INTRO TO SOC & CULTURAL THEORY

SOCIAL & CULTURAL THEORY

This course presents students with crucial theories of society, paying particular attention at the outset to classic social theory of the early 20th century. It traces a trajectory of writings essential for an understanding of the social: from Saussure, Durkheim, Mauss, Weber, and Marx, on to the structuralist ethnographic elaboration of Claude Levi-Strauss and the historiographic reflections on modernity of Michel Foucault. We revisit periodically, reflections by Franz Boas, founder of anthropology in the United States (and of Anthropology at Columbia), for a sense of origins, an early anthropological critique of racism and cultural chauvinism, and a prescient denunciation of fascism.  We turn as well, also with ever-renewed interest in these times, to the expansive critical thought of W. E. B. Du Bois.  We conclude with Kathleen Stewart’s
A Space on the Side of the Road
--an ethnography of late-twentieth-century Appalachia and the haunted remains of coal-mining country--with its depictions of an uncanny otherness within dominant American narratives.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: John Pemberton
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Regimes of various shapes and sizes tend to criminalize associations, organizations, and social relations that these ruling powers see as anathema to the social order on which their power depends: witches, officers of toppled political orders, alleged conspirators (rebels, traitors, terrorists, and dissidents), gangsters and mafiosi, or corrupt officers and magnates. Our main goal will be to understand how and under what conditions do those with the power to do so define, investigate, criminalize and prosecute those kinds of social relations that are cast as enemies of public order. We will also pay close attention to questions of knowledge – legal, investigative, political, journalistic, and public – how doubt, certainty, suspicion and surprise shape the struggle over the relationship between the state and society.

The main part of the course is organized around six criminal investigations on mafia-related affairs that took place from the 1950s to the present (two are undergoing appeal these days) in western Sicily. After the introductory section, we will spend two weeks (four meetings) on every one of these cases. We will follow attempts to understand the Mafia and similarly criminalized organizations, and procure evidence about it. We will then expand our inquiry from Sicily to cases from all over the world, to examine questions about social relations, law, the uses of culture, and political imagination.

*Although this is a social anthropology course,
no previous knowledge of anthropology is required or presumed
. Classroom lectures will provide necessary disciplinary background.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Naor H Ben-Yehoyada
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

CORPSE LIFE: ANTH HISTORY OF THE DEAD

CORPSE LIFE:ANTH HIST OF DEAD

The awareness of mortality seems to be a peculiarly human affliction, and its study has been a key theme of 20th century philosophy. This class will address the question of human finitude from outside of the western philosophical tradition. Anthropologists have shown that humans deal with the challenge of death in diverse ways, which nevertheless share some common themes. During the semester we’ll look at case studies from across the world and over time and also explore the ethics and politics of disturbing the dead. The evidence of past human mortuary assemblages will provide some of our key primary texts. We’ll analyze famous burials such as those of Tutankhamun, the Lord of Sipan, and Emperor Qin’s mausoleum, containing the celebrated terracotta warriors, but we’ll also consider less well-known mortuary contexts. We will also critically examine the dead body as a privileged site for anthropological research, situating its study within the broader purview of anthropological theories of the body's production and constitution.  $25 Anthropology Lab Fee.  Satisfies Global Core Requirement (Columbia College and General Studies).

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Zoe Crossland
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• 4 points

CORPSE LIFE:ANTH HIST OF THE DEAD-DISC

CORPSE LIFE:ANTH OF DEAD-DISC

• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 9:10 a.m.-10 a.m.
• T 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• M 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• M 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• T 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• T 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Emre Deniz Yurttas
  Info
• 0 points

Archaeologies of Making

Archaeology has often been described as the discipline of 'things' or of the material traces of the past. This course seeks to enhance students' engagement with the material world as a means of complementing text-based instruction in the tradition of experimental archaeology and hands-on history. Through weekly activities, students will create and engage with ‘things’, reflect critically on differences in reading about and making things, and gain a critical understanding of material culture studies in archaeology and beyond.

• R 10:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Amanda Althoff
  Info
• 3 points

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Discussion section for ANTH2017.

