printer friendly pageANTHRO 107A: Finding Home Reclaiming History: Advanced Methods in California Indian Studies
How do contemporary California Native Americans claim and tell their own stories? Using archival information, government documents, archaeological evidence, Interviews and field projects, this course examines the methods contemporary scholars use to work with Native Americans. We emphasize the role of mythmaking, film and popular culture in shaping public perceptions of California Indians. May be repeat for credit
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 12 units total)
Instructors:
Wilcox, M. (PI)
ANTHRO 116C: Native Americans in the 21st Century: Encounters, Identity, and Sovereignty in Contemporary America (ANTHRO 16, ARCHLGY 16, NATIVEAM 16)
What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Wilcox, M. (PI)
ANTHRO 117A: Stuff (ANTHRO 217A, ARCHLGY 117A)
Never before have humans been engulfed by so much stuff. Stuff is needed to survive giving us the basics of food, clothing, and shelter. But stuff does so much more. Smart phones rule our social interactions. Louis Vuitton handbags display status. Air conditioning masters nature. Picassos inspire beauty. Wedding bands promise eternal love. Crosses connect believers to God. Is stuff really who we are? This seminar explores the science of stuff, past, present and future, investigating deeply-held beliefs about the meaning, value, and purpose of objects. Because our stuff has become such a popular obsession, this course embraces the eclectic intersection of popular and academic knowledge. Students will seek to answer the complex whys of our relationship with objects and understand our future human condition made by the material world.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Colwell, C. (PI)
ANTHRO 120: The Maya
Lecture course on the ancient and modern Maya. We explore the archaeology, ecology, culture, and language history of the Maya from the earliest times to the Classic Maya Collapse in the 9th-10th Centuries A.D., and examine also the Post-Classic, the Conquest, and Colonial Periods, and the persistence and impact of the Maya in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and diasporic Maya in the United States. The course acquaints students with the cultural achievements of the Maya in the context of the anthropology and archaeology of civilization, and considers issues of identity over vast periods of time. It includes discussion of the roles of isolation, contact, and geography in Maya history; principles of archaeological excavation and interpretation as applied to the Maya city-states, especially to their rise and fall; Maya hieroglyphic writing and its decipherment; Maya mythology and the Popol Vuh; Maya art in its Mesoamerican context; ethical issues in the management of Maya archaeological sites; principles of ethnographic analysis as applied in modern Maya communities, and Maya rebellions against colonial and modern states. Anthropology concentration: CS, Arch. No prerequisites.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
ANTHRO 120F: Buying Black: Economic Sovereignty, Race, and Entrepreneurship in the USA (AFRICAAM 120F, CSRE 120F)
This seminar examines how communities of color have critiqued and transformed capitalism in America through concepts of economic independence, entrepreneurship, and sovereignty. By tracing concepts such as the double-duty dollar, casino/tribal capitalisms, retail boycotts, and buying black, the course traces ethnic entrepreneurialism in America. Students will also consider the international context of such US-based movements, particularly in relation to American imperialism and global supply-chain capitalism.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Lu, V. (PI)
ANTHRO 123A: Debating Repatriation (ANTHRO 223A, ARCHLGY 123A)
The debates over the return of cultural property have raged for centuries. At stake are key questions about the rights of Indigenous peoples, intellectual freedom, nationalism, globalization, heritage management, the meaning of history, and the purpose of museums in the world. This seminar examines these vital discussions that intersect law and morality, science and religion, culture and politics. Discussions will be informed by cross-cultural, legal, ethical perspectives, exploring both the philosophical and practical implications of the repatriation debates. This course will provide students with a nuanced historical viewpoint of museum collections, heritage policies, and legal dimensions that underpin contests over cultural property.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Colwell, C. (PI)
ANTHRO 126A: Politics of the Past (ANTHRO 226A, ARCHLGY 126A)
The past is never dead, William Faulkner once wrote. It's not even past. This seminar explores the contested meanings of history in the political present. It particularly focuses on how archaeological work and heritage becomes entangled in larger questions of identity, belonging, belief, economics, and the stories we tell about ourselves. Students will gain an expansive and in-depth perspective on why humans so value what has come before us, and why making meaning from the past is a process suffused with power.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Colwell, C. (PI)
ANTHRO 127C: Anthropology of Sport and the Body
This course will use the work of anthropology and critical studies to analyze modern sport and how it shapes the body. We will begin by looking at various ways in which theorists have proposed studying sport, and then use these theoretical frameworks to examine contemporary sport, from individual practice to global spectacle. We will look too at how sport has historically been used as a technique of both control and resistance. We will read several anthropologists work on sport across the world. We will conclude the course with a sustained discussion of the Olympic Games, using the tools we have studied to think through this massive spectacle of global import. nThis course is ideally suited for anyone interested in how sport can be examined as a form of culture and social exchange and, more broadly, how theory can be used to break open contemporary culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Kayne, S. (PI)
ANTHRO 128: Visual Studies
Drawing on anthropology, art history, cultural studies, and other fields, this course explores how and why one might want to think critically about the politics of visuality, social imagination, the politics of making and consuming images and things, iconophonia and iconophilia, the classification of people and things into 'artists' and 'art', and cultural production more generally.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-SocSci
Instructors:
Malkki, L. (PI)
ANTHRO 152: Ritual, Politics, Power (SOC 156)
Our everyday lives are made up of multiple routines, some consciously staged and imagined and others unconscious and insidious. Anthropologists call these rituals. Rituals shape every aspect of our lives, creating our symbolic universes and governing the most minute of our practices. nnFor early anthropologists and for those interested in religious and symbolic life, rituals and rites were seen as both one of the most universal features of human existence, and, as that which enables us to reflect upon our human existence. A prominent example are that of the ¿rites de passage¿ found in every culture, from puberty initiation rites, weddings or funerals, which socially signal the change from one status to another. While initially for anthropologists, rituals marked the difference between the sacred and the profane, soon scholars began to see the ubiquity of ritual and the symbolic in shaping even the most mundane activity such as the structure of a meal and why one is not meant to eat dessert before the main course. The first half of the class examines these different debates surrounding the meaning and effects of rituals and rites. The second half of the class takes these debates to think about the question of power and politics. We return to the question of how our symbolic universes are staged and imagined by us through ritual forms such as the annual Presidential ¿pardoning the turkey¿ at Thanksgiving. The question of power however pushes us even further to ask why it is that we obey particular kinds of authority, consent to particular actions, and find ourselves doing things we haven¿t consciously decided to do. Many have argued that these kinds of political questions about how we respond and are shaped by power have something to do with our symbolic worlds and ritual, from the most obvious (the monarchy) to the most subtle (listening in a classroom). Throughout the course, these abstract questions will be grounded in cross-cultural examples and analysis.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Thiranagama, S. (PI)
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