Anthropology (ANTH)

* ANTH 011a, Reproductive TechnologiesMarcia Inhorn

Introduction to scholarship on the anthropology of reproduction. Focus on reproductive technologies such as contraceptives, prenatal diagnostics, childbirth technologies, abortion, assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and embryonic stem cells. The globalization of reproductive technologies, including social, cultural, legal, and ethical responses. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  SO
MW 4pm-5:15pm

* ANTH 018a, Scientific Thinking and ReasoningEduardo Fernandez-Duque

Students read, discuss and reflect on the paramount importance of science and quantitative reasoning in their lives through an exploration of the basic elements of a quantitative scientific process of inquiry. The goal of the course is to introduce students to foundational topics in science that must be, but sometimes are not, thoroughly considered early in the process of scientific inquiry. The first part focuses on reading about truth, facts and skepticism, causality, inference, deductive and inductive reasoning, research questions, and formulation of hypotheses and predictions. The second part considers aspects related to the actual development and implementation of a scientific study including considerations of types of study (e.g, observational, experimental), study feasibility, sample size, selection and validity of variables, power analysis, confounding factors. The third part considers the analyses, interpretation and presentation of results, offering introductory explanations of a priori statistical protocols; predictive and/or explanatory power and interpretation of both statistical significance and research relevance. The course is neither a lecture or seminar, but instead each meeting is a hybrid of both formats; a format where students are required to be active participants in the process of learning.   Enrollment limited to first-year students.   SC, SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* ANTH 030b / ARCG 030b / LAST 030b, Inca Culture and SocietyRichard Burger

History of the Inca empire of the Central Andes, including the empire's impact on the nations and cultures it conquered. Overview of Inca religion, economy, political organization, technology, and society. Ways in which different schools of research have approached and interpreted the Incas over the last century, including the influence of nationalism and other sources of bias on contemporary scholarship. Enrollment is limited to first-year students.   SO
HTBA

* ANTH 075a, Observing the WorldJane Lynch

How do we learn about the worlds of others? How do we represent our own? This seminar focuses on the poetics and politics of social observation and engagement. We examine the qualitative research methods (e.g., asking, listening, and observing) used by scholars—as well as other professionals, including journalists and government officials—to produce texts (e.g., academic books, magazine articles, and case files) based on empirical observation. Thinking critically about observation and observational writing as modes of knowledge production, we discuss and develop tools of reading, thinking, and writing to address questions of injustice and power. Texts are juxtaposed with documentary film, photography, and other forms of artistic and visual representation, to help bring both the conventions and possibilities of observational writing more clearly into view. Students complete a range of writing projects, including: descriptive and analytical “field notes,” interviews, and essays based on their own observations of the world(s) around them. In addition to developing their writing skills, students also learn basic concepts in the practice and politics of social research and analysis. Enrollment limited to first-year students.   WR, HU, SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* ANTH 112b, Agent, Person, Subject, SelfPaul Kockelman

Introduction to the interconnections between language and personality development and to the social construction of person and self. Focus on the capacities of agency, subjectivity, selfhood, and personhood as analyzed in classic works from anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. Ways in which these seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities are essential for understanding social processes.  SO
W 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 116b, Introduction to Biological AnthropologyDavid Watts

Introduction to human and primate evolution, primate behavior, and human biology. Topics include a review of principles of evolutionary biology and basic molecular and population genetics; the behavior, ecology, and evolution of nonhuman primates; the fossil and archaeological record for human evolution; the origin of modern humans; biological variation in living humans; and the evolution of human behavior.  SC, SO0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

ANTH 140b / ER&M 241b / SOCY 138b, The CorporationDouglas Rogers

Survey of the rise, diversity, and power of the capitalist corporation in global contexts, with a focus on the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: the corporation as legal entity and the social and cultural consequences of this status; corporations in the colonial era; relationships among corporations, states, and non-governmental organizations in Western and non-Western contexts; anti-corporate critique and response; corporate social responsibility; and race, gender, and indigeneity.  HU, SO0 Course cr
MW 10:30am-11:20am

ANTH 203b, Primate ConservationDavid Watts

A study of nonhuman primates threatened by deforestation, habitat disturbance, hunting, and other human activities; the future of primate habitats, especially tropical rainforests, as they are affected by local and global economic and political forces. Examination of issues in primate conservation, from the principles of conservation biology and rainforest ecology to the emergence of diseases such as AIDS and Ebola and the extraction of tropical resources by local people and by transnational corporations.  SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* ANTH 204a, Molecular AnthropologySerena Tucci

