Course Offerings
See the Registrar's page for more information on the courses listed below.
Spring 2009-2010
ANT 206 / EEB 306 / GEO 208
Human Evolution (EC)
Instructors: Alan Mann and Janet Monge
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.
ANT 270
Anthropology of Mental Illness (EC)
Instructor: Noelle Molé (na, npdf)
We adopt a comparative, historical, and cultural approach to mental health, and its accompanying illnesses, remedies, and institutions. Especially important will be the creation of cultural consensus surrounding categories of normal and pathological in mental health, and their subsequent codification in diagnoses, treatments, and institutions. We'll examine psychoanalytic theory, American psychiatry, and debates that call the very premise of disordered health and "madness" into question. We'll also focus on ethnographic accounts of mental illnesses: depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and the global rise of pharmaceuticals treatments.
Understanding Muslim Social and Political Movements (SA)
This course is designed to introduce students to a number of contemporary movements that claim to restore Islam as the central norm for practice in the social, economic and political life of Muslim communities and societies. Throughout the survey of discourses and practices by and about the so-called "islamists," their supporters and their opponents, the course will center on the reconfiguration of religion, self, community, culture, society, identity, and power. Emphasis will be on the Arab world and Iran. (Students who completed ANT 306 in Fall 2006 or Spring 2008 will not be allowed credit for this course.)
Anthropology of Human Rights: Culture, Violence, and Difference (SA)
This course examines the impact of anthropology on human rights. While human rights policy upholds universal norms and standards, anthropology examines the range of human cultural diversity and experience. We explore what the study of this diversity contributes to the understanding of human rights issues, including ethnic cleansing, gender-based violence, and torture. Additional themes address how understandings of cultural diversity affect central questions for human rights policy and anthropology, including justice, the body, and citizenship. Case studies include Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, Argentina, and Guatemala. Freshmen interested in this course should contact the instructor before enrolling.
Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture (SA)
Instructor: Everett Zhang
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.
Anthropology of Sound (SA)
This course listens closely to sounds, historicizes the technologies from which they resonate, and tours their cultural surroundings. We analyze acoustics of ritual, everyday life, social identities, and nature, for example, and relate the auditory to the visual and textual. How do voices, radio, cinema, concerts, phonographs, MP3s, world music, and recording studios mediate culture? How is sound a "thing" that can be contemplated, packaged, or sold? What is at stake in debates about digital vs. analogue, liveness, fidelity, and intellectual property? Projects will explore possibilities for portraying ethnographic knowledge with sound media.
Borders and the Body Politic: Anthropology and History in Greece and Cyprus (SA)
Explores the constitution of the body politic in Greece and Cyprus, from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the ongoing formation of the European Union. Through ethnographies and films, we will trace conflict and conciliation between Greek and Turkish peoples, focusing on two historical case studies: the Asia Minor Catastrophe of the 1920s, and the invasion of Cyprus in the 1970s. Topics will include: statehood, nationalism, and empire; war and peace-making; violence and health; migration and patriation; gender, community, and identity; social trauma and generational transmission; archival and bodily memory; and the modern uses of history. Not open to freshmen.
The Uses of Deception: Perspectives on Magic and Science (EM)
"Deception" usually has negative connotations, but scientists and magicians use it in service of truth, justice, and entertainment. For a magician's trick to induce doubt and delight, an audience's attention must be misdirected. Likewise, biomedicine and many other fields use deception (e.g., the placebo) as a research tool. Topics include: the 'real' as objective truth or cultural construct; social fictions in daily life; the tangled histories and present day alliance of science and magic; fraudulent vs. legitimate deception; popular access to science. Guest magicians may visit; research projects may involve fieldwork and multimedia.
Foodways: Biocultural Aspects of Human Diet
Instructor: Alan Mann
Foodways is a biocultural exploration of human food consumption. Readings and discussions will focus on both the biological and socio-cultural aspects of what humans eat and the ways human cultures conceptualize food and its consumption. Topics include the nutritional needs of humans, the differences between diet and cuisine, which foods taste good and why some foods taste disgusting, the evolution of human diet, how cultures define what is and what is not food, the symbolism associated with various kinds of food, and how cultures distinguish foods that are suitable for some members of the society and not others.
Black Europe: Race, Ethnicity, and Diaspora in Contemporary Europe (SA)
European cities are increasingly being reshaped by migration, EU enlargement, and economic integration. Against this backdrop, issues of diversity, difference, and cultural friction are particularly salient topics in cross-cultural research on race and racialization. We will specifically explore the contemporary presence and impact of the African diaspora throughout Europe.
History 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. Required Course for Concentrators. ANT 201 or instructor's permission. Non-majors will also need instructor's permission to enroll.
Initiation, Education, and Apprenticeship: Cross Cultural Perspectives (EC)
From Brazilian capoeira, Japanese dance, and American jazz piano, to glassblowing, lawyering, and navigating a warship: how do people acquire the skills necessary to perform expert activities in different cultural settings? What kinds of knowledge can anthropologists gain as apprentices, and how does it translate into writing? This course focuses on apprenticeship as a subject and method for anthropological research. We examine theories of learning and their application to case studies of wide-ranging domains of expertise. Students conduct ethnographic and experiential activities, generating original data for discussion and analysis.
What is a Good Society? Modern Social Ideals in Japan (SA)
Japan, along with other East and Southeast Asian nations, has reined in market forces and produced wealth by relying on the care of families, communities, and an emphasis on shared morality and values--while de-emphasizing individual rights and the tolerance of difference. The outcome is a cohesive and caring society, but one that has come with social costs. The course discusses these trade-offs in the context of contemporary social issues: the family and private life, efforts to improve society through education, socialization, prenatal care, and eugenics, and Japanese approaches to medicine and bio-ethical issues.
Critical Perspectives on Global Health and Health Policy (SA)
This course introduces students to the main disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts underway to improve global health. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course probes environmental, social, political, economic factors that shape patterns and variations in disease and health across societies. Topics include: infectious and chronic diseases; development and risk factors; pharmaceuticals and public health interventions; public-private partnerships; human rights and social justice. Students are encouraged to think creatively about health problems and to envision innovative and effective interventions. Juniors and Seniors Only.
Proseminar in Anthropology
Second term of a two-term survey of major anthropological writings, primarily for first-year graduate students. An inquiry into some of the most influential texts in anthropology to raise fundamental questions about anthropology's past and future. Spring term will emphasize contemporary and venerable theoretical and ethnographic issues. Not Open to Freshmen.
Japan Anthropology in Historical Perspective
The course considers Japan studies in the context of theories of capitalism, personhood, democracy, gender, and modernity. We will be discussing issues of fieldwork as method and "area" as a unit of analysis. We will also consider the place of Japan in American social thought.
Interdisciplinary Research: The Anthropology of Kinship
Introduces a key area of research in anthropology: the study of kinship--the ways in which peoples of different cultures marry and relate within and outside the family and the means by which one generation relates to one another within/outside the family. Course opens with a discussion of what kinship means to the social anthropologist as distinct from the biologist, and considers different possible approaches of the subject within social anthropology itself. Course also examines how recent work on gender, person and the body have challenged and modified earlier assumptions about descent, succession, marriage and familial alliances. Open to Graduate Students Only.
Fall 2009-2010
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.
Summer 2009
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