One of the themes that will be addressed in the course is the concept of "excluded pasts"-- traditional histories written by the dominant culture that are often exclusionary in their accounts of ancient and recent peoples. Mainstream histories often exclude or present in a biased or distorted manner accounts of common or lower status families, members of minority groups, or individuals persecuted for religious, political or sexual persuasions. The reason for touching on this theme is to recognize that the past practices of archaeology were exclusionary. As a western science dominated in its formative years by Euro-American men, archaeologists working in North America excavated burials and sacred sites with minimal consultation with descendant communities. Sensitive materials were appropriated and placed in museums and curation facilities. As will be discussed in class, Native American scholars refer to this kind of archaeology as "scientific colonialism" or "imperial archaeology." As a consequence of a growing backlash to these past practices, in combination with recent legislation involving the repatriation of material culture back to descendant communities, the field of archaeology is currently undergoing significant changes in its methods and practices as it attempts to become a more inclusive and collaborative science. The course will explore how archaeologists today are creating close working relationships with diverse stakeholders, participating in collaborative research teams, and undertaking educational outreach with the public.

Anthro 2AC will highlight an important goal of contemporary archaeology--the construction of alternative, pluralistic histories using multiple lines of evidence. Course lectures and readings will consider how archaeology can provide a powerful methodology for constructing alternative histories of excluded peoples (and their encounters with the dominant culture) by examining the material culture of their daily practices. As we will see, the performance of daily routines produces patterned accumulations of material culture that are among the most interpretable kinds of deposits found in archaeological contexts. While most people may perceive these kinds of deposits as simply garbage or refuse collections, when analyzed by archaeologists they can provide critical insights about past people. The course examines how the archaeology of daily practice, when integrated with other sources of relevant information (oral traditions, oral histories, written records), provides the most powerful way to understand the past outside of a time machine.

The course will present case studies from California to highlight the potential of writing alternative histories about people with excluded pasts. The case studies will also highlight the benefits and challenges of working with diverse stakeholders, specifically Native Californian tribes (e.g., Kashaya Pomo), Hispanic descendant communities, and Euro-American historical societies.

Course requirements: Three exams required (two midterms and a final exam) and a short research paper. Participation in weekly discussion sections is mandatory. Discussion sections are an important component of the course, you must attend them, and they will count for 20% of your final grade.

This introductory course to anthropology positions it as a discipline with key concepts for understanding diverse ways of life, with special insights into our global contemporary situations.  The course also fulfils the American Cultures course requirement, focusing on the global formation of American society and culture. 

Human society is constantly being destabilized and re-formed through engagements with diverse flows of populations, commerce, mass culture, technology, and politics.  No country or culture is cut off from transnational links and influences.  This class stresses the picture of America as "a nation of immigrants" rather than "a stand alone nation," a land that is an open global system rather than a fortress under siege.

Course materials will illuminate the transnational nature of contemporary American problems through an emphasis on global youth experiences to emphasize the relevance of anthropology to students own lives and identities. Key anthropological concepts of kinship, gender, ethnicity, race, and class-- as ideas and as practices -- will be explored in overseas and American communities. Through engagement with the methods of cultural anthropology and a focus on the dynamic and transnational processes of identity-making we will explore what it means to be "American," as well as to be human, today.

This freshman seminar is designed to explore various approaches to the topic of humor, particularly as humor reflects and reinforces social boundaries--gender boundaries, ethnic boundaries, national boundaries, class boundaries, boundaries of friendship, and the like.  We will examine (1) the sources of humor; (2) types of humor (jokes, riddles, teasing and banter, verbal dueling, among others); and (3) the impact of humor on both individuals and groups.  Although humor is intrinsically lighthearted, it invariably reflects deep-seated social and psychological concerns.  This is the main message of this course.

Note: This course is restricted to freshman (students who have completed fewer than 30 units)

Films offer an unparalleled opportunity to show what we think another time or place was like, engaging our senses and giving a more vivid impression of actually being there. In the hands of some film makers, these creations of the past can make us feel a simultaneous sense of difference and connection. Other film makers simply use the past as an exotic backdrop for stories that could be taking place today. In this course, we will compare Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to films including Mel Gibson's Apocalypto to understand how an imagined past can help us understand other times and places or fail to promote our understanding. If you have ever wondered whether a film set in the past is giving you a real sense of what it would have been like to live in another time or place, this course is for you. This seminar is part of the On the Same Page initiative: http://onthesamepage.berkeley.edu.