This course is a perfect introduction for anyone interested in understanding how genetics can help us answer fundamental questions in human evolution and population history. The course studies the basic principles of population genetics, molecular evolution, and genetic data analysis. Topics include DNA and human origins, human migrations, genetic adaptation, ancient DNA, and Neandertals. By the end of this course, students learn about the processes that generate and shape genetic variation, as well as the molecular and statistical tools used to reconstruct human evolutionary history.  SC
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 213a / EAST 313a, Contemporary Japan and the Ghosts of ModernityYukiko Koga

This course introduces students to contemporary Japan, examining how its defeat in the Second World War and loss of empire in 1945 continue to shape Japanese culture and society. Looking especially at the sphere of cultural production, it focuses on the question of what it means to be modern as expressed through the tension between resurgent neonationalism and the aspiration to internationalize. The course charts how the legacy of Japan’s imperial failure plays a significant role in its search for renewal and identity since 1945. How, it asks, does the experience of catastrophic failure—and failure to account for that failure—play into continued aspirations for modernity today? How does Japanese society wrestle with modernity’s two faces: its promise for progress and its history of catastrophic violence? The course follows the trajectory of Japan’s postwar nation-state development after the dissolution of empire, from its resurrection out of the ashes after defeat, to its identity as a US ally and economic superpower during the Cold War, to decades of recession since the 1990s and the search for new relations with its neighbors and new reckonings with its own imperial violence and postwar inactions against the background of rising neonationalism.  HU, SO
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

ANTH 215a / ARCG 215a, Archaeology of ChinaAnne Underhill

Archaeology of China, one of the world's oldest and most enduring civilizations, from the era of early humans to early empires. Methods of interpreting remains from prehistoric and historic period sites.  SO
MW 9am-10:15am

ANTH 217a, Hormones, Evolution, and Human BehaviorRichard Bribiescas

This course examines the evolution of human behavior through the lens of endocrinology and life history theory. Topics include the evolution of social behavior, pair bonding, parental investment, aggression, sex, feeding behavior, and risk tolerance. This course also addresses these topics with a mindful eye towards variation throughout the human life course from birth to death. Specific attention is made towards examining behavioral endocrinology within the context of human diversity in all its forms, social, biological, and ecological as well as in comparison with other species including non-human primates. ANTH 116, ANTH 242, or a similar course is recommended before enrolling in this course.  SO0 Course cr
TTh 9:25am-10:15am

ANTH 230a / WGSS 230a, Evolutionary Biology of Female BodiesClaudia Valeggia

Evolutionary, biosocial, and situated perspectives on the female body. Physiological, ecological, social and cultural aspects of the development of female bodies from puberty through menopause and aging, with special attention to lived experiences. Variation in female life histories in a variety of cultural and ecological settings. Examples from both traditional and modern societies.  SC0 Course cr
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

ANTH 232a / ARCG 232a / LAST 232a, Ancient Civilizations of the AndesRichard Burger

Survey of the archaeological cultures of Peru and Bolivia from the earliest settlement through the late Inca state.  SO
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

ANTH 237a / GMAN 233a / HUMS 225a / LITR 242a / PHIL 219a, Karl Marx's CapitalStaff

A careful reading of Karl Marx's classic critique of capitalism, Capital volume 1, a work of philosophy, political economy, and critical social theory that has had a significant global readership for over 150 years. Selected readings also from Capital volumes 2 and 3.  HU0 Course cr
HTBA

* ANTH 253b / ARCG 253b, Introduction to Experimental ArchaeologyEllery Frahm

Experimental archaeology is one of the most important tools to develop and test models which link human behaviors and natural forces to the archaeological record.  This class explores the elements of good experimental design and procedures. ANTH 316L, ARCG 316L recommended.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 264a / ARCG 264a / SPAN 404a, Aztec Archaeology and EthnohistoryOswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

An anthropological and ethnohistorical examination of the Aztec civilization that dominated much of Mexico from the fourteenth century until the Spanish Conquest of 1521.  SO
TTh 9am-10:15am

* ANTH 303b, Field Methods in Cultural AnthropologyYukiko Koga

The fundamentals of cultural anthropology methods. The foundations of fieldwork approaches, including methods, theories, and the problem of objectivity.  WR, SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 307b / EP&E 256b, Reparation, Repair, Reconciliation: Reckoning with Slavery and Colonialism in Global PerspectiveYukiko Koga

