51 - 60 of 204 results for: ANTHRO

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?

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.

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.

This seminar explores sartorial practices as a means for examining formations of identities and structural inequalities across space and time. Building off the definition of dress, pulled from Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne B. Eicher, this course examines sartorial practices as social-cultural practices, shaped by many intersecting operations of power and oppression including racism, sexism, and classism, that involve modifications of the corporal form (i.e., scarification, body piercings, and hair alteration) as well as all three-dimensional supplements added to the body (i.e., clothing, hair combs, and jewelry). The emphasis on intersecting operations of power and oppression within this definition of dress draws on Kimberlé Crenshaw's conceptualization of intersectionality. Through case studies and examples from various parts of the world, we will explore multiple sources of data - documentary, material, and oral - that have come to shape the study of dress. We examine how dress intersects with facets of identity, including race, age, ethnicity, sexuality, and class.

Once almost exclusively associated with the radical leftist thought, 'dispossession' has become a household concept. This course aims to place dispossession within the historical and philosophical traditions that shape it and addresses the key question of how to think about it. We will also explore some of the following questions that are central to discourses and practices of dispossession: Why are certain forms of human deprivation and exploitation called dispossession? What is included within the framework of dispossession, and what is left out? What relationships are connected to dispossession? Recognizing dispossession as a theoretical trope, readings and discussions will cover various social processes globally. In line with the anthropological maxim that "knowledge is always situated," more theoretical texts will be complemented by ethnographies. Property at the center, and personhood always already accompanying it, the course will traverse a broad range of connected topics currently prevalent both in the discipline and public discourse.

In this course, we will examine the ways a variety of publics learn about and engage with archaeological topics, including fictional media, science journalism, pseudoarchaeology media, social media, publicly-accessible sites and museums, public archaeology programming, and community-driven archaeology projects. We will evaluate the effectiveness of these forms of public engagement for teaching non-archaeologists about the human past and its inhabitants. Students will choose among a variety of projects that allow them to practice engaging with non-archaeologist publics about archaeological topics in a variety of media or formats. No archaeological experience required.

From grocery stores and farmers' markets to real estate and financial markets, how have markets come to dominate so many spheres of our lives? In this course, we will explore an anthropological understanding of how markets have come to shape human life. We will trace the socio-cultural and historical contexts that define these markets. Further, the course will outline how these markets have both negotiated and transformed the most significant social relations of power, hierarchy and identity shaping our world - race, ethnicity, gender, caste, and religion, among others.

From lawsuits over coffee spills to military action staged in the name of human rights, 'law' is one of the most potent ideas to proliferate the modern world. In this course, students will engage with the philosophical questions that the concept of law raises about 'human nature' and 'society,' and explore the forms that legality takes in different cultural traditions. Using a set of case studies that range from tribal councils and Islamic legal debates to transnational business arbitration and shoplifting, we will interrogate law's relationship to social domination, political mobilization, and ideals of freedom, dignity, and morality. Students will leave the course a grasp of key debates in legal philosophy, an expanded knowledge of legal systems throughout the world, and a deeper understanding of the relationship between law, politics, and social conflict.

This course builds on the idea that considering environmental and social justice concerns together is possible and necessary. As such, it examines key issues in environmental justice alongside anthropological studies of related social and environmental concerns. We will study topics related to cities, agriculture, extraction, water, toxicity, and climate, alongside attentions to racial capitalism, settler colonialism, development, war-making, and state-sanctioned violence. In doing so, we will center a critical race and historical perspective that is attentive to social and environmental dynamics that have shaped present injustices. Through readings, discussions, hands-on projects, and interactive classroom engagement, we will consider the ongoing lived, analytical, and political stakes of these issues. Further emphasis on environmental justice strategies and movements will enhance our critical and heterogeneous understanding of these topics, their lived impacts, and their alternative possibilities.