Princeton University

See the Registrar's course page for more information on the Fall 2009 courses listed below.

ANT 201
Introduction to Anthropology (SA)
Instructor: John Borneman
An introduction to the comparative study of human societies, focusing on the ways in which different peoples around the world behave and organize their beliefs and relationships. Based on ethnographic accounts and documentary films, the course examines a wide range of topics, including the relation of religion to economics and to politics, changing patterns of kinship and sex, and the interplay of global events and local worlds. The course familiarizes students with ethnographic methods and also places anthropological concepts and insights in historical perspective. Required course for concentrators.

ANT 215/ EEB 315
Human Adaptation (ST)
Instructors: Alan Mann, Janet Monge
Human adaptation focuses on human anatomy and behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Lectures and weekly laboratory sessions focus on the evolution of the human brain, dentition and skeleton to provide students with a practical understanding of the anatomy and function of the human body and its evolution, as well as some of its biological limitations. No science background is required on the part of the student.

ANT 218/ REL 218
Religion and Medicine (EM)
Instructor: João Biehl
The seminar examines illness experiences and therapeutic practices as they are related to religious traditions worldwide. We will specifically look at the mind-body interface amid suffering and investigate how new medical technologies intermingle with belief systems and local forms of care. We will also consider how the themes of sacrifice and salvation are actualized in humanitarian and global health interventions and theorize emerging notions of wellbeing and human agency. Students will learn to analyze representations of religious experience and to conduct ethnographic interviews.  Developed with support from the Center for the Study of Religion and designed for freshmen and sophomores.

ANT 223/ HLS 223
Anthropology of the Psyche (SA)
Instructor: Elizabeth A. Davis
This seminar addresses the social relations in which mental health, mental illness, and psycho-medical knowledge are entangled and produced. We will engage various cross-cultural approaches to mental conflicts and pathologies: psychoanalysis, ethnopsychology, biomedical psychiatry, transcultural psychiatry, and religious and "alternative" practices of diagnosis and healing. Drawing on ethnographic and clinical studies from Greek and other contexts, we will examine the role of culture in determining lines between normal and pathological, and consider the intertwining of psyche and body in human experience and behavior.

ANT 301
The Ethnographer's Craft (SA)
Instructor: Rena Lederman
This course provides an introduction to "doing" anthropology through the study and practice of fieldwork, and is meant to complement other Anthropology Department courses and independent work projects. Emphasizing seminar-style discussions and a "workshop" format, the course considers a variety of anthropological research methods and types of writing. Throughout, it aims to develop an understanding of key ideas like objectivism, interpretation, reflexivity, participant-observation, translation, and comparison. Required course for concentrators. Not open to freshmen.

ANT 308
Forensic Anthropology (EC)
Instructor: Janet Monge
An introduction to the techniques of analysis that biological anthropologists apply to forensic (legal) cases. Topics include: the ethical and moral considerations of international forensic efforts, recovery of bodies, analysis of life history, reconstruction of causes of death, and case studies where anthropologists have contributed significantly to solving forensic cases. Discussions will include the limitations of the application of DNA recovery to skeletal/mummified materials; various case studies including recovery of body parts from the World Trade Towers site; and uncovering gravesites in Bosnia and Iraq.

EAS 312/ ANT 312
Mind, Body, and Bioethics in Japan and Beyond (EM)
Instructor: Amy Borovoy
The seminar will examine key concepts of the mind, the body, and the nature-culture distinction. We will study these issues in the context of Japanese beliefs about the good society, making connections between "lay culture," Japanese notions of social democracy, and "science culture." Topics include: styles of care for the mentally ill, the politics of disability, notions of human life and death, responses to bio-technology, the management of human materials (such as organs), cultural definitions of addiction and "co-dependency," and the ethics of human enhancement.

ANT 321
Ritual, Myth, and Worldview (SA)
Instructor: Isabelle Clark-Deces
The objectives of this course are essentially threefold: (1) to familiarize students with the anthropological study of ritual, or how the question of ritual has been posed within the discipline of anthropology; (2) to explore and understand how ritual structures and restructures the relations, actions, and experiences of human beings, and (3) to examine how ritual exploits and dramatizes the kinds of experience that we call "social" or "historical." Finally, the course explores the impact of the media and globalization, diasporas, and the plays of 'modernity' and 'tradition' on the practice of ritual.

