ANTH 20100. The Inka and Aztec States. 100 Units.

This course is an intensive examination of the origins, structure, and meaning of two native states of the ancient Americas: the Inka and the Aztec. Lectures are framed around an examination of theories of state genesis, function, and transformation, with special reference to the economic, institutional, and symbolic bases of indigenous state development. This course is broadly comparative in perspective and considers the structural significance of institutional features that are either common to or unique expressions of these two Native American states.

Instructor(s): A. Kolata     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 40100,LACS 20100,LACS 40305

ANTH 20405. Anthropology of Disability. 100 Units.

This seminar undertakes to explore "disability" from an anthropological perspective that recognizes it as a socially constructed concept with implications for our understanding of fundamental issues about culture, society, and individual differences. We explore a wide range of theoretical, legal, ethical, and policy issues as they relate to the experiences of persons with disabilities, their families, and advocates. The final project is a presentation on the fieldwork.

Instructor(s): M. Fred     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 36900,ANTH 30405,CHDV 30405,HMRT 25210,HMRT 35210,SOSC 36900

ANTH 20415. American Legal Culture: Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Problem-Solving Courts,AMERICAN LEGAL CULTURE: Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Problem-Solving Courts. 100 Units.

This seminar will examine the values and norms of American Legal Culture through an exploration of the concepts and related institutions associated with Therapeutic Jurisprudence, an approach that applies the tools of social science to examine the law and its key actors’ impact on individuals’ mental and physical health and to evaluate and propose alternatives for improving the legal system. 
,Participants will conduct observations in Cook County’s specialty courts: Drug Court; Mental Health Court; Veterans Treatment Court; Guardianship Court; Specialty Court for Felony Prostitution Cases. Sessions will combine discussion of relevant literature pertaining to therapeutic jurisprudence as well as various ethnographic research methods that students will be using to gain insights into the particular court they are studying. ,This seminar will examine the values and norms of American Legal Culture through an exploration of the concepts and related institutions associated with Therapeutic Jurisprudence, an approach that applies the tools of social science to examine the law and its key actors’ impact on individuals’ mental and physical health and to evaluate and propose alternatives for improving the legal system. Participants will conduct observations in Cook County’s specialty courts: Drug Court; Mental Health Court; Veterans Treatment Court; Guardianship Court; Specialty Court for Felony Prostitution Cases. Sessions will combine discussion of relevant literature pertaining to therapeutic jurisprudence as well as various ethnographic research methods that students will be using to gain insights into the particular court they are studying. Morris Fred.

Instructor(s): M.Fred,F. Morris      Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open to third- and fourth-year College students and to graduate students,
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 30415,PLSC 30415,LAWS 93801,LLSO 26203,,MAPS 46701

ANTH 20535. The Social Life of Clean Energy. 100 Units.

This course in political and environmental anthropology focuses on how renewable energy forms (like solar, wind, biofuel, and geothermal) have become increasingly important sites of political activity, commercial opportunity and social imagination across the world. Against the backdrop of an enduring geopolitics and geoeconomics of petroleum, coal, and nuclear power, of transnational activist and governmental discourse on sustainability, and of local concerns about resource entitlement and cultural sovereignty, we examine how clean energy forms are being imagined, developed, institutionalized, and contested in a variety of places across the world. In each case, we explore the unique social life of an emergent technology and source of power.

Instructor(s): C. Howe     Terms Offered: Summer

ANTH 20701-20702. Introduction to African Civilization I-II.

Completion of the general education requirement in social sciences recommended. Taking these courses in sequence is recommended but not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. African Civilization introduces students to African history and cultures in a two-quarter sequence.

ANTH 21015. Media, Culture, and Society. 100 Units.

This course is a theoretical and ethnographic overview of past, current, and future directions of anthropological research on the mass media. We study issues as diverse as projects of media representation and cultural conservation among indigenous peoples, the relationship of mass media to nationalism across the world, the social life of journalism and news making in an era of new technologies and ownership consolidation, and current debates over the role of mass media.

Instructor(s): D. Boyer     Terms Offered: Summer

ANTH 21102. Classical Readings in Anthropology: History and Theory of Human Evolution. 100 Units.

This course is a seminar on racial, sexual, and class bias in the classic theoretic writings, autobiographies, and biographies of Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Keith, Osborn, Jones, Gregory, Morton, Broom, Black, Dart, Weidenreich, Robinson, Leakey, LeGros-Clark, Schultz, Straus, Hooton, Washburn, Coon, Dobzhansky, Simpson, and Gould.

Instructor(s): R. Tuttle     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38400,EVOL 38400,HIPS 23600

ANTH 21107. Classical Readings in Anthropology: Anthropological Theory. 100 Units.

Since its inception as an academically institutionalized discipline, anthropology has always addressed the relation between a self-consciously modernizing West and its various and changing others. Yet it has not always done so with sufficient critical attention to its own concepts and categories—a fact that has led, since at least the 1980s, to considerable debate about the nature of the anthropological enterprise and its epistemological foundations. This course provides a brief critical introduction to the history of anthropological thought over the course of the discipline's long twentieth century, form the 1880s to the present. Although we focus on the North American and British traditions, we review important strains of French and, to a lesser extent, German social theory in chronicling the emergence and transformation of modern anthropology as an empirically based, but theoretically informed, practice of knowledge production about human sociality and culture.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: TBA
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 30000

ANTH 21201. Intensive Study of a Culture: Chicago Blues. 100 Units.

This course is an anthropological and historical exploration of one of the most original and influential American musical genres in its social and cultural context. We examine transformations in the cultural meaning of the blues and its place within broader American cultural currents, the social and economic situation of blues musicians, and the political economy of blues within the wider music industry.

Instructor(s): M. Dietler     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 21201

ANTH 21217. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Luo of Kenya. 100 Units.

This course is an overview of the history and contemporary culture of the Luo, a Nilotic-speaking people living on the shores of Lake Victoria. We examine the migration of the Luo into the region, the history of their encounter with British colonialism, and their evolving situation within the postcolonial Kenyan state. We also use the wide variety of studies of the Luo to illuminate transformations in the nature of ethnographic research and representations.

Instructor(s): M. Dietler     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): AFAM 21217

ANTH 21225. Intensive Study of a Culture: Louisiana. 100 Units.

Louisiana is home to Cajun music, Creole food, and the Yat dialect, as well as some of the most impressive prehistoric mound sites in North America. This course offers an archaeological, historical, and ethnographic introduction to Louisiana's complex culture. We focus on the ways in which race, ethnicity, and identity are constructed within and about Louisiana.

Instructor(s): S. Dawdy     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 21230. Intensive Study of a Culture: Lowland Maya History and Ethnography. 100 Units.

The survey encompasses the dynamics of first contact; long-term cultural accommodations achieved during colonial rule; disruptions introduced by state and market forces during the early postcolonial period; the status of indigenous communities in the twentieth century; and new social, economic, and political challenges being faced by the contemporary peoples of the area. We stress a variety of traditional theoretical concerns of the broader Mesoamerican region stressed (e.g., the validity of reconstructive ethnography; theories of agrarian community structure; religious revitalization movements; the constitution of such identity categories as indigenous, Mayan, and Yucatecan). In this respect, the course can serve as a general introduction to the anthropology of the region. The relevance of these area patterns for general anthropological debates about the nature of culture, history, identity, and social change are considered.

Instructor(s): J. Lucy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 30705

ANTH 21251. Intensive Study of a Culture: Modern China. 100 Units.

Contemporary China is often spoken of as undergoing deep and rapid social change. Certainly globalizing forces have been especially evident in all parts of China over the last couple of decades. At the same time, like the rest of East Asia and the Pacific Rim, China has developed distinctive social, cultural, and political forms, many of which circulate nationally and transnationally. This course comes to terms with both the processes of change that have characterized the last few decades and with a few recent social and cultural phenomena of interest. Because the scholarly literature lags behind the pace of transformation in China, we draw on a wide variety of materials: ethnography, memoir, fiction, films, essays, historical studies, short stories, websites. Emphasis in class discussions is on grasping how contemporary Chinese realities are experienced from viewpoints within China—this is the sense in which the course is intensive study of a "culture." Readings and materials are divided into several major units concerned with historical memory, rural China, urban life, labor migration, and popular culture. Students undertake, as a term project, their own investigation of some aspect of contemporary cultural change in China.

Instructor(s): J. Farquhar     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32200

ANTH 21254. Intensive Study of a Culture: Pirates. 100 Units.

