Course Offerings
Spring 2011-2012
See the Registrar's site for more information on the courses listed below.
AAS 445/ANT 445The Post Colonial Subject(SA)Power is often represented as a "top-down" phenomenon, meaning that those who have the most power control what we do, what we know, and even how we feel. That is particularly the case in the study of marginalized people (e.g. African Americans) who are often not seen as creative agents, but as victims of the powerful. Contemporary cultural studies challenge the "top-down" understanding of power and look instead at the role of the individual in creating, recreating, and resisting power. This course will challenge both approaches from the perspectives of race, class, and gender.Carolyn M. Rouse
ANT 206/GEO 208/EEB 306Human Evolution(EC)An investigation of the evidence and background of human evolution. Emphasis will be placed on the examination of the fossil and other evidence for human evolution and its functional and behavioral implications.Alan E. MannJanet M. MongePage Selinsky
ANT 207The American Family in Law and Society(SA)The course will focus on the conflicts occasioned by changing family patterns, the role of technology in conflicts over procreation and rights of the fetus, the meaning of property and its impact on divorce settlements, and the comparative development of laws of inheritance and incest. Multicultural issues will also figure prominently in the course.Lawrence Rosen
ANT 211Cultural Property and the Arts of Native North America(LA)The course will survey the arts of the native peoples of North America, including areas in the southwest, northwest coast, the arctic regions, and pre-contact times. Special emphasis will be given to the right of cultural property, the international conventions on cultural property, and the ethics of museum displays and the uses of Indian art by non-Indians.Lawrence Rosen
ANT 221/LAS 228/JDS 222The Anthropology of Migration and Diasporas(SA)Mass flows of migration define the history of modern nations. Indeed, policies towards immigrants and refugees reflect how nations struggle to define themselves. Migrants' experience reflects these complexities--challenging borders while reaffirming the continued significance of national boundaries. We will explore migration from the perspective of anthropology and ethnographic approaches to the experience of those moving across national borders as they negotiate belonging, citizenship, and identity. We also explore key themes and frameworks in the study of migrant experience -- as diaspora, transnationalism, globalization, and sovereignty.Natasha Zaretsky
ANT 307Culture in Play: Toys, Games, and Sports(SA)The common phrase "it's only a game" suggests that such activities are less than serious. But for players and spectators alike, play often entails considerable commitments, including substantial expenditures of money and time. In this course, we explore what forms of "play" reveal about the cultures and peoples who take part in them, analyzing how everyday practices involving toys, games, and sports might illuminate broader social phenomena. Possible topics include: Olympics and performances of nationalism; dolls and the gendering of bodies; internet avatars and social constructions of the self; individualist ideologies and team spirit.Richard J. Martin
ANT 310Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology(EC)A survey of current data and debates in evolutionary theory, molecular anthropology, primate biology and behavior, primate and human evolution, and modern human biology and adaptation. One three-hour seminar.Alan E. Mann
ANT 313Culture and Human Emotion: Love, Anger, Fear and Sorrow(SA)Human emotion is a historically and culturally particular phenomenon experienced as a constellation of mental and bodily expressions, symbolic meaning, and broad social structures. We will study emotion at an individual and collective level: how panic and fear are produced in social contexts, how love and compassion are expressed and ritualized, and how anxiety may be tied to technological advance. We also explore how emotions become commercialized within particular economic regimes: how do love and fear become "profitable" emotions? We will examine why certain emotions such as sorrow come to represent irrationality and psychiatric disorder.Noelle Jean Molé
ANT 335Medical Anthropology(EM)Medical anthropology looks at the interaction of illness, social environment, and medicine from a cross-cultural perspective. It compares non-medical models of disease causality and healing with biomedical ones, and explores how social and technological inequalities shape disease and health outcomes. Students learn to collect and interpret individual illness narratives as well as to assess the cultural and political dynamics of global health problems. The course draws from ethnography, medical journals, media reports and films.João BiehlCarolyn B. Eisert
ANT 390History of Anthropological Theory(HA)This course is an introduction to fundamental theories and debates in social/cultural anthropology. We will examine the national and colonial origins of anthropology, considering how western encounters with non-western peoples in the 19th-20th centuries opened questions about human kinship, history, economy, religion, language, sexuality, and personhood that continue to shape the horizons of our thought today. We will study this inheritance critically, exploring the changing concepts, methods, and ethics of anthropological research and writing, and evaluate their bearing on questions of power, justice, and identity in the present.Carol J. Greenhouse
ANT 425Post-War French Social Theory(SA)Using the works of thinkers such as Sartre, Merleau, Ponty, Aron, Ricoeur, Levi-Strauss, Foucault and Bourdieu, the course will present students with some of the conflicting images of Western society as viewed by these thinkers. This course will introduce students to these authors with emphasis on their departure from traditional schools of thought and the consequences of their ideas on the production of knowledge about societies. Topics will include: relation of social thought to literary criticism and theories of social description.Abdellah Hammoudi