Note: This course is restricted to freshman (students who have completed fewer than 30 units)

Description not yet available.

Description not yet available.

Material culture as an expression of American socioeconomic, political, religious, gender and ethnic values since the 17th century. Topics include: architecture, domestic artifacts, food ways, healthcare and "pop culture." European, African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American examples will be considered.

Prerequisites: An introductory course in archaeology (Anthro 2) is recommended but not required.

The goal of this course is to provide a general picture of prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology in China, Japan and Korea. The course will emphasize the differences and similarities in archaeological studies between East Asia and North America. It will also consider the role of archaeology in East Asian societies today, and discuss how archaeological interpretations have been affected by the social and political contexts in these countries. Topics to be emphasized include changes in subsistence-settlement systems, origins and dispersal of food production, the development of social complexity, and the formation of state

Prerequisites: None. Freshmen, sophomores and students in non-anthropology majors are encouraged to take this class.

This course is an introduction to skeletal biology and its basis for the analysis of human skeletal remains. The study of the human skeleton provides insight into human evolution and health, and can be applied in archaeological, forensic, and biomedical contexts. The first half of the course will deal with the structure, function, and growth of the human skeleton, while later classes will introduce the methods used to analyze and interpret archaeological skeletal remains and gain information on aspects such as age, sex, health, and biological variation. Lectures provide relevant background, but students are expected to devote a significant amount of time to work and participate in weekly labs.

Prerequisites: Anthropology 1, Biology 1B.
Students who have taken ANTHRO C103/IB C142 (Osteology) are NOT able to take this course.

Enrollment information: Consent of Instructor required.

Discussion of and laboratory instruction in methods of analysis of ceramics used by archaeologists to establish a time scale, to document interconnections between different areas, sites, or groups of people, to suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites, and to understand the organization of ceramic production itself.

Course format: Three hours of lecture/discussion and three hours of laboratory per week.

Prerequisites: Anthro 2.

This course is about ethnographic fieldwork, public archaeology, the anthropology of pedagogy and education, the anthropology of technology, and collaborative learning and the material and media representation of culture. The course is designed to provide an opportunity for undergraduates to work with 6 th graders in exploring the worlds of archaeology, history, and computer-based technologies. There is no mid-term or final examination for this course, but there are research projects, weekly field notes, and active participation expected. Students enrolled in Anthropology 136h are expected to mentor and interact with children (predominantly 6th graders) in Expedition, an after-school program at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland. Additionally, this course fulfills the methods requirement for Anthropology majors, providing an opportunity to learn and use a variety of ethnographic skills. The focus of the course this semester is encouraging the awareness of the multicultural nature of the meaning of material culture and its expression and/or the significances of "place" through digital storytelling.

The Expedition after-school program is designed to bring the archaeological experience to 6th graders through facilitated play with a variety of media, including: digital storytelling (video production), computer games, web browsing, hands-on exploration of real artifacts, etc.

Requirements: This course is essentially a practical research/service-learning course. Participation in the Roosevelt School after-school program (approx. 2-3 hrs one afternoon each week) is a required part of the course. You will be expected to keep field notes of your observations and enter them into the course database each week.

Required reading: Kozol, J. 2000 Ordinary Resurrections: children in the years of hope. Crown Publ, New York.
Weekly required readings will also be available for  the course on a  bSpace website.

This course will consider the human dimensions of particular energy production and consumption patterns. It will examine the influence of culture and social organization on energy use, energy policy, and quality of life issues in both the domestic and international setting. Specific treatment will be given to mind-sets, ideas of progress, cultural variation in time perspectives and resource use, equity issues, and the role of power holders in energy related questions.

Prerequisites: None

CANCELLED.

Note: Beginning Spring 2009, students WILL be able to take Anthropology 138B without having first completed Anthropology 138A.