• R 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• R 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• M 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• M 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• F 11:10 a.m.-noon
• M 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Carlos A Montes
  Info
• 0 points

ARCHAEOL BEFORE THE BIBLE

Please note that this is not a class on “biblical archaeology”. It is a course about the politics of archaeology in the context of Israel/Palestine, and the wider southwest Asia region. This course provides a critical overview of prehistoric archaeology in southwest Asia (or the Levant - the geographical area from Lebanon in the north to the Sinai in the south, and from the middle Euphrates in Syria to southern Jordan). It has been designed to appeal to anthropologists, historians, and students interested in the Ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies. The course is divided into two parts. First, a social and political history of archaeology, emphasizing how the nature of current theoretical and practical knowledge has been shaped and defined by previous research traditions and, second, how the current political situation in the region impinges upon archaeological practice. Themes include: the dominance of "biblical archaeology" and the implications for Palestinian archaeology, Islamic archaeology, the impact of European contact from the Crusades onwards, and the development of prehistory.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Brian Boyd
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

LIVING WITH ANIMALS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PER

This course examines how humans and animals shape each other’s lives, using the tools and perspectives of anthropology. We’ll explore the astounding diversity of human-animal relationships in time and space, tracing the ways animals have made their impact on human societies (and vice-versa). Using contemporary ethnographic, historical, and archaeological examples from a variety of geographical regions and chronological periods, this class will consider how humans and animals live and work together, and the ways in which humans have found animals “good to think with”.  In this course, we will also discuss how knowledge about human-animal relationships in the past might change contemporary and future approaches to living with animals. Through the reading and thinking that this course requires, you will explore what an anthropological perspective on living with animals looks like and how thinking about animals might change anthropology.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Hannah Chazin
  Info
• 4 points

Religion in Chinese Society

Issues and problems in the understanding of religion in China from late imperial times to the present.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Myron L Cohen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

Black/Life/Science

What is the relationship of the production of scientific knowledge to Black life in the Americas? What can thinking that arises out of the intellectual traditions of Black Studies contribute to our understandings of the many genres of science (social, physical, earth, life) and their relationship to justice? Building from these essential questions, this course offers a framework for considering the ways that canonical sciences have constrained, categorized, and delimited Black lives, exploring such themes as: technoscientific constructions of race difference, epigenetic theories about the heritability of trauma, histories of biomedical experimentation, the long durée of eugenicist thinking, and the relationship of racialized (and gendered) bodies to their environments. We will also explore scientific scripts emergent from “below,” like: folk healing, speculative fictions, and Black nationalist origin stories, that have and continue to be sources of imaginative and emancipatory promise. In addition to developing the capacity to read widely across genres of science and critical studies thereof, students will develop skills in the deconstruction and speculative refiguring of scientific discourse.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

The Social Life of Solidarity

Calls for solidarity are a ubiquitous feature of contemporary political life. When someone acts “in solidarity with” they both recognize their own difference – be it one of geography, community, positionality – and propose to act in a way that meaningfully bonds them to others across this difference. While undeniably central to social movements, “solidarity” looks radically different across contexts. As a result, the organizing question of this course holds incredible political importance: What is solidarity? How does one act in solidarity? What are the possibilities and pitfalls of the term as an analytical frame and political demand?

Anthropologists have a head start in answering this question. The concept of solidarity has been central since the foundations of the discipline. This course places anthropological theories of solidarity in dialogue with literature on both social and political movements and ethnographically insightful accounts of the little things we do (talk, listen, joke, celebrate) that are essential to forms of social solidarity. Through our readings and discussions, we will consider both what these theories offer our understanding of contemporary political and social life and how political and social life might allow us to develop, critique, or complicate these theories.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jacob A Bessen
  Info
• 4 points

NATIVE AMERICA

This is an undergraduate seminar that takes up primary and secondary sources and reflections to: a) provide students with an historical overview of Native American issues and representational practices, b) provide students with an understanding of the ways in which land expropriation and concomitant military and legal struggle have formed the core of Native-State relations and are themselves central to American and Native American history and culture, and c) provide students with an understanding of Native representational practices, political subjectivity, and aspiration.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Audra Simpson
  CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

ARCH ENGAGE: PAST IN PUB EYE

This course provides a panoramic, but intensive, inquiry into the ways that archaeology and its methods for understanding the world have been marshaled for debate in issues of public interest. It is designed to examine claims to knowledge of the past through the lenses of alternative epistemologies and a series of case-based problems that range from the academic to the political, legal, cultural, romantic, and fraudulent.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Terence N D'Altroy
  CULPA: 37 Info
• 4 points

