Courses to be announced- Please refer to the directory of courses online for times and locations: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
Socio-Cultural Anthropology
ANTH W4042y Agent, Person, Subject, Self 3 pts. Paul Kockelman. Treats the interrelated notions of agent, person, subject, and self from a semiotic and social perspective.
ANTH G4114y Religion and Media 3 pts. Brian Larkin. This class analyzes the role of mediation in religious practice. Reading theories of media and of religion we will examine how transformations in media technology shift the ways in which religion is encoded into semiotic forms, how these forms are realized in performative contexts and how these affect the constitution of religious subjects and religious authority. Topics include word, print, image, and sound in relation to Islam, Pentecostalism, Buddhism and animist religions
ANTH G4118y Settler Colonialism in North America 3 pts. Audra Simpson. This course examines the relationship between colonialism, settlement and anthropology and the specific ways in which these processes have been engaged in the broader literature and locally in North America. We aim to understand colonialism as a theory of political legitimacy, as a set of governmental practices and as a subject of inquiry. Thus we will re-imagine North America in light of the colonial project and its ?technologies of rule? such as education, law and policy that worked to transform Indigenous notions of gender, property and territory. Our case studies will dwell in several specific areas of inquiry, among them: the Indian Act in Canada and its transformations of gender relations, governance and property; the residential and boarding school systems in the US and Canada, the murdered and missing women in Juarez and Canada and the politics of allotment in the US. Although this course will be comparative in scope, it will be grounded heavily within the literature from Native North America. Enrollment limit is 15. Priority
is given to graduate & advanced undergraduate students. Instructor permission required via email.
ANTH W4282y Islamic Law 3 pts. Brinkley Messick. An introductory survey of the history and contents of the Shari'a combined with a critical review of Orientalist and contemporary scholarship on Islamic law. In addition to models for the ritual life, we will examine a number of social, economic and political constructs contained in Shari`a doctrine, including the concept of an Islamic state, and we also will consider the structure of litigation in courts. Seminar paper.
ANTH G4289y Women in post-socialist Tranformation; Ukraine, Russia, Poland in Focus 3 pts. Oksana Kis. This course will introduce students to the post-socialist transformations in
Eastern Europe from the gender perspective. By focusing on Ukraine, Poland
and Russia, we will examine the multidimensional impact of radical political,
social, economic and cultural changes onto women's lives. Exploring
challenges women faced in transition from state socialism to market economy
and democracy women will be analyzed as both targets and agents of changes.
The role of schooling and media in women's gendered socialization, ways of
(re)construction of old/new models of femininity, women's responses to
demographic crisis and alteration of family roles, women's agency and
representation in politics, as well as women's economic strategies and
employment behaviors will be examined. Special attention will be given to the
problems faced by women migrant workers abroad and those subject to
trafficking. International debates on collisions of feminist and
traditionalist ideologies in the new women's activism and controversies of
introducing women's and gender studies in post-socialist academic disourse
will be discussed as well to enable students' better understanding of
complexity of emerging women's movements and institutionalization of feminist
scholarship in Central and Eastern Europe. Undergraduates may enroll with the permission of the
instructor.
ANTH G4325y Semiotic Technologies (formerly: The Linguistic Anthropology of Artificial Languages)
3 pts. Paul Kockelman. Treats the digital and computational mediation of
meaning, through the lens of classic texts in linguistic anthropology,
critical theory, media studies, and computer science.
ANTH G4377y House, Home, Project 3 pts. Catherine Fennell. This seminar introduces students to anthropology's rich tradition of theorizing about spatiality through three themes: "House," "Home" and "Project." Each theme represents how anthropologists and anthropological thinkers have approached the spatial dimensions of domestic life, architecture and quotidian experience. By tracing the presence of houses, homes and housing-related projects throughout anthropological thought, students will consider how anthropology contributes to comprehensive theories of spatiality, as well as to varied interrogations of bodily practice, memory, affect and the governance of social well-being. Course enrollment is 18. Instructor's approval is required via email prior to
registration.