This class takes up "America" as a cultural Other for comparison. In trying to understand possible futures of our world, "America" has drawn our attention as an exotic existence in the contemporary world. The more anthropologists studied other people; the more they came to realize the need for understanding the symbolic predominance of American vision and life for today. To compare with a focus, this class will examine the problems, both social and conceptual, that America has posed for the world, in order to produce an anthropological analysis of some emerging global tendencies of our time.

Prerequisites: No coursework prerequisite is needed, but the requirement for serious engagement with assigned readings will be demanded.

Required Texts (in the order of reading sequence):
Tocqueville, A. de. 2001[1835/40]. Democracy in America. (Abri. Heffner) Signet.
Mills, C. Wright. 2000[1956]. The Power Elite. Oxford.
Riesman, D. 2001[1961]. The Lonely Crowd. Yale Nota Bene.
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Harvard.
Huntington, S. P. 2002. The Clash of Civilizations. Harvard.
Bloom, A. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. Simon and Schuster.

Note: Cross-listed with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies C147B. Course will be taught by a professor from that department.

An introduction to social theory and ethnographic methodology in the cross-cultural study of sexuality, particularly sexual orientation and gender identity. The course will stress the relationships between culture, international and local political economy, and the representation and experience of what we will provisionally call homosexual and transgendered desires or identities.

CANCELLED

This course focuses on how all of us construct notions of difference--racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, class and nation--through folklore. By examining how a wide range of genres are used in both enforcing social boundaries and hierarchies and challenging the official discourse and institutions that attempt to shape us, the study of folklore forms and analytic approaches provide tools for understanding our world and attempting to transform it. The course project turns each student into a contributor in the field of folklore by collecting traditional knowledge from his/her milieu.

You are required to enroll in a discussion section, but attendance will not be mandatory. These are optional sessions in which graduate students help class members decide which types of folklore (jokes, proverbs, riddles, songs, rituals, games, cyberlore, medical folklore, etc.) to collect, whom to interview, and how to analyze and write-up the materials. Sections can help familiarize students with the Folklore Archive, in which more than half a million examples are available. The GSIs can also discuss the readings and how to use them in analyzing their collections.

Prerequisites: None. The catalog description (which says upper division standing) is not accurate. This course is open for enrollment to any interested student.

Vernacular heritage has gained increasing attention throughout the world in recent years, spurred by nostalgia, issues of identity and community, the pursuit of prestige and power, and desire for economic gain. The primary goal of this course is to acquaint class members with representations and interpretations of Korea's vernacular heritage. Topics include: material culture, family and kinship, popular religion, performing arts, and wedding ceremonies, as well as efforts to conserve, revitalize, and construct national heritage in situations of rapid social change and increasing international communication, migration, and tourism. The course has another objective of helping students to enhance their critical thinking when interpreting such efforts and thereby develop more informed understandings of strategic responses to varied circumstances throughout the world.

The two objectives are pursued through assigned readings, lectures, videos, slides, class discussions, and individual reflection. The topics of the readings and audiovisual material are varied and deal with diverse topics, but all are devoted to using representations of heritage as devices for interpreting or explaining Korean culture and society. All of the slides and many of the videos are rare and, like lectures and class discussions, unavailable outside of class.

This course is an introduction to research problems and research design techniques. Each participant will plan and conduct independent research of particular interest to her or himself. Weekly seminars will discuss the pragmatics, ethics, and philosophy of field research. The once-weekly sessions are divided between lecture and in-class workshops on research design and problem-solving. Lecture and section attendance is required for this course.

In preparation for the class, participants should begin to think through possible research projects. Ideal projects are first of all, feasible given the time you have: a semester. They address situations and problems that are interesting and important and that can be studied locally. Over the past two years, research sites and problems for this course have included topics as diverse as the practices remaking status and personal identity among Filipino migrants who take nursing positions to migrate to the United States; the forms of food discipline and body discipline undertaken by children training in ballet and how these help rethink current debates on eating disorders; the provision of food advice to Berkeley's homeless population and what this reveals about the organization of support services and their relation to different forms of power; and the study of how American military personnel make the transition back to civilian life, and what this reveals about military service as a form of labor and about the organization of labor today more generally.