Imperial reckoning for slavery, imperialism, and colonialism has gained new momentum in recent years, from official apologies for colonial violence to reparations lawsuits filed in Asia, Europe, and the US for slavery, genocide, and massacres, to demands for the return of bodily remains and cultural artifacts from established cultural institutions. This seminar explores how these new attempts for belated imperial reckoning are reshaping relations between former empires and their ex-colonies. It approaches imperial reckoning as a site for redressing not only the original violence but also the transitional injustice incurred in the process of the unmaking of empire, which calls for post-imperial reckoning. Drawing on examples from recent cases, this course explores what it means to belatedly reckon with imperial violence today. What does it mean to reckon with imperial violence through legal means, decades after the dissolution of empires? What is the role of law in belated redress? How is historical responsibility articulated and by whom? Who is responsible for what, then and now? What are the stakes in reckoning with distant, yet still alive, pasts? Why and how does it matter today for those of us who have no direct experience of imperial violence? This course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as debt, gift, moral economy, structural violence, complicity and implication, and abandonment. Instructor permission required.  HU, SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 308b / WGSS 407b, Feminist & Queer Ethnographies: Borders and BoundariesEda Pepi

This seminar gives students a storm’s eye view of contemporary crises, where borders are as volatile as the ring of a wedding bell or the birth of a child. Feminist and queer ethnographies explore the geopolitical lines and social divides that define and confine us. Manifesting through laws, social norms, and physical barriers, borders and boundaries shape our identities, turning the intimate act of living into a fiercely political one. We consider them as lived experiences that cross militarized lines—as the everyday realities of families, detention centers, workplaces, universities, and even nightclubs. Our readings trace the fluidity of borders, the extension of the global north's influence, and the internal colonialism that redraws the landscapes of nations. Contemporary ways of bridging time and space are profoundly gendered, sexualized racialized, and class-specific, capable of materializing with sudden intensity for some and remaining imperceptible to others, morphing from ephemeral lines to seemingly permanent barriers. The course is an invitation to think beyond the map – to understand borders as something people live, challenge, and transform. Our intellectual battleground is the liminal space where geopolitics meets the raw human struggle for recognition, peeling back the layers of political theatre to witness the making and unmaking of our borderlands. Anchored by a “radical hope for living otherwise,” the seminar also aims to expand the intellectual horizons necessary for dreaming of, and working towards, the world to come.  HU, SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 309a, Language and CulturePaul Kockelman

The relations between language, culture, and cognition. What meaning is and why it matters. Readings in recent and classic works by anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, and philosophers.  SO0 Course cr
M 9:25am-11:15am

* ANTH 311a, Anthropological Theory and the Post Colonial EncounterJane Lynch

Key texts in the theoretical development of sociocultural anthropology. Theorists include Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, Sidney Mintz, Bernard Cohn, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Sherry Ortner, and Joan Scott.  SO0 Course cr
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 316La / ARCG 316La, Introduction to Archaeological Laboratory SciencesEllery Frahm

Introduction to techniques of archaeological laboratory analysis, with quantitative data styles and statistics appropriate to each. Topics include dating of artifacts, sourcing of ancient materials, remote sensing, and microscopic and biochemical analysis. Specific techniques covered vary from year to year.  SC
W 1:30pm-4:30pm

* ANTH 318b / SAST 308b / URBN 412b, Peril and Possibility in the South Asian CityKalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan

For the first time in human history, at some point in the last decade a majority of humankind became city dwellers. A fifth of these city-dwelling masses inhabit the massive and massifying megacities of the Indian sub-continent. Karachi, Dhaka, and Bombay frequently threaten to be the most populous urban centers on earth, and it may only be faith in the accuracy of government census data that defers this dubious honor. For while these cities are plugged into the global flows of people, ideas, things, and capital; such developments also bring with them anomie, alienation, dispossession, and depredations. Historical social conflicts born of a century of European colonialism and millennia of caste society have in some cases been mitigated, in others intensified in ways both insidious and invidious. Much ink has been spilt on contouring both the perils and possibilities attending the urbanization of the sub-continent. This course explores a ground-up view of the many ways in which the urban denizens of these bustling cities where pasts and futures collide, experience this collision. While this course draws on interdisciplinary scholarly examinations engaging the urban emergent, it focuses on the realm of experience, desire and affect germinating in the city. Students sample ethnography, art, speculative fiction, and film to map out the textures of this complex and mutating fabric. In doing so we chart the emergence and application of new ideas and cultures, practices and constraints, identities and conflicts in the contemporary urban landscapes.  SO
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ANTH 319b / AMST 315b / WGSS 217b, Writing Anthropology: Digital Fan CommunitiesStaff