FEMINIST AND DECOLONIAL STUDIES IN LATIN

This course introduces feminist and decolonial studies as an exciting and interdisciplinary field that helps us better understand power, inequality, and social change. It offers a foundation in key feminist and decolonial ideas while inviting students to connect theory with real-world struggles and movements.
     In the first part of the course, we will learn core concepts and explore major debates in feminist and decolonial thought. In the second half, we will look at feminism not only as a set of ideas, but also as a diverse and dynamic social movement that has shaped political struggles, cultural representation, and historical change.
      Together, we will ask important questions such as: Is gender shaped by colonial histories? What does intersectionality help us see about inequality? How can research and political action be guided by feminist and decolonial perspectives? What can we learn from Indigenous feminisms, community feminisms, and other transformative ways of thinking?
      Throughout the course, we will engage with the work of activists, scholars, and artists—especially Indigenous, Afro-descendant, LGBTQ+, and land and water defenders—whose ideas are reshaping feminist studies today. We will also explore how feminist and decolonial perspectives help us understand the current planetary crisis and imagine more just and sustainable ways of relating to each other and to the environment.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Marisa G Ruiz Trejo
  Info
• 4 points

ECOCRITICISM FOR THE END TIMES

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. This seminar aims to show what an anthropologically informed, ecocritical cultural studies can offer in this moment of intensifying ecological calamity. The course will not only engage significant works in anthropology, ecocriticism, philosophy, literature, politics, and aesthetics to think about the environment, it will also bring these works into engaged reflection on living in the end times (borrowing cultural critic Slavoj Zizeks phrase). The seminar will thus locate critical perspectives on the environment within the contemporary worldwide ecological crisis, emphasizing the ethnographic realities of global warming, debates on nuclear power and energy, and the place of nature. Drawing on the professors long experience in Japan and current research on the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, the seminar will also take care to unpack the notion of end times, with its apocalyptic implications, through close considerations of works that take on the question of ecocatastrophe in our times. North American and European perspectives, as well as international ones (particularly ones drawn from East Asia), will give the course a global reach.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Marilyn Ivy
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

ANTICOLONIALISM

The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: David Scott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 72 Info
• 4 points

ANIME EFFECT: JAPANESE MEDIA

Culture, technology, and media in contemporary Japan. Theoretical and ethnographic engagements with forms of mass mediation, including anime, manga, video, and cell-phone novels. Considers larger global economic and political contexts, including post-Fukushima transformations. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Marilyn Ivy
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisite: the written permission of the staff member under whose supervision the research will be conducted.

• Instructor: Brian Boyd
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Hannah Chazin
  Info
• Instructor: Marilyn Ivy
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Paige West
  CULPA: 41 h-index: 23 Info
• Instructor: Antara Chakrabarti
  Info
• Instructor: Nadia Abu El-Haj
  CULPA: 13 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Amanda Althoff
  Info
• Instructor: Naor H Ben-Yehoyada
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Jacob A Bessen
  Info
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Myron L Cohen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Zoe Crossland
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Terence N D'Altroy
  CULPA: 37 Info
• Instructor: Catherine Fennell
  Info
• 2-6 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisite: the written permission of the staff member under whose supervision the research will be conducted.

• 2-6 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisite: the written permission of the staff member under whose supervision the research will be conducted.

• Instructor: Gina A Jae
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: John Pemberton
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Paloma Rodrigo Gonzales
  Info
• Instructor: J.C. Salyer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: David Scott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 72 Info
• Instructor: Audra Simpson
  CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Kaya N Williams
  Info
• Instructor: Ellen Marakowitz
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Nicholas Glastonbury
  Info
• Instructor: Rosalind Morris
  CULPA: 20 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Radhika Govindrajan
  Info
• 2-6 points