This course introduces students to American culture through an examination of the dominant institutions and ideologies of American capitalism. Instead of a comprehensive analysis, the focus of the course is on a number of key features of American capitalism: the centrality of consumption, corporations as powerful economic and social institutions, the American dream embodied in the figure of the entrepreneur, capitalist speculation at the beginning of the 21st century, the importance of technology, and counter-capitalist movements.

We will analyze each of these areas through the lens of various ethnic groups as they encounter capitalism in the U.S.. Rather than looking at these groups in isolation, their mutual constituency and interaction is foregrounded. Through comparing experiences of consumption, exploitation in cubicles and on the factory floor, and corporate greed, among others, the processes that constitute individuals as ethnic workers and consumers are brought up to critical examination. 

The aim of the course is twofold. By questioning dominant capitalist ideologies of success defined as material wealth and consumption, and by understanding corporations not as natural entities but as the products of historical and social processes, students will develop the ability to interrogate their views of and critically engage their encounters with American capitalism.

Secondly, this course familiarizes students with anthropology at UC Berkeley by incorporating writings of professors and alumni of the department. Berkeley itself will be situated in its geographical and social location in the Bay Area through a focus on high-tech cultures. Once again, the goal is to connect students with their own experiences in their (temporary) home.

Prerequisites: None.

This course introduces students to the anthropological study of Maya people in Southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Necessarily selective, the course focuses on certain parts of the Maya region, emphasizing selected themes and problems. It is composed of three roughly equal modules, the first introducing the history and extent of the region (from the classic through the colonial period), the second focusing on rebellion in the region, and movements aimed at self-definition of Maya people by Maya people (with a focus on Chiapas and the Pan Mayan movement), and the third zeroing in on the ethnography of Yucatan. The Yucatan is one of the best studied parts of the Maya region, and will provide a case study through which to critically explore the models, methods and practices of ethnography. In the latter part of the semester, we will examine in detail aspects of contemporary Yucatecan ethnography, based on research over the past two decades by myself and others. In this phase, our focus will be the classic ethnographies of Redfield and Villa Rojas, the legacy of misunderstanding and objectification, and aspects of contemporary shamanic practice. The course will be a combination of lectures, film screenings and discussion.

Prerequisites: None. Reading knowledge of Spanish helpful but not required.

Requirements: There will be brief quizzes in weeks 4 and 12, a midterm in week 7, and a final exam at the assigned time during the exam period. Final grades will be calculated as follows: midterm exam (30%), final exam (40%), quizzes, careful reading, attendance and class participation (30%).

Food is necessary to stay alive, yet it is never consumed without being transformed by a social meaning and setting. Food is the backbone of society. Food is the foundation of every economy. Food marks social differences, boundaries, bonds and contradictions. Eating is a continual evolving enactment of gender, family, and community. We will think about how food-sharing creates solidarity, how food scarcity damages the human community and the human spirit. This course will focus on food and focus on a series of key topics within cultural food studies, including taboos, ritual, religion, health, alcohol use, social feasting, civilizing society through food use, and the global politics of food. Through a series of lectures, readings, movies, and projects we will explore the important yet perhaps un-noticed place of food in shaping our place in the world as well as those of all humans, through time.

Note: This course satisfies the Upper Division Biological requirement for the major.

Fast-paced advanced seminar on classic and current issues in biological anthropology. Readings will include some basic background but primarily will be drawn from current research papers in topic areas such as evolutionary theory, human paleontology, human evolutionary genetics, brain evolution, evolution of human cognition and language, species-unique physiology, primate behavior and adaptation, and other relevant areas. Students are expected to present critical seminar discussions of current research papers and produce 4 written commentaries critically analyzing primary sources.

Prerequisite: Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students with at least 2 courses in biological anthropology or equivalent. Anthro 111 is strongly recommended.

An analysis of the patterns and processes of organic evolution. History and philosophy of evolutionary thought; the different lines of evidence and fields of inquiry that bear on the understanding of evolution. The major features and processes of evolution through geologic times; the generation of new forms and new lineages; extinction; population processes of selection, adaptation, and other forces; genetics, genomics, and the molecular basis of evolution; evolutionary developmental biology; sexual selection; behavorial evolution; applications of evolutionary biology to medical, agricultural, conservational, and anthropological research.

