Stanford University Explore Courses

ANTHRO 340A: Fit: The Anthropology of Sports, Medicine, and Debility

Sport has long been a domain in which everyday people, medical professionals and political authorities have interfaced with the making of institutional definitions and social norms regarding fitness and debility. This course will challenge students to reflect on that interface through consideration of recent research findings within sociocultural anthropology and allied fields.

Terms: Win | Units: 5

Instructors: Kohrman, M. (PI)

ANTHRO 341: The Archaeololgy of Religious Crusading in Medieval Europe

This course will present a chronologically framed outlined of the three main regions that witnessed the greatest impact of the crusading period. Commencing with the initial capture of Jerusalem and the subsequent establishment of a crusader kingdom in the Middle East in AD1099, till its eventual end in 1291, this will be followed by the `pagan conversions¿ of the Northern Baltic. Centred on Poland (Prussia) and Latvia (Livonia) from the 13th to 15th c., this example will also be compared with neighbouring Lithuania, which never fell under the political hegemony of the Monastic Orders. Finally, the course covers the Iberian case, where the Reconquista ¿ or `reconquest¿ - of lands from Muslim groups concluded with the fall of Granada and the unification of Spain in 1492. Through archaeological and historical evidence, the materials, technologies and ideas of the crusading groups will be compared and contrasted, with a particularly emphasis on bioarchaeological datasets. Ultimately, the course deals with the economic, social and practical mechanisms used by the religious orders to `colonise¿, once the initial conquest had been achieved. Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor

Last offered: Spring 2013

ANTHRO 343: Culture as Commodity

Focus is on theories of commodification, interests in tourism, national cultures as marketable objects, and how identities are constituted through production and consumption. The formation of global style and taste. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. Co-term students and above may sign up for this course.

Last offered: Spring 2017

ANTHRO 344: Graphic Medicine

In this course students will study medical cultures through visual communication ranging from x-rays and PET scans to graphic novels. Course will also include literature on visual theory.

Last offered: Autumn 2010

ANTHRO 345: New Visions in Medical Anthropology

Recent experimental histories of the field. Emphasis is on how, working within anthropology's classic format, the ethnographic monograph, authors have innovatively responded to the challenges of representing amorphous, unspoken, and often violent relationships between the body and social change. The authors' expository techniques, and how they engage and extend theoretical debate. How to assess works within medical anthropology and its allied fields. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Last offered: Winter 2018

ANTHRO 345A: Race and Power: The Making of Human Difference in History, Biology and Capital

This course examines how race is made. We will pay close attention to how people engage with material, economic, scientific, and cultural forces to articulate human group difference as a given, and even natural. In this seminar, we will look at the reality of race as a literally constructed phenomenon, where historical, colonial, bodily, market, penal, and humanitarian constituent elements both circulate and sediment racial understandings. To focus our readings and discussions we will divide this vast terrain into three units: race and the colonial encounter, race and biopower, and race in systems of capital accumulation.

Last offered: Winter 2018

ANTHRO 346: The Social Imagination

The imagination as such has not been an accustomed object of ethnographic fieldwork or theoretical debate in anthropology. This seminar consists of a cluster of thematic explorations including: the spatial imagination of states; the imagination of race, colonialism, and domination; the social imagination of evil and of the good; and conceptualizations of the creative imagination.

Last offered: Autumn 2014

ANTHRO 346A: Sexuality Studies in Anthropology

Current research on sexuality from perspectives including paleoanthropology, archaeology, ethnography, and linguistic anthropology. Readings paired with case studies that explore theoretical and methodological issues. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Last offered: Winter 2011

ANTHRO 347: Religion and Modernity (RELIGST 332X)

What role has the category of religion played in the development of the modern state, both colonial and national? How have central concepts of liberal political thought, such as freedom, progress, and history, depended on certain normative ideas of religion? Through various genealogical, historical, and ethnographic inquires, this course examines how the category of religion has both subtended and disturbed formations of colonial and post-colonial modernity.

Last offered: Spring 2014

ANTHRO 347B: World Heritage in Global Conflict

Heritage is always political, it is typically said. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has over 1000 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally, but has found it¿s own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.