Are you a Twihard? BTS ARMY? A Chalamaniac? This course investigates the communities and practices that emerge around popular media. In this course we think critically about fan responses to popular media through fanfiction, fanvids, shipping, and online fandoms. Through which we explore how fan responses point to and rely on the questioning and rethinking of media texts, to reinvent them as powerful but covert means of access and transformation. We examine fandoms/online fan communities as addressing the needs of marginalized communities to adapt, expand, and challenge books, movies, music, and other media to meet their needs. This course engages fan cultural practices as robust networks of critique through examinations of gender, race, sexuality, intellectual property ownership, and the production of fan labor.   WR, SO
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ANTH 324a / ANTH 824a / EAST 324a, Politics of MemoryYukiko Koga

This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the US, this course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.  HU, SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 326b / ARCG 326b, Ancient Civilizations of the Eurasian SteppesWilliam Honeychurch

Examination of peoples of the steppe zone that stretches from Eastern Europe to Mongolia. Overview of what archaeologists know about Eurasian steppe societies, with emphasis on the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron, and medieval ages. Attention both to material culture and to historical sources. Topics range from the domestication of the horse to Genghis Khan's world empire, including the impact these events had on neighboring civilizations in Europe and Asia.  SO
F 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ANTH 342a / EAST 346a, Cultures and Markets in AsiaHelen Siu

Historical and contemporary movements of people, goods, and cultural meanings that have defined Asia as a region. Reexamination of state-centered conceptualizations of Asia and of established boundaries in regional studies. The intersections of transregional institutions and local societies and their effects on trading empires, religious traditions, colonial encounters, and cultural fusion. Finance flows that connect East Asia and the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Africa. The cultures of capital and market in the neoliberal and postsocialist world.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 353a / ARCG 353a, The Archaeology of Trade and ExchangeRichard Burger

This seminar will focus on archaeological approaches to exchange and trade. As background, we will review some of the principal theories of exchange from anthropology and sociology, such as those of Mauss, Malinowski and Polanyi. The role of trade and exchange in different kinds of societies will examined by contextualizing these transactions within specific cultural configurations and considering the nature of production and consumption as they relate to movement of these goods. We will consider methods and models that have been used to analyze regions of interaction at different spatial scales and the theoretical arguments about the social impact of inter-regional and intra-regional interactions involving the transfer of goods, including approaches such as world systems, unequal development and globalization. In addition, we will examine the ways that have been utilized in archaeology to identify different kinds of exchange systems, often through analogies to well documented ethnographic and historic cases. Finally, we will consider the range of techniques that have been employed in order to track the movement of goods across space. These sourcing techniques will be evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages from an archaeological perspective, and how the best technical analyses may vary according to the nature of natural or cultural materials under consideration (ceramics, volcanic stone, metals, etc.). The theme for this year’s seminar is obsidian so students should select some aspect of obsidian research for their final paper and presentation.
F 2:30pm-4:30pm

* ANTH 354b, Cuerpos Femeninos (Female Bodies): Biology, Evolution, and SocietyClaudia Valeggia

This course is not your regular lecture or seminar class. It is indeed a journey, an exploration of female bodies from an evolutionary and biosocial perspective. We focus on physiological, ecological, and social aspects of women’s development from puberty, through reproductive processes such as menstrual cycles, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and breastfeeding, and menopause. We also explore variation in female life histories in a variety of western and non-western cultural and ecological settings. Examples are drawn primarily from traditional and modern human societies and our own life experiences. We encourage critical thinking at all times with the hope that discussions in this class become useful when making decisions about your lives as citizens, potential parents, health care providers, health care recipients, and policy makers. This course is taught entirely in Spanish. Open to students who have placed into L5 courses or who have successfully completed an L4 course in Spanish.  L5, SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* ANTH 356b, Goods and GoodnessJane Lynch

What is the good in buying organic milk or a shirt stitched with a “Made in USA” tag? Should people try to effect social, economic, and environmental change through their purchasing habits? This course examines “ethical consumerism” by tracing its antecedents and placing them in social, cultural, and historical contexts. We ask: how do different ideas of what makes goods good affect what we make and buy, give and take, keep as treasure and toss out as trash? To address this question, we investigate the moral claims that have been central in debates over what the economy is. Readings for this course provide students with a grounding in classic theories of political economy. However, we also examine scholarship that challenges and encourages us to read against the grain of those theories. Drawing upon this latter body of scholarship, we explore how “ethical consumerism” intersects with nationalist projects, socioeconomic privilege, race and racialization, religious values, and the gendering of consumer behaviors and identities. Our study of commodities in this course is thus an inquiry into diverse claims about “goodness” and the ways in which ethics and morality both intersect with and are embedded in economic life.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 362a, Unity and Diversity in Chinese CultureHelen Siu