Prerequisites:  Biology 1B or consent of instructor.

Note: This course satisfies the Upper Division Biological requirement for the major.

Modern Homo sapiens began crossing the water barrier of Wallacea into Australia and Near Oceania during the Pleistocene, at least 40,000 years ago. Ultimately, populations of H. sapiens spread all the way across the Pacific to colonize virtually every habitable island. This course examines this remarkable history of dispersal and expansion from the perspectives of biogeography and evolutionary ecology. H. sapiens, like any other species, faced problems of dispersal, colonization, and potential extinction, and adapted in a variety of ways to the diversity of insular ecosystems encountered. For humans, it is necessary to use a dual evolutionary model that takes into account cultural evolution and transmission, as well as biological evolution of human populations. This course also explores the impacts of human populations on the isolated and often fragile natural ecosystems of oceanic islands, and the reciprocal effects of anthropogenic change on human cultures.

Prerequisites: Evidence that student has mastered basic concepts in evolution and ecology (Anthro 1 and/or Bio 1B)

Note: This course satisfies the Upper Division Biological requirement for the major.

This course will ask: How did Indian immigrants come to gain a foothold and flourish in the Silicon Valley's economy of high technology, venture capital, and rapid development? How do these immigrants and their families fit into the longer history of immigration from India? Is the concept of 'transnationalism' useful for understanding the Indian diaspora's experiences of living and working in the Silicon Valley?

Students will learn about the goals, scope, and methodologies of oral history, and their final product will include one or more of the following: a book; catalogued audio tapes; catalogued interview transcripts; catalogued collected documents (photographs, letters, emails, legal documents); a multi-media exhibit; a driving audio tour cassette; an internet website.

Note: This course satisfies the Area requirement and either the Social/Cultural Core or an elective.

Course Description
The goal of this seminar is to explore a critically engaged anthropology ( and medical anthropology) and the different forms this might take. Most anthropologists focus on their scholarship and leave to others --the media, legislators, political leaders, technicians, policy experts, and business--the applications of their research to everyday and political life. Critically applied and public anthropology, however, has a long and distinguished pedigree from Franz Boas and Margaret Mead to Pierre Bourdieu, Laura Nader and Paul Farmer to mention but a few of those anthropologists who have envisioned anthropology as both an intellectual field, a discipline, and a ‘force field’, a site of critical thinking and resistance. Opportunities and dangers face the academy today and social science and anthropology in particular. While anthropology is well positioned to understand and interpret cultural complexity and diversity in a globalized and violent world, powerful forces actively seek to limit radical enquiry, academic freedoms and to undermine humanistic, philosophical, and critically interpretive research. We need to overcome the stodgy and anachronistic opposition between scholarship and active engagements in the world. Critical scholars link theory and practice and move comfortably between observation (detachment) and action (engagement), between the podium and street, and strive to reach broad audiences and multiple publics. In addition to writing scholarly discourses, they write ethnographies that reach broader publics, editorials, pamphlets, broadsheets, and blogs.

This seminar will open with classic essays on the role of the scholar, the intellectual, and the writer in the world (Boas, Benedict, C Wright Mills, D.Hymes), followed by more recent ethnographies and critical essays that have illuminated social issues such as race and immigration, jails, policing and the death penalty, law and lawlessness in strong and weak states, epidemics, medicine, anthropology and ethics, humanitarianism and human rights, war, violence, and the militarization of everyday life, public security, legalized torture, and other threats to freedom in the 21st century. In addition to seminar discussions and critical reaction papers on key readings, the seminar will also discuss anthropological involvements in critical events in the field and at home. Wars, dirty wars, genocides, perverse forms of economic and cultural globalization, immigration, race and racism, the dearth penalty have been potent sites of engagement for critically applied cultural and medical anthropologists.

