Fall 2015 Undergraduate Course Schedule
MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY
9:30-10:45 / 11:00-12:15 / 12:30-1:45 / 2:00-3:15 / 3:30-4:45WILKING
ANTH-UA 112 (30)
Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality
SILV_414
BEIDELMAN
ANTH-UA 31
Witchcraft: An Anthropological Approach (20)
25WAV_706
BAILEY
FRSEM-UA 219
Why People Believe Weird Things or, Science and Pseudoscience
9:30-12 (WED ONLY)
TISC_LC1 / HIGHAM
ANTH-UA 59 (20)
Primate Communication
25WAV_706
WHITE
ANTH-UA 3 (80)
Archaeology: Early Societies and Cultures
SILV_520
002 T 9:30-10:45 25WAV_204
003 T 11:00-12:15 25WAV_204
004 T 12:30-1:45 25WAV_204
005 T 2:00-3:15 25WAV_204
TURNBULL
ANTH-UA 321 (20)
Anthropology of China and Japan
25WAV_612 / BEIDELMAN
ANTH-UA 30 (20)
Anthropology of Religion
25WAV_KRIS
GRANT
ANTH-UA 950 (25)
Honors Research I (WED ONLY)
25WAV_612
KHAN
CORE-UA 509
Cultures & Contexts: Caribbean (120) 5WP_101
002 - T 8:00-9:15
WAVE_566B
003 - T 9:30-10:45
BOBS_LL146
004 - T 12:30-1:45
12WV_L113
005 - T 2:00-3:15
12WV_L113
006 - T 3:30-4:45
SILV_506
007 - T 4:55-6:10
25W4_C-19 / MERRY
ANTH-UA 331 (40)
Human Rights and Culture
GCASL_269 / ANDERSON
ANTH-UA 320.2 (25)
Heritage, Cultural Property, and Colonialism
25WAV_612
TUESDAY AND THURSDAY
/ FRIDAY9:30-10:45 / 11:00-12:15 / 2:00-3:15 / 3:30-4:45
GRANT
ANTH-UA 1 (80)
Human Society and Culture
MYER_121
002 F 9:30-10:45 TISC_LC1
003 F 9:30-10:45 BOBS_LL142
004 F 12:30-1:45 25W4_C-14
005 F 11:00-12:15
TISC_LC7 / ANTON
ANTH-UA 50 (20)
Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution
25WAV_706
HANSEN
ANTH-UA 36 (40)
Global Biocultures
25WAV_KRIS
ABERCROMBIE
CORE-UA 544 (120)
Cultures & Contexts: Spain
5WP_101
002 12:30-1:45 TISC_LC2
003 2:00-3:15 25W4_C-5
004 12:30-1:45 25W4_C-5
005 2:00-3:15 WAVE_570
006 2:00-3:15 25W4_C-3
007: 3:30-4:45 7E12_131
OLIPHANT
ANTH-UA 321.2 (20)
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion
25W4_C-14 / BAILEY
ANTH-UA 2
Human Evolution (160)
19W4_101
002 R 9:30-10:45 25WAV_204
003 R 11:00-12:15 25WAV_204
004 W 9:30-10:45 25WAV_204
005 W 11:00-12:15 25WAV_204
006 W 12:30-1:45 25WAV_204
007 W 2:00-3:15 25WAV_204
008 W 3:30-4:45 25WAV_204
009 W 5:00-6:15 25WAV_204
DAVILA
ANTH-UA 320.1 (20)
Anthropology of Cities
194M_206 / ROGERS
ANTH-UA 111 (20)
Anthropology of Europe
194M_301 / SCHIEFFELIN
FRSEM-UA 496
The Cultural Nature of Language
25WAV_706
9:30-12
WRIGHT
ANTH-UA 211
Rise and Fall of Civilizations (25)
25WAV_KRIS
9:30-12
Departmental Courses
Human Society and Culture
ANTH-UA 1
Grant
Surveys the general aims, methods, and findings of modern cultural anthropology and its ties with the humanities and social sciences. Economic, political, and family organizations and systems of thought, including religion, are covered with equal attention to "primitive," traditional, and modern complex societies, particularly non-Western societies.
