose of this course is to make the participants familiar not only with ethnographic works and social concepts compiled from academic research on men and masculinity. But it also prompts us to critically engage with cultural critiques, polemics, and ways of seeing of the virile formations, their contestations, and social rebounds, such as in new queer media spaces, stand-up stages, tech world's bromance in the Silicon Valley, and the deep corners of Manosphere's incel networking, among others. In this exploration, this course exposes us not only to the forms of hypermasculinity or male chauvinism from machismo to exclusionary androphilia, but also to male coping mechanisms and their failures in the presence of loss and loneliness, ableism, social defeat, and cancel culture. By collecting together, we will ethnographically interact with a wide range of materials, including but not limited to artistic performances, manifestos, podcasts, comics, graphic novels, social media memes and posts, memoirs, novels, films, and documentaries to explore how virility is contested, transmuted, dissolved, and remade. Guest lecturers and speakers may also join based on their availability.
| Units: 3