Undergraduate Courses Autumn 2009 Undergraduate Courses Spring 2010 Undergraduate Courses

Spring 2010 Undergraduate Courses

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	Sociocultural Anthropology
	Archaeology
	Physical Anthropology

Revised 11/04/09 - Please refer to the directory of courses online for times and locations: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/

ANTH V1002y (sec 001) The Interpretation of Culture 3 pts. Elizabeth Povinelli. The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Case studies from ethnography are used in exploring the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief system, art, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.

ANTH V1002y (sec 002) The Interpretation of Culture 3 pts. Brian Larkin. The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Case studies from ethnography are used in exploring the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief system, art, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.

ANTH V2005y The Ethnographic Imagination 3 pts. Rosalind Morris. This course introduces students to the theory and practice of "ethnography" - the intensive study of people's lives as shaped by social relations, cultural images, and historical forces. Ethnography as a term has a double meaning - both the fieldwork through which knowledge is drawn, and the written works through which that knowledge is represented. Through the critical reading of various kinds of texts - classic ethnographies, histories, journalism, novels, films - we will consider the ways in which understanding, interpreting, and representing the lived worlds of people - at home or abroad, in one place or transnationally, in the past or the present - can be accomplished.

ANTH V2009y Culture through Film and Media 3 pts. Peggi Vail. Culture through Film & Media explores how cultures have been represented through visual media, from feature and documentary film to television and the internet. It also considers the ways in which communities have embraced mass media, independent, and new media technologies to shape or revision portrayal. This course takes an anthropological approach to investigating media and its fundamental role in the contemporary world.

ANTH V2027y Changing East Asian Foodways 3 pts. Drew Hopkins. “Changing East Asian Foodways” provides an introduction to the Historical Anthropology of East Asian cultures through an examination of changing foodways among the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese and overseas Chinese, the responses of these groups to the global spread of fast food and café culture, and the role that East Asian food cultures have played in the social construction of difference and similitude in the Western cultures in which immigrants from East Asia have settled.    

ANTH V2139y Magic, Witchcraft and Modernity 3 pts. This class investigates magic and witchcraft, in addition to spirit mediums and ghosts in the shadow of technology, industry, and rational science. Beginning with the simple and open-ended definition of magic as a means to control and make sense of events that cannot be explained, the course is journey through uncanny convergences and apparitional events that are at once sensual, yet ghostly. Course material ranges from baseball players who employ magical practices to deal with mathematical uncertainties of the game, to more challenging case studies on witchcraft, spirit possession, shamanism, and other forms of magic as healing. Alongside contemporary readings on the topic, students will also read classic anthropological texts on magic and witchcraft.

ANTH V3465y Women and Gender Politics in the Muslim World 3 pts. Lila Abu-Lughod. Practices like veiling that are central to Western images of women and Islam are also contested issues throughout the Muslim world. Examines debates about Islam and gender and explores the interplay of cultural, political, and economic factors in shaping women's lives in the Muslim world, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia.

ANTH V3525y Introduction to South Asian History and Culture 3 pts. Instructor to be announced. Examines four major aspects of contemporary South Asian societies: nationalism, religious reform, gender, and caste. Provides a critical survey of the history of and continuing debates over these critical themes of society, politics and culture in South Asia. Readings consist of primary texts that were part of the original debates and secondary sources that represent the current scholarly assessment on these subjects.

ANTH V3810y Madagascar 4 pts. Lesley Sharp. Critiques the many ways the great Red Island has been described and imagined by explorers, colonists, social scientists, and historians as an Asian-African amalgamation, an ecological paradise, and a microcosm of the Indian Ocean. Religious diasporas, mercantilism, colonization, enslavement, and race and nation define key categories of comparative analysis. Limited to 20, instructor's permission