Human Evolution
ANTH-UA 2
Bailey
Investigates the evolutionary origins of humans. The study of human evolution is a multidisciplinary endeavor involving a synthesis of concepts, techniques, and research findings from a variety of different scientific fields, including evolutionary biology, paleontology, primatology, comparative anatomy, genetics, molecular biology, geology, and archaeology. Explores the different contributions that scientists have made toward understanding human origins and provides a detailed survey of the evidence used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of our own species.
Archaeology: Early Societies and Cultures
ANTH-UA 3
White
Introduces contemporary archaeology, its theories, practices, and early societies and cultures. Examines current methodological and theoretical viewpoints of archaeological scholarship within the discipline of anthropology. Focuses on key transformations in cultural evolution, such as the origins of modern humans, the emergence of food production, and the development of complex societies, urbanism, and early states. Explores gender roles, landscapes and settlements, technologies, art, cognitive systems, urbanism, and state formation.
Anthropology of Religion
ANTH-UA 30
Beidelman
Presents basic social theories of religion considering beliefs and world view, mythology, ritual, sacrifice, good and evil, priests and prophets, purity and pollution, social change. Considers five cases. including at least one or more from the following: America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
year students admitted.
Witchcraft: An Anthropological Approach
ANTH-UA 31
Beidelman
Surveys witchcraft and it relates to gender, sexuality, age, power and authority, social change, deviancy, symbols, magic, religions, ethnicity. Five case studies, including one on witchcraft in historical and modern US, on historical New England, on historical Europe, and two on Africa.
Global Biocultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Public Health
ANTH-UA 36
Hansen
This seminar surveys the mutual shaping of culture and biology in diverse contexts around the world. Starting with sociocultural theories of biocultural process, and ending with ethnographies of disability, drugs, place, pain, and biotechnology, we will examine the relationship of larger political economic structures to individual subjectivities, and examine biological experience as simultaneously material and socioculturally plastic.
Primate Communication
ANTH-UA 59
Higham
Increased social and communicative complexity is one of the defining features of humans compared to other mammals. Key insights into the evolution of human communication can come from studying our most closely related extant relatives, our fellow members of the Primate order. The present course features a mixture of lectures and discussion classes to consider contemporary topics in primate (including human) communication. Topics covered include definitions of communication and consideration of its major theoretical issues such as the difference between signals and cues, signal honesty, and concepts of signal information content and evolutionary signal design. Sections of the class focus on communication in different sensory modalities – olfactory, auditory and visual, as well as multimodal communication, before discussing theories and issues related to the evolution of language. The class finishes by considering some of the most contemporary topics in primate communication.
Anthropology of Europe
ANTH-UA 111
Rogers
This course explores cultural systems and social structures in contemporary Europe, offering an introduction to anthropological approaches to the study of complex western societies. Drawing primarily on ethnographic case material (supplemented with a selection of European feature films), we will examine ways of thinking about Europe and European identities, focusing on the significance of old, new, or uncertain divisions within the continent and boundaries around it. Particular emphasis will be given to the impact of large-scale economic, political, and social change on everyday life, as well as on conceptions of religious and ethnic diversity.
Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality
ANTH-UA 112
Stout
Compares women's and men's experiences, activities, resources, powers, and symbolic significance as they vary within and between societies. Social and historical approaches in the analysis of how gender relations are affected by major social transformations. Emphasis on such changes as gender roles, current transnational migrations, social movements, international relations, and the role of the military in a variety of world societies.
The Rise and Fall of Civilizations
ANTH-UA 211
Wright
Beyond antiquarian and biblical texts in which the ancient past was referred to as mysterious or “lost,” little was known about the earliest civilizations until the 20th century. It was then that anthropological archaeologists began a series of intensive programs of research on the Sumerians, the Maya, Inka, and other civilizations. The results of this research are raising questions about the very meaning of the idea of what it constitutes to be a civilization and for it to rise or fall? Does the new evidence show that the development of powerful armies was the cause of the rise of civilizations or that climate change was the reason for its fall? Are these general “rules” about the rise and fall of civilizations, ones we should apply to modern societies? Is western civilization in decline?
