printer friendly pageANTHRO 116: Data Analysis for Quantitative Research (ANTHRO 216)
An introduction to numeric methods in Anthropology and related fields employing the Data Desk statistics package to test hypotheses and to explore data. Examples chosen from the instructor's research and other relevant projects. No statistical background is necessary, but a working knowledge of algebra is important. Topics covered include: Frequency Distributions; Measures of Central Tendency, Dispersion, and Variability; Probability and Probability Distributions; Statistical Inference, Comparisons of Sample Means and Standard Deviations; Analysis of Variance; Contingency Tables, Comparisons of Frequencies; Correlation and Regression; Principal Components Analysis; Discriminant Analysis; and Cluster Analysis. Grading based on take-home problem sets.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-AQR
Instructors:
Klein, R. (PI)
;
Shi, H. (TA)
ANTHRO 116B: Anthropology of the Environment (ANTHRO 216B)
This seminar interrogates the history of anthropology's approach to the environment, beginning with early functionalist, structuralist, and Marxist accounts of human-environment relationships. It builds towards more recent developments in the field, focusing on nonhuman and relational ontologies as well as current projects on the intersections of nature, capital, politics, and landscape histories. At the end of this class, students will be familiar with the intellectual histories of environmental anthropology and contemporary debates and tensions around questions of ethics, agency, environment, and historical causality.
Last offered: Spring 2018
ANTHRO 117B: Archaeologies of Religion: Belief, Ritual and Tradition (ANTHRO 217, ARCHLGY 117B)
Talking about religion and its place in modern life, inevitably appears to rest on evaluations of what religion was in the past. `Antiquated beliefs', `medieval hidebound ritual', `blind prejudice', `cultic devotion', and the constraints of tradition upon personal freedom --- such judgments abound and come readily to our minds and roll off our tongues. But what do we know of premodern religion?nIn this course we will learn more about religion, past and present, by engaging with different archaeological approaches to religion. We will start by reviewing key anthropological debates over what religion is and how (and why) it might be defined. We will pause to ask ourselves: Is religion principally immaterial or profoundly material? Is it a matter of private belief or public life? What can material remains teach us of `religion' in the past and about ourselves? We shall engage with the following debates: How has the origin of religion been understood? What is ritual and how is it studied archaeologically? How do these relate to belief? Based on these explorations we will ask: is it more valuable to try to define religion, to study its evolutionary, symbolic or performative aspects or to ask what it is that `religion' does?
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Trivedi, M. (PI)
ANTHRO 117C: Global Heritage: Conflict, Reconciliation, and Diplomacy (ARCHLGY 105)
Archaeological studies from the 1990s framed cultural heritage as a resource that created attachments to place and to the past as a means to buttress national and cultural identities. But heritage can no longer be viewed as simply a marker of a singular, national identity. As a global era ushers in new regimes of heritage management, heritage becomes embroiled in a multitude of interactions whether acting as a fulcrum of transnational governance or functioning at the crux of community empowered utilizations and initiatives.nnThis course will trace what happens to heritage as it has been drawn into a world of global interactions while also maintaining more local forms of attachment. The class will address three themes (conflict, reconciliation, and diplomacy), all of which result from the multi-scalar relations that emerge from heritage financing, management, and preservation in a transnational arena. While the class will discuss cases that include both tangible and intangible heritage,
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Archaeological studies from the 1990s framed cultural heritage as a resource that created attachments to place and to the past as a means to buttress national and cultural identities. But heritage can no longer be viewed as simply a marker of a singular, national identity. As a global era ushers in new regimes of heritage management, heritage becomes embroiled in a multitude of interactions whether acting as a fulcrum of transnational governance or functioning at the crux of community empowered utilizations and initiatives.nnThis course will trace what happens to heritage as it has been drawn into a world of global interactions while also maintaining more local forms of attachment. The class will address three themes (conflict, reconciliation, and diplomacy), all of which result from the multi-scalar relations that emerge from heritage financing, management, and preservation in a transnational arena. While the class will discuss cases that include both tangible and intangible heritage, the focus of the course will center around tangible elements of the past, including heritage sites and archaeological artifacts. Combining readings from the field of international relations, archaeology, and heritage studies, the class will question if and how heritage can be used in local settings while also producing international exchanges.
Last offered: Winter 2019
ANTHRO 118C: Heritage Development in the Global South (ARCHLGY 116)
Heritage is a site of both promise and contestation in the Global South. These nations use it for a wide range of purposes: Peru¿s thriving tourism sector rests on a basis of heritage attractions, South Africa negotiates a post-apartheid identity through heritage, and India places increasing numbers of sites on the World Heritage List. Outlining different modes of heritage production and interpretation, this class investigates heritage regimes on scales ranging from local communities and national governance to international recognition. We will examine the role of heritage in building communities and identity; the place of heritage within economic development; the efforts of Global South countries to negotiate the legacies of colonialism and global inequality through managing their pasts; and the deployment of heritage as part of international power struggles within worldwide structures like UNESCO. Drawing on anthropology, heritage studies, and archaeology, students will gain a deeper understanding of how heritage is used by Global South countries to produce identity, support development, domesticate the past, and build the future.