ANTH G6018y Anthropology in Theory 3 pts. Rosalind Morris. This
course is intended for advanced students in socio-cultural anthropology, and is
addressed to the question of interdisciplinarity as it relates to
anthropology. How does anthropology --
its discourses, concepts, methods, and theoretical interventions – travel outside
of the discipline? What do other disciplines
and interdisciplinary formations, such as history, literary criticism,
philosophy and cultural studies, ask of anthropology, and how do their
practitioners deploy the questions and the knowledges generated within
anthropology for their own purposes? How
does the auto-critical project that has been internal to the discipline
function beyond its boundaries? To what
ends and purposes is anthropology asked to produce knowledge of the
other-as-object? And how does this demand inflect the conceptual project
carried out within the discipline? These
questions animate this course. At a time
in which ‘area studies’ have been reformulated to answer to the real-historical
conditions of re-regionalization, and against the backdrop of several decades
of institutional and intellectual reform under the name of
‘interdisciplinarity,’ this course provides students with an opportunity to
reflect critically and specifically on the itineraries of their discipline and
its place in a changed and changing milieu.
It will help them to deepen their own understanding of their discipline,
but also prepare them for engagement with other disciplinary traditions. Our
discussions will focus on: the idea of the anthropological type, the question
of kinship, the concept of the gift and the method of ethnography. A
prerequisite for this course is Anthropology G6601 or the permission of the
instructor.
ANTH G6036y Ethnography of the Nation State 3 pts. Lila Abu-Lughod. Through a close analysis of anthropological works, this seminar examines possible ways of doing ethnography in and of "the nation." Readings include ethnographies of ethnicity and race; cultural production, including media and museums; and nationalist narratives and memory. Enrollment limited to 25 and Instructor's permission.
ANTH G6037y Biography & Autobiography: A Portrait of South African Intellectuals 3 pts. Hlonipha Mokoena. Portraits are created to represent the likeness of a chosen subject. The writing of biographies and autobiographies has long been the preferred method through which South African intellectuals have written about their or others� political, intellectual, personal or notorious lives. This course is an examination of how the practice of biographical and autobiographical writing emerged and solidified in South African literature in part to compensate for the paucity of biographical writing but also as a substitute for a nuanced or critical engagement with the chequered and complex history of the country's intellectual and cultural inheritance. In particular, the course will consider the mediatory role of the biographer who, in the case of South Africa, often constructed a biographical subject through an ethnographic method of interviewing, translating and then representing the subject.
ANHS G6050y Caste, Culture, and Tradition: An Anthropological History 3 pts. Janaki Bakhle and EV Daniel.
ANTH 6078y Strange Resonances, Close Listenings: Ethnography and
Sound 3 pts. John Pemberton. How does one live with sound and move within worlds of sound? How does one think with sound, and through sound? In pursuit of such questions the course explores: soundscapes, acoustic ecology, and soundwalks; historical listening, echoes of audible pasts, and resonances of auditory cultures; uncanny narrative effects of sonic forces in myth and literature; technological effects of repeated listenings in the age of electronic reproduction, ethereal transmissions, and audio-vision; sounds at the edges of listening with experimental music. Sound, chambers, noise, feedback, voice, resonance, silence: from the sirens of the Odyssey, to the captured souls of Edison's phonography, to compositional figures ala John Cage, to everyday acoustical adventures, if one were to really listen, closely, how might one write about sound? What/who might the listening subject be?
ANTH G6170y Law, History and Anthropology 3 pts. Brinkley Messick. The study of legal institutions, the utilization of case materials, and the critical analysis of legal texts. Recent social historical and ethnographic work on trial procedures, evidence regimes, legal writing, interpretation, and disciplinary systems. Non-Western, premodern and colonial materials shed comparative light on Western notions of law, truth and justice.
ANTH G6212y Seminar: Principles and Applications in Social and Cultural Anthropology 3 pts. Ellen Marakowitz. Prerequisites: G4201. Principles and Applications of Social and Cultural Anthropology and instructor's permission. Focus on research and writing for the Master's level thesis, including research design, bibliography and background literature development, and writing.
