DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

One way people work through trauma—understood as major ruptures in human experience such as mass violence and death, natural catastrophe, or forced displacement—is by visiting its locations and re/creating narratives about it. Representations of fear and suffering serve as forms of therapy, prevention, civic education, and even entertainment.  Memorials to traumatic human experience are often offered as symbols of hope for transformation and the future deterrence of further trauma (“never again”).  In this seminar, we analyze these sites and practices, asking whose trauma is remembered, and who’s forgotten?  What power inheres in different forms of remembering through travel, and in the aesthetic and material shape of memorials?  What do culture and heritage mean to those who produce it and for those who consume it as tourists?  How can sites, objects, and histories of trauma simultaneously “belong” to a local community, a nation, and all humanity?  Topics include museums, genocide, colonialism, slavery, the Holocaust, and war, among others.  We examine tourism from an anthropological perspective, using local and global case studies such as: the representation of slavery at Colonial Williamsburg, the role of community museums in post-apartheid South Africa, visiting Holocaust sites in Europe, and genocide tourism sites in Cambodia and Rwanda. 

ANTHO 101 Freshmen Seminar combined with WCAS BIOL_SCI 115-6-20: First-Year Seminar: Biological Thought and Action

Overview of class

Science is a process by which people make sense of the world. Scientists examine evidence from the past, work to understand the present, and make predictions about the future. Integral to this process are the methods they use to collect and analyze data, as well as the ways in which scientists work together as a community to interpret evidence and draw conclusions. In this class, we will take a multidisciplinary approach to examining biological thought and action and their social ramifications. We will seek to understand science as a social pursuit: the work of human beings with individual, disciplinary, and cultural differences, and requiring tremendous investments in training and equipment. Does it matter that participation in science is more accessible to some than to others? How do biases, assumptions, uncertainty, and error manifest in scientific work? What is the history of scientific values such as objectivity and reproducibility? The course will conclude by investigating current topics of public debate.

In this seminar, students will read about, discuss, write about, and thus gain the intellectual tools to begin to evaluate past and present American urban inequalities—including not only those of class, but also race/ethnicity, gender & sexuality, nationality. We will read across several different academic disciplines and journalism to become familiar with key analytic concepts, methods, and historical phenomena, such as the Great Compression, the War on Poverty, urban regimes, ethnography, and political economy. Using them, we will explore arenas of inequality: employment; urban space, housing, migration, and neighborhoods; schooling, criminal justice, the public sphere. You will watch two short, relevant videos on your own before the first seminar meeting.

This seminar introduces students to the anthropological study of the senses. Through close examination of ethnographic texts and films, students will explore how cultures "make sense" of the everyday and increasingly globalized world. With a heavy emphasis on written assignments, we approach the notion of perception as more than a purely physical act, and through structured participation and deliberate observation, students will learn how sensory experiences are deeply related to our own histories and cultural identities. Course activities center around developing analytic skills in the genre of ethnographic writing, and critically engaging with cross-cultural examples of sensual mediations of reality. Topics range from how the senses shape the aesthetics of daily life through color, odor, and flavor, to the significance of communication and information of technologies in the era of virtual reality, slime videos, and the online autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) community.

The Pyramids, Stonehenge, Cahokia, and Great Zimbabwe: who built these monuments, and why? They are often associated with buried treasure, lost civilizations, and a forgotten past. But archaeologists look beyond a Romantic view and ask questions about why they were built, and what they tell us about humankind. By learning about past cultures, what made them different and what made them similar, we gain a better understanding of human history and the state of the world today. People in the past were very different, but they shared one thing in common - they left behind stones and bones, pottery fragments, great monuments and burial offerings. These fragments of the past are used by archaeologists to build an understanding of what it means to be human. In this class, you will be introduced to the questions, theories, and methods of archaeology. You will learn about how archaeologists locate, survey and excavate the great monuments of the past; how they study artifacts in the lab; and how they use the stuff they find to piece together stories about the past, and test those stories against the evidence. You will learn about the diversity of ancient and modern peoples, their cultures, and the past they inhabited. You will also learn about the place of archaeology in the modern world - how archaeologists engage with questions such as long-term climate change and human response, sustainability, and inequality.