An exploration of the Chinese identity as it has been reworked over the centuries. Major works in Chinese anthropology and their intellectual connections with general anthropology and historical studies. Topics include kinship and marriage, marketing systems, rituals and popular religion, ethnicity and state making, and the cultural nexus of power.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 367b, Technology and CultureLisa Messeri

This class examines how technology matters in our daily lives. How do technologies shape understandings of ourselves, the worlds we inhabit, and each other? How do the values and assumptions of engineers and innovators shape our behaviors? How do technologies change over time and between cultures. Students learn to think about technology and culture as co-constituted. We read and discuss texts from history and anthropology of science, as well as fictional explorations relevant to course topics. .  SO0 Course cr
HTBA

* ANTH 376b / EVST 377b, Observing and Measuring Behavior, Part I: Study DesignEduardo Fernandez-Duque

This is the first course in a spring-fall sequence. The course surveys theoretical issues and practical methods relevant to studying the behavior of animals and humans, primarily in the “wild.” Topics covered include formulation of research questions, hypotheses and predictions, study design, sampling methods for studying behavior, genetics, endocrinology, ecology, climate. Students learn and practice various forms of behavioral and ecological sampling, as well as gain familiarity with some widely-used technologies that facilitate the study of behavior (e.g. radiotelemetry). Then, working around a specific research question, students design their own study. Those who choose can develop a study to be implemented during an NSF-funded Summer Program in Argentina (https://www.owlmonkeyproject.com/open-calls). Students who enrolled in ANTH 376 during spring 2021 when the summer program was cancelled due to the pandemic can apply to take part in the 2022 summer program in Argentina and may enroll in ANTH 377 during the fall 2022 term. Prerequisite: Some background (including high school) on evolutionary biology, animal behavior, biology recommended. Contact the Instructor if in doubt.  SC, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 377a / EVST 379a, Observing and Measuring Behavior, Part II: Data Analyses and ReportingEduardo Fernandez-Duque

This is the second course in a spring-fall sequence. The course is primarily for students who have recently conducted research and are in the process of analyses and writing up the results of the research. In this course students learn how to analyze the data they have collected, strategies for interpreting and presenting results, including considerations of study design issues and a priori statistical protocols; predictive and/or explanatory power and interpretation of statistical significance, scientific inference and research relevance. Students practice writing and oral skills associated with how to write communicating the results of their study. Prerequisite: ANTH 376 or EVST 377QR, SC, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 378b, Postwar VietnamErik Harms

An introduction to the study of Vietnamese society since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, with a focus on how economic and political changes intersect with cultural and social life. The historical challenges of postwar socialism, economic renovation, and the intersection of "market-oriented socialism" with class dynamics, urbanization, gender, health care, and ritual life.  SO
M 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 380b / LING 219b, The Evolution of Language and CultureEdwin Ko

Introduction to cultural and linguistic evolution. How human language arose; how diversity evolves; how innovations proceed through a community; who within a community drives change; how changes can be “undone” to reconstruct the past. Methods originally developed for studying evolutionary biology are applied to language and culture.  WR, SO0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ANTH 383b / SAST 303b, In Ordinary FashionJane Lynch

Clothing fashions not only our bodies but also our experiences in and claims about the world. It has been used to define the nature and radical possibilities of indigeneity, anti-colonial nationalism, counter-cultural narratives, and capitalist critiques. At the same time, dress–and its social and legal regulation–also creates and reinforces social hierarchies, systems of morality, and forms of exclusion. This course centers these competing social realities and histories using clothing as a way into understanding the poetics and politics of everyday life. Readings include ethnographies and social histories of textiles, fashion, and the manufacture of garments including cases from India, Guatemala, Italy, China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Trinidad, and the United States.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 385a / ARCG 385a, Archaeological CeramicsAnne Underhill

Archaeological methods for analyzing and interpreting ceramics, arguably the most common type of object found in ancient sites. Focus on what different aspects of ceramic vessels reveal about the people who made them and used them.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 394a, Methods and Research in Molecular Anthropology ISerena Tucci

The first part of a two-term practical introduction to molecular analysis of anthropological questions. Discussion of genetics and molecular evolution, particularly as they address issues in anthropology, combined with laboratory sessions on basic tools for genetic analysis and bioinformatics. Development of research projects to be carried out in ANTH 395.  SC0 Course cr
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 395b, Methods and Research in Molecular Anthropology IISerena Tucci

The second part of a two-term practical introduction to molecular analysis of anthropological questions. Design and execution of laboratory projects developed in ANTH 394. Research involves at least ten hours per week in the laboratory. Results are presented in a formal seminar at the end of the term. Prerequisite: ANTH 394.  RP
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 398a / AFST 388a / EDST 388a, Anthropology of EducationStaff

