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This course will introduce students to the theories and methods that archaeologists use to study ceramic objects. Ceramic materials are ubiquitous at most archaeological sites, making their analysis critical for interpreting the past. This course applies an anthropological lens to consider not just the ceramics themselves, but the people for whom these objects were critical in daily life. As such, we will examine theory alongside method, so that students learn how these areas inform each other and what information can be gleaned through specific research questions and techniques. We will dedicate one day a week to discussing theory, while the other day will focus on methodological applications through hands-on labs. Students will be introduced to the physio-chemical methods for ceramic analysis (e.g., ICP-MS, petrography), with an emphasis on paste analysis using digital and polarized light microscopy. We will also consider the ethics of analysis. For instance, we will weigh the merit of destructive techniques against knowledge gained and conservation concerns. This class is appropriate for anthropology, archaeology, classics, art history, and history majors, or anyone with an interest in material culture analysis.

Anthropology and the academy more generally have long valued text, language, and cognition more highly than the image, visuality, and the imagination. Yet, contemporary political movements and strategies for social justice and transformation vividly demonstrate why effective social research needs to study both.Pre-requisite by instructor consent.

In this seminar, we will investigate the relationship between body and environment in its many manifestations. Through engagement with key concepts in environmental and medical anthropology and social studies of science, we will ask: what is the relationship between environmental injustice and health inequity? How are relationships of power - such as colonialism, racism, and war - also environmental projects? And how do we study altered environments and ill or injured bodies in just ways? This course prepares students to critically engage questions of environmental and human health, with a particular focus on scholarship from beyond the United States.

What makes us a person over time? How do we feel in our bodies? Are our bodies the way how powerful systems make us into persons? Can we resist incorporation through our bodies? How do bodily images and bodily feelings become circulated in a way that shapes how you or I might feel or become a person? In 1938, Marcel Mauss delivered a lecture "the category of the person" which argued that "the person" was an eminently cultural category. In doing so, he pointed to the fact that we are not born persons but become persons over our life-cycles, often through a set of both sacred and secular rituals. Others have subsequently pointed to the racialized, classed and gendered dimensions of how one becomes a person - social recognition of that personhood is also far from given but can act to keep us in a place we do not wish to be. This class explores three themes: 1) the life-passage and how we become persons through rituals, focusing in on youth, parenting and death; 2) how bodies can become the site of power and resistance and how gendered and racialized bodies are inhabited; 3) how "figures of personhood" are circulated as commoditized goods. Readings and discussions will focus on global contexts rather than only North American ones. Students are encouraged to learn about fundamental concepts without assuming that the how they work in the society, that some have been born in, and that they are all learning within, is universally applicable. The emphasis is instead that every society is produced through histories, cultural concepts, structures of power, and global circulation and movements. No prior knowledge is required. Students will come out of the class equipped with knowledge about multiple communities and structures and analytical skills of comparison and discussion of cultural and historical phenomena. The class is fully a seminar led class (no lectures), and students will learn (facilitated by the instructor) how to close-read social and anthropological theory and ethnographic work, and how to have complex open-ended conversations about this material. Students will learn over the course of the class to be able to distill insights from several different contexts and theories into their own writing.

"Ruin" has a prominent place in critical theory. The concept has close associations with the critique of modernity as the promise of scientific advancement becomes shattered with two world wars. The past two decades, however, have seen a renewed interest - evena rediscovery - in anthropology. What are some of the issues anthropologists address by using "ruin" as an anchor? What are some of the common threads between works that deploy this concept? This course introduces works that have adopted the trope of "ruin" as lens to interrogate primary anthropological objects such as capitalism, globalization, migration, environment, infrastructure, nation and empire. With insights from diverse methodologies employed by anthropologists drawing upon critical theory, literary theory, and archaeology, we will explore a rich array of anthropology's current concerns.

Unusual mental phenomena have existed throughout history and across cultures. Taught by an anthropologist and psychiatrist, this course explores how different societies construct the notions of "madness": What are the boundaries between "normal" and "abnormal", reason and unreason, mind and body, diversity and disease? Optional: The course will be taught in conjunction with an optional two-unit discussion section.

Police in the United States have come under greater public scrutiny in recent years, particularly as cell-phone videos make visible abuses by police, prompting nation-wide protests for social justice, police reform, and abolition. Increased scholarly attention to the police centers on racial profiling, "broken windows" policing strategies, mass incarceration, the surveillance state, political protests, and intensified immigration and national border policing. While the police represent state authority, ordinary policing practices are notoriously difficult to study, thereby eliding variable conditions and contradictions. This course interrogates policing and carceral practices by focusing on the purpose of the police, quotidian policing practices, and territorial control in diverse U.S. and global contexts. Course readings emphasize ethnographies of policing, along with key texts from critical geography and related fields, to elucidate multiple topographies of policing, control, and neglect at work in governing contemporary societies.

Maps, facial reconstructions, drawings of our ancient ancestors, 3D models; archaeology is a deeply visual discipline. But how do we know if an image is based on archaeological evidence? Do archaeologists still need to know how to draw? And what goes into making a good visualization? Explore these questions and more drawing on readings and activities from "How to Lie with Maps" to drawing your cellphone. Using this background, we'll then apply some of these techniques to visualize the nineteenth-century Market Street Chinatown in San Jose. What did it look like? What was the layout? What could you see from the inside? And can you find a new story to tell about one of the most important Chinese American archaeological collections?

What does it mean to claim we are all cyborgs - hybrids of human and machine? While popular culture often imagines cyborgs as futuristic figures in film, literature, and video games, this course approaches the cyborg as a framework for understanding human existence and user experience today. Drawing on anthropology, cybernetics, and cognitive science, we will explore how bodies, minds, and technologies co-construct each other, blurring the boundaries between natural and artificial, human and machine. Case studies include smartphones, wearables, biohacking, prostheses, virtual/augmented reality, and AI. Students will gain hands-on experience in methodologies shared by anthropology and UX research - including interviews, participant observation, and surveys - and will apply these techniques to critically rethink how technologies are designed and experienced in everyday life.