Anthropology

This course examines culture's role in reproducing health inequalities in the United States. Different populations have very different levels of access to care, environmental exposures, and cultural beliefs about health and well-being. Institutional cultures also influence how different patients are treated, how evidence is used to determine treatments, and how healthcare priorities are articulated and funded. Additionally, this course explores how medical care is influenced at a national level by health policies. These factors ultimately impact population health and patients' experiences with life, death and chronic disease.

Analysis of a major world region stressing the issues of cultural diversity, history, and social change. Attention will be given to the theoretical contributions of regional study, the history of regional approaches, and the internationalization of the production of anthropological research.

Study of a selected topic in anthropology; the particular choice will vary from year to year.

Analysis of classical and contemporary sources of cultural anthropology, with particular emphasis on those writers dealing with meaning and representation. The topical focus of the course will vary with the instructor. One three-hour seminar.

Classic and modern theories of religion relevant to anthropologists. Students will familiarize themselves with anthropological monographs dealing with a particular aspect of religion: shamanism, witchcraft, possession and ecstasy, healing. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.

This course considers how the sciences can be studied ethnographically, how they vary culturally one from another, and how scientific knowledge is generated. It develops an understanding of the values and social contexts of Western scientific practice through the comparative study of Western and non-Western systems of knowledge, and explores the implications and validity of the assumption that the sciences are culturally produced rather than objective standards transcending culture. One three-hour seminar.

Explores issues surrounding the relation of individual memory to collective trauma, the social forms of redress to trauma, and attempts to establish accountability for harm. Takes up three major approaches to memory: social organization (Halbwachs), psychoanalysis (Freud), and associative temporalities (Sebald). Examines various genres in which the memory of loss is retained or displaced, and the landscapes and histories in which such memories are recalled and losses repaired. A better understanding of such memories will improve our approaches to cultural observation, documentation, analysis, and interpretation. One three-hour seminar.

An exploration of the reciprocal influences of anthropology and gender studies, considering both classic and recent contributions; an evaluation of key interpretive categories (for example, "nature,'' "domestic,'' "woman'') specifically in the context of cross-cultural translation; and comparison of various approaches to questions about the universality of gendered power hierarchies. One three-hour seminar.

Explores the theories and methods of ethnographic filmmaking. This seminar introduces students to the pioneering work of filmmakers including Robert Flaherty, Jean Rouch, and Fred Wiseman in order to address questions of documentary authenticity, knowledge, methods, ethics, and audience. One three-hour seminar.

A two-term survey of major anthropological writings, primarily for first-year graduate students.

A two-term survey of major anthropological writings, primarily for first-year graduate students.

What theoretical approaches are available to ethnographers for making sense of race and inequality? This class places Critical Race Theory in conversation with foundational anthropological theories of race and ethnicity. Students in this course explore the usefulness of contemporary legal theory, structuralism, pragmatism, Marxian analysis, and interpretivism for understanding and writing about race and difference.

In this course, we situate economic anthropology as a subfield of anthropology in the context of developments in political economy, social theory, and anthropology writ large. We read: classic works that reveal the rationality of 'primitive' society, attempts to use economic theory to analyze 'primitive' economies, the formalist-substantivist debate with Karl Polanyi at the center, as well as approaches to economic anthropology from the 1970s and onward (structuralist Marxist economic anthropology, feminist economic anthropology, and new approaches to markets after Latour).

The course offers an in-depth examination of a wide array of subfields and topical specialties in anthropology. The topics give exposure to advanced theories, with professors that are leader experts in their areas.

The course offers an in-depth examination of a wide array of subfields and topical specialties in anthropology. The topics give exposure to advanced theories, with professors that are leader experts in their areas.

This seminar alternates reading discussions and workshopping to explore the ethics, politics, and practice of ethnographic fieldwork. It considers questions about evidence, research spaces (e.g., "the field"), researchers' relations with diverse interlocutors, and 'method' itself. Students' local field projects are bases for workshop meetings on participant observation, the interview/conversation distinction, and record-keeping, as well as for critical reflection on credibility claims, scale, subject position, representation/reception, improvisation and collaboration in ethnographic practice in anthropology and neighboring disciplines.

The 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 focuses on theories that emphasize the role of formal elements in producing meaningful discursive and social effects. Works of Russian formalists and French (post)-structuralists are discussed in connection with psychoanalytic and anthropological theories of formation.

A selected topic in anthropology is studied, the particular choice varies from year to year.

A selected topic in anthropology is studied; the particular choice varies from year to year.

This 6-week course for graduate students will focus on recent key theoretical and ethnographic texts on gender and sexuality. Recent research in clinical psychoanalytic, linguistics and rhetoric, and anthropology have opened up new ways of understanding attachment, gender identification, and cultural context in the shaping of sexuality. This course will explore this literature, with the primary concern the utility of these frames for ethnographic research.

The course concerns Japan studies in the context of theories of capitalism, personhood, democracy, gender, and modernity. The thematic focus this term is on health and medicine as they intertwine with social and cultural processes. Topics include: cultural variability of diagnosis and bio-medical practices; how biotechnologies shape and are shaped by social relationships; the containment of medicalization by received notions of kinship, gender, and national identity; conceptions of life itself; and models of public health and the containment of harmful behavior. Reading selections include material on Japan, China, and India.

The arts of interpretation across the disciplines.