Many questions regarding pirates, smugglers, and privateers go to the heart of major anthropological problems (e.g., the nature of informal economies, the relationship between criminality and the state, transnationalism, the evolution of capitalism, intellectual property and globalization, political revolutions, counter-culture, and the cultural role of heroic [or anti-heroic] narratives). Each week we tackle one of these topics, paring a classic anthropological work with specific examples from the historical, archaeological, and/or ethnographic literature. We compare pirate practices in the early modern Caribbean to examples spanning from ancient ship raiders in the Mediterranean to contemporary software "piracy."

Instructor(s): S. Dawdy     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 21254

ANTH 21255. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Senegambia. 100 Units.

This course is an overview of history, culture, and society in the Senegambia, a territory situated between the Senegal and Gambia Rivers, and roughly corresponding to the political boundaries of modern-day Senegal. We examine the region in broad historical perspective. We begin with oral accounts of migration and state formation. We then track the gradual entanglement of local societies with global political economic forces during the Atlantic era. We also discuss the legitimate trade, French colonialism, and road to political independence. The focus of the last portion of the course is on cultural, artistic, and political experiences in the postcolonial state of Senegal.

Instructor(s): F. Richard     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): AFAM 21255

ANTH 21264. Intensive Study of a Culture: Political Struggles of Highland Asia. 100 Units.

As Edmund Leach noted in a later edition of The Political Systems of Highland Burma, massive changes largely occasioned by outside forces reshaped political relations in the later twentieth century. And not just in Highland Burma. This course compares political trajectories of societies across the arc of the Himalayan Highlands, from Burma to Afghanistan. From World War II, through decolonization and the cold war, and via many and disparate counterinsurgency campaigns, conflict and violence has marked the region, big states and small, old states and new. This course compares the recent political regimes, struggles and fortunes of Burma, Northeast India, Nepal, Tibet, and Afghanistan.

Instructor(s): J. Kelly     Terms Offered: Spring (possibly)
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 21264

ANTH 21265. Intensive Study of a Culture, Celts: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern. 100 Units.

Celts and things Celtic have long occupied a prominent and protean place in the popular imagination, and "the Celts" has been an amazingly versatile concept in the politics of identity and collective memory in recent history. This course is an anthropological exploration of this phenomenon that examines: (1) the use of the ancient past in the construction of modern nationalist mythologies of Celtic identity (e.g., in France and Ireland) and regional movements of resistance to nationalist and colonialist project (e.g., in Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gallicia, Asturias); (2) the construction of transnational ethno-nostalgic forms of Celtic identity in modern diasporic communities (Irish, Scottish, etc.); and (3) various recent spiritualist visions of Celticity that decouple the concept from ethnic understandings (e.g., in the New Age and Neo-Pagan movements). All of these are treated in the context of what is known archaeologically about the ancient peoples of Europe who serve as a symbolic reservoir for modern Celtic identities. The course explores these competing Celtic imaginaries in the spaces and media where they are constructed and performed, ranging from museums and monuments, to neo-druid organizations, Celtic cyberspace, Celtic festivals, Celtic theme parks, Celtic music, Celtic commodities, etc.

Instructor(s): M. Dietler     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 21303. Making the Natural World: Foundations of Human Ecology. 100 Units.

This course considers the conceptual underpinnings of contemporary Western notions of ecology, environment, and balance, but it also examines several specific historical trajectories of anthropogenic landscape change. We approach these issues from the vantage of several different disciplinary traditions, including environmental history, philosophy, ecological anthropology, and paleoecology.

Instructor(s): M. Lycett     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): ENST 21201 and 21301 are required of students who are majoring in Environmental Studies and may be taken in any order.
Equivalent Course(s): ENST 21301

ANTH 21305. Modern Readings in Anthropology: Explorations in Oral Narrative (The Folktale) 100 Units.

This course studies the role of storytelling and narrativity in society and culture. Among these are a comparison of folktale traditions, the shift from oral to literate traditions and the impact of writing, the principal schools of analysis of narrative structure and function, and the place of narrative in the disciplines (i.e., law, psychoanalysis, politics, history, philosophy, anthropology).

Instructor(s): J. Fernandez     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 45300,HCUL 45300

ANTH 21320. Law, Lawyers and the Courtroom. 100 Units.

This course explores the relationship between law, lawyers, and their quintessential place of practice, the courtroom. Though the relationship between the three might seem straightforward – lawyers practice law in the courtroom – this course seeks to complicate the picture through the use of contemporary ethnographies and other social scientific texts. To this end, this course asks: what makes a lawyer a lawyer? What exactly is it that they do? And, what goes on in the courtroom, with its specialized language, ritualized performances, and complex procedures? By thinking through these questions as a class, this course aims to denaturalize the connections between lawyers, law, and courtrooms. Analyzing the ideological underpinnings of these objects of study, revealing their cultural specificity, and exploring the nuances of their relationships to each other and to society, students will come to a far more complex understanding of how the law-filled world in which we live is both constructed and constructive. Readings include historical, theoretical, sociocultural, and, in particular, sociolinguistic texts. A visit to a courtroom will be part of this course.

Instructor(s): L. Cabatingan      Terms Offered: Spring

ANTH 21401. The Practice of Anthropology: Logic and Practice of Archaeology. 100 Units.

This course offers an overview of the concepts and practice of anthropological archaeology. We discuss the varied goals of archaeological research and consider the range of ways in which archaeologists build inferences about the past from the material record. Throughout the quarter, the more general discussion of research logic and practice is situated in the context of detailed consideration of current archaeological projects from different parts of the world.

Instructor(s): M. Lycett     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 21406. The Practice of Anthropology: Celebrity and Science in Paleoanthropology. 100 Units.

This seminar explores the balance among research, "showbiz" big business, and politics in the careers of Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey; Alan Walker; Donald Johanson; Jane Goodall; Dian Fossey; and Biruté Galdikas. Information is gathered from films, taped interviews, autobiographies, biographies, pop publications, instructor's anecdotes, and samples of scientific writings.

Instructor(s): R. Tuttle     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38300,HIPS 21100

ANTH 21420. The Practice of Anthropology: Ethnographic Methods. 100 Units.

This course introduces theory and practice, as well as situates ethnography within social science research more generally. Students are exposed to a wide range of investigative and analytical techniques used in ethnographic research and to multiple forms of interpretation and representation of ethnographic data. Students are required to apply the methods discussed in class through field assignments and through a final ethnographic project that is developed in consultation with the instructor. This course is particularly useful for students who intend to write a senior thesis the following year. Field trips to sites in Chicago required.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Preference given to third-year anthropology majors, others by consent only

ANTH 21525. Love, Conjugality, and Capital: Intimacy in the Modern World. 100 Units.

A look at societies in other parts of the world demonstrates that modernity in the realm of love, intimacy, and family often had a different trajectory from the European one. This course surveys ideas and practices surrounding love, marriage, and capital in the modern world. Using a range of theoretical, historical, and anthropological readings, as well as films, the course explores such topics as the emergence of companionate marriage in Europe and the connections between arranged marriage, dowry, love, and money. Case studies are drawn primarily from Europe, India, and Africa.

Instructor(s): J. Cole, R. Majumdar     Terms Offered: Winter 2013
Prerequisite(s): Any 10000-level music course or consent of instructor
Note(s): This course typically is offered in alternate years.

ANTH 21725. Mass Mediated Society and Japan. 100 Units.

This course explores the emergence of mass mediated society in twentieth century industrial modernity through the sociocultural lens of Japan. Specifically, we will be looking at the evolution of new social forms, identities, subjectivities, and experience engendered through mass mediating technologies. At the same time, we will consider the various forms of discourse that arise in relation to these phenomena. Although our attention will be on the experience and effects of mass mediated society in Japan, readings will not be Japan exclusive. They will draw from a wide range of disciplines, combining critical theory with ethnographic, and historical texts. We will also consider examples from popular culture. No previous knowledge of Japan or Japanese language is required.

Instructor(s): M. Fisch     Terms Offered: Spring

ANTH 22000. The Anthropology of Development. 100 Units.

This course applies anthropological understanding to development programs in "underdeveloped" and "developing" societies. Topics include the history of development; different perspectives on development within the world system; the role of principal development agencies and their use of anthropological knowledge; the problems of ethnographic field inquiry in the context of development programs; the social organization and politics of underdevelopment; the culture construction of "well-being;"  economic, social, and political critiques of development; population, consumption, and the environment; and the future of development.

Instructor(s): A. Kolata     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 35500,ENST 22000

ANTH 22105. The Anthropology of Science. 100 Units.