ANT 335
Medical Anthropology (EM)
Instructor: Joao Biehl
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. Not open to freshmen.

ANT 350
Desire and Repression: Economic Anthropology and American Pop-Culture (SA)
Instructor: Carolyn Rouse
This course explores the idea of consumerism and commodities in cultural life, particularly as it affects various segments of the American population. Using as background the theory of exchange and the development of both pre-capitalist and capitalist economies, topics will include race and fashion, religion and materialism, and the social value of reciprocity. Students will also engage in a semester-long project aimed at understanding the cultural context of the American desire for things.

ANT 405
Topics in Anthropology: Revisiting Sacrifice (SA)
Instructor: Abdellah Hammoudi
The course brings back to discussion a concept and a set of practices central to the lives of millions of men and women across the world. While sacrifice is invoked in religious and political discourse and practice, it has been somewhat neglected by anthropologists in recent decades. Understanding sacrifice is understanding ritual and religion, and their role in the globalizing world. Topics include theories of sacrifice, categories and comparison, genealogies and deconstruction, violence, power and religion, jihad, sacrifice and terror. We will study contemporary material from public discourses and arts before going back to classical theory. Juniors, seniors & graduate students only

ECS 406/ ANT 424
European Rituals and the Individual: The Social and Political through Expressive Culture (SA)
Instructor: John Borneman
This course explores the "individual" as produced through European rituals that crosscut national boundaries, yet grow out of particular local, regional, and national cultures. How is the individual formed in the rituals of modern expressive culture? What are the functions of dance, music, visual culture, political culture, local festivals, and sport? What are the rites of passage, consumption activities, free time (vacations, tourism), and work cultures? The course will analyze empirical cases and select social theoretical frames that try to explain the emergence and development of "the individual" in modern European life.

ANT 428
Anthropological Lifeworks Compared (SA)
Instructor: James Boon
This seminar considers the entire "work and life" of three anthropologists noted for their interdisciplinary impact: Clifford Geertz, Margaret Mead, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. We stress multiple field experiences, shifting historical circumstances, interpretive controversy, and hybrid arts and ideas advanced in striking careers and corpora. How have ethnology, history, and autobiography been blended in a body of research and writing that may begin to resemble in its own right a plural "world"?

AAS 445/ ANT 445
The Post Colonial Subject (SA)
Instructor: Carolyn Rouse
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.

ANT 501
Proseminar in Anthropology
Instructor: Abdellah Hammoudi
First term of a two-term survey of major anthropological writings, primarily for first-year graduate students. This seminar will focus on some major figures who have influenced anthropological theory and shaped our ideas of what anthropology is or should be. Historical formulations of some issues which are currently revisited and hotly debated such as rationalization and unreason, science and communication, subjectivity and dialogic encounters, and the status of knowledge and truth in the social sciences will be examined. Not open to freshmen.

ANT 541
Topics in Social Anthropology: Disciplinary Practices
Instructor: Rena Lederman
This course explores the ethics and politics of field research (with special attention to differences between anthropology and its disciplinary neighbors), as well as shifting ideas about "the field" and relations between researchers, their interlocutors and audiences. It also considers practical matters like participant observation, interviewing, fieldnotes, and other research sources.

EAS 550/ ANT 550
Topics in Social Theory and East Asia
Instructor: Amy Borovoy
An introduction to classical social theory of modernity and an exploration of new directions in social theory in contemporary social science. Course examines the ways in which Western scholarship on East Asia has engaged with theories of modernity, at times generating new bodies of thought on social exchange, capitalism, feminism, the state and civil society, and agency and subjectivity. Texts on Japan, China, and elsewhere, moving between theoretical, ethnographic, and historical texts, are used. Not open to freshman.

ANT 315
Modern Human Origins (ST)
Instructor:  Prof. Alan Mann
Princeton Summer Study Abroad Program in the Southwest of France (Bordeaux)
Program dates: June 8-July 17, 2009
Summer 2009 course website