Last offered: Winter 2019
ANTHRO 119: Zooarchaeology: An Introduction to Faunal Remains (ANTHRO 219, ARCHLGY 119)
As regularly noted, whether historic or pre-historic, animal bones are often the most commonly occurring artefacts on archaeological sites. As bioarchaeological samples, they offer the archaeologist an insight into food culture, provisioning, trade and the social aspects of human-animal interactions. The course will be taught through both practical and lecture sessions: the `hands-on¿ component is an essential complement to the lectures. The lectures will offer grounding in the main methodological approaches developed, as well as provide case-studies to illustrate where and how the methods have been applied. The practical session will walk students through the skeletal anatomy of a range of species. It will guide students on the identification of different parts of the animal, how to age / sex individuals, as well as recognize taphonomic indicators and what these mean to reconstructing post-depositional modifications.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
ANTHRO 119B: Tech Ethics and Ethnography: the human in human-computer interaction
Do machines have culture? How do engineers write themselves into their products? Can we better anticipate the unexpected and unwanted consequences of technologies?nnTaking as its point of departure the discipline of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which examines the design and use of computer technology, this course shifts the focus to the humans creating and utilizing the technology. It invites us to think about computer science and social science together and learn how ethnographic methods can be utilized for ethical thinking and design in technology. This course will combine rigorous theoretical thinking with hands-on in-the-field research. Students will devise and engage in their own ethnographic research projects. This course will be of interest to students from a wide range of disciplines, including: computer science, engineering, medicine, anthropology, sociology, and the humanities. Our aim is to have a truly interdisciplinary and open-ended discussion about one of the most pressing social issues of our time, while giving students skills-based training in qualitative methods.
Last offered: Spring 2019
ANTHRO 120: Bioethics and Ancient DNA (ANTHRO 220, ARCHLGY 120A)
The first ancient human genome was sequenced just 10 years ago. From a single genome in 2010 to what has been hailed as a `scientific revolution¿ today, the field of paleogenomics has expanded rapidly. 10 years on we will explore how the field is grappling with emerging issues related to ethical and responsible research, including sampling practices, collaborative community partnerships, and accessibility of research findings to the broader public. How have researchers successfully leveraged multiple voices, perspectives, and priorities engaged with ancient DNA to explore the human past? What are the possibilities of engagement beyond the practical and project-based level? How do these new alliances formed around paleogenomics inform the ethics of sampling, participation, and interpretation? In this course, we will thoughtfully and critically engage with aDNA research in the present to envision possible futures for the field.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Moots, H. (PI)
ANTHRO 121B: Vital Infrastructures: The Foundations of Modern Life
Infrastructure describes the material grids that exist beneath society, economy and culture: the foundation upon which everyday life rests and depends. While meant to remain invisible, out of sight and out of mind, diverse infrastructures have become lightning rods for political protest and demands for justice, rights, and a good life. From anti-dam activism in India, to campaigns for clean drinking water in South Africa, to transportation networks in urban Bolivia, and to the energy networks of the United States, infrastructure reveals the connections and disconnections of the globalized world. Taking an anthropological perspective, this course asks: why has infrastructure taken on vital importance to the modern nation-state? What do infrastructural histories reveal about the vital political ideals like freedom, development, equality, and nature? When does infrastructure take on a life of its own, undermining even the best laid plans? What happens when infrastructures fail? Through multi-disciplinary readings and exploratory assignments, this course challenges students see the world beneath their feet in new ways and to trace the material connections that define and sustain modern life itself.
ANTHRO 123: Ethical Life with Strangers: Sociality and Civility (ANTHRO 223)
How do we deal with strangers in different parts of the world. What is a stranger? And to whom? Many theorists suggest that dealing with anonymous strangers is central to norms of sociality and civility. For the thinker Georg Simmel, the stranger is less concerned with norms of civility, and more with the promise of urban life, a category ripe for marginalization but also an illustration of the possibilities of ambiguous and multi-faceted life with others that reckons not only with our connections with others but our secrets. Others suggest that questions of empathy and ethics are concerned with how ¿others¿ are imagined and interacted with. However, is social life an encounter with strangers in a simple sense? Surely what it is to be a friend, enemy or a stranger is socially and historically produced? Who are the same and who are the others? Is anybody an ¿other¿ by virtue of not being oneself? What is the public and what is the private in different places, in different interactions?
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How do we deal with strangers in different parts of the world. What is a stranger? And to whom? Many theorists suggest that dealing with anonymous strangers is central to norms of sociality and civility. For the thinker Georg Simmel, the stranger is less concerned with norms of civility, and more with the promise of urban life, a category ripe for marginalization but also an illustration of the possibilities of ambiguous and multi-faceted life with others that reckons not only with our connections with others but our secrets. Others suggest that questions of empathy and ethics are concerned with how ¿others¿ are imagined and interacted with. However, is social life an encounter with strangers in a simple sense? Surely what it is to be a friend, enemy or a stranger is socially and historically produced? Who are the same and who are the others? Is anybody an ¿other¿ by virtue of not being oneself? What is the public and what is the private in different places, in different interactions? What is the difference between distant others, and those who are others to each other whose histories are intertwined? This class examines these questions and the complex issues around how heterogenous individuals and communities live together, by emphasizing the historical stratifications of race, class, caste, gender that comprise the stakes in any-one meeting in any space, but especially in certain spaces. We will read ethnographies and histories that teach us the ways in which structures of power, colonialism and often as a corollary exclusion and fear structure how and who meets each other, AND, also emphasize the ways in which social life can be exhilarating, complex, violent, contingent and transformative.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Thiranagama, S. (PI)
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