Reading key works in the philosophy of science, as well as ethnographic studies of scientific practices and objects, this course introduces contemporary science studies. We interrogate how technoscientific "facts" are produced, discussing the transformations in social order produced by new scientific knowledge. Possible topics include the human genome project, biodiversity, and the digital revolution.

Instructor(s): J. Masco     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32300,HIPS 21301

ANTH 22123. Science Studies III: Information Age. 100 Units.

This seminar explores the sociocultural effects of the digital revolution in information technologies. Interrogating the technoscientific as well as sociocultural logics behind new virtual media, we discuss how new forms of subjectivity (collective and individualized), new forms of governmentality, and new political commitments are being produced via information technologies and supercomputing.

Instructor(s): J. Masco     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 22125. Introduction to Science Studies. 100 Units.

Science is a dense site of practices, norms, and values that shapes what it means to be human in the contemporary era. Interwoven with the character of scientific knowledge is the character of the ideas that can be thought and not thought, the diseases that will be treated and not treated, the lives that can be lived and not lived. Yet, science, objectivity, and knowledge have proved resistant to critical analysis. This course is an introduction to thinkers who have withstood this resistance and explores questions about the nature, culture, and politics of scientific knowledge and its production.

Instructor(s): K. Sunder Rajan     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 22126. Feminist Science Studies. 100 Units.

This course aims to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of feminist science studies. As the feminist movements of the 1970s began to change the American political landscape, academic feminists initiated inquiries into the marginalization of women in science – a debate philosopher Sandra Harding has called “the woman question in science”. Feminist scholars, often trained as biologists or physicists, began to examine sex and gender in their own fields of research, now approaching those fields as social realms. They raised the question of androcentric or male-centered epistemologies underlying Western science (alongside scholars critiquing the ‘Eurocentric’ perspective of the social sciences). Harding has called this debate the “science question in feminism.” Feminist science studies scholars have worked up a critical literature on sex, gender, race, class, or disability in human genetics, primate studies, botany, physics, but also in philosophy and the social sciences. In this course, we seek to understand some of the interventions this field hopes to make, and to debate the relevance of these interventions in the current moment. We will begin the seminar by reading texts understood to have paved the ground for feminist critiques of science. This will be followed by a sample of canonical texts illustrating the field’s basic questions. We will then look at different scientific fields and examine feminist writings from within and about them, whereby the specificities of scientific context and content will continuously be up for discussion. After midterms, we will read Science Fiction writer Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. This will serve as a break from theory, and as a different medium into this seminar’s main topics. Following Atwood, we will focus on reproduction and reproductive technologies, another crucial realm of activity for feminist science studies scholars. From there we will transition into medical research and political issues around medicalization. We will spend the final week of the quarter thinking about various paths feminists have taken to intervene into scientific fields through scholarly writing, art, or activism.

Instructor(s): A. Jabloner     Terms Offered: Spring

ANTH 22130. Anthropology of the Machine. 100 Units.

This course examines the machine as a social problematic, asking what is the machine and what is its relationship with technology, science, nature, bodies, and culture. Moving between the tangible and the abstract, we explore the machine as material instantiation, historical paradigm, metaphor, limit, method, and ideal. The course will follow a lecture/seminar format, and students will develop an anthropology of the machine as part of the course requirements.

Instructor(s): M. Fisch     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 22205. Slavery and Unfree Labor. 100 Units.

This course offers a concise overview of institutions of dependency, servitude, and coerced labor in Europe and Africa, from Roman times to the onset of the Atlantic slave trade, and compares their further development (or decline) in the context of the emergence of New World plantation economies based on racial slavery. We discuss the role of several forms of unfreedom and coerced labor in the making of the "modern world" and reflect on the manner in which ideologies and practices associated with the idea of a free labor market supersede, or merely mask, relations of exploitation and restricted choice.

Instructor(s): S. Palmié     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 31700,CRES 22205,LACS 22205,LACS 31700

ANTH 22220. Black Atlantic Environments. 100 Units.

In recent years, informed by such high profile events as Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, there has been a resurgence of interest by scholars to consider how the environment shapes Black Atlantic experiences. Our central concern throughout the course will be: What is the Black Atlantic, and how might a critical understanding of the environment be gained by asking such a question? This course will explore the role the environment plays in the historical, cultural, political, and aesthetic conceptualization of places that encompass a region called the Black Atlantic. We will take a tour, traversing geographical and historical locations to read some defining theories and ethnographies that inform what could tentatively be called Black Atlantic environmental thought. In so doing, the course will allow students to develop the ability to identify, compare, and formulate theories about environmental subjectivities and their peculiar relations to anthropological debates about ‘culture’ and ‘nature.’

Instructor(s): S. Vaughn     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENST 22220,CRES 22220

ANTH 22400. Big Science and the Birth of the National Security State. 100 Units.

This course examines the mutual creation of big science and the American national security state during the Manhattan Project. It presents the atomic bomb project as the center of a new orchestration of scientific, industrial, military, and political institutions in everyday American life. Exploring the linkages between military technoscience, nation-building, and concepts of security and international order, we interrogate one of the foundation structures of the modern world system.

Instructor(s): J. Masco     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 34900,HIPS 21200

ANTH 22410. Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. 100 Units.

Science, technology and information are the ‘racing heart’ of contemporary cognitive capitalism and the engine of change of our technological culture. They are deeply relevant to the understanding of contemporary societies. But how are we to understand the highly esoteric cultures and practices of science, technology and information? During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists raised original, interesting, and consequential questions about the sciences and technology.  Often their work drew on and responded to each other, and, taken together, their various approaches came to constitute a field, "science and technology studies."  The course furnishes an initial guide to this field.  Students will not only encounter some of its principal concepts, approaches, and findings, but will also get a chance to apply science-studies perspectives themselves by performing a fieldwork project. Among the topics we examine are the sociology of scientific knowledge and its applications, constructivism and actor network theory, the study of technology and information, as well as recent work on knowledge and technology in the economy and finance. Beginning with the second week of classes, we will devote the second half of the class to presentations and discussion.

Instructor(s): K. Knorr Cetina     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 30217,ANTH 32410,CHSS 30217,SOCI 20217

ANTH 22530. Ethnographic Film. 100 Units.

This seminar explores ethnographic film as a genre for representing "reality," anthropological knowledge, and cultural lives. We examine how ethnographic film emerged in a particular intellectual and political economic context, as well as how subsequent conceptual and formal innovations have shaped the genre. We also consider social responses to ethnographic film in terms of (1) the contexts for producing and circulating these works, (2) the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation, and (3) the development of indigenous media and other practices in conversation with ethnographic film. Throughout the course, we situate ethnographic film within the larger project for representing "culture," addressing the status of ethnographic film in relation to other documentary practices (e.g., written ethnography, museum exhibitions, documentary film).

Instructor(s): J. Chu     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32530

ANTH 22535. Engaging Media: Thinking about Media and Their Audiences. 100 Units.

In the first part of the course we look at how post–World War II mass communications and “classical” film theory theorized communication and spectatorship; in particular, we trace the dialogue between these liberatory models and the totalitarianism and propaganda (i.e., top-down models of control) of the times. We then look at theories of mass media reception and spectatorship that put ideology at the center of their analysis, interrogating theories of the “receiver” of media messages as cultural dope (Frankfurt school Marxism), psychoanalytic and (post-)Marxist theories of spectatorship (“Screen” theory), feminist critiques of film spectatorship, and reactions to the above in cognitivist film studies. We then turn to British Cultural Studies’ theories of media, focusing on how such work attempts to reconcile models of reception as ideologically unproblematic and as determined by the ideological structures of production and reception. Particular focus is given to the theoretical arguments regarding ideology and media, the notion of “code,” and the differences and similarities in the model of communication with the sociology of mass communication. In the second half of the course we look at anthropological approaches to media and how anthropologists have taken up the issue of media reception. Why have anthropologists largely ignored media and reception studies until recently? What kinds of contributions can anthropology make to the theorization and methodological approach to reception? By critically looking at ethnographies of reception, we problematize the concept of reception proper, looking at more holistic ways of dealing with the issue of the mediation of social life. In the final part of the course we re-evaluate what we mean by “mass media” and “reception.” First we look media (con)texts that blur the duality of production/reception. We then consider new forms of media and to what extent “reception” as a category even makes sense in attempting to understand how engagement with such new media functions.

Instructor(s): C. Nakassis
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32535

ANTH 22606. Indigeneities. 100 Units.