An integral part of this seminar is a new public anthropology lecture series, the Wednesday colloquium, that will feature prominent scholars and public intellectuals and related scholars designed to complement the seminar. Some colloquia will take place during class meetings, others an hour before or after the seminar. As UC Berkeley has had a long tradition of engaged research and direct action some speakers will be drawn from among our distinguished faculty in anthropology, sociology, geography and related disciplines as well as invited guest speakers from universities home and abroad.

Requirements:
Weekly critical reaction papers, active participation in seminar discussions, a research paper on a topic relevant to the seminar, or a report on an activist/engaged practicum. Each student in the seminar is expected to co-facilitate seminar meetings on two occasions. Students are expected to attend the Wednesday afternoon colloquia in Public Anthropology – Critical Thinking for Critical Times. Though not obligatory, those who wish to serve in the role of graduate student discussant following one of the Wednesday Colloquia may volunteer to do so.

Required Texts:
Beatriz Manz. 2004. Paradise in Ashes. U. of California Press
Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1945/1989, Boston: Houghton Mifflin)
Pierre Bourdieu, 2003 , Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market. Verso
C Wright Mills. 1959 The Sociological Imagination reprinted (2000), Oxford U. Press
Jean and John Comaroff, eds. 2006 Law and Disorder in the PostColony. U. of Chicago
Adrienne Pine. 2008. Working Hard, Drinking Hard: Violence and Survival in Honduras. U California Press
Michael Taussig,2003. Law in a Lawless Land. University of Chicago Press
Harriet Washington,2006. Medical Apartheid: the Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Broadway Books
Unni Wikan, 2008. In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame. University of Chicago
Meira Weiss, 2002.The Chosen Body: Politics of the Body in Israeli Society, Stanford University Press
Paul Rabinow and George Marcus ( with James Faubion and Tobias Rees). Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary. 2008. Duke University Press.

Pamphlets and Broadsheets Pamphlets
have long had an association with revolutions and social movements. They played an instrumental role in creating conditions for change at a time when, though literacy rates were low and education was the privilege of the few, politics had not been reduced to electoral democracy where voters must often choose between indistinguishable candidates o the lesser of the two evils. Pamphlets played an important role in the American War on Independence, the French Revolution, and the Indian independence movement. Anarchists, socialists, and labor unions historically took advantage of the pamphlet to disseminate their ideas. Today a few publishers have continued this tradition including: Ombracorte (in Italy) The Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series (Mutiuniversity & Citizens International (Malaysia), and Prickly Paradigm Press (Chicago, edited by Marshall Sahlins).

We will be reading:
David Graeber 2004. Fragments for an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Routledge, “Thinking in Action” Series.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 2008. The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics, Global (in)Justice and the Traffic in Organs. Penang: Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series, no. 6
Vinay Lal, Empire and the Dream-Work of America. Penang: Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series, no. 4
(three copies available on reserve at the Anthropology Library)

Recommended:
Joao Biehl, The Will to Live, 2008, U California Press
Ivan Illich (1975)Medical Nemesis; Toward a History of Needs(1977)
Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader. 2008. Plunder :When the Rule of Law is Illegal.
Malden,MA: Blackwell.
Carolyn Nordstom, 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money and Power in the Contemporary World. (U of California Press) Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, Violence in War and Peace
Helen Epstein, 2006. The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight against AIDS
Puma Gobodo-Madikizela. 2004. A Human Being Died That Night. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Loic Wacquant, 2007, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. PolityPress, London
Patrick Tierney. 2002. Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002
Orin Starn. Ishi’s Brain. 2004 WW Norton.

Book chapters and articles will be circulated electronically or posted on bSpace . Some will be put on reserve in the Anthropology library.

This seminar is REQUIRED for all first-year graduate students in anthropological archaeology and is open to other students in
anthropology and in other departments who are interested in the history and theory of archaeological practice.

Emphasis is placed on significant developments and debates over the last five decades that have shaped the field of anthropological archaeology as we know it today. The seminar begins with an historical overview of the approaches in archaeology that have been labeled cultural historical, processual, and post-processual. The last third of the seminar then considers intellectual issues and topics that are shaping discourses in archaeology today.

Description coming soon!

Description coming soon!

Graduate seminar, open to advanced undergraduates; with permission of instructor.