ANTH V3840y Urban life and cultural Imagination in South Asia 4 pts. T.N. Hansen. One of the most conspicuous changes in South Asia in the last decades has been the enormous growth of cities across the region. The rate of urbanization in South Asia has historically been relatively modest. Today more than sixty five cities in South Asia have more than a million people, and there are hundreds of smaller cities around 300.000 to half a million people across the wider region. The World Bank projects that in less than a decade, India alone will have around half a billion people living in cities. Of these at least a third and possibly more will be living in slums. Urban slums in India and elsewhere in the subcontinent are the most highly politicized places with more people voting and taking to the streets than anywhere else. The future of particularly India but also other countries in the region is undoubtedly urban, political power is urban, new technologies and new cultural phenomena are all decidedly urban. This course has two aims: Firstly, to give the participants a strong overview of the historical development of cities and urban culture across the South Asian region from the pre-colonial cities until today. Secondly, the participants will be given a broad and sensitive introduction to many aspects of contemporary urban cultures, conflicts, identities and experiential frames in South Asian cities. The readings will be work by critical historians and social theorists of South Asia; recent ethnographies of many aspects of contemporary urban life in South Asia�s cityscapes; popular novels, short stories and films that address various aspects and mythologies of urban life in the region.

ANTH V3850y Psychoanalysis, Colonialism, and Race 4 pts. Karen Seeley. This course begins by investigating the impact of colonialism, racialized notions of difference, and Freud's Jewish identity on key psychoanalytic theories and concepts. Further, it examines the ramifications when psychoanalytic theory and practice were imported into colonial settings. The course then considers the ways in which legacies of colonialism and racism remain embedded in psychoanalysis. After interrogating psychoanalytic precepts Freud viewed as universal, it looks at recent work in relational and intersubjective psychoanalysis that seek to undo classical understandings of mental structure, psychopathology, and analytic interaction. The course concludes by examining clinical case examples in cross-racial psychoanalysis. Enrollment limit to 20 plus instructor's permission required.

ANTH V3855y Secular Modernity and Religious Authority 3 pts. Angie Heo. This course seeks to understand the relationship between secular and religious forms of authority in the modern world. Among topics to be considered include the rise of religiosity in the public and political spheres, tolerance and pluralism, and the legal organization of religious practices. Course enrollment is limited to 20 students.

ANTH BC3868y Ethnographic Fieldwork In New York City 4 pts. Lesley Sharp. Seminar-workshop on field research in New York City. Exploration of anthropological field research methods followed by supervised individual field research on selected topics in urban settings. (open to anthropology majors; others with instructor's permission. Limit enrollment is 15)

ANTH V3895y Anthropology and the Politics of Climate Change 4 pts. Nicole Petersen. This course addresses the ways that we can understand the variety of issues and challenges facing individuals, organizations, and nations as we come to understand and combat anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on work in anthropology, sociology, geography, and other disciplines, this course will examine how climate change is affecting and will continue to affect communities worldwide, concepts of risk and vulnerability, the role of science and local knowledge, and the social contexts of policies and actions.

CSER W3906y Race and Scientific Practice 4 pts. Catherine Fennell.

ANTH V3912y Ethnographic China 4 pts. Myron Cohen. Reading of selected ethnographies of China from among the many published since 1990. In the context of rapid social and economic change in China during this period, the seminar will critically consider how each ethnography represents the observations, interpretations, and field techniques of the anthropologist who is its author. Also discussed will be the shared themes and contesting perspectives emerging from a comparison of these works, as well as the overall contribution of this ethnographic research to our understanding of China as an emerging world power.

ANTH V3924y Anthropology and Disaster 4 pts. Karen Seeley. This course examines various approaches to the study and representation of natural and humanly caused disasters. Course readings include eyewitness accounts of calamities, personal memoirs of genocide, and ethnographic reports of the aftermath of floods, earthquakes, political violence, and nuclear reactor explosions. The course also considers conventional patterns of disaster response, as well as shifting notions of disaster preparedness that have emerged since 9/11. It concludes with an examination of post-disaster reconstruction, looking at the ways social divisions, economic conditions and political interests invariably affect the cultural, public health, and psychological repercussions of disasters. Enrollment limited to 20.Instructor’s permission required.