Depending on how you look at it, questions of indigeneity—the who, how, what, and why of peoples that either identify, or are identified, as “native”—are questions that at once transcend, entail, and/or are produced by Euro-American scholarly, political, and legal inquiry. Whether assailed as the product of colonial orientalism or celebrated as the ur-subjectivity of those who resist it (or something in between), the claims of, to, and about indigeneity continue to excite and demand attention scholarly and political. Indeed some argue that politics of indigeneity have gained unique traction in recent decades, as indigenous actors, scholars, and their advocates have pressed for changes to legal, political, and cultural/scientific regimes that have indigenous affairs as their chief objects of inquiry. One need only consider the 2007 passage of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the legal decisions acknowledging the force of native title in the Supreme Courts of Australia and Canada, and even the changes in various regimes of research concerning the social scientific study of native peoples and/or the representation of their material culture, all of which happened less than 20 years ago. Despite these long-standing interests and recent social, politica,l and economic gains, indigenous communities remain among the most vulnerable in the world. These trenchant inequalities beg the question, how does the condition of indigeneity relate to the various social forces shaping the world today and to the lived experiences of those who claim to be, or get named as, indigenous. It is towards an exploration of this question that this course is dedicated. Among the lines of inquiry that we will pursue in the course are: (1) tracing the genealogies of indigeneity as a notion, both in Euro-American human sciences and in other epistemological traditions; (2) considering the role that notions of indigeneity play in contemporary national and international political regimes; (3) exploring how indigeneity is claimed or disclaimed, by different peoples around the world, and why; and (4) considering the ways in which notions of indigeneity are being figured in new regimes of possession and commodification, including intellectual property, genetics and genome mapping, and the role of indigenous knowledge in resource extraction and bioprospecting. In pursuing these questions this course will endeavor to tease out the manifold relationships that the rising politics of indigeneity at the dawn of the 21st century has to other global political economic phenomena. Simultaneously, the course will also attend to the ways in which different peoples, caught up in different sociopolitical milieu, orient to the notion of indigeneity as it articulates with their lived experiences with matters of autochthony (the state of being “from here”), allochthony (being “from elsewhere”), and the consequences of those distinctions to their everyday lives.

Instructor(s): J. Richland
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 33106

ANTH 22609. Indigenous Methodologies. 100 Units.

 The 1969 publication of Vine Deloria Jr.’s Custer Died for your Sins forever changed the landscape for academic research with indigenous communities in North America, if not the world. Declaring, “Indians have been cursed above all other peoples in history. Indians have anthropologists,”(Deloria 1988[1969]: 78), Deloria’s broadside was aimed at a social science academy whose research methods, ethics and findings he felt offered little concrete benefit to the indigenous peoples whose lives they studied. Whether accurate or not, the critique sent ripples not only through the academy, but through policy circles, and the native communities themselves, inaugurating a period of remarkable refiguring of the legal, scholarly, and interpersonal landscapes against which social science research on indigenous peoples is constituted. This refiguring has emerged in a variety of modes, and with different effects and outcomes.  In this course, students will be introduced to the evolving ethics, methods, policies and epistemologies shaping social science research with indigenous communities in North America. In addition, in the second half of the quarter, students will get first hand experience working on issues of relevance to social science research with Indigenous communities under the supervision of Prof. Richland and leadership at two institutions in Chicago – the Title VII American Indian Education Program, and the North American Anthropology Division of The Field Museum. In this part of the course, students will be paired up and work on independent projects that are designed to address the needs and interests of these organizations and the indigenous peoples with which they work, and then to initiate their own academic inquiry alongside those projects. These projects will provide you with an opportunity to understand and implement the theories, ethics, and methods learned in class, revealing the rewards and challenges of conducting research programs that engage leading theories and debates in the academy while also making real contributions to the indigenous communities with which students are working.

Instructor(s): J. Richland
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 33107

ANTH 22710. Signs and the State. 100 Units.

Relations of communication, as well as coercion, are central though less visible in Weber's famous definition of the state as monopoly of legitimate violence. This course reconsiders the history of the state in connection to the history of signs. Thematic topics (and specific things and sites discussed) include changing semiotic technologies; means; forces and relations of communication (writing, archives, monasteries, books, "the" internet); and specific states (in early historic India and China, early colonial/revolutionary Europe, especially France, Britain, and Atlantic colonies, and selected postcolonial "new nations").

Instructor(s): J. Kelly     Terms Offered: Possibly Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 41810

ANTH 22715. Weber, Bakhtin, Benjamin. 100 Units.

Ideal types? The iron cage? Captured speech? No alibis? Dialectical Images? Charismatic authority? Heteroglossia? Modes of Domination? Seizing the flash? Finished, monological utterances? Conditions of possibility? Strait gates through time? Weber, Bakhtin, and Benjamin provide insights and analytical tools of unsurpassed power. Scholars who use them best have faced and made key decisions about social ontology and social science epistemology, decisions that follow from specific, radical propositions about society and social science made by these theorists and others they engage, starting at least from Immanuel Kant. This course is designed for any student who wants to more clearly understand the arguments of Weber, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, and to understand more broadly the remarkable trajectories of German social theory after Kant. It is designed especially for anyone hoping to use some of their conceptions well in new research. (Yes, Bakhtin is Russian, and cultural theory in Russia and the U.S. too will come up.) Fair warning: this course focuses on four roads out of Kant’s liberal apriorism (including culture theory from Herder to Boas and Benedict, as well as Benjamin and the dialectical tradition, Bakhtin’s dialogism, and Weber’s historical realism). We will spend less time on good examples of current use of Weber’s, Bakhtin’s, and Benjamin’s ideas than on the writings of Weber, Bakhtin, and Benjamin themselves, and their predecessors and interlocutors (including Herder, Hegel, Clausewitz, Marx, Ihering, and Simmel). The premise of the course is that you will do more in your own research with a roadmap than with templates.

Instructor(s): J. Kelly     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 43720

ANTH 22910. Performance and Politics in India. 100 Units.

This seminar considers and pushes beyond such recent instances as the alleged complicity between the televised "Ramayana" and the rise of a violently intolerant Hindu nationalism. We consider the potentials and entailments of various forms of mediation and performance for political action on the subcontinent, from "classical" textual sources, through "folk" traditions and "progressive" dramatic practice, to contemporary skirmishes over "obscenity" in commercial films.

Instructor(s): W. T. S. Mazzarella     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 22900

ANTH 23080. Social Rights & the New Social Democracies in Latin America. 100 Units.

Over the past ten years, Latin Americans have revived and reinvented these classic human rights questions. Left-wing governments, elected in a wave that traversed the region, have made vigorous attempts both to create new rights and to talk about rights in new ways: in the terms of “citizenship,” “participation,” and “struggle.” As a result, Latin America’s new social democracies, the unexpected sign of the millennium, were born speaking the language of rights.  
,
,The new social democracies operate at a specific economic and cultural juncture. In this class, we will take the juncture as an opportunity to think through some general questions. Why do rights emerge at certain moments in history? What context makes it possible for new rights to achieve recognition? How is the current debate on rights connected to a long tradition of political practice in Latin America? Can people meaningfully possess socioeconomic rights, which do not primarily depend on a judiciary, and collective rights, which lack an individual subject? What are the limits that rights discourse imposes, and what alternatives are available for thinking about social democracy?  
,
,This course will not focus narrowly on governmental rights claims, but will strive to engage with the post-neoliberal moment as common historical reality and shared dilemma for many sorts of people throughout Latin America. We will open with an examination of rights and legal practice at key points in Latin America’s past. We will look, in particular, at three issues: the legal apparatus that accompanied Spanish conquest, the troubled relationship between liberalism and slavery, and the resurgence of social rights during the populist moment in the mid-twentieth century. After considering the history behind the current moment, we will investigate at length the economy and culture of contemporary post-neoliberalism. We will then move to consider the voicings involved in speaking from an indigenous position. Next we will inquire how social democracy engages with new subjects: the subjects of participation and citizenship. This will lead us to an analysis of new social programs (with conditional cash transfers as our key example) and the debates about economic rights that they inspire. We will conclude by assessing contemporary points of crossing between the collective and the universal.

Instructor(s): G. Morton     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 26504,PBPL 26504,LACS 26514

ANTH 23101-23102-23103. Introduction to Latin American Civilization I-II-III.

Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This sequence is offered every year. This course introduces the history and cultures of Latin America (e.g., Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean Islands).

ANTH 23600. Medicine and Society in Twentieth-Century China. 100 Units.

This course is a survey of historical and anthropological approaches to medical knowledge and practice in twentieth-century China. Materials cover early modernizing debates, medicine and the state, Maoist public health, traditional Chinese medicine, and health and medicine in popular culture.

