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This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline¿s distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline's distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.

Aims, methods, and data in the study of human society's development from early hunters through late prehistoric civilizations. Archaeological sites and remains characteristic of the stages of cultural development for selected geographic areas, emphasizing methods of data collection and analysis appropriate to each.

Modernity. How the concept of art appears timeless and commonsensical in the West, and with what social consequences. Historicizing the emergence of art. Modernist uses of primitive, child art, asylum, and outsider art.

The world-famous landscapes of East Africa, including Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and the Rift Valley lakes of Tanzania form the backdrop for this special course on protected area conservation and its impacts on local people. The course is designed to explore the pros and cons of parks and protected areas as they affect flora, fauna, and human inhabitants, and to address the dilemma of how to achieve conservation in a manner that creates local community benefits and promotes social justice. We will use a case study approach to ask: (1) What approach to protected area (PA) conservation has been taken in each case? Who are the key proponents and what are their main social and ecological objectives? (2) How successful has the protected area been at achieving its conservation goals? (3) What are the benefits of the PA to people and who receives them? (4) What are the costs of the PA to people and who pays them? (5) Where benefits are not commensurate to costs, what, if anything, is being done to address the imbalance? How well is it working? (6) Are there alternative conservation models that would make the interests of parks and people more compatible, and reduce the tradeoffs between them? What is needed to operationalize these alternative models, and how do they incentivize conservation behavior among local residents?nThis course includes an intensive 12-day expedition to Tanzania to observe firsthand the dilemmas of parks and peoples we have discussed in class. We are scheduled to visit Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Mt. Meru, and Serengeti National Parks, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and nearby Maasai villages. Both on campus and in Tanzania, the course emphasizes student contributions and presentations. Students are required to read one or two books a month over the summer, and to come to campus in the fall well-prepared to discuss each one, including co-leading the discussion of one of the readings. Students are also expected to carry out literature research on a particular conservation dilemma in East Africa that is of interest to them for the final assignment of the seminar, a 6- to 8-page paper, and to present the main findings of that paper during evening seminars as we travel in East AfricanNote: Students will arrive on campus and will be housed at Stanford until we leave for the travel portion of the course. A group of 20-some Stanford alumni will join us for the last 2 days on campus and for the travel portion of the course.

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.

Fossil, genetic and archaeological evidence suggest that modern humans began to disperse out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. Subsequently, humans have colonized every major landmass on earth. This class introduces students to the data and issues regarding human dispersal, migration and colonization of continents and islands around the world. We explore problems related to the timing and cause of colonizing events, and investigate questions about changing patterns of land use, demography and consumption. Students are introduced to critical relationships between prehistoric population changes and our contemporary environmental crisis.

Secularism is often taken to be a necessary prerequisite for democracy in the modern world. The separation of religion and politics is often written into constitutions as a fundamental priority. Yet around the world, growing numbers of religious movements have sought to dispute the legitimacy of secularism. Social scientists, including anthropologists, are beginning to research the forms of domination and political violence that have been justified in the name of secularism. This course seeks to make sense of this global debate about secularism. It does so by taking up an anthropological perspective: much as anthropologists might study culture, religion, or kinship, we will interrogate secularism as a comparative social artifact, constituted by historically specific repertoires of signs, identities, everyday practices, and institutional powers. The course focuses on case studies in the United States, Western Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.

The human-animal relationship is dynamic, all encompassing and durable. Without exception, all socio-cultural groups have evidenced complex interactions with the animals around them, both domesticated and wild. However, the individual circumstances of these interactions are hugely complicated, and involve much more than direct human-animal contact, going far beyond this to incorporate social, ecological and spiritual contexts.n This course delves into this complexity, covering the gamut of social roles played by animals, as well as the methods and approaches to studying these, both traditional and scientific. While the notion of `animals as social actors¿ is well acknowledged, their use as proxies for human autecology (the relationship between a species and its environment) is also increasingly recognized as a viable mechanism for understanding our cultural and economic past. It will piece together the breadth of human-animal relationships using a wide geographic range of case studies.