TS: Anthropology of Cities
ANTH-UA 320.001
Davila
This course will examine current transformation apace across Latin American cities involving rapid urbanization, the growth of neoliberal developments and the transformation of creative industries and economies across the region. We will focus on post 1980s transformations when we see new modes of globalization across the region that presented new openings but also constrains in regards to the development of enclave urbanism, new types of segregation and new imaginaries of class and “urban” identities. Topics include the rise of tourism and creative economies – such as around art and media; Latin American urban design and new urbanisms; the neoliberalization of labor and the rise of informal economies, and immigration. We also also touch on how Latin American immigration is transforming urban imaginaries in the major cities across the United States.
TS: Heritage, Cultural Property, and Colonialism
ANTH-UA 320.002
Anderson
TBA
TS II: Anthropology of China and Japan
ANTH-UA 321.001
Turnbull
TBA
Human Rights and Culture
ANTH-UA 331
Merry
Offers an overview of the human rights system, looking at its basic elements and studying how it works. Focuses on the relationships between human rights and culture. Human rights campaigns frequently encounter resistance in the name of protecting cultural differences. This is particularly common with issues concerning women, children, and the family. Explores several issues that raise questions of human rights and culture, such as female genital cutting, honor killing, trafficking of persons, and indigenous peoples' rights to culture. Using these examples, considers how the human rights system deals with tensions between global standards and local ways of life. Examines the meanings of rights and of culture in these debates and shows the implications of adopting an anthropological analysis of these situations. The goal of the course is developing an understanding of human rights in practice.
Honors Research I
ANTH-UA 950
Grant
Open only to honors majors who have the permission of the director of undergraduate studies and who have secured the support of a faculty mentor to supervise the student's honors research and serve as the primary thesis reader
College Core Curriculum Courses Taught by Anthropology Faculty
Cultures and Contexts: Caribbean
CORE-UA 509
Khan
Known for its beauty, cultural vitality, and diverse mix of peoples, cultures, and languages, the Caribbean is where today’s globalization began some 500 years ago, and where the idea of “modernity” took shape. Its sugar economy and colonial history of slave labor and indenture made it the site of massive transplantations of peoples and cultures from Africa for four centuries, from Asia and the Middle East for two centuries, and, throughout, a sizeable influx of peoples from Europe.
This course examines Caribbean colonial and postcolonial history and cultures, focusing on the relationship between processes of development and exploitation of the region. It also explores local ideas about race, class, culture, gender, and sexuality, which both justify and challenge these processes. We will tack between the past and the present, in order to better understand the relationship between historical and contemporary forces. Our coverage will be interdisciplinary, and range across English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, and Dutch-speaking territories.
Cultures and Contexts: Spain
CORE-UA 544
Abercrombie
Spanish modernity, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: Spain has not been a major world power in over 200 years, during which its competitors and successor empires (France, Britain, and the U.S.) branded it, via a conglomeration of ideas called the “Black Legend,” as a backwards and feudal bastion of superstition and intolerance, good only for anthropologists and tourists. A hotbed of state-building in antiquity, Spain emerged as a center of Renaissance learning under Arab and Berber rule. While the rest of Europe languished in feudalism, its seven centuries co-existence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews saw the rebirth of classical knowledge, the spread of literacy, the development of a human-centered cosmology, the emergence of narrative self-making and the novel, and Europe’s first primarily urban society, where philosophy, the sciences, architecture, and the arts flourished. After Christian princes defeated the last Islamic foothold in the Peninsula in 1492, Castilian language and culture was the backbone of Spain’s imperial expansion across the Atlantic and produced the first modern, disciplining state, the privileging of individualism, private property, and capitalism, and theses of popular sovereignty, the nation state, and theories of racial inequality. Outpaced in industrialization by the late 18th-century, still Spain (and the new nations of Spanish America) kept pace with liberal reforms that culminated in the clash of competing fascist-capitalist and democratic-socialist ideologies, leading to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, and the re-birth of Spanish democracy in the post-Franco and European Union era, and Spain’s current avant-garde role in culture and the arts. Materials include history, ethnography, literature, and film.
Freshman Seminar Courses Taught by Anthropology Faculty
Why People Believe Weird Things, or Science and Pseudoscience
FRSEM-UA 219
Bailey
TBA
The Cultural Nature of Language
FRSEM-UA 496
Schieffelin
TBA