Anthropology

How might we begin to conceive relational ethics? In the attempt to think through this question, we will slowly read and discuss some important texts in anthropology and continental philosophy that have attempted to think and articulate relationality, being-with and ethics.

In this seminar, we will examine how we can use our training in the social sciences and humanities to further the goals of a collaborating community, as well as to engage with different publics. The focus of this course will be on anthropology and its subdisciplines. Our discussions on how to engage with non-academic communities and publics will be applicable to a broad range of disciplines.

This seminar will explore the norms, embodied practices, material artifacts, and forms of reasoning which shape processes of care and abandonment across a range of contemporary cases. We will explore Foucault's writings on bio-power, how a focus on abandonment and abjection has altered the field of anthropology, and how care might relate to other concepts like kinship.

This course will examine mental health issues from the perspectives of biomedicine and anthropology, emphasizing local traditions of illness and healing as well as evidence from epidemiology and neurobiology. Included topics will be psychosis, depression, PTSD, Culture Bound Syndromes, and suicide. We will also examine the role of pharmaceutical companies in the spread of western based mental health care and culturally sensitive treatment.

Investigates the grammatical structure of non-European language on the basis of data collected in class from a native speaker. A different language is the focus of study each year.

An introduction to the theory and analysis of linguistic sound systems. Covers the essential units of speech sound that lexical and grammatical elements are composed of, how those units are organized at multiple levels of representation, and the principles governing the relation between levels.     

Considers how languages change as part of social systems and affected by historical processes. We will contrast language change through internal processes of drift and regular sound change with contact-induced language change involving multilingualism and code switching, language shift and lexical borrowing, the emergence of pidgin, creole, and intertwined languages, language endangerment, and computational tools for historical linguistics.

This course explores the theoretical, practical, and ethical foundations of language documentation and linguistic fieldwork, forms of research that can hardly be separated in this era of global language loss.

This course introduces students to the literature pertaining to the development of Artificial Intelligence, especially as this pursuit entails questions of Language, Data, Ecology, and Epistemology. Together we will discuss touchstone pieces tied to these issues and work towards developing resources that will eventually inform the development of an undergraduate gateway course on Language, AI, and Society.

In anthropology, where identity has become a central concern, language is seen as an important site for the construction of, and negotiation over social identities. In linguistics, reference to categories of social identity helps to explain language structure and change. This seminar explores the overlap between these converging trends by focusing on the notion of discourse as a nexus of cultural and linguistic processes.

Students build knowledge and practice of analysis of peoples' joint-engagement in embodied interactions. How does action weave together multiple sensory modalities into semiotic webs linking interactions with more durative institutions of social life? Course includes workshops on video recording, and the transcription and coding of verbal and non-verbal actions. Prior coursework in Linguistics, Anthropology or instructor permission recommended.

This course surveys ethnographic and linguistic literature on literacy, focusing on the social meanings of speaking vs. writing (and hearing vs. reading) as opposed communicative practices, looking especially at traditionally oral societies.

Discourse analysis looks at the patterns in language and language-use above the level of sentence grammar and seeks to apply the micro-level analysis of communicative interactions to understanding the macro-level processes of social and cultural reproduction. Topics include: symbolic interactionism, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse prosody, and digital analysis techniques.

This graduate-level seminar seeks to understand variation in language (and its significance for social relations and social hierarchies) by focusing on forms of language that are aesthetically valued (whether as powerful or as poetic) in particular communities. The course assumes some familiarity both with technical analysis of language and anthropological perspectives on social formations.

This course examines theories and practices of race and otherness, in order to analyze and interpret constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of race from the late 18th to the 21st centuries. The focus varies from year to year, and may include 'race, 'progress and the West,' 'gender, race and power,' and 'white supremacy.' The consistent theme is that race is neither a biological nor a cultural category, but a method and theory of social organization, an alibi for inequality, and a strategy for resistance. Cross listed as AAS 5528. Prerequisite: ANTH 1010, 3010, or other introductory or middle-level social science or humanities course

Topics to be announced prior to each semester, dealing with linguistics.

Seminars in topics of specific interest to faculty and advanced students will be announced prior to each semester.

New course in the subject of anthropology.

Seminars in topics announced prior to each semester.

Topics to be announced prior to each semester, dealing with social and cultural anthropology.

Investigates current theory, models, and research methods in anthropological archaeology.

Laboratory training in techniques and methods used in analyzing animal bones recovered from archaeological sites. Include field collection, data analysis, and the use of zooarchaeological materials in reconstructing economic and social systems.

This course explores theories and techniques underlying spatial analysis and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in archaeological research. Topics covered in this hands-on course include construction and manipulation of spatial data, basic spatial statistics and landscape studies. Students are expected to work on their own research projects, involving the construction, analysis and modeling of environmental and social variables.

Exploration of the archaeology of frontiers, expansions and colonization, focusing on European expansion into Africa and the Americas while using other archaeologically-known examples (e.g., Roman, Bantu) as comparative studies. Prerequisite: For undergraduates, ANTH 4591 senior seminar or instructor permission.

The focus of this class is the nature of sociopolitical interaction across boundaries and imperial frontier regions, using multidisciplinary research and different scales of analysis. Among other disciplines, this includes archaeology, ethnohistory and history. Some of the case studies comprise the ancient frontiers of imperial formations in the ancient World, the pre-Columbian Americas, and those in the US and beyond.