ANT 502Proseminar in AnthropologyThis second half of a two-semester proseminar for first year graduate students in anthropology continues the exploration of major theoretical currents that inform the discipline. This second semester will focus on the relation between theories of human action, consciousness, and disciplinary practices such as fieldwork, participant observation, translation, sense-making, and interpretation. Theorists or theories will often be paired with the reading of an ethnographic account inspired by them.John W. Borneman
ANT 522ATopics in Theory and Practice of Anthropology: (Half-Term): Moral AnthropologyContrary to political, religious or medical anthropologies, moral anthropology does not exist as such, in spite of the early interest demonstrated by social scientists towards moral questions. There has recently been a growing interest in the ethnography of moralities, moral subjectivities, and moral economies. This six-week course endeavors to bring together the various currents, approaches and issues in this emerging field, discussing the genealogical and epistemological issues of the inquiry on morals and moralities in the discipline and exploring the frontier between moralities and politics.Didier Fassin
ANT 522BTopics in Theory and Practice of Anthropology: (Half-Term): Foucault, Deleuze & Anthropology TodayThis six-week seminar probes analytical frameworks that inform the ways anthropologists engage, think and write about state-market interactions and contemporary human becomings. Reading Foucault, the class inquires into how neoliberal economic reason impacts governance and the meaning of rights and population wellbeing. Reading Deleuze, the class questions the normalizing force of power arrangements and reflects on people's plasticity and on the fluidity of social fields. Class attends to how anthropology has stimulated such concept-work and inquires into how ethnographic fieldwork might generate alternative figures of thought today.João Biehl
ANT 570/COM 577Interdisciplinary Research: Language and Subjectivity: Theories of FormationThe purpose of the course is to examine key texts of the twentieth century that established the fundamental connection between language structures and practices on the one hand, and the formation of selfhood and subjectivity, on the other. In particular, the course will focus on theories that emphasize the role of formal elements in producing meaningful discursive and social effects. Works of Russian formalists and French (post)-structuralists will be discussed in connection with psychoanalytic and anthropological theories of formation.Serguei A. Oushakine
ANT 704Race and EthnicityNo description availableCarolyn M. Rouse
COM 236/SLA 236/HLS 236/ANT 236/NES 234Rituals, Songs, and Stories: Balkan and East European Oral Traditions(LA)This course explores oral traditions and oral literary genres (in English translation) of the Balkan and East European world, both past and present, including traditions that draw from the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish East European communities. Topics include traditional rituals (life-cycle and seasonal) and the music and song associated with them, contemporary forms of traditional and popular culture, and oral traditional narrative: poetry (epic and ballad) and prose (folktale and legend). Discussion and analysis will focus on the role and meaning of Balkan and East European oral traditions as forms of expressive culture.Margaret H. Beissinger
EAS 230/ANT 230/ENV 230Culture and the Environment in East Asia(SA)This lecture addresses the cultural, social, and political dimensions of human-environment relations with specific reference to East Asia. East Asia represents a hotspot for environmental debates, where China, Japan, and Korea simultaneously face international criticism over over-exploitation and animal rights, as well as praise for developing new "green" technologies. Drawing from anthropological and environmental literatures and from the popular media, we will connect the region's environmental issues to broader anthropological themes, such as religion, gender, urban-rural relations, development, nationalism, and globalization.Satsuki Takahashi
EAS 332/ANT 333Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture(SA)This course offers an overview of contemporary China, focusing on its transformation from Maoist socialism to the current Chinese society. It outlines Maoist socialism, and explores the changes since the late 1970s, giving special attention to tensions in this transformation: the tension between decentralized social life and the sovereignty of the post--Mao state; between the memories of Maoist socialism and current cultural politics; between the loss and reinvention of traditions; between the increasing mobility and social re-stratification; and between China's change and the existing theories about the way a society changes.Everett Y. Zhang
EAS 584/ANT 584Modernity and China (I): Power and LifeThis course addresses the topic of Chinese Modernity. Over time this course introduces different approaches and issues, while focusing on one set of issues each time. In this semester, it examines how life was dealt with differently by different modes of power and how a certain way of governing life became the threshold of modernity. Course examines the inspirations and limits of the framework of govern mentality and biopower, seen through the cases such as famine prevention, famine relief and the failure to do so, and through the interaction of different modes of power in Maoist socialism and post-Mao China.Everett Y. Zhang
Summer 2012
ANT 315 Modern Human Origins (STL)
Instructor: Alan Mann
Princeton Summer Study Abroad Program in the Southwest of France (Bordeaux)
June 11-July 20, 2012
Application deadline: February 27, 2012
Course website