This course explores how the insights and concepts of social anthropology contribute to improved understanding of educational theory and practice in multicultural settings. The course draws on ethnographic approaches to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationship between personhood, learning, and the centrality of culture within various educational contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. It illustrates the realities of what it means to be growing up and living in multicultural and multilingual African nations. Students are encouraged to think critically about the potential benefits and challenges of applying the discourses, models, and systems of Western education as a means of "development." Assigned readings will help critically examine traditional categories such as 'gender,' 'class,' 'race,' 'kinship,' 'religion,' and 'nation.' Class discussions acknowledge the intricate interplay of these categories in the context of contemporary experiences of migration. By end of the course, students develop a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics shaping educational systems and intercultural relations in Africa and beyond. Ultimate aim is to equip students with the confidence and cultural sensitivity necessary for making informed comparisons of teaching and learning practices within a global context.  SO
W 1pm-2:50pm

* ANTH 405b, Causal Inference in Behavioral Ecology, Evolution and Environmental SciencesEduardo Fernandez-Duque

If correlation does not usually imply causation, how can we understand causes and effects when we cannot do “real” experiments and most of our data are observational?  This seminar is intended for students who are planning or conducting research in the ecological, environmental, evolutionary, and behavioral sciences. The course is focused on how to design studies that allow us to make inferences about causality (“causal inference”) when most data are observational (as opposed to experimental). We read book chapters and journal articles on observational and experimental research, deductive and inductive reasoning, formulation of research questions, conceptual diagrams, hypotheses and predictions, selection/definition/validity of variables, causal diagrams and paths, mediators, moderators, and confounding factors.   SC
HTBA

* ANTH 409a / ER&M 394a / EVST 422a / F&ES 422a / GLBL 394a, Climate and Society: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesMichael Dove

Discussion of the major currents of thought regarding climate and climate change; focusing on equity, collapse, folk knowledge, historic and contemporary visions, western and non-western perspectives, drawing on the social sciences and humanities.  WR, SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 414b / EAST 417b, Hubs, Mobilities, and World CitiesHelen Siu

Analysis of urban life in historical and contemporary societies. Topics include capitalist and postmodern transformations; class, gender, ethnicity, and migration; and global landscapes of power and citizenship. .  SORP0 Course cr
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 415b, Culture, History, Power, and RepresentationHelen Siu

This seminar critically explores how anthropologists use contemporary social theories to formulate the junctures of meaning, interest, and power. It thus aims to integrate symbolic, economic, and political perspectives on culture and social process. If culture refers to the understandings and meanings by which people live, then it constitutes the conventions of social life that are themselves produced in the flux of social life, invented by human activity. Theories of culture must therefore illuminate this problematic of agency and structure. They must show how social action can both reproduce and transform the structures of meaning, the conventions of social life. Even as such a position becomes orthodox in anthropology, it raises serious questions about the possibilities for ethnographic practice and theoretical analysis. How, for example, are such conventions generated and transformed where there are wide differentials of power and unequal access to resources? What becomes of our notions of humans as active agents of culture when the possibilities for maneuver and the margin of action for many are overwhelmed by the constraints of a few? How do elites—ritual elders, Brahmanic priests, manorial lords, factory-managers—secure compliance to a normative order? How are expressions of submission and resistance woven together in a fabric of cultural understandings? How does a theory of culture enhance our analyses of the reconstitution of political authority from traditional kingship to modern nation-state, the encapsulation of pre-capitalist modes of production, and the attempts to convert “primordial sentiments” to “civic loyalties”? How do transnational fluidities and diasporic connections make instruments of nation-states contingent? These questions are some of the questions we immediately face when probing the intersections of culture, politics and representation, and they are the issues that lie behind this seminar.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 421a / EAST 421a, Ethnography in China’s BorderlandsStaff

Methods such as participant observation, interviews, surveys, and ethnography are based on the assumption of access to a field. This course looks at whether and how one can understand a society if access is restricted and dangerous for local participants. We study the cluster of concepts known as “remote ethnography”—studying on-the-ground conditions from a distance—through the case of Xinjiang, China. It looks critically at methods used by journalists, social scientists, governments, corporations and others in situations where access is not possible, including open-source research, close reading of official texts, social media analysis, digital survey techniques, remote imaging, and diaspora interviews. In particular, we ask if these can be done without detailed knowledge of local context, culture and history, and study how these sources relate to recent ethnographic knowledge about people's lives in rural southern Xinjiang. Students become familiar with the main concepts of remote ethnography and acquire basic tools for their own research. By the end of the semester, they also prepare to critically assess the methods used by anthropologists, social scientists, journalists and others in studying closed societies.  HU
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ANTH 423b / ANTH 623b, The Anthropology of Possible WorldsPaul Kockelman

