71 - 80 of 337 results for: Anthropology

Land is often treated as stable ground, bounded property, or neutral territory. This course challenges these assumptions by examining interdisciplinary conceptions of land within anthropological scholarship. Its goal is to understand and situate the intersecting contestations over land as a global resource, shared environment, property, territorial foundation of the nation-state, and a site of human and non-human dwelling. Through historical and ethnographic case studies from different regions of the world, the course explores how land becomes central to colonial projects and decolonial struggles; how property and ownership are tied to citizenship and rights; how land is governed in contemporary settler-colonial and post-colonial contexts; and how climate change and environmental planning unevenly shape vulnerability and belonging. Together, these perspectives invite students to rethink land as a dynamic and unstable social relation rather than a fixed or neutral ground.

Forests shape our lives more deeply than we often realize and linger in the peripheries of public discourse. Forests can be enchanted, industrially managed, engulfed by fire, preserved as wilderness. Drawing upon emerging frames, such as multispecies ethnography and feminist studies of the environment, this course takes a "rubber boots" approach to the forest, which includes a visit to the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford. Additionally, we will explore how forests intersect with climate justice, colonial legacies, and Indigenous sovereignty. By the end of the course, you will be able to tell the forest from the trees.

There are few cities more emblematic of the rapid urbanization of today's global population than Mumbai, India, formerly known as Bombay. With over 20 million residents, Mumbai today stands as the most populous city in one of the world's most populous countries, an ever-expanding metropolis marked by starkclass disparities and a heterogenous collage of religious, ethnic, and caste communities struggling to find space on a narrow peninsula painstakingly reclaimed from the Arabian Sea. The city's glitz, glamour, and diversity have long made it an object of fascination for both Indians and foreigners alike. Not only is Mumbai a major engine of culture and politics within India, but the city also has a long history of furnishing imagery of South Asian life to the wider world, whether as a site for documentaries and novels or through colorful Bollywood films. In this course, students will have the opportunity to use Mumbai as a jumping-off point to explore South Asian culture and society, as well as contemporary themes in global urban studies: How do issues such as gentrification, rural-urban migration, segregation, the globalization of capitalism, and decolonialization play out in a city such as Mumbai? What happens to supposedly timeless identities such as religion, caste, and ethnicity when they are subjected to the pressures of intense urbanization? What kinds of data can we use to answer these questions, and what are their respective strengths and limitations?We will address these questions through a wide range of materials, including film, literature, and academic texts. By the end of the quarter, students should not only find themselves with expanded knowledge of South Asia, Mumbai, and global urbanism, but also with increased confidence regarding the types of data, methodology, and analysis they can employ in their own projects. No prior knowledge of South Asia or urban studies is assumed for this course.

For the past 40 years, feminist scholars have been exploring how the lack of diversity among archaeologists in the present affects what we learn about the past. As disciplinary demographics become more inclusive, how has the practice of archaeology changed? What inequities linger, and how can they be addressed? How do these inequities shape the knowledge we produce about the human past? In this intersectional course, we will examine sexism, racism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, and cissexism in the field. Along with grounding ourselves in the literature and hearing from a variety of guest speakers, we will focus on understanding the methods of this body of investigation, and developing new research on these issues. Students will develop small-scale original research projects using surveys, participant observation, oral histories, or interviews to understand a form of inequality in the discipline. These papers will be presented in a symposium at the end of the quarter.

An introduction to themes and discourses in Black Geographies: a field concerned with the spatial dynamics and dimensions interwoven with Black life and being. This seminar-style course operates from the premise of the social construction of race and racism as spatial phenomena. As Jovan Scott Lewis and Camilla Hawthorne put it in The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (2023), "the production of space is tied to the production of difference." We thus commence the course with a theoretical orientation to this interdisciplinary field and its intersection with Black Studies at large. Subsequent weeks focus on how the Black experience(s) manifests around the world through various spatially-oriented imaginaries (the Black metropolis vs. Black suburbia, Black America vs. Black Europe, the African Diaspora vs. the African continent, Afro-Asia vs. Afro-Orientalism, Jim Crow laws in the southern United States vs. the South African apartheid regime, etc.). The course concludes with a meditation on the construction of Black utopias - or dystopias? - whether real-world places (Tulsa, Oklahoma's "Black Wall Street") or fictions (Wakanda, the home of Marvel's Black Panther superhero). Throughout the quarter, we will endeavor to balance theorizing Blackness as a social construction and geographic phenomenon with the lived experiences of people of African descent who navigate, resist, and challenge structures of spatialized power. Through both cultural production and the historical archive, we will ask how Black people have navigated anti-Blackness to create affirming senses of place in hostile spaces and times.

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.

Built environments face several ecological and structural challenges. Aging infrastructure, toxic saturation, and dramatic weather events prompt the need to rework modernist assumptions about built forms and their permanence. This seminar/workshop offers a generative approach to place-making. Drawing upon our respective orientations in the social and natural sciences, as well as in practice-based disciplines such as design, engineering, and environmental studies, we aim to imagine plans better suited to address environmental concerns of the twenty-first century. Readings and methods combine ethnographic and project-oriented case studies that highlight urgent problems in need of undoing, as we collaboratively work towards ideas for rebuilding a sustainable future.

From backyard solar panels and water wells to DIY filters and cookware, what can small-scale, locally crafted technologies teach us about survival, adaptation, and creativity in the Anthropocene that high-tech solutions often overlook? This course traces the life-worlds of indigenous technologies across mountains, forests, deserts, and coastal regions. Through case studies such as wildfire management, water harvesting aqueducts, and floating reed islands, students explore how seemingly vernacular technologies meet the functional, economic, socio-political, and aesthetic needs of indigenous communities that create and sustain them. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, and ecological philosophy, this course further examines the sustainability, resilience, accessibility offered by these low-tech technical solutions in the contemporary world. Students will engage with theoretical frameworks from social ecologies, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), appropriate technology, and Anthropocene studies.

Community-based research in archaeology