ANTH G6305y Beyond Sublime: Affects and Aesthetics in Late Modernity 3 pts. Marilyn Ivy. A central concern of modern theory and philosophy is the place of the aesthetic and its relationship to feelings and politics. How are feelings articulated with aesthetic judgments? How do different aesthetic apprehensions shade into different affective experiences? What are the political implications of these aesthetico-affective complexes, particularly under conditions of advanced capitalism, virtualization, and mass mediation? Starting with Longinus's On the Sublime and Kant's philosophy of the beautiful and the sublime, the course will consider aesthetico-affective experiences left out of formal philosophy but important in everyday life. Minor aesthetic concepts like the uncanny, the grotesque, and the cute will be intermixed with consideration of affects like anxiety, stupefaction, and hopefulness. Examples, cases, and inspiration are drawn from life in the United States (and elsewhere), from fiction, music, art, and film; disciplinary approaches are taken from literary criticism, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Theoretical readings include works by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Lyotard, Gaschï Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, and others.
ANTH G6430y Recognition, Espionage, Camouflage 3 pts. Elizabeth Povinelli. This course examines the politics of recognition from the perspective of the security state. Not long ago, scholars and public intellectuals were ringing the death knell of the strong nation-state and celebrating the emergence of a new multicultural, postcolonial world. We were living at the end of history. The sovereign right to kill was being replaced by the governmentalism of neoliberalism and a new kind of racism. The mobility of post-Fordist capital and the new media were thought to have created a qualitatively new mode of global cultural and social commerce fostering hybrid forms of social being and practice. Governmentality was not oriented to killing, but to constituting populations and their vitalities; to making live and letting die. Western states were busy performing shame and apologizing for past colonial practices. Suddenly things are not so clear-perhaps they never were. The post 9/11 world seems to have reorganized the logic and relations of recognition and civilization, the sovereign and neoliberal state. Pundits praised the "prescience" of Samuel Huntingtonï's Clash of Civilizations. Scholars rushed to embrace Agamben's state of exception. Politicians in democracies sought to reclaim strong executive powers, the right to designate enemies, to kill, to suspend constitutional rights, and to rely on nondemocratic regimes to torture for truth. Civilization reemerged in an unapologetic form-a mode of differentiating the world in social and historical terms. Recognition was no longer merely about tolerance but about camouflage and espionage. This course seeks to understand whether and in what way the politics of recognition has mutated within the techniques of state security. Course is restricted to graduate students only. Instructor's permission is required.
ANTH G6500y The Art of Fieldwork 3 pts. Michael Taussig. Fieldwork is what defines anthropology yet is rarely, if ever, discussed. Why? Why so invisible? Is it an art or a science or what, and what happens between f/w and the published text? What is the literary work of the f/w diary? Course enrollment is 20.
ANTH G6602y Questions in Anthropological Theory II: Texts 3 pts. Nadia Abu-El-Haj. This course surveys the historical relationships between anthropological thought and its generic inscription in the form of ethnography. Readings of key ethnographic texts will be used to chart the evolving paradigms and problematics through which the disciplines practitioners have conceptualized their objects and the discipline itself. The course focuses on several key questions, including: the modernity of anthropology and the value of primitivism; the relationship between history and eventfulness in the representation of social order, and related to this, the question of anti-sociality (in crime, witchcraft, warfare, and other kinds of violence); the idea of a cultural world view; voice, language, and translation; and the relationship between the form and content of a text. Assignments include weekly readings and reviews of texts, and a substantial piece of ethnographic writing. (ONLY OPEN TO 1ST YR PHD STUDENTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY)
ANTH G8498y Modern China 3 pts. Myron Cohen.Selected themes in the analysis of Chinese society during late imperial and modern times.
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Archaeology
ANTH W4346y Laboratory Techniques 3 pts. Zoe Crossland. Training in general archaeological methods. Data recording techniques, preparation of reports and illustration, etc. $25.00 mandatory laboratory fee.
ANTH G4129y Landscape: Interpreting Place 3 pts. Zoe Crossland. Understanding how people inhabit and make sense of the physical world is fundamental to any understanding of human society. This class will explore different archaeological perspectives on the creation and inhabitation of place by reading archaeological accounts together with material from anthropology, architecture, art history, geography and social theory. Instructor's permission is required.