This course focuses on the nature of possible worlds: literary worlds (Narnia), ideological worlds (the world according to a particular political stance), psychological worlds (what someone remembers to be the case, wishes to be the case, or believes to be the case), environmental worlds (possible environmental futures), virtual worlds (the World of Warcraft), and—most of all—ethnographic works in which the actual and possible worlds of others are represented (the world according to the ancient Maya). We don’t focus on the contents of such worlds per se, but rather on the range of resources people have for representing, regimenting, and residing in such worlds; and the roles such resources play in mediating social relations and cultural values.  SO
M 9:25am-11:15am

* ANTH 425a / ARCG 425a / EAST 428a, Archaeology of Protohistoric JapanStaff

Where and when are the origins of Japanese culture? In this seminar we will examine the archaeology of the Japanese archipelago from the introduction of paddy rice agriculture through the end of the 8th century with an eye toward this question. Examining excavated materials and early textual accounts, we will confront myths—both ancient and modern—of Japanese origins, and interrogate the framing of these time periods. Students will explore the interplay between event and process; and between local developments and outside influence through topics including the arrival of immigrant populations and rice agriculture, political and trade relationships within the archipelago as well as on the Asian continent, and the emergence of political “statehood.”  SO
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ANTH 430a / AMST 430a / ER&M 432a / HIST 123a, Muslims in the United StatesZareena Grewal

Since 9/11, cases of what has been termed “home-grown terrorism” have cemented the fear that “bad” Islam is not just something that exists far away, in distant lands. As a result, there has been an urgent interest to understand who American Muslims are by officials, experts, journalists, and the public. Although Muslims have been part of America’s story from its founding, Muslims have alternated from an invisible minority to the source of national moral panics, capturing national attention during political crises, as a cultural threat or even a potential fifth column. Today the stakes are high to understand what kinds of meanings and attachments connect Muslims in America to the Muslim world and to the US as a nation. Over the course of the semester, students grapple with how to define and apply the slippery concept of diaspora to different dispersed Muslim populations in the US, including racial and ethnic diasporas, trading diasporas, political diasporas, and others. By focusing on a range of communities-in-motion and a diverse set of cultural texts, students explore the ways mobility, loss, and communal identity are conceptualized by immigrants, expatriates, refugees, guest-workers, religious seekers, and exiles. To this end, we read histories, ethnographies, essays, policy papers, novels, poetry, memoirs; we watch documentary and fictional films; we listen to music, speeches, spoken word performances, and prayers. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of the multiple meanings and conceptual limits of homeland and diaspora for Muslims in America, particularly in the Age of Terror.  HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 441a / MMES 430a / WGSS 430a, Gender and Citizenship in the Middle EastEda Pepi

This seminar explores the complex interplay between gender, sexuality, and citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa. We examine how they are both shaped by and shape experiences of nationality, migration, and statelessness. Highlighting how gender and sexual minorities, and the gendered regulation of life, more broadly, both animate and contest colonial legacies tied to a racialized notion of “modernity.” Through ethnography, history, and literature, students confront a political economy of intimacies that continuously reshape what it means to be or not to be a citizen. Our approach extends beyond borders and laws to include the everyday acts of citizenship that rework race, religion, and ethnicity across transnational fronts. We discuss how people navigate their lives in the everyday, from the ordinary poetry of identity and belonging to the spectacular drama of war and conflict. Our goal is to challenge orientalist legacies that dismiss theoretical insights from scholarship on and from this region by labeling it as focused on exceptional cases instead of addressing “universal” issues. Instead, we take seriously that the specific historical and social contexts of the Middle East and North Africa reveal how connections based on gender and sexuality within and across families and social classes are deeply entwined with racial narratives of state authority and political sovereignty on a global scale.  SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 447b / MMES 447b, Culture and Politics in the Contemporary Middle EastMarcia Inhorn

In the decade since the 2011 Arab uprisings, the challenges facing the Middle East have been profound. They include various forms of war and displacement, political and economic instability, social upheaval and societal rupture. Indeed, by 2015, millions of Middle Eastern men, women, and children had been driven from their homes by conflict. This advanced undergraduate/graduate seminar is designed to explore some of the most important contemporary cultural and political shifts that are shaping life across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The course aims for broad regional coverage, with particular focus on a variety of important Middle Eastern nation-states (e.g., Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran). Students should emerge from the course with a keener sense of Middle Eastern regional histories and contemporary social issues, as described by a new generation of leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies and particularly Middle East Anthropology. This course is thus designed for students in Anthropology, Modern Middle East Studies, and Global Affairs, but also from the disciplines of Sociology, History, Political Science, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the like. The course is also intended for students in the CMES Graduate Certificate Program.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 450a / ARCG 450a, Analysis of Lithic TechnologyOswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