Language is universally practiced by humans, but commonsense understandings about language, its appropriate use, and its inherent qualities vary widely both between and within societies. Using the anthropological method of comparative, cross-cultural, qualitative analysis, this course looks outside our own society to ask basic questions about the relationship between language, culture, and society. We explore the dynamics of everyday talk as well as the social and political forces that shape the ways we talk and evaluate others\' speech. How does language shape collective culture and individual thought, and how do culture and thought shape language? How do adults use language to help children become culturally competent? Why have some languages disappeared altogether while others have spread? How have forces like colonialism and economic globalization brought about changes in the ways small-scale societies use language?

From antiquity until today the "West" (itself a troubled concept) imagined many things in Africa. Power, weakness, wealth, poverty, beauty, savagery, knowledge, ignorance, light, darkness. We are all heirs of these incoherent visions; a bequest that appears in widely held and constantly renewed beliefs and assumptions about the "Dark Continent." Visions of Africa today revolve largely around a set of tropes developed in the 19th century - Africa as benighted, undeveloped, female, chaotic, famine-ridden, and incapable of self-governance. However, as with all instances when one position gazes at another, the result is both accurate and inaccurate. In this class, we will turn our gaze on contemporary Africa from a cultural anthropological perspective. Using the tools of anthropology, we will visit several arenas critical to contemporary African cultures - music & dance, cinema, literature, sport, the body, technology, politics and development, among others. Through these various lenses, we will attempt to better understand cultural choices and what we can say about Africa/ns from our perspective. That is, to recognize and value both internal and external views of the continent. Through these arenas and these perspectives, we will better know issues of power, gender, hierarchy, spirituality, and economics. Will you arrive at an entirely accurate view of Africa and Africans? Never. The journey, however, will take you closer.

Cultural and ethnographic approaches to peace, peace building and peace activism. Topics of investigation include the concept of “peaceful societies,” cultural mechanisms for conflict resolution, truth and reconciliation, the relationship between peace and commerce, and the role of literature, art and material culture in peace activism.

This course includes one guest lecture on global peace activism to be scheduled outside of the normal class meeting times. Students are required to attend the event and prepare two or three questions for the guest speaker.

The event is:

Frontiers of Atomic Bomb Literature, on October 10, 2019

Seirai, Yuichi, former director, Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (2010-2019), and an Akutagawa Literary Award winning novelist; His numerous novels on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and its contemporary effects include Ground Zero, Nagasaki: Stories (Weatherhead Books on Asia), trans. Pual Warham, Columbia University Press, 2014 https://www.amazon.com/Ground-Zero-Nagasaki-Stories-Weatherhead-ebook/dp/B00QSNZSIM/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=seirai+yuichi&qid=1555342291&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull 

Knowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bio-archeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains. Through this course you will be exposed to techniques for identification and classification of human skeletal anatomy through hands-on, dry laboratory sessions. Additional time outside of class is available and may be required to review practical materials.

In this course, students learn about the culture of medieval Europe, c.AD1000-1500, through material evidence -- landscapes, buildings and objects. Among other topics, we will look at the remains of medieval field systems, villages and hamlets; the houses of peasants and lords; churches great and small; and pottery and other artifacts. The course material will be interdisciplinary: students will look at the evidence of archaeological excavations, survey of standing buildings, analysis of maps and aerial photos, and landscape, social, economic and architectural history. The course will consider Europe as a whole, but there will be an emphasis on medieval England and its neighbors in north-west Europe.

This class is fundamentally about how—and why—we do archaeology. Over the course of the quarter, we will take what interests you about archaeology and build a scaffold for how you think about these interests and how you might examine them in depth in the future. The main goal is to produce a high quality NSF proposal by the end of the course (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program proposal for undergraduates; NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for graduate students). To that end, we will spend time reviewing successful proposals to decipher how scholars link theory, data, methods, and analysis in their research projects. We will work our way through the main methods in every archaeologists\' tool kit: regional survey, excavation, and materials analysis. Upon completion of the course, students should feel comfortable writing grant proposals and be ready to design their own independent archaeological research project.