ANTH V3939y Millennial Futures: Mass Culture and Japan 4 pts. Marilyn Ivy. Addresses mass culture and its relationship to Japan at the end of the 20th century. Approaches the themes of millennial anxiety and wishfulness in such domains as everyday life, technology, criminality, gender and sexuality, and consumption. Instructor's Permission Required

ANTH V3947y Text, Magic, Performance 4 pts. John Pemberton. An examination of text and performance, as informed by magic and related articulations of power. Topics explored include: prophetic writing, historical inscription; divine kingship, cosmology, divination; colonial fiction, nationalist figuration; spirit possession, ritual sacrifice; mask performance, music, shadow theater. The course draws principally on Southeast Asian sources. Key concerns are subjectivity and repetition. Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.

ANTH V3960y The Culture of Public Art and Display In New York City 4 pts. Alexander Alland. Before registering, student must sign-up in the anthropology department. If list is full, sign waiting list. Field course and seminar considering the aesthetic, political, and sociocultural aspects of selected city museums, public spaces, and window displays. Enrollment limit to 16. Students must sign-up in Anthropology Department prior to registering

ANTH V3978y Dialogic Imagination in Opera 4 pts. Elaine Combs-Schilling. Students must attend operas outside class time. Drawing on theories of Bakhtin and Eco, analyzes the production logic of three opera performances in terms of communication media utilized; the class, status and gendered perspectives mobilized; and the devices used to engage or distance the audience. Performance rather then musicological angles stressed. Enrollment limited to 25 students. Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor via email at: mec3. Must state year and major and why you with to join the class. Priority given to upper class anthropology and music majors. Submit e-mail "Request for Admittance Form" obtained from mec3@columbia.edu

ANTH V3979y Fluent Bodies 4 pts. Neni Panourgia. The recent proliferation of writings on the social significations of the human body have brought to the fore the epistemological, disciplinary, and ideological structures that have participated in creating a dimension of the human body that goes beyond its physical consideration. The course, within the context of anthropology, has two considerations, a historical one and a contemporary one. If anthropology can be construed as the study of human society and culture, then, following Marcel Mauss, this study must be considered the actual, physical bodies that constitute the social and the cultural. Enrollment limited to 20. Instructor's permission required.

ANTH V3983y Ideas and Society In the Caribbean 4 pts. David Scott. Focusing on the Anglo-Creole Caribbean, examines some aspects of popular culture, literary expression, political change, and intellectual movements over the past thirty years. Enrollment limit 15.

ANTH V3989y Introduction to Urban Anthropology 4 pts. Steven Gregory. Enrollment limit25.

ANTH W3998y Supervised Individual Research Course In Anthropology 2-6 pts. STAFF.Prerequisite: the written permission of the staff member under whose supervision the research will be conducted.

ANTH V3999y Honors Seminar In Anthropology 4 pts. Elaine Combs-Schilling. This is a seminar at which senior anthropology majors will develop a research project and write a thesis in consultation with a professor. Students must have at least a 3.6 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept.

ANTH W4022y Political Ecology 3 pts. Nicole Peterson. Analyzes global, national, and local environment issues from the critical perspectives of political ecology. Explores themes like the production of nature, environmental violence, environmental justice, political decentralization, territoriality, the state, and the conservation interventions. Instructor's permission.

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 W4289y Women in Post-Socialist Transformations: Ukraine n Focus 3 pts. Oksana Kis. This course will introduce students to the post-socialist transformations in Eastern Europe from the gender perspective. Focusing on Ukraine, it examines the complex impact of radical political, social, economic and cultural changes onto women’s lives.

ANTH W4340y Cinemas of the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) 3 pts. Kevin Dwyer.
This course focuses on one expressive form(cinema) in one predominantly Arab Muslim region(the Maghreb, comprising the nations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria), as part of an anthropological effort to explore the ways in which films taken individually and a nation’s cinema as a whole can help us understand society.The discussion of films and filmmakers will be set in the historical, political, cultural, and social contexts of the individual countries and of the region.The approach will combine historical and thematic perspectives, highlighting differences and similarities from country to country, from film to film, and from filmmaker to filmmaker.

