Graduate Courses Autumn 2008 Graduate Courses Spring 2008 Graduate Courses

Spring 2008 Graduate Courses

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	Sociocultural Anthropology
	Archaeology
	Physical Anthropology
	Research Courses
	Teachers College Courses

Revised 12/5/07

Socio-Cultural Anthropology

ANTH G4173y. The Dead, Terminable and Interminable. 3 pts.

ANTH G4282y. Islamic Law. 3 pts.

ANTH G4284y. Islam and Theory. 3 pts.

ANTH G6017y. Specular Economies: Anthropology of Late Capitalism. 3 pts. The politics of representation in ethnographically particular contexts in order to understand how contemporary economic forms are informed by more general logics of visibility. Materials from Southeast Asia on the ways the forms of occulted economies change over time and how the values of transparency have come to dominate the discourses of political value.

ANTH G6129y. Labor and Exchange, Measurement and Value. This course is about economy and society, as seen through the lens of two classic works: Marx's Capital (volume 1) and Evans-Pritchard's Nuer (books 1 and 2). It has several overarching goals. First, to give students the opportunity to read, compare, and discuss two classic works in social theory-works that are often read in a piece-meal and rushed fashion, or presupposed as general canon. Second, to introduce students to key categories in British social anthropology, and Marxist and substantivist economics-and to provide a genealogy of these categories. To sketch an alternative meta-language for examining social relations vis-à-vis the economy-one which is grounded in American Pragmatism and Boasian (Linguistic) Anthropology. And finally, in light of this genealogy and meta-language, to reconsider a key set of disjunctures in the theoretical imaginary: house-holding to moneymaking, status to contract, community to society, quality to quantity, use-value to exchange-value, concrete domination to abstract domination, private to public, punishment to discipline, and so forth.

ANTH G6184y. Questions of Identity. 3 pts. Designed to be both theoretical and empirical, clarifying concepts such as “identity” and “subjectivity” while also exploring various approaches to questions of political identification and self-understanding. We shall look at authors who approach questions of identity and subjectivity philosophically as well as historically. Some of the readings will be explicitly devoted to conceptual conundrums and theories of the self. Others will engage the question of political identification and analyze the practices of self-fashioning and subject formation as central social and political phenomena in particular contexts.

ANTH G6186y.Performing Subjectivity in an Age of Revolution. Explores 4 Mozart operas composed in 1786-1790 era as distinct articulations of person, authority and community in this era of radical change in Europe. Drawing on theories and practices on Enlightenment, I will argue that chronologically the subjects in Mozart’s dramas move from Enlightenment’s highest aims of individual transformation to its underside of hierarchy and exclusion. Readings include works from Abbate, Butler, Kant, Nagel, and Steptoe.

ANTH G6212y. Seminar: Principles and Applications in Social and Cultural Anthropology. 3 pts. 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 G6235y. The Third World: After Sovereignty? 3 pts. It is increasingly being asserted today that the concept of sovereignty no longer constitutes a plausible way of organizing our thinking about power and legitimacy in contemporary global politics. The state, so it is sometimes said, as the pre-eminent source and adjudicator of political identity within territorially bounded nation-states a well as between sovereign states, is being fundamentally challenged. What does this mean for our understanding of the Third World which came into being precisely as part of the project of the universalization of sovereignty? What are the new conceptual and political conditions in which the problem of sovereignty arises in – and for – the Third World? Through a variety of literature this course engages these questions.

ANTH G6642y. No Alternative: modernity and critical theory. In recent years, theories of “alternative modernity” have arisen in anthropology and the other social sciences. Produced out of a concern with non-western difference and shaped by writings on globalization, such theories often betray a lack of sustained understanding of the aporias of modernity as theorized by critical theorists of the Frankfurt school and others. This seminar will work to critique the notion of alternative modernity by engaging critical theoretical works on “uneven development,” the dilemmas of otherness, aesthetics and politics, and mass culture. It will do so in tandem with a consideration of what might be thought of as modernities elsewhere (with some emphasis on Japan as a key exemplar of so-called "nonwestern modernity").

ANTH G6500y. The Art of Fieldwork. 3 pts. 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?

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Archaeology

ANTH W4001y. The Ancient Empires. 3 pts. This course provides a comparative study of five of the world's most prominent ancient empires: Assyria, Egypt, Rome , the Aztecs, and the Incas. The developmental histories of those polities, and their essential sociopolitical, economic, and ideological features, are examined in light of theories of the nature of early empires and methods of studying them.

ANTH G4127y. Archaeologies of Contemporary Conflict. 3 pts. Archaeological traces of warfare and conflict demand a sophisticated theoretical engagement, whether the context is recent mass graves or ancient battlefields. This class brings the anthropological literature on violence, ritual, and religion together with archaeological evidence of past violence, to think through archaeological involvement in present day conflicts.

ANTH G6085y Thing Theory. 3 pts. Enrollment limit 15. 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 hone inanimate objects can be read as having a form of agency on their own.

ANTH G6353y. Exhibiting Culture: Politics and Practices of Museum Exhibitions. 3 pts. Enrollment limit 15. 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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Physical Anthropology

ANTH G4146y. The Human Brain Evolving.To better understand human and evolution, and, one might argue, the human species’ place in Nature, one must have some understanding of the brain, the human animal’s most important organ of adaptation. This course will examine the comparative and paleoneurological evidence for human brain evolution to better understand our consciousness, language ability, intelligence, and offer speculations about its (the brain) future evolution. Prerequisite: V1010, The Human Species; V1011, Primate Behavior, and/or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12-15.

ANTH G4148y.Human Skeletal Biology, II. 3 pts. Recommended for archaeology, physical anthropology, premedical, and biology students interested in the human skeletal system. Intensive study of human skeletal materials, using anatomical and anthropological landmarks to assess sex, age, and ethnicity of the bones. Other primate skeletal material and fossil casts are used for comparative study. Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12.

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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

ANEB G9106. Research In Special Fields. 3-9 pts. Prerequisite: Instructor’s permission. Individual research in all divisions of anthropology and allied fields for advanced graduate students

ANTH G9110*. Museum Anthropology Internship. 3-9 pts. Not to be taken without permission of the program directors, usually after completing the Museum Anthropology core courses. 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.

 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 G9113. Research In Quantitative Methods. 3-9 pts. Prerequisite: Instructor’s permission. Individual research and tutorial in quantitative methods for advanced graduate students.

ANTH G9114. Research In Data Processing. 3-9 pts. Prerequisite: Instructor’s permission. Individual research and tutorial in data processing for advanced graduate students.

*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.

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