SENIOR THESIS SEM IN ANTHROPOL

Prerequisites: The instructors permission. Students must have declared a major in Anthropology prior to registration. Students must have a 3.6 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept in order to be considered. Interested students must communicate/meet with thesis instructor in the previous spring about the possibility of taking the course during the upcoming academic year. Additionally, expect to discuss with the instructor at the end of the fall term whether your project has progressed far enough to be completed in the spring term. If it has not, you will exit the seminar after one semester, with a grade based on the work completed during the fall term. This two-term course is a combination of a seminar and a workshop that will help you conduct research, write, and present an original senior thesis in anthropology. Students who write theses are eligible to be considered for departmental honors. The first term of this course introduces a variety of approaches used to produce anthropological knowledge and writing; encourages students to think critically about the approaches they take to researching and writing by studying model texts with an eye to the ethics, constraints, and potentials of anthropological research and writing; and gives students practice in the seminar and workshop formats that are key to collegial exchange and refinement of ideas. During the first term, students complete a few short exercises that will culminate in a substantial draft of one discrete section of their senior project (18-20 pages) plus a detailed outline of the expected work that remains to be done (5 pages). The spring sequence of the anthropology thesis seminar is a writing intensive continuation of the fall semester, in which students will have designed the research questions, prepared a full thesis proposal that will serve as a guide for the completion of the thesis and written a draft of one chapter. Only those students who expect to have completed the fall semester portion of the course are allowed to register for the spring; final enrollment is contingent upon successful completion of first semester requirements. In spring semester, weekly meetings will be devoted to the collaborative refinement of drafts, as well as working through issues of writing (evidence, voice, authority etc.). All enrolled students are required to present their project at a symposium in the late spring, and the final grade is based primarily on successful completion of the thesis/ capstone project. Note: The senior thesis seminar is open t

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 4 points

FEMINIST AND DECOLONIAL STUDIES IN LATIN

Feminist & Decolonial LA

This course introduces feminist and decolonial studies as an exciting and interdisciplinary field that helps us better understand power, inequality, and social change. It offers a foundation in key feminist and decolonial ideas while inviting students to connect theory with real-world struggles and movements.
     In the first part of the course, we will learn concepts and explore major debates in feminist and decolonial thought. In the second half, we will look at feminism not only as a set of ideas, but also as a diverse and dynamic social movement that has shaped political struggles, cultural representation, and historical change.
      Together, we will ask important questions such as: Is gender shaped by colonial histories? What does intersectionality help us see about inequality? How can research and political action be guided by feminist and decolonial perspectives? What can we learn from Indigenous feminisms, community feminisms, and other transformative ways of thinking?
      Throughout the course, we will engage with the work of activists, scholars, and artists—especially Indigenous, Afro-descendant, LGBTQ+, and land and water defenders—whose ideas are reshaping feminist studies today. We will also explore how feminist and decolonial perspectives help us understand the current planetary crisis and imagine more just and sustainable ways of relating to each other and to the environment.

Class Note: Indigenous & Black women, feminist & queer authors

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Marisa G Ruiz Trejo
  Info
• 4 points

Settler Colonialism

This course examines the relationship between colonialism, settlement and anthropology and the specific ways in which these processes have been engaged in the broader literature and locally in North America. We aim to understand colonialism as a theory of political legitimacy, as a set of governmental practices and as a subject of inquiry. Thus, we will re-imagine North America in light of the colonial project and its technologies of rule such as education, law and policy that worked to transform Indigenous notions of gender, property and territory. Our case studies will dwell in several specific areas of inquiry, among them: the Indian Act in Canada and its transformations of gender relations, governance and property; the residential and boarding school systems in the US and Canada, the murdered and missing women in Juarez and Canada and the politics of allotment in the US. Although this course will be comparative in scope, it will be grounded heavily within the literature from Native North America.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Audra Simpson
  CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

PRIN/APPL OF SOCIETY & CULTURE

Prerequisites: graduate standing. Introductory survey of major concepts and areas of research in social and cultural anthropology. Emphasis is on both the field as it is currently constituted and its relationship to other scholarly and professional disciplines. Required for students in Anthropology Department's master degree program and for students in the graduate programs of other departments and professional schools desiring an introduction in this field.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Ellen Marakowitz
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

ETHICAL ISSUES IN MUSEUMS

Ethical questions about museum activities are legion, yet they are usually only discussed when they become headlines in newspapers. At the same time, people working in museums make decisions with ethical and legal issues regularly and seldom give these judgments even little thought. In part, this is due to the fact that many of these decisions are based upon values that become second nature. This course will explore ethical issues that arise in all areas of a museum's operations from governance and management to collections acquisition, conservation, and deaccessioning. We will examine the issues that arise when the ownership of objects in a museum's are questioned; the ethical considerations involved in retention, restitution and repatriation; and what decolonization means for museums.