Instructor(s): J. Farquhar     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 33610,HIPS 22601

ANTH 23620. Medicine and Anthropology. 100 Units.

The rise of modern biological medicine into global dominance dates from the 18th century, with the field developing in tandem with technological industrialization, scientific objectivism, and secular modernism in writing and social theory. The things we now have before us in the medical field—doctors, patients, drugs, symptoms, diseases, pacemakers, antiseptic wipes, psychologies, therapeutic protocols, health insurance, white coats, immunizations, folk remedies, and much more—are many of the things that ground all of our ethics and our politics in contemporary North America. In order to better understand how medicine affects wider worlds of experience and action, this course gathers a number of historical and ethnographic studies of medical knowledge and practice for careful study. In a series of readings and discussions we will consider the social and political economic shaping of illness and suffering and the “culture-bound” character of diseases; we will examine medical and healing systems—well beyond biomedicine—as social institutions and as sources of epistemological authority; and we will read about the knowledge politics of medical experts and their clients and patients. Topics covered will also include the problem of belief; local theories of disease causation and healing efficacy; the placebo effect and contextual healing; theories of embodiment; medicalization; modernity and the distribution of risk; the meanings and effects of medical technologies; and the relatively recent global health movement.

Instructor(s): J. Farquhar     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 33620

ANTH 23715. Self-Determination: Theory and Reality. 100 Units.

From the Versailles Conference (1919) through the Bandung Conference (1955) and beyond, global politics has been reorganized by efforts to implement and sustain political sovereignty on the basis of national self-determination. This course examines the theories informing this American-led plan and its real consequences, with attention to India, Algeria, Indo-China, New Zealand, Fiji, and Hawaii. Dilemmas in decolonization, partitions, the consequences of the cold war, and the theory and practice of counterinsurgency are discussed together with unintended consequences of the plan in practice, especially the rise of political armies, NGOs, and diaspora.

Instructor(s): J. Kelly     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 43715

ANTH 23805. Nature/Culture. 100 Units.

Exploring the critical intersection between science studies and political ecology, this course interrogates the contemporary politics of "nature." Focusing on recent ethnographies that complicated our understandings of the environment, the seminar examines how conceptual boundaries (e.g., nature, science, culture, global/local) are established or transgressed within specific ecological orders).

Instructor(s): J. Masco     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 43805,CHSS 32805,HIPS 26203

ANTH 23907. Religion and Politics in a Secular Age. 100 Units.

How do contemporary religious political projects engage with, respond to and occasionally reconfigure secular ideals and frameworks for political action? Moreover, how does religion intersect with and inform religious practitioners’ political engagements in societies where politics is understood to be the domain of the secular? In this course we explore how anthropologists of religion have studied these questions in a variety of contemporary contexts from Latin America to the Middle East to Europe to Africa and South Asia. Through close analyses of ethnographies of religious movements we examine the ways in which religiously motivated political projects build on and reproduce but also reinterpret religious practices, ideologies, ethics and subjectivities. Thus, we, for example, study how Muslims in Egypt, Hindus in India, and Protestant Christians in Guatemala draw on religious beliefs and practices to engage in politics as religious actors. We ask how diverse religious value schemes and models of subjectivity, social relations, and communicative practice inform religious practitioners’ political actions. And, we interrogate how these various politico-religious projects reflect, negotiate and, on occasion, undermine different locally salient understandings of secularism.

Instructor(s): E. Hartikainen.     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open to grad students and 3rd/4th year undergrads

ANTH 24001-24002-24003. Colonizations I-II-III.

This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This three-quarter sequence approaches the concept of civilization from an emphasis on cross-cultural/societal connection and exchange. We explore the dynamics of conquest, slavery, colonialism, and their reciprocal relationships with concepts such as resistance, freedom, and independence, with an eye toward understanding their interlocking role in the making of the modern world.

ANTH 24101-24102. Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia I-II.

This sequence introduces core themes in the formation of culture and society in South Asia from the early modern period until the present. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses must be taken in sequence.

ANTH 24320. Cultural Psychology. 100 Units.

There is a substantial portion of the psychological nature of human beings that is neither homogeneous nor fixed across time and space. At the heart of the discipline of cultural psychology is the tenet of psychological pluralism, which states that the study of "normal" psychology is the study of multiple psychologies and not just the study of a single or uniform fundamental psychology for all peoples of the world. Research findings in cultural psychology thus raise provocative questions about the integrity and value of alternative forms of subjectivity across cultural groups. In this course we analyze the concept of "culture" and examine ethnic and cross-cultural variations in mental functioning with special attention to the cultural psychology of emotions, self, moral judgment, categorization, and reasoning. (B*, C*; 2*, 3*)

Instructor(s): R. Shweder     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing. Instructor consent required.
Equivalent Course(s): CHVD 31000,PSYC 23000,PSYC 33000,ANTH 35110,HDCP 41050,GNSE 21001,GNSE 31000,AMER 33000,CHDV 21000

ANTH 24325. Love, Conjugality, and Capital: Intimacy in the Modern World. 100 Units.

A look at societies in other parts of the world demonstrates that modernity in the realm of love, intimacy, and family often had a different trajectory from the European one. This course surveys ideas and practices surrounding love, marriage, and capital in the modern world. Using a range of theoretical, historical, and anthropological readings, as well as films, the course explores such topics as the emergence of companionate marriage in Europe and the connections between arranged marriage, dowry, love, and money. Case studies are drawn primarily from Europe, India, and Africa.

Instructor(s): J. Cole, R. Majumdar
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 43101,SALC 33101,CHDV 33212,AFAM 23101,ANTH 32220,CRES 23101,CRES 33101,CHDV 22212,GNDR 23102,GNDR 31700,HIST 26903,HIST 36903

ANTH 24511-24512. Anthropology of Museums I-II.

This sequence examines museums from a variety of perspectives. We consider the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the image and imagination of African American culture as presented in local museums, and museums as memorials, as exemplified by Holocaust exhibitions. Several visits to area museums required.

ANTH 24705. Jurisdiction: Language and the Law. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): J. Richland
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 34705

ANTH 24800. Uncanny Modernities. 100 Units.

This seminar examines the concept of the "uncanny" as an ethnographic topic. Pursuing the linkages between perception, trauma, and historical memory, this course asks if the modern state form necessarily produces the uncanny as a social effect. We explore this theme through works of Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Benjamin, and Foucault, as well as recent ethnographies that privilege the uncanny in their social analysis.

Instructor(s): J. Masco     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 54800

ANTH 25102. Local Bodies, Global Capital. 100 Units.

The project of this course is to closely examine the relationship between global capital and local bodies or, put differently, to look at the implications of economic forms for particular people's experience and collective forms of existence. The course will read divergently critical theories of capitalism and some historically-situated field materials, focusing on interplays between speculative, scientific, and spectral qualities of economic practice. We will examine some local sites of multinational capital investment, production, and circulation: from factory floors to marketplaces, from transnational scientific research to pharmaceutical marketing. In order to better grasp local bodies, the course will pay special attention to biomedical, genomic, and pharmaceutical industries that emerged as a major locus of global capital investment, as well as read for the existential, bodily, and political complaints about shared market conditions voiced around the globe. By examining comparatively some particular health disorders, incidents, and interventions, the course will ask: How are the ways of being, feeling, and thinking determined by the abstract global power of capital? How do bodies and economies intersect? How do local bodies and subjectivities negotiate temporalities, materialities, and epistemologies associated with the speculative and spectral features of global capital? Can we grasp a shared global condition, which is capitalism, from the vantage point of some embodied local lives?

Instructor(s): L. Jasarevic     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): INST 27501,CHDV 27501

ANTH 25110. Living with Debt: A Comparative Perspective. 100 Units.

This course approaches debt anthropologically, as a universal cultural practice that forms and undoes social relations, amasses and dissipates wealth, and profoundly shapes the experience of people involved in market or nonmonetary exchanges. Treating debt as a broadly economic category, the course will investigate comparatively how do people live with debt, how does indebtedness feel, and what are the economic and political implications of local borrowing-lending strategies. Because consumer and national debt seem to be a shared contemporary global predicament, the course will also critically examine historical dynamics at work in and different scales of debt economies: national, transnational, familial, and personal. The course will look at practice and experience of indebtedness inside and outside the market: from credit card debts to barter and gift exchanges, from organ donations to military and diplomatic relations. By broadening our definition of debt, these comparative insights aim to excavate an experience of indebtedness held in common cross-culturally as well as complicate what seems most natural about giving, owing, and owning.

Instructor(s): L. Jasarevic     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): INST 28525

ANTH 25116. Magic Matters. 100 Units.