This seminar will explore collecting for anthropology museums, with an emphasis on ethnography. Topics will include the psychological, cultural, and historical roots of artifact collecting, as well as the institutional context of anthropology museums in the 19th and 20th centuries. Readings will include theories of objects and collecting, collecting practices, colonialism, the ethnic art market, and folk art. These topics will be explored across a wide range of regional case studies, from Native North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

The primary requirement will be a research project analyzing a collection in the Hearst Museum. With the approval of the instructor, each student will chose one of these collections, and then research it with a review of the objects themselves, their documentation in the museum's catalogues, and the relevant scholarly literature. The point will be to determine how the particular Hearst collection illustrates the general nature of anthropological museum collecting, as expressed in the course readings. Each student will present his/her findings in a class lecture and written paper.

The course, limited to 15 students (with the approval of the instructor), should appeal to students in anthropology, folklore, history, and art history.

Basis for evaluation:
Class participation (40 %): discussion of the assigned readings, and leading discussion for two of the readings.
Final research project (60 %): class oral presentation of research project (10 %), 20-24 page written paper (50%).

Prospective students should send an email to the instructor summarizing their academic status (undergrad, graduate; department), previous museum
experience, reasons for taking the course, and a prospective region and/or subject matter that they hope to research.

"Research Projects"; Enrollment is strictly limited to the professor's immediate advisees.

In response to the disciplinary call for developing "an anthropology of modernity," this seminar takes up "America" as a cultural Other and examines its ideological ramification for the world. "The predicament of culture" is not a cultural predicament; it is a problematic difficulty in relating ourselves to others; it is a difficulty in the production of cultural knowledge or knowledge of cultures. In trying to understand possible futures of our world, "America" has drawn our attention as both power and alienation. The more anthropologists studied other people; the more they came to realize the need for understanding the symbolic predominance of American vision and life for today. Such is the goal of this seminar: it will sort out a hierarchy of problems, both socio-historical and analytico-conceptual, that have made America "American," in order for us to understand some emerging global forms such as the fashion of neoliberalism. The seminar will focus on certain peculiar aspects of American life on the one hand and its vision or conception of liberty, justice, and governance on the other. The choice of readings, taken as a whole, should be seen an analytical exercise by which we hope to defamiliarize the contemporary world.

Required Texts (in the order of reading sequence):
Tocqueville, A. de. 2001[1835/40]. Democracy in America. (Abri. Heffner) Signet.
Nordau, M. 1993[1892]. Degeneration. U. Nebraska Press.
Veblen, T. 1994[1899]. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Penguin.
Lynd, R. S. & H. M. 1956[1929]. Middletown. Harvest.
Mills, C. Wright. 2000[1956]. The Power Elite. Oxford.
Riesman, D. 2001[1961]. The Lonely Crowd. Yale Nota Bene.
Lasch, C. 1996. The Revolt of the Elites. Norton.
Wilson, E. O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard.
Hayek, F. A. 2007. Constitution of Liberty. Routledge.
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Harvard.
Harvey, D. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell.
Huntington, S. P. 2002. The Clash of Civilizations. Harvard.
Bloom, A. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. Simon and Schuster.
Baudrillard, J. 1986. Amerique. Grasset (Eng. Trans., Verso, 1988).

CANCELLED

This seminar will address the topics of how truth claims are produced, limited and circulated. Equally, it will analyze the modes in which those who produce truth claims are governed by themselves and by others. It will devote special attention to the venues in which such practices are formed.

READINGS:

FOUCAULT, MICHEL

• THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, NEW YORK: TAVISTOCK PUBLICATIONS, 1972.
• THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE SUBJECT, LECTURES AT THE COLLÉGE DE FRANCE, 1981-82, NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2005.
• LE GOUVERNEMENT DE SOI ET DES AUTRES, COURS AU COLLEGE DE FRANCE, 1982-3. PARIS: HAUTES ÉTUDES 2008.

RABINOW, PAUL & BENNETT, GAYMON

• SYNTHETIC ANTHROPOS: ON THE DESIGN OF HUMAN PRACTICES (IN PRESS)

REQUIREMENTS:

• Active classroom attendance and participation.
• Collaborative team projects.