“Historical Archaeology," is a field archaeology that focuses on the past 500 years and addresses a myriad of questions including, identity, European colonialism, resistance, capitalism, and power. This course will explore the history of different peoples in the Americas through the study of the material remains they left behind: architecture, burials, food remains, clothing and jewelry, etc. Attention will be focused on the presentation and/or exclusion of groups in depictions of history and in the creation of new identities (ethnogenesis) in different parts of the Americas. It will also consider the ways in which power and economy intersect with other forms of identity, such as class, gender, and sexuality. The course will survey a variety of communities, concentrating on Indigenous Peoples, as well as people of European, African and Asian descent in American contexts. While there will be course material which touch on French and Iberian colonial contexts, class projects will primarily draw on study of artifacts and communities in the Eastern United States and the Anglophone Caribbean.

The religion of Islam is widely practiced, not only in the Middle East and in Arabic-speaking countries, but also in East and South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and increasingly in Europe and North America.  Anthropologists in the last few decades have turned increasingly to the study of Islamic communities around the world, specifically paying attention to the ways in which a global religion has been adapted to the particular circumstances of local communities. This class will explore important aspects of Muslim societies, including authority, education, law, gender, and piety.

The goal of sociocultural anthropology, the largest subfield of anthropology and the core of the discipline, is to understand the dynamics of human variation in social action and cultural thought. A key question is how these variations are produced and reproduced, whether we speak of society (subsistence, ideas) or individuals (biology, psychology, social identity). Conversely, what happens when reproduction fails to occur, or does so when and how it should not. Because reproduction is so strongly associated with biology in our society, viewing it through a cultural lens poses significant challenges to some of our most basic tenets. Tensions arise in questions of agency vs. control, nature vs. culture, identity construction, reproducing under varying conditions, and so on. The study of reproduction, therefore, offers a window into the heart of anthropology itself. The goals of this course are (1) to expose students to just a few of the many sociocultural approaches to reproduction by ranging broadly across topics, time, and place; and (2) to identify and evaluate concepts and theories embedded in writings on the dynamics of reproduction. While the concept of "reproduction" can refer to societal reproduction, emphasis will be on the reproduction of children. To this end, possible topics may include fostering/adoption, AIDS orphans, fatherhood, technologies of fertility control, assisted reproduction, obstetrics, gender imbalances in Asia, debates over abortion, etc.

This course concentrates on the anthropological knowledge produced on the past and present economic practices of societies around the world. Economic anthropology emerged out the critique of the taken-for-granted binary between the economic lives of so-called “primitive” societies and that of modern societies. This course will introduce those debates while at the same time questioning the premises, themes, and concepts with which we analyze economic practices. Each week is organized under one of the following themes: Gift, Commodity, Money, Labor, Market, Debt, Finance and Crisis, and The Economy. The readings involve both theoretical texts of political economy and contemporary ethnographies. Drawing on these readings, we will reflect on the social practices categorized under the umbrella term “the economy”, and question the larger systems those practices generate, reproduce, challenge, or dismantle. 

Rather than attempting the impossible--an overview of the whole history of the discipline of anthropology-this course will focus on one particular problem: the relationship between theory and ethnographic description in cultural Anthropology. The course will attempt to survey the development of certain schools of thought in the discipline since the mid-nineteenth century: evolutionism; historical particularism; structural-functionalism; culture and personality; cultural materialism; interpretive anthropology. In order to examine the ways in which each of these theoretical approaches affects the ways in which anthropologists choose to describe what they observe, the class will read a series of ethnographies (or excerpts from larger works) written at different times from different points of view.

The cross-cultural study of the formation and perpetuation of societal organizations (both formal and informal), and how important knowledge is said to be the young, the inexperienced, and the outsider.  The course will emphasize sociological and anthropological framings of socialization, as well as more contemporary interests in the social construction of identity, authenticity, and legitimacy through institutions of learning. Of interest as well will be debates about the pathways through which literacy, secrecy, and profit may affect the transmission of knowledge.