ANTH G6085y Thing Theory 3 pts. Severin Fowles. An intensified concern with thingness and materiality has emerged in the past decade as an explicitly interdisciplinary endeavor involving anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, literary critics, and philosophers among others. The new material culture studies that has resulted inverts the longstanding study of how people make things by asking also how things make people, how objects mediate social relationships--ultimately how inanimate objects can be read as having a form of agency of their own. Readings will be drawn from foundational texts in this recent work by Daniel Miller, Alfred Gell, Bill Brown, Nicholas Thomas, and others that have situated their work at the boundaries between such things as object and subject, gift and commodity, art and artifact, the alienability and inalienability of things, as well as--at a disciplinary level--the distinction between ethnography, archaeology, and art history.
ANTH G6192y Exhibitions: Practical Considerations 3 pts. Nan Rothschild. This course addresses the practical challenges entailed in the process of creating a successful exhibition. Developing an actual curatorial project, students will get an opportunity to apply the museum anthropology theory they are exposed to throughout the program. They will be given a hands-on approach to the different stages involved in the curation of a show, from the in-depth researching of an exhibition topic to the writing, editing and design of labels and panels that will be effective for specific audiences. Prerequisites, if any: Must have taken ANTH G6352,and be taking ANTH G6353. Enrollment limit 15.Instructor's permission is required.
ANTH G6205y Research Design in Anthropology 3 pts. Terence D’Altroy. Research design in anthropology (all subfields), from theoretical conceptualization to problem formation, methods, and grant writing.
ANTH G6353y Exhibiting Culture: Politics and Practices of Museum Exhibitions 3 pts. Monique Scott. Examines anthropological, art, and history exhibits to explore how they visualize culture and identity. Relationships between museums, audiences, and the artists, cultures, and concepts exhibited will be explored.
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Biological/Physical Anthropology
ANTH G4148y Human Skeletal Biology II 3 pts. Ralph
Holloway. Recommended for archaeology and physical anthropology
students, pre-meds, and biology majors interested in the human skeletal system.
Intensive study of human skeletal materials using anatomical and
anthropological landmarks to assess sex, age, and ethnicity of bones. Other
primate skeletal materials and fossil casts used for comparative study. Enrollment
limit is 12 and instructor’s permission is required.
ANTH G4002y Controversial Topics in Human
Evolution I 3 pts. Ralph Holloway Controversial issues
that exist in current biological/physical anthropology, and controversies
surrounding the descriptions and theories about particular fossil hominid discoveries,
such as the earliest australopithecines, the diversity of Home erectus, the
extinction of the Neandertals, the evolution of culture, language, human
cognition. Prerequisite: Instructor's permission and introductory
biological/physical anthropology course. Enrollment limit is 15 and
instructor's permission is required.
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Graduate Research Courses
Fall and Spring Semesters:
ANTH
G9101. Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology 3-9 pts.
Prerequisite: Instructor's permission. Individual research and tutorial in
social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.
ANTH
G9102. Research in Archaeology 3-9 pts. Prerequisite: Instructor's
permission. Individual research and tutorial in archaeology for advanced
graduate students.
ANTH
G9103. Research in Physical Anthropology 3-9 pts. Ralph Holloway.
Prerequisite: Instructor's permission. Individual research and tutorial in
physical anthropology for advanced graduate students.
ANTH G9105. Research in Special Fields 3-9 pts.
Prerequisite: Instructor's permission. Individual research in all divisions of
anthropology and in allied fields for advanced graduate students
ANTH G9110 and ANTH G9111 Museum Anthropology Internship
3-9 pts. Nan Rothschild. An internship arranged through the Museum Anthropology
program of 10 hrs/week (for 3 credits) or 20 hrs/week (for 6). Involves
"meaningful" work, requires keeping a journal and writing a paper at
the completion of the semester. Not to be taken without permission of the
program directors, usually after completing the Museum Anthropology core
courses.
ANTH G9112. Research in Archaeological Method and Theory 3-9
pts. Prerequisite: Instructor's permission. Individual research and tutorial in
archaeological method and theory for advanced graduate students.
ANTH G9999. Weekly Seminar. All anthropology graduate students are required to attend. Reports of ongoing
research are presented by staff members, students, and special guests.
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Courses In Anthropology at Teacher’s College
TO BE ANNOUNCED.
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