The course explores the lively presence of magic in the contemporary, presumably disenchanted world. It approaches the problem of magic historically—examining how magic became an object of social scientific inquiry—and anthropologically, attending to the magic in practice on the margins of the industrial, rational, cosmopolitan, and technological societies and economies. Furthermore, this course reads classic and contemporary ethnographies of magic together with studies of science and technology to critically examine questions of agency, practice, experience, experiment, and efficacy. The course reads widely across sites, disciplines, and theories, attending to eventful objects and alien agents, stepping into post-socialist, post-colonial, and post-secular magic markets and medical clinics, and reading for the political energies of the emergent communities that effectively mix science, magic, and technology.

Instructor(s): L. Jasarevic     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 25116,INST 27701

ANTH 25125. Emotions and Culture, Paradigms of Empirical and Theoretical Analysis. 100 Units.

The sociology of emotions is of increasing interest to contemporary societies. We believe now that even intelligence is dependent on emotions, and we find, in a variety of settings, that emotions and emotional energy directly influence situational and organization outcomes. The course gives an overview of the current state of the analysis of emotions in social science fields. Students will be asked to read, analyze, and discuss major works in the social studies of emotions in class, and to think about ways to apply emotional concepts in future research. Particular attention will go to analyzing the challenges for theorization and empirical specification.

Instructor(s): K. Knorr Cetina     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20203,ANTH 35125,SOCI 30203

ANTH 25148. ISRAEL IN FILM and ETHNOGRAPHY. 100 Units.

Combining weekly screenings of both Israeli fiction and documentary films with readings from ethnographic and other relevant research, this seminar will explore the dynamics of ethnic and religious diversity in modern Israeli society. Some of the (often overlapping) topics to be covered in this examination of the institutional and ideological construction of Israeli identity/ies: the absorption of immigrants; ethnic, class, and religious tensions; the kibbutz; military experience; the Holocaust and other traumas; evolving attitudes about gender and sexuality; and the struggle for minorities’ rights.

Instructor(s): F. Morris     Terms Offered: Spring

ANTH 25200. Approaches to Gender in Anthropology. 100 Units.

This course examines gender as a cultural category in anthropological theory, as well as in everyday life. After reviewing the historical sources of the current concern with women, gender, and sexuality in anthropology and the other social sciences, we critically explore some key controversies (e.g., the relationship between production and reproduction in different sociocultural orders; the links between "public" and "private" in current theories of politics; and the construction of sexualities, nationalities, and citizenship in a globalizing world).

Instructor(s): S. Gal     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 43800,GNDR 25201,GNDR 43800

ANTH 25305. Anthropology of Food and Cuisine. 100 Units.

Contemporary human foodways are not only highly differentiated in cultural and social terms, but often have long and complicated histories. Anthropologists have long given attention to food. But, until quite recently, they did so in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion. This course explores several related themes with a view towards both the micro- and macro-politics of food by examining a range of ethnographic and historical case studies and theoretical texts. It takes the format of a seminar augmented by lectures (during the first few weeks), scheduled video screenings, and individual student presentations during the rest of the course.

Instructor(s): S. Palmié     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 35305

ANTH 25310. Drinking Alcohol: Social Problems or Normal Cultural Practice? 100 Units.

Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world, and, as archaeologists have recently demonstrated, it has a very long history dating back at least 9,000 years. This course will explore the issue of alcohol and drinking from a trans-disciplinary perspective. It will be co-taught by an anthropologist/archaeologist with experience in alcohol research and a neurobiologist who has experience with addiction research. Students will be confronted with literature on alcohol research from anthropology, sociology, history, biology, medicine, psychology, and public health and asked to think through the conflicts and contradictions. Selected case studies will be used to focus the discussion of broader theoretical concepts and competing perspectives introduced in the first part of the course. Topics for lectures and discussion include: What is alcohol? chemical definition, cultural forms, production processes, biological effects; The early history of alcohol: archaeological studies; Histories of drinking in ancient, medieval, and modern times; Alcohol and the political economy: trade, politics, regulation, resistance; Alcohol as a cultural artifact: the social roles of drinking; Styles of drinking and intoxication; Alcohol, addiction, and social problems: the interplay of biology, culture, and society; Alcohol and religion: integration vs. prohibition; Alcohol and health benefits: ancient beliefs and modern scientific research; Comparative case studies of drinking: ethnographic examples, historical examples, contemporary America (including student drinking).

Instructor(s): M. Dietler, W. Green     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing. This course does not meet requirements for the biological sciences major.
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 22800,BIOS 02280

ANTH 25325. History and Culture of Baseball. 100 Units.

Study of the history and culture of baseball can raise in a new light a wide range of basic questions in social theory. The world of sports is one of the paradoxical parts of cultural history, intensely intellectually scrutinized and elaborately “covered” by media, yet largely absent from scholarly curricula. Perhaps more than any other sport, baseball has even drawn a wide range of scholars to publish popular books about it, yet has produced few professional scholars whose careers are shaped by study of it. In this course, we will examine studies that connect the cultural history of baseball to race, nation, and decolonization, to commodity fetishism and the development of capitalist institutions, to globalization and production of locality. We will compare studies of baseball from a range of disciplinary perspectives (economics, evolutionary biology, political science, history, and anthropology) and will give special attention to the culture and history of baseball in Chicago. We hope and expect that this course will be a meeting ground for people who know a lot about baseball and want to learn more about cultural anthropology, and people who are well read in anthropology or social theory who want to know more about baseball. The course will draw heavily on the rich library of books and articles about baseball, scholarly and otherwise, and will also invite students to pursue their own research topics in baseball culture and history.

Instructor(s): J. Kelly
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 35325

ANTH 25410. Anthropology of Everyday Life. 100 Units.

In an effort to clarify the field of everyday life ethnography and stimulate critical reflection on the everyday lives we all lead, this course draws on three bodies of literature: (1) classic anthropological approaches to studying social life (e.g., behaviorism and utilitarianism, the sacred/profane distinction, phenomenology, habitus and practice); (2) twentieth-century cultural Marxist critical theory; and (3) recent studies of popular culture. This course includes a workshop component to accommodate student projects.

Instructor(s): J. Farquhar     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 25435. Corporate Lives. 100 Units.

The corporation is at the center of heated debate. If for some, corporations are gracious benefactors that usher in prosperity and engage in corporate social responsibility projects that make the world a better place, for others, corporations are evil, all-powerful entities unlimited by state borders that sow environmental destruction, economic exploitation, and cultural homogenization in their wake. This course aims to provide a more grounded understanding of the consequences of corporate expansion by taking an anthropological perspective rooted in ethnographic accounts of corporate lives in a variety of social and cultural contexts. How, we will ask, are corporations intertwined with transformations in the lives, social relations, and everyday practices of those who work within them, and what do these developments mean for local communities in particular places around the world? And how might we begin to describe the consequences of these transformations without falling into well-worn tropes of corporate “good” and “evil”? In asking such questions, our goal will be not only to shed light on the corporation itself, but to gain a better, and more critical, understanding of social processes associated with globalization and capitalism and the theoretical approaches used to study them. The course will be organized primarily as a discussion, and active student engagement is expected.

Instructor(s): S. Cohen     Terms Offered: Spring

ANTH 25500. Cultural Politics of Contemporary India. 100 Units.

Structured as a close-reading seminar, this class offers an anthropological immersion in the cultural politics of urban India today. A guiding thread in the readings is the question of the ideologies and somatics of shifting "middle class" formations; and their articulation through violence, gender, consumerism, religion, and technoscience.

Instructor(s): W. Mazzarella     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 42600,SALC 20900,SALC 30900

ANTH 25510. Afterlives of Gandhi. 100 Units.

This course deals with transnational textual, political, and theoretical transmissions of the Gandhi idea in the first half of the twentieth century.

Instructor(s): L. Gandhi, W. Mazzarella     Terms Offered: Not offered 2012–13; will be offered 2013–14
Prerequisite(s): undefined
Note(s): undefined
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 24308

ANTH 25710. Global Society and Global Culture: Paradigms of Social and Cultural Analysis. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to major theories of globalization and to core approaches to global society and global culture. We discuss micro- and macroglobalization, cultural approaches to globalization, world systems theory, glocalization and hybridization approaches and the “strong program” in globalization studies.  Empirically oriented topics include global love, global finance, global terrorism and the globalization of nothing. The empirical ethnographies of the global are chosen to illustrate the interest and feasibility of globalization studies and of critical studies of dimensions of globalization.

Instructor(s): K. Knorr Cetina     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20169,ANTH 35710,SOCI 30169

ANTH 25900. South Asian Archaeology. 100 Units.