This seminar, which plays on Federico Fellini’s film of the same title, and the famous 13th century Italian feminist poem “The Treasure of the City of Ladies,” explores the variations across positionality, time, and space in women’s American urban experiences. We will establish some basic urban-studies concepts and, with a special focus on Chicago, will then read together literary work, historical and social science studies, and contemporary journalism in order to consider misogyny/racism/xenophobia/classism and their effects on women’s lives, and issues of women’s employment, reproductive rights, sexuality, and violence against women. And, of course, women’s own agency in attempting to live their urban lives, pursue their goals, and claim their equal rights and pleasures. We will also consider common representations—and misrepresentations--of varying women’s urban lives. 

Humans display great variation in many aspects of their biology, particularly in terms of physical growth and development, nutrition, and disease patterns. These differences are produced by both current ecological and environmental factors as well as underlying genetic differences shaped by our evolutionary past. It appears that many diseases of modern society, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and various cancers, have resulted from change to a lifestyle that is quite different from that of our ancestors. These diseases thus reflect an imbalance between modern life conditions and those which shaped most of our evolutionary history. This course will explore the evolutionary dimensions of variation in health and disease pattern among humans. We will first review key concepts in evolutionary biology, and their application to human evolution. We will then examine bio-cultural and evolutionary models for explaining variation in specific human diseases.

This course is designed to introduce students to the field of reproductive ecology, an exciting and growing subfield of biological anthropology.  Reproductive ecology examines the variability in human reproduction and physiology and asks how do aspects of reproduction respond to the environment in adaptive ways.  While all humans share the same reproductive systems there is a great deal of flexibility within these systems.  The objective of this course is to explore the major features of the human reproductive process from a biological and ecological perspective.  Further, we will examine the impact of these conditions on fertility outcomes and health in the absence of modern methods of contraception and their place in the larger ecological and evolutionary context.

This class will provide rigorous guidance on how one moves through the scientific process, from articulating scientific questions to answering them in a way that your audience can really relate to. We will do this using data from our ongoing study about if a participatory agricultural intervention can improve maternal and child nutrition in central Tanzania (Clinical trials.gov #: NCT02761876). Specific skills to be developed include human subjects training, formal literature review, hypothesis generation, developing analytic plans, data cleaning, performing descriptive statistics, creation of figures and tables, writing up results, and oral presentation of results. This course will be a terrific foundation for writing scientific manuscripts, theses, and dissertations. Prior experience with qualitative or quantitative analysis is preferred, but not required.

Climate crisis, directly linked to CO2 emissions from centuries of burning fossil fuels, has brought energy resources to the center of public attention. This course will survey works of anthropology, history, and geography as well as films and novels to understand how various resources and energy systems relate to sociocultural practices and politics throughout the world. Focusing on one energy resource each week, Fire and Blood will examine how uranium, wind, coal, light, oil, water, and other materials are made into sources of power—both physical and political. It will trace the movement of resources from the subsoil, atmosphere, or riverbeds to pipelines, power plants, dams, turbines, or other kinds of energy infrastructures; and finally, to the electrified streets of urban Mumbai, the wastelands of Navajo County, or the melting ice sheets of the Arctic. After discussing the toxic legacies of fossil fuels and nuclear things, we will end the course by reading texts on “energy transition” and post-carbon futures. By the end of the course, each student will have produced a research paper on an existing, past, or planned energy resource project of their choice from anywhere in the world.

Archaeology and nationalism have been closely intertwined at least since the idea of the nation-state emerged following the French Revolution. Archaeology offers nationalist agendas the possibility of filling in national historical records and extending the past far into prehistory. Its results can be displayed in museums, occupy entire sites, and be readily accessible online —thus potentially reaching many new audiences beyond traditional print media. In turn, nationalism has contributed significantly to the development of archaeology as a modern discipline.

Drawing on new critical approaches and examples selected from a wide geographical range, this course explores the role of archaeology in the creation and elaboration of national identities from the eighteenth century to the present day. Issues include the institutionalization of archaeology; the development of museums and practices of display and interpretation; the creation of archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations; cultural property legislation and repatriation of artifacts; and archaeology and monuments under totalitarian regimes.