• F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Sally Yerkovich
  Info
• 3 points

CONTESTING THE PAST

This course provides a panoramic survey of the ways that competing interest groups call on knowledge or narratives of the past and methods of its study in debates over controversial public issues. It is designed to examine claims about the past through the lenses of alternative knowledge frameworks and ideas about reality, in the context of specific contemporary problems: e.g., nationalist narratives; the basis for human rights for indigenous peoples; ownership or destruction of the world's patrimony; strife over disputed lands; investigations into mass human exploitation, murder and genocide; communities’ engagement with their own history; the antiquity of humanity on the planet; and interstellar communications and paranormal phenomena. The information that we will draw from balances historical sources, contemporary literature (e.g., newspapers and other periodicals), archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, oral accounts, and videos (both academic and popular).

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Terence N D'Altroy
  CULPA: 37 Info
• 3 points

MAKING ETHNOG:METHOD & WRITING

This course begins with two central and related epistemological problems in conducting ethnographic research: first, the notion that objects of scientific research are ‘made’ through adopting a particular relational stance and asking certain kinds of questions. From framing a research problem and choosing a ‘research context’ story to tell, to the kinds of methods one selects to probe such a problem, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ – or means and content – are inextricably intertwined. A second epistemological problem concerns the artifice of reality, and the nebulous distinction between truth and fiction, no less than the question of where or with whom one locates such truth.

With these issues framing the course, we will work through some key themes and debates in anthropology from the perspective of methodology, ranging from subject/object liminality to incommensurability and radical alterity to the politics of representation. Students will design an ethnographic project of their choosing and conduct research throughout the term, applying different methodological approaches popular in anthropology and the social sciences more generally, such as participant observation, semi-structured interview, diary-keeping and note-taking.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Nicholas Glastonbury
  Info
• 3 points

READING, WRITING, ETHNOGRAPHY

READING WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY

Anthropology GR6079x READING WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY. Reading, Writing, Ethnography” asks students to imagine learning to read and then to write anew. It explores a series of exemplary texts in order to explore the histories, genre conventions and experimental forms for writing ethnography.  The course is especially concerned with the ways in which empirical observation is made the ground of theoretical abstraction and generalizing claims. Additionally, it examines the relationship between different theoretical and aesthetic movements as these have influenced the writings of anthropologists and those whose work can be considered to have an anthropological ambition—even when they have not been formally trained in anthropology.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Rosalind Morris
  CULPA: 20 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

THING THEORY

Anthropology GR6085x THING THEORY. The ‘material turn’ is a shorthand for the vast and messy literature on things/objects/materials/ stuff/matter that crosses between and interweaves anthropology, archaeology, art history, science & technology studies (STS), political science, philosophy, and literary studies. Material cultural studies, of varying sorts, ask how things make us. This course explores the turn towards things across the humanities and social sciences over the past few decades. Engaging with the material of worlds, scholars have generated new questions, new modes of analysis, and new accounts of subjectivity, agency, and being. We will read a variety of texts from anthropology, STS, and other disciplines, in order to trace some of the ways in which material objects have become important to scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Hannah Chazin
  Info
• 3 points

Waste and Leftovers

Generations of anthropologists have seized upon waste as an object to think through issues as wide-ranging as labor divisions, religious devotion, and processes of social classification and value production. In recent years the discipline has renewed attention to this object by way of puzzling through how apparently intensifying global processes of industrialization, consumption, and extraction shape contemporary politics and ecological sensibilities. This seminar charts some of these moves within and beyond our discipline by inviting students to consider how and to what ends societies work through wasted things but also other kinds of durable leftovers (i.e. “ruins,” “byproducts,” “rubble,” “remainders” etc). Of particular concern for us will be the production and (re)appropriation of things that defy strict classification as “waste,” that is, as things imagined to be readily and permanently ejected from a social group or order. Students will read seminal texts on waste, excess, abjection, and reappropriation alongside ethnographic and historical monographs that take up these themes.