Introduction to the analysis of chipped and ground stone tools, including instruction in manufacturing chipped stone tools from obsidian. Review of the development of stone tool technology from earliest tools to those of historical periods; relevance of this technology to subsistence, craft specialization, and trade. Discussion of the recording, analysis, and drawing of artifacts, and of related studies such as sourcing and use-wear analysis.  SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 451b / WGSS 431b, Intersectionality and Women’s HealthStaff

The intersections of race, class, gender, and other axes of “difference” and their effects on women’s health, primarily in the contemporary United States. Recent feminist approaches to intersectionality and multiplicity of oppressions theory. Ways in which anthropologists studying women’s health issues have contributed to social and feminist theory at the intersections of race, class, and gender.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 453b / HLTH 425b, Global Health: Equity and PolicyCatherine Panter-Brick

Current debates in global health have focused specifically on health disparities, equity, and policy. This advanced undergraduate seminar class is designed for students seeking to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of health research, practice, and policy.  Each week, we address issues of importance for research and policy, and apply theory, ethics, and practice to global health debates and case studies. The class encourages critical thinking regarding the promotion of health equity.    WR, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 454b / ARCG 454b, Statistics for Archaeological AnalysisWilliam Honeychurch

An introduction to quantitative data collection, analysis, and argumentation for archaeologists. Emphasis on the exploration, visualization, and analysis of specifically archaeological data using simple statistical approaches. No prior knowledge of statistics required.  QR
F 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 464b / ARCG 464b / E&EB 464b, Human OsteologyEric Sargis

A lecture and laboratory course focusing on the characteristics of the human skeleton and its use in studies of functional morphology, paleodemography, and paleopathology. Laboratories familiarize students with skeletal parts; lectures focus on the nature of bone tissue, its biomechanical modification, sexing, aging, and interpretation of lesions.  SC, SO0 Course cr
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* ANTH 465b / AMST 459b, Multispecies WorldsKathryn Dudley

This seminar explores the relational and material worlds that humans create in concert with other-than-human species. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the problematic subject of anthropology—Anthropos—we seek to pose new questions about the fate of life worlds in the present epoch of anthropogenic climate change. Our readings track circuits of knowledge from anthropology and philosophy to geological history, literary criticism, and environmental studies as we come to terms with the loss of biodiversity, impending wildlife extinctions, and political-economic havoc wrought by global warming associated with the Anthropocene.  A persistent provocation guides our inquiry: What multispecies worldings become possible to recognize and cultivate when we dare to decenter the human in our politics, passions, and aspirations for life on a shared planet?  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 468a / AFST 465a / HSHM 413a / URBN 400a / URBN 442a, Infrastructures of Empire: Control and (In)security in the Global SouthLeslie Gross-Wyrtzen

This advanced seminar examines the role that infrastructure plays in producing uneven geographies of power historically and in the “colonial present” (Gregory 2006). After defining terms and exploring the ways that infrastructure has been conceptualized and studied, we analyze how different types of infrastructure (energy, roads, people, and so on) constitute the material and social world of empire. At the same time, infrastructure is not an uncontested arena: it often serves as a key site of political struggle or even enters the fray as an unruly actor itself, thus conditioning possibilities for anti-imperial and decolonial practice. The geographic focus of this course is the African continent, but we explore comparative cases in other regions of the majority and minority world.  SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 471a or b and ANTH 472a or b, Readings in AnthropologyWilliam Honeychurch

For students who wish to investigate an area of anthropology not covered by regular departmental offerings. The project must terminate with at least a term paper or its equivalent. No student may take more than two terms for credit. To apply for admission, a student should present a prospectus and bibliography to the director of undergraduate studies no later than the third week of the term. Written approval from the faculty member who will direct the student's reading and writing must accompany the prospectus.
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* ANTH 491a or b, The Senior EssayWilliam Honeychurch

Supervised investigation of some topic in depth. The course requirement is a long essay to be submitted as the student's senior essay. By the end of the third week of the term in which the essay is written, the student must present a prospectus and a preliminary bibliography to the director of undergraduate studies. Written approval from an Anthropology faculty adviser and an indication of a preferred second reader must accompany the prospectus.
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