“Planet Earth” has a political and social history. The Copernican turn and geological notions of deep time, for example, radically shifted understandings of the Earth, time, and humans’ relationship to them. Whole Earth images first generated by the Apollo Space missions in the late 1960s and 1970s have been the characteristic form of planetary imagination during the late twentieth century. Earthrise and The Blue Marble images enabled humans to imagine the planet as an interconnected whole against the backdrop of the Cold War and environmental disasters. They have been crucial to the emergence of a “global consciousness” and became famous icons of the global environmental movement, depicting the planet as the common home of humans as one species. The power of these images has not decreased, yet other forms of representation and imagination have emerged as well. The development of Google Earth or advanced climate modeling systems, for example, mark a different notion of Earth, characterized by dynamic, heterogeneous, and open systems. This course examines such shifting notions of the Earth by tracing how practices and discourses of geopolitics, political theory, cartography, population studies, climate modeling, deep ocean sensing, outer space exploration and mining, and science fiction literature, have come to sense, know, represent, and imagine the planet since the 18th century. In doing so, this course also surveys shifting socio-political currents, from the intersection of the military-industrial complex and techno science to how climate crisis, Anthropocene debates, and Earth Systems analysis reflect further shifts in the ways the planet is understood today. Tracing these shifts in planetary representation and imagination is also crucial to understanding how core concepts such as “humanity” and “species” are made and unmade. Understanding the deeply mediated processes behind planetary depictions is not only central to making sense of contemporary politics and policies that propose to shape the future, but also to imagining alternative worlds and futures beyond our grim ecological predicament.

Migration is not just a movement across borders; it is a process of becoming. By examining trajectories of intra- and inter-national migration within Latin America, this course will explore the social, cultural, economic, and political histories that reveal relationships between migration and larger global and postcolonial socio-economic forces. We will reflect on the reasons why individuals choose to become mobile, as well as the structural conditions that might compel them. Specifically, we will look at disparities between urban and rural populations, clashes over job markets in urban settings, and the formation of individual and collective migrant identities in contexts of mass displacement. The course will begin by studying how waves of migrants (within and across frontiers) after independence shaped contemporary ideologies of race and belonging in Latin America, and end with a reflection on what these trajectories can teach us about studying Latin American migrants in the "Global North" today. Furthermore, the course will investigate how migration pathways challenge accounts of a unified Latin American “identity,” yet also allow for diasporic coalitions abroad. Course materials include canonical readings from anthropology and history, along with films, memoirs, and testimonies.

This course will provide an overview of key theories and concepts in biological anthropology. Specific attention will be given to how biological anthropology articulates with the other sub-disciplines of anthropology. General principles from evolutionary biology will first be discussed, examining how they can be applied to look at human biological and behavioral variation. Alternative approaches for explaining human variation are then explored and considered within a historical context. Third, we will examine the material (i.e., fossil) evidence for human evolution, focusing on the interplay between biological and cultural/behavioral evolutionary trends. Finally, we will examine how several aspects of modern human variation (eg. growth, nutritional status, morbidity and mortality) are shaped by the interplay between genetic, ecological and socio-cultural factors. Throughout we will highlight the utility of the bio-cultural framework for explaining human diversity.

This course focuses on the key themes, concepts and debates that have characterized cultural anthropology’s logic of inquiry. We pay careful attention to the historical precedents of the sub-field’s mode of questioning, both within the broader discipline and in the social sciences and humanities, more generally. We will also inquire into how cultural anthropology articulates with the other sub-fields of the discipline as it changes in the broader social fields of academe and American political economy. Examining these core dimensions of the sub-field will provide a strong understanding of how cultural anthropologists conceptualize their subjects/objects of study in relationship to the shifting terrains in academia and national and global political economic processes. Throughout, we will address the larger stakes—both ethical and political—of taking particular ethnographic and theoretical approaches. We will both cultivate a critical approach to the readings, and try to understand them on their own terms in the circumstances of their production.  