South Asia has a rich historical record, from the very beginnings of our species to the present, and yet the earlier part of this record is surprisingly little-known outside specialist circles. This course provides a broad overview of South Asian archaeology and early history, from the beginnings of agricultural production to the expansion of states and empires in the early days of textual records. We cover critical anthropological processes such as the origins and expansion of agriculture, the development of one of the world's first urban societies—the Harappan or Indus civilization—the growth and institutionalization of social inequalities, and changing contexts of social and religious life. While the course actually extends a bit beyond the time of the Buddha, its major focus is on the periods up to and including the Early Historic. No prior experience of either South Asia or archaeology is assumed; Indeed, we will think quite a bit about the nature of evidence and about how we know about the more distant past.

Instructor(s): K. Morrison     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 25900

ANTH 25906. Shamans and Oral Poets of Central Asia. 100 Units.

This course explores the rituals, oral literature, and music associated with the nomadic cultures of Central Eurasia.

Instructor(s): K. Arik     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Knowledge of Arabic and/or Islamic studies helpful but not required
Note(s): NEHC 20765 and 20766 may be taken in sequence or individually.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20766,EEUR 20766,EEUR 30766

ANTH 26020. Archaeology of Modernity. 100 Units.

This course covers the development, themes, practices, and problems of the archaeology of the modern era (post 1450 AD), or what in North America is better known as the subfield of "historical archaeology." Texts and discussions address topics such as the archaeology of colonialism, capitalism, industrialization, and mass consumption. Case studies from plantation archaeology, urban archaeology, and international contexts anchor the discussion, as does a consideration of interdisciplinary methods using texts, artifacts, and oral history. Our goal is to understand the historical trajectory of this peculiar archaeological practice, as well as its contemporary horizon. The overarching question framing the course is: what is modernity and what can archaeology contribute to our understanding of it?

Instructor(s): S. Dawdy     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 46020

ANTH 26505. Non-Industrial Agriculture. 100 Units.

Agriculture is, fundamentally, a human manipulation of the environment, a deliberately maintained successional state designed to serve human needs and desires. In this course, we use the history of non-industrial agriculture to think through some contemporary concerns about environmental change and the sources of our food—including topics such as genetically modified plants, fertilizers, sustainability, and invasive species. Beginning with the origins of agriculture in the early Holocene, we examine several forms of so-called "traditional" agriculture in the tropics and elsewhere, from swidden to intensive cropping. While the course is framed in terms of contemporary concerns, our focus is primarily historical and ethnographic, focusing on the experiences of agriculturalists over the last ten thousand years, including non-industrial farmers today. Students will be expected to produce and present a research paper.

Instructor(s): K. Morrison     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 46505,ENST 26505

ANTH 26710-26711. Ancient Landscapes I-II.

The landscape of the Near East contains a detailed and subtle record of environmental, social, and economic processes that have obtained over thousands of years. Landscape analysis is therefore proving to be fundamental to an understanding of the processes that underpinned the development of ancient Near Eastern society. This class provides an overview of the ancient cultural landscapes of this heartland of early civilization from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth and sixth millennia B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D.

ANTH 26740. Economic Organization of Ancient Complex Societies. 100 Units.

,This course provides undergraduate and graduate students with an overview of some of the basic theoretical and methodological issues involved in the study of ancient complex societies, primarily through archaeological evidence supplemented by textual data.,

Instructor(s): G. Stein     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 20045,ANTH 36740,NEAA 30045

ANTH 26830. Archaeology of Religious Experience. 100 Units.

This seminar provides a critical exploration of archaeological approaches to past religious life. Drawing on a variety of case studies spanning a broad temporal and geographic spectrum, we examine/interrogate how object worlds can help to expand our understanding of religion in prehistoric and historic societies. Firmly grounded in contemporary anthropological thinking, this course explores theoretical and methodological possibilities, challenges, and limitations arising from archaeological studies of religious experience.

Instructor(s): F. Richard     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 26900. Archaeological Data Sets. 100 Units.

This course focuses on the methodological basis of archaeological data analysis. Its goals are twofold: (1) to provide students with an opportunity to examine research questions through the study of archaeological data; and (2) to allow students to evaluate evidential claims in light of analytical results. We consider data collection, sampling and statistical populations, exploratory data analysis, and statistical inference. Built around computer applications, the course also introduces computer analysis, data encoding, and database structure.

Instructor(s): A. Yao     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Advanced standing and consent of instructor

ANTH 27130. America: Society, Polity, and Speech Community. 100 Units.

We explore the place of languages and of discourses about languages in the history and present condition of how American mass society stands in relation to the political structures of the North American (nation-) states and to American speech communities. We address plurilingualisms of several different origins (i.e., indigenous, immigrant) that have been incorporated into the contemporary American speech community, the social stratification of English in a regime of standardization that draws speakers up into a system of linguistic "register," and how language itself has become an issue-focus of American political struggles in the past and contemporaneously.

Instructor(s): M. Silverstein     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): LING 27130

ANTH 27300. Language Voice and Gender. 100 Units.

This course explores how we “voice” ourselves as “gendered” persons by, in essence, performing gender in discursive interaction, that is, in language-mediated and semiosis-saturated interpersonal events. The several analytic orders and interacting semiotic planes of framing gender will be emphasized, as also the inherently “dialectic” character of social categories of identity such as gender, which exist emergently as “culture” between essential[ized] individual “nature” and interested intuitions we have and formulate about the micro- and macrosocial orders in which we participate. No prior linguistics or sociocultural anthropology is presupposed, but serious attention to conceptual and theoretical issues in the sociocultural analysis of language in relation to identity will be nurtured in the course of the discussion. We start with a review of some key ideas that have shaped the recent study of language and gender, then cycle back to consider several problematic areas, and finally look at some discursively rich ethnographic treatments of gendering.

Instructor(s): M. Silverstein     Terms Offered: Spring (possibly)

ANTH 27305. Pornography and Language. 100 Units.

The course explores the place and role of language in pornographic films. Why does language occur in filmed pornography at all? What kind of language occurs? What role does it play? How is it gendered? How does it frame the narrative or drive it forward? How does language subvert or undermine the visual representation of sex? What does any of this tell us about gender, sexuality and erotics in non-pornographic contexts? Course readings focus on theories of pornographic representation, theories of language, gender and erotics, and methods of transcribing and analyzing dialogue. The course requires students to watch a wide range of pornography, including different varieties of straight, gay and trans porn, so anyone enrolling in the course must be interested in pornography as a social and cultural phenomenon and must also have experience watching porn and thinking about it. (M, C)

Instructor(s): D. Kulick     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Upper-level undergrad course.
Note(s): Not offered 2013-14.
Equivalent Course(s): LING 29405,CHDV 20405

ANTH 27505. Professional Persuasions: The Rhetoric of Expertise in Modern Life. 100 Units.

This course dissects the linguistic forms and semiotics processes by which experts (often called professionals) persuade their clients, competitors, and the public to trust them and rely on their forms of knowledge. We consider the discursive aspects of professional training (e.g., lawyers, economists, accountants) and take a close look at how professions (e.g., social work, psychology, medicine) stage interactions with clients. We examine a central feature of modern life—the reliance on experts—by analyzing the rhetoric and linguistic form of expert knowledge.

Instructor(s): S. Gal     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): LING 27220

ANTH 27510. Language and Temporality: Ethnographies of Time. 100 Units.

How does language create our sense of time, and our conviction that there is/are pasts, presents and futures? How are quite different forms of time (in conjunction with space) constructed by language ideologies and enacted in familiar and exotic interactional events?  National time and memory, narrative time, historical time, romantic time, diagetic time, diasporic time, global time, institutional time, and many others -- have all been proposed and discussed in recent ethnographies. They all require mediation by linguistic or broadly semiotic form and action. The class will start with some theoretical discussion of semiotic tools for analyzing temporality and then read a series of recent ethnographies that take up these issues in depth.

Instructor(s): S. Gal     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 27605. Language, Culture, and Thought. 100 Units.

Survey of research on the interrelation of language, culture, and thought from the evolutionary, developmental, historical, and culture-comparative perspectives with special emphasis on the mediating methodological implications for the social sciences.(B*, C*; 2*, 3*, 5*)

Instructor(s): J. Lucy     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 21901,ANTH 37605,CHDV 31901,HDCP 41950,PSYC 21950,PSYC 31900

ANTH 27700. Romani Language and Linguistics. 100 Units.