CONSENT OF INSTRUCTOR MANDATORY. NO AUDITORS

The contemporary metropolis presents social science and anthropology in particular with especially difficult yet fundamental problems of study. This graduate seminar develops a foundation for their anthropological investigation in two ways: it considers urban theory and analysis in relation to historical context, social practice, and spatial production; and, it juxtaposes conceptualizations of North Atlantic metropolitan life with those emerging today in the Global South, emphasizing the latter. The seminar opens with the modern/ist paradigms of analysis that developed to investigate the "exhilarations and catastrophes" of the cities of industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century Europe. After studying the articulation of these paradigms in European colonialism, the seminar considers urban development in the contemporary Global South through a number specific themes and cities. The themes include urban peripheries, illegal housing, segregation, social and cultural movements, gendered practices, immigration, violence, privatization, and insurgent urban citizenships. The seminar will use a set of anthropological studies of cities in Africa, Brazil, China, and India to focus on problems of urban research and to develop consistent comparative perspectives.

While the seminar recognizes the gargantuan dimensions of this urbanization, it problematizes the language of chaos, crisis, and disease that is often applied to it. Rather, the seminar studies contemporary urbanization as developing at the intersection of two forces. One is the imposition of projects articulated both globally and locally by recognized agents of development, such as state governments, world organizations, corporations, planning agencies, NGO's, and political parties. The other comprises the insurgent practices of people - usually the urban poor - through which these projects are lived and, typically, transformed, derailed, and/or reconstituted. These insurgent practices include illegal residence, social movements, gender politics, violence, and the formulation of new urban citizenships. Thus the seminar considers urbanization as a process that develops in the engagement of the imposed and the insurgent. It emphasizes anthropology and ethnography as means to identify these insurgent practices amid the apparent cacophony of cities, investigate their decisive importance in urbanization, and consider their role in the articulation of projects of urban development that are democratic.

Cross listed with Folklore C262A.

This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, García Canclini, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the seventeenth century and the present—along with the philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue—in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities. Foci include ideologies of language and family/community/nation; how modern projects produce Other voices; how the auralities/oralities they imagine are textually inscribed, circulate through literary and scholarly texts, and both authorize and complicate dominant canons; scholarly practices for encoding time-space constructions in these representations of cultural forms; the construction of traditional and modern forms as scientific, technological, and disciplinary objects; imaginations of the production, circulation, and reception of knowledge and discourse; notions of cosmopolitan, global, national, and local and how subjects are produced, interpellated, and hierarchically organized in their terms; and practices for imbuing cultural forms with mobility and value. The seminar will provide students with space to use these readings in deepening and broadening work on their own research projects. Graduate students from all departments and programs are welcome.

This is a cross-departmental seminar building on the shared location of the work of the instructors, the Maya lowlands.

Our approach is to question the artificial divide between prehistory and history, in a region where the prehispanic and posthispanic societies were united by language and a history of practices, and where both employed literacy (originally in the Maya script, and after the beginning of colonization, shifting gradually to a new form of textuality using european script to create hybrid texts in Maya languages and in Spanish) to record their own histories.

The course necessarily engages as well with the differences between histories based on studying material remains and those based on the examination of historical texts. We are interested in understanding how new social forms arose during colonization, and so those with interests in coloniality, "culture contact", and hybridity are welcome. Our joint theoretical interests converge on issues of practice and so those interested in a deeper understanding of practice theories are also welcome.

The main locations we will explore in detail include northern Yucatan, site of the city, Mayapan, 16th century city-states in Yucatan and the communities created during the colonial period through reducción, and where appropriate neighbors in Guatemala and Honduras that shed light on or were even historically connected to these Yucatecan places.

NOTE: Required of all first-time GSIs appointed for 2008-2009 in Anthropology. This seminar introduces new GSIs to the theory and practice of teaching and learning within the discipline of Anthropology. By the end of this course, participants will be able to effectively foster small group discussions; organize and coach group work; develop test questions that advance learning; and evaluate student work consistently. Participants will also have developed an individual teaching philosophy, grouned in theoretical work related to teaching and learning, and will understand the implications of that teaching philosophy for practice.