Key concepts we will investigate include: culture/society; self/other; structure/agency; time; nature/science; economy; materiality; emotion/affect; institutions.

The objective of this course is to survey current efforts to understand the dynamic relationships among society, biology, and health. Many scholars and agencies recognize the need for interdisciplinary approaches that draw on concepts and methods from the social/behavioral sciences as well as the life/biomedical sciences, but successful linkage across levels of analysis has remained an elusive goal. What are the epistemological and methodological challenges to successful integration, particularly in an era of increasing specialization in training and the production of knowledge? What can be learned from prior attempts at integration emerging from distinct disciplinary traditions, including biocultural anthropology, bio demography, psychobiology/health psychology, social epidemiology, and psychosomatic medicine?

This course examines theoretical and ethnographic approaches to the state, with a particular focus on the intersection of state projects and subject-making practices.  Early declarations of the state’s growing irrelevance in an era of globalization have proven to be grossly premature, as any migrant worker, prisoner, Palestinian struggling for statehood, Snowden supporter, or person in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles will tell you.  Yet many questions abound.  Is the nature of the state/subject relations changing with neoliberal globalization and if so, how?  What might be similar across different state/subject formations, and what might be different–not only in this particular historical juncture but in previous ones as well?  Do certain state/subject relations adhere to the very structure of the modern state and/or can we disrupt the universalist notion of the modern state as a Western form that takes “alternative” shape in different regions?  How can we think about the state, both ethnographically and theoretically, in ways that do not always presume the state as an agent, a monolith, or a set of always coherent projects?  What are the myriad ways that state projects shape particular (racialized, gendered, classed) subjects, and is this shaping always complete?  What fissures appear and how?  How do people engage or circumvent the state in their daily lives and in particular political struggles in ways that disrupt or collude with subject-making projects?  Key themes to be explored include governmentality, sovereignty, citizenship, rights, materiality, activism, security, law, and development. We will be especially concerned with understanding poststructuralist and neoliberal frameworks approaching states and subjects and try to think productively with and beyond them.  Finally, we will continually ask how theory informs ethnography and how ethnography informs theory.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that "theory" is not the preserve of any particular discipline. At the same time that other disciplines have been enthusiastically adopting "ethnography" in one form or another as a research strategy, anthropologists have been borrowing perspectives from literary studies, philosophy, and history among other disciplines. This class will serve as an introduction - a consumer's guide of sorts - to thinkers whose ideas have been frequently cited, if not used, by contemporary anthropologists among others. The seminar will provide a forum for evaluating their relevance (or irrelevance) to the research agendas of students in the class.

This course explores the relationship between linguistic and semiotic communication and forms of media. While all communication is mediated, this course will focus in particular on how this occurs through broadcast media (radio, television, print), film, social media, and digital communication. Topics include: advertising and branding; critical discourse analysis; digitally mediated communication; indigenous language media; genre and intertextuality; media ideologies; message and reception theory; style and stylization; and subtitling and dubbing. Assignments include presentations, response papers, a seminar paper prospectus, and a seminar paper.

This course will provide a graduate level introduction to the anthropology of mind, body, and health. We will address broadly the question of how Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness and the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing. In addition, we will analyze medical practices as cultural systems, as well as the ways in which health, body, and mind are socially and politically constructed and manipulated, bodies are controlled and policed, and definitions of mind and mental processes influence and are influenced by social context. There will be a particular focus on the concepts of embodiment and trauma and their various uses and meanings in specific contexts. We will combine an examination of current theoretical paradigms with ethnographic case material from a number of societies, including Brazil, Japan, the US, and Canada. The goal of this comparative endeavor will be to analyze similarities and differences across understandings of mind and body and systems of healing, and to examine American perspectives, behaviors, and practices critically in order to illuminate the ways in which they are socially embedded and culturally specific. Open to all graduate students. No P/N.

This course is concerned with the method, theory, and practice underlying spatial analysis using tools such as GIS in understanding human landscapes in the past and present. We will focus on the kinds of data, methods of analysis, and frames of interpretation of landscapes in the past and present. In this course, students will be exposed to underlying theories of space in the interpretation of ancient and modern landscapes and gain practical experience collecting and analyzing spatial data in the context of anthropological research. While case studies will be drawn from a variety of contexts in archaeology, it is relevant to anyone who wishes to analyze data about and within the spatial and temporal contexts of the research, they are conducting.

