Anthropology

Independent study conducted by the student under the supervision of an instructor of his or her choice.

Introduces major historical figures, approaches, and debates in anthropology (sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological), with a focus on understanding the discipline's diverse intellectual history, and its complex involvement with dominant social and intellectual currents in western society.

Explores the major recent theoretical approaches in current anthropology, with attention to their histories and to their political contexts and implications.

Seminar on ethnographic methods and research design in the qualitative tradition. Surveys the literature on ethnographic methods and explores relations among theory, research design, and appropriate methodologies. Students participate in methodological exercises and design a summer pilot research project. Prerequisite: Second year graduate in anthropology or instructor permission.

Seminar on the craft of ethnographic writing and the ethical, political, and practical challenges of describing studied people in scholarly books and articles. What can student researchers do during fieldwork to help them write better dissertations more easily? How should they analyze and present field data? Prerequisite: ANTH 7040 or instructor permission. Suitable for pre- and post-field graduate students.

A workshop for graduates preparing dissertation proposals and writing grant applications. Each student prepares several drafts of a proposal, revising it at each stage in response to the criticisms of classmates and the instructor.

This course engages with ways that historical process are inscribed in landscapes, which are the traditional territories of indigenous communities and have also been shaped by colonialism, extractive enterprise, and nature conservation. It challenges students to examine their assumptions to examine ways in which dominant values and stories are inscribed in landscapes and made to appear natural and how indigenous peoples contest these processes. Prerequisite: Graduate status or instructor permission.

Analyzes the ways in which a spirit of national or ethic solidarity is mobilized and utilized.

Disabled people are considered the ¿world¿s largest minority,¿ but does a shared disability experience exist? In this course we examine the diverse ways disability is understood in different social contexts. We use disability studies as a critical lens to examine issues of power and to ask key questions of anthropology, including; What does it mean to have an anthropology of embodied experience? An anthropology of the mind?

Anarchy - organizing society through horizontal relations of free association - has a modern European history contemporary with Anthropology and has Indigenous histories in many places where people decided together to organize society against the state and hierarchy. Readings survey anthropology of non-state societies and engages questions of how non-European anarchies of Black and Indigenous authors and organizers critique anthropological methods.

Topics include the politics of cultural representation in history, anthropology, and fine arts museums; and the museum as a bureaucratic organization, as an educational institution, and as a nonprofit corporation.

Study of the cultural representations and interpretations of the body in society.

An advanced introduction to the study of language from an anthropological point of view. No prior coursework in linguistics is expected, but the course is aimed at graduate students who will use what they learn in their own anthropologically-oriented research. Topics include an introduction to such basic concepts in linguistic anthropology as language in world-view, the nature of symbolic meaning, language and nationalism, universals and particulars in language, language in history and prehistory, the ethnography of speaking, the nature of everyday conversation, and the study of poetic language. The course is required for all Anthropology graduate students. It also counts toward the Theory requirement for the M.A. in Linguistics.

Survey of modern schools of linguistics, both American and European, discussing each approach in terms of historical and intellectual context, analytical goals, assumptions about the nature of language, and relation between theory and methodology.

The study of pidgins and creoles emerged as a subfield of linguistics in the latter half of the 20th century. Its ideas have been borrowed, notably by anthropologists, to analyze the increasing diversity and mixedness we confront in a globalizing world. But where did such ideas come from, and what are their (un)intended consequences? In this course, we trace the epistemological development of Creole studies and consider its historical and contemporary impacts.

Surveys the classification and typological characteristics of Native American languages and the history of their study, with intensive work on one language by each student. Some linguistics background is helpful.

Language and Culture in the Middle East

This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics (the study of how languages change over time) and the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory. Considered is the use of linguistic evidence in tracing prehistoric population movements in demonstrating contact among prehistoric groups and in the reconstruction of daily life. To the extent that the literature permits, examples and case studies will be drawn from the Mayan language area of Central America, and will include discussion of the pre-Columbian Mayan writing system and its ongoing decipherment. Fulfills the comparative-historical requirement for Linguistics graduate students.

Analyzes particular aspects of language structure and use. Topics vary from year to year.

New course in the subject of anthropology.

This course examines the quantitative analytical techniques used in anthropology and archaeology. Topics include seriation, regression analysis, measures of diversity, and classification.

New course in the subject of anthropology.

For master's research, taken before a thesis director has been selected.

For master's thesis, taken under the supervision of a thesis director.

Directed Readings