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ANTH V3075y Ethnoarchaeology: Theory and Method 3 pts. K. Fewster.  Analogies are constantly being made in archaeological interpretation, even if the process is not overt. Hodder argues that a prehistoric stone axe is only an ‘axe’ as opposed to ‘a piece of polished stone 4x4cm’ because of the image we have in our heads of everything that an axe is. Ethnoarchaeology, in its broadest sense, is the theoretical and methodological basis by which both these ‘simple’ analogies, and much more complex ones, are made. Given their mutual interests, it is interesting that there remain misunderstandings between the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology that affect the means by which archaeologists use (and abuse) ethnographies in their work, the means by which archaeologists tailor anthropological theory to their own ends, and the means by which the status of the reciprocal nature of the relationship between archaeology and anthropology is negotiated. In the 1960s to 1980s, and in the United States in particular, much of the research in ethnoarchaeology was directed towards the creation of epistemology and much effort was put into the production of Middle Range Theory to deal explicitly with the exact means by which ethnographic analogy is used in archaeological reasoning. The British-based critique of processualism in the 1980s and 1990s dismissed such methodology as intrinsic to the New Archaeology which created it. In keeping with contemporary theory, no coherent methodology was set up to address the issue of analogical reasoning in post-processual contexts. However, the legacy of this is that, given the importance of the interpretive tool of ethnoarchaeology, analogies continue to be used in archaeology. It is anticipated that the production of ethnoarchaeological methodologies is now a necessary part of the process of paradigm shift and that they may be the result of a synthesis of processualist ideas with those of the post-modern critique.  The course will be taught by means of examples and case studies to illustrate the various theories of analogy that have been proffered. The course will be assessed by means of a small independent project in which students conduct an ethnoarchaeological study of their own.

ANTH V3150y The Prehistory of Europe 3 pts. K. Fewster. The land mass that is now known as Europe has relinquished a rich archaeological database that bears testimony to prehistoric human activity from the Upper Palaeolithic to the end of the Iron Age, a time period of some 40 000 years. While it is possible to talk of a European prehistory at a general level, the large scale of the territory means that regional diversity will be taken into account. Archaeological evidence for various regions of Europe will be presented chronologically, along with a critique of the means by which archaeological data are deposited, discovered, and retrieved. The interpretations that have been made of these data, by different authors, will be critically compared and contrasted, taking into account the social and political contexts in which archaeologists wrote. The aim of this will be to demonstrate that archaeological narratives, or archaeologists? stories about the past, are much influenced by the contemporary contexts in which they are produced. Some of the material highlights of the course include Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings, such as those at Lascaux in France, Neolithic standing stone monuments, such as Stonehenge in England, Bronze Age hoards, and Iron Age hillforts from all over Europe. Palaeoenvironmental techniques, dating, ethnographic analogy and experimental archaeology are all methods that will be drawn on in the discussion of the available archaeological evidence in Europe and the interpretations which have been made from it.

ANTH V3903y Cities: Ethno-archaeology, Archaeology and Theory 4 pts. Nan Rothschild. This course will examine cities in comparative perspective, over time and space, from several viewpoints. We will examine how and when they develop, how they function, and what urban life is like. Is the urban experience the same for all residents? At all times? In all places? We will begin with theory and some urban history and then focus on New York as a laboratory, from its origins to the present. The course involves a kind of archaeology called ethnoarchaeology in which we look at living societies and communities in order to gain a better understanding of past and present. Our examination of contemporary urban life pays special attention to spatial organization and order, the geography of power in the urban landscape, and to material things, as these are the kinds of data that archaeologists typically focus on. Instructor's permission required. Enrollment limit to 20.

ANTH W4346y Laboratory Techniques 3 pts. Training in general archaeological methods. Data recording techniques, preparation of reports and illustration, etc. $10.00 mandatory laboratory fee Instructor to be Announced

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ANTH G4148y The Human Skeletal Biology II 3 pts. Ralph Holloway.  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.  Enrollment limited to 12 students and instructor's permission required..  

ANTH G4200y Fossil Evidence of Human Evolution 3 pts. Ralph Holloway. Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students who are interested in paleoanthropology. Provides a closer look at what comprises the fossil evidence for human evolution from the australopithecines of 4 million years ago to the fully modern human species of 25,000 years ago. Involves hands-on examination of the departmental casts.  Prerequisites: ANEB V1010 or the equivalent, and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12. 

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