The terms ‘new materialism’ and ‘the ontological turn’ have recently surfaced within theoretical conversations in a number of fields – philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, history and art history, to name only a few. In this class, we will survey these conversations from an anthropological point of view.  The readings will give you an overview of these new theoretical developments, but our focus is also on method: how to apply these ideas in your own research, whether your project is ethnographic, archaeological, or historical.  The syllabus is organized around [somewhat] concrete topics such as ‘things’, ‘animals’, ‘bodies’, ‘senses’, and ‘substances’. Each week, we will read excerpts from influential theorists who explore these topics, paired with examples of published research that uses these theories, as well as some older studies that address the week’s topic from other theoretical perspectives.  In addition to a term paper, readings, and participation in discussion, there will be some short weekly creative assignments to let you try your hand at some ontological work.

Within the Primate order an astounding range of physiological adaptations and behaviors are represented. What processes led to this extreme diversification? How can an understanding of primate diversity inform studies of human physiology and behavior? In this course we will use both classic and recent non-human primate studies to explore topics such as nutrition, growth, disease, sociality, cognition, and communication. The course will rely heavily on reading and discussion of the primary literature, and is designed to be flexible so as to address the research interests and backgrounds of all participants. At the end of this course, students will have better insight into ecological and evolutionary theories relevant for explaining variation in a range of traits across the primate phylogeny and appreciate how studies of non-human primates impact our perspectives on human physiology and behavior.

This graduate-level course examines the philosophy and rudiments of research methods in sociocultural anthropology, and the relationship of ethnography to the construction of theory.  The best science arguably involves a combination of innovative "upstream" thinking and deductive rigor, the integration of theory with practice, and strategies for eliciting and attending to voices from very different times, places, and social positions.  With the goal of conveying these skills, the course will require students to design a local fieldwork project based on a theoretical question relevant to anthropology, and carry it out through ethnographic methods that bring to light conceptual issues in the week’s readings.

Each week will entail some reading and a methods assignment tailored to the project. Class time will be devoted to discussing the readings and how they might enhance or cast critical light on the field exercise.  The last assignments will involve a write-up of the project in a short paper along with a class presentation.

Within the Primate order an astounding range of physiological adaptations and behaviors are represented. What processes led to this extreme diversification? How can an understanding of primate diversity inform studies of human physiology and behavior? In this course we will use both classic and recent non-human primate studies to explore topics such as nutrition, growth, disease, sociality, cognition, and communication. The course will rely heavily on reading and discussion of the primary literature, and is designed to be flexible so as to address the research interests and backgrounds of all participants. At the end of this course, students will have better insight into ecological and evolutionary theories relevant for explaining variation in a range of traits across the primate phylogeny and appreciate how studies of non-human primates impact our perspectives on human physiology and behavior.

Public and scholarly interests in food have grown exponentially in recent years, but the topic has been of interest to anthropologists since the inception of our discipline. This is not surprising, since four-subfield anthropology is uniquely positioned to address the complexity of factors that define and motivate food practices. Food is at once culturally defined, biologically necessary, and historically situated. In this class, we will explore how each of the four-subfields has approached food practices and how they change over time. The goal is to understand how the multi-faceted nature of foodways demands a non-disciplinary approach, and how we might better match our methods and writing styles to this subject of study.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) following decades of negotiation. In this graduate seminar, we will examine the 20^th century origins of the global movement for Indigenous rights and seek an understanding of the varied meanings of Indigeneity (along with Aboriginality and Autochthony) across time and space. We will emphasize the comparative study of Indigenous-state relations and highlight how the concept of Indigenous is a shorthand for peoples who are variously identified as original, first, tribal, local, and traditional, in addition to their own names for themselves. Our readings will draw from scholarship in history, anthropology, and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), spanning geographies from Hawai'i to the Russian Arctic to Cameroon.