This is a beginning course on the language of the Roms (Gypsies) that is based on the Arli dialect currently in official use in the Republic of Macedonia, with attention also given to dialects of Europe and the United States. An introduction to Romani linguistic history is followed by an outline of Romani grammar based on Macedonian Arli, which serves as the basis of comparison with other dialects. We then read authentic texts and discuss questions of grammar, standardization, and Romani language in society.

Instructor(s): V. Friedman     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): LGLN 27800,ANTH 47900,EEUR 21000,EEUR 31000,LGLN 37800

ANTH 28010. Introduction to Biological Anthropology. 100 Units.

This course provides a general evolutionary framework for the 360 living and 470 fossil primate species. Applications of chromosomal studies (karyology) and biomolecular comparisons (molecular phylogenetics) are also covered. Other topics include principles of classification, principles of phylogenetic reconstruction, scaling effects of body size, primates in the context of mammal evolution, diets and dentitions, locomotor morphology and behavior, morphology and function of sense organs, evolutionary aspects of the brain, reproductive biology, and social organization. Each lecture concludes with implications for human evolution.

Instructor(s): R. Martin     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): BIOS 10110 or 10130
Equivalent Course(s): BIOS 13330

ANTH 28100. Evolution of the Hominoidea. 200 Units.

This course is a detailed consideration of the fossil record and the phylogeny of Hominidae and collateral taxa of the Hominidea that is based upon studies of casts and comparative primate osteology.

Instructor(s): R. Tuttle     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing and consent of instructor
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38100,EVOL 38100,HIPS 24000

ANTH 28105. Primate Evolution. 100 Units.

This course is the first of three in the Primate Biology and Human Evolution sequence (see also BIOS 23248 and 23253). This course introduces the evolution of nonhuman primates and humans. We focus on taxonomic classification; the use of fossil and genetic evidence for phylogenetic reconstructions; the evolution of primate morphological and physiological characteristics (e.g., body and brain size, skull and skeleton, sense organs, and dietary and reproductive adaptations); the adaptive radiation of Prosimians, New World Monkeys, Old World Monkeys, and apes into their current areas of geographic distribution; and an overview of the hominid fossil record.

Instructor(s): R. Martin, University of Chicago Paris Center     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor
Equivalent Course(s): BIOS 23241

ANTH 28200. Naturalizing Disaster: Nature, Vulnerability, and Social History. 100 Units.

The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction defines disaster in three crucial terms: hazards, vulnerability, and capacity.  While only the first of these can be ‘natural’ in the way that that term is commonly understood,  catastrophic events and processes are frequently represented as exogenous, autonomous, and unpredictable elements of a bio-physical world.  Beginning from the theorization of disaster as a property of nature, this seminar examines the political ecology of drought, flood, earthquake, and famine in their historical, economic, and cultural contexts, focusing on community vulnerability and capacity as outcomes of socio-natural histories and relations. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies we will consider a number of dimensions of the dynamic between nature, dislocation, and communities in an increasingly vulnerable world.

Instructor(s): M. Lycett and P. Drake     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38220,ENST 26201

ANTH 28210. Colonial Ecologies. 100 Units.

This seminar explores the historical ecology of European colonial expansion in a comparative framework, concentrating on the production of periphery and the transformation of incorporated societies and environments. In the first half of the quarter, we consider the theoretical frameworks, sources of evidence, and analytical strategies employed by researchers to address the conjunction of environmental and human history in colonial contexts. During the second half of the course, we explore the uses of these varied approaches and lines of evidence in relation to specific cases and trajectories of transformation since the sixteenth century.

Instructor(s): M. Lycett, K. Morrison     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 48210,ENST 28210

ANTH 28300. Comparative Primate Morphology. 200 Units.

This course covers functional morphology of locomotor, alimentary, and reproductive systems in primates. Dissections are performed on monkeys and apes.

Instructor(s): R. Tuttle     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38200,EVOL 38200,HIPS 23500

ANTH 28400. Bioarchaeology and the Human Skeleton. 100 Units.

This course is intended to provide students in archaeology with a thorough understanding of bioanthropological and osteological methods used in the interpretation of prehistoric societies by introducing bioanthropological methods and theory. In particular, lab instruction stresses hands-on experience in analyzing the human skeleton, whereas seminar classes integrate bioanthropological theory and application to specific cases throughout the world. Lab and seminar-format class meet weekly.

Instructor(s): M. C. Lozada     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 38800,BIOS 23247

ANTH 28510. Anthropology of Space/Place/Landscape. 100 Units.

Materiality has emerged as a fertile interest in anthropology and other social sciences. Within this broad conceptual umbrella, space, place, and landscape have become critical lenses for analyzing and interpreting people’s engagement with their physical surroundings. Once an inert backdrop to social life, a mere epiphenomenon, the material world is now acknowledged as a generative medium and terrain of cultural production: at once socially produced and framing sociality, shaping and constraining human possibilities, both by and against design… This course concerns itself with these articulations: 1) the spatial production of social worlds, 2) its expressions in different cultural and historical settings, and 3) its trails of ambiguous effects. Drawing on several fields, anthropology and geography chiefly, but also art history, architecture, philosophy, and social theory, we will explore how the triad of space/place/landscape works on, in, and through different social worlds and its role in the making of social experience, perception, and imagination. We will also reflect on how spatial formations frequently elude the very social projects that have birthed them. The objective of the course is to provide you with a foundation in contemporary spatial thought, which can be creatively applied to questions of spatiality in your own research setting.

Instructor(s): F. Richard     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 58510

ANTH 28600. Apes and Human Evolution. 100 Units.

This course is a critical examination of the ways in which data on the behavior, morphology, and genetics of apes have been used to elucidate human evolution. We emphasize bipedalism, hunting, meat eating, tool behavior, food sharing, cognitive ability, language, self-awareness, and sociability. Visits to local zoos and museums, film screenings, and demonstrations with casts of fossils and skeletons required.

Instructor(s): R. Tuttle     Terms Offered: Autumn, Spring
Note(s): BIOS 23241 recommended. Autumn course at University of Chicago Center in Paris; Spring course on campus.
Equivalent Course(s): BIOS 23253

ANTH 28702. Archaeologies of Political Life. 100 Units.

This seminar examines how archaeologists have approached political life in the past forty years. Its aim is to question the categories through which political worlds are often studied (beginning with such unwieldy terms as 'states,’ 'chiefdoms,’ ‘complexity,’ etc.) and complicate analyses of politics in the past. Rather than relying on concepts that already predetermine the outcome of political functioning, we will read key texts in anthropology and political theory (on sovereignty, domination, legitimacy, political economy, governance, ideology, hegemony, subjectivity, anarchy) to dissect the foundations and operations of power, expose its cultural logics, and explore the processes behind the categories. Some of the questions that will guide our discussions include: How do politics work in both past and present? Through what channels and modalities? With what effects (anticipated or not)? And what role does the material world play in mediating these relations? Each week will pair theoretical readings with case-studies drawn from different parts of the world and from different moments in history. Through this seminar, students will gain familiarity with classic archaeological thinking on power and critical perspectives steering contemporary studies of past politics.

Instructor(s): F. Richard
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 58702

ANTH 29105. Pollen Analysis. 100 Units.

Although this course is concerned with Holocene vegetation history and the impact of humans on that vegetation, concepts and lab skills presented can be applied to a variety of disciplines. Initial lab exercises prepare students for the primary focus of the course: the collection, processing, analysis, and interpretation of a pollen core from a local wetland. We take one weekend field trip to collect the core and observe local vegetation. Students then analyze and interpret pollen from the core, culminating in an in-class research symposium.

Instructor(s): K. Morrison     Terms Offered: Not offered 2013-14; will be offered 2014-15

ANTH 29500. Archaeology Laboratory Practicum. 100 Units.

This hands-on lab practicum course exposes students to various stages of artifact processing on a collection from a recently excavated site (e.g., washing, sorting, flotation, identification, data entry, analysis, report preparation, curation). The primary requirement is that students commit to a minimum of nine hours of lab work per week, with tasks assigned according to immediate project needs.

Instructor(s): F. Richard     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor
Note(s): Undergraduates may take this course only once for credit.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 59500

ANTH 29700. Readings in Anthropology. 100 Units.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. At the discretion of the instructor, this course is available for either a quality grade or for P/F grading.

ANTH 29900. Preparation of Bachelor's Essay. 100 Units.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. At the discretion of the instructor, this course is available for either a quality grade or for P/F grading. For honors requirements, see Honors section under Program Requirements.

ANTH 29910. Bachelor's Essay Seminar. 100 Units.

Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Open only to students currently writing BA honors papers.