• F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Catherine Fennell
  Info
• 3 points

WAR & SOCIAL THEORY

WAR AND SOCIAL THEORY

In this class, we will think about the various ways in which philosophers, social theorists, historians and anthropologists have thought about war. More specifically, the course focuses on a set of key themes and questions that have been central to such writings: the nature of violence and the question of responsibility or accountability, shifting technologies of warfare (including, technologies of representation), and the phenomenology and aftermath of warfare, for civilians and for combatants. The questions that drive this seminar are theoretical and historical, as well as ethical and political. For example, how do shifting understandings of the trauma of soldiers shape ethical questions and political conversations regarding perpetration and the question of responsibility? Or, when we think warfare through new technologies (cinematic, action at a distance) from whose perspective are we theorizing or trying to understand the experience of war? How might we analyze the very different affective responses that different forms of violence-or of perpetration -elicit?

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Nadia Abu El-Haj
  CULPA: 13 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

IDEA OF A BL RADICAL TRADITION

This course will seek to raise and think through the following questions: What does it mean to talk today about a black radical tradition? What has it meant in the past to speak in these (or cognate) terms? And if we take the debate in part at least to inhabit a normative discursive space, an argumentative space in which to make claims on the moral-political present, what ought it to mean to talk about a black radical tradition?

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: David Scott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 72 Info
• 3 points

History of Archaeology Theory

This seminar examines the history of archaeological thought from its antiquarian beginnings in the 19th century, through archaeology’s professionalization and redefinition as an anthropological science during the mid-20th century, to the emergence of archaeology as a critically self-reflexive discipline during the late-20th century, defined by complicated intellectual ties across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Our driving questions are epistemological. How have archaeologists understood the project of interpretation? How have they articulated their relationship to data? What has come to count as evidence and what has not? How have archaeologists organized material remains in the present to make claims about the past? What questions have been posed about past cultures, and how were these “cultures” constructed as objects of study in the first place? Is archaeology best understood as a generalizing science, a historically oriented humanity, or both—and how and why has the discipline’s answer to this question evolved over time? How do the situated positions of archaeologists within contemporary society impact the claims they make about the past?

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Zoe Crossland
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• 4 points

PRE-ATLANTIC SLAVERY AFRICA AND SOUT

PRE-ATLANTIC SLAVERY - AF

This seminar on pre-Atlantic Slavery in Africa and Asia will focus on the history of captivity and bondage in modern and the premodern Africa. Conceptually, what is the difference between a captive and a slave? How has captivity been central to the history of social difference and state formation in premodern Africa? By introducing the student to the history of trade in captives within Africa and across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the student will be encouraged to rethink premodern Africa as central to premodern world history rather than marginal to it.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Mahmood Mamdani
  CULPA: 21 Wikipedia h-index: 57 Info
• 4 points

MUSEUM ANTHROP:HIST & THEORY

This course will consider museums as reflectors of social priorities which store important objects and display them in ways that present significant cultural messages. Students visit several New York museums to learn how a museum functions.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Brian Boyd
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

ETHNOGRAPHY STUDIO

Ethnography is often taught as a method of observation. This course begins from a different  premise: ethnography is a political technology of knowledge production shaped by empire, race,  capital, gender, and disciplinary power. It is also a fragile and unfinished writing practice that  scholars continually remake. This seminar treats ethnography as a site of struggle over these  questions: Who can produce knowledge? Whose worlds become legible? Which archives  endure? What research should refuse to know? And, how writing itself organizes relations of  power?

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

RSCH IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHRO

RSRCH SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHRO

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.

• Instructor: Brian Boyd
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Hannah Chazin
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• Instructor: Ellen Marakowitz
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3-9 points

RSCH IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHRO

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.

• Instructor: Nicholas Glastonbury
  Info
• 3-9 points

RSCH IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHRO

RSRCH SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHRO

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.

• Instructor: Marilyn Ivy
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3-9 points

RSCH IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHRO

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.

• Instructor: Nadia Abu El-Haj
  CULPA: 13 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• Instructor: Myron L Cohen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3-9 points

RSCH IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHRO

RSRCH SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHRO

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in social and cultural anthropology for advanced graduate students.

• Instructor: Antara Chakrabarti
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• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• Instructor: Amanda Althoff
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• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Naor H Ben-Yehoyada
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Jacob A Bessen
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• Instructor: Zoe Crossland
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Terence N D'Altroy
  CULPA: 37 Info
• Instructor: Catherine Fennell
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• Instructor: Severin Fowles
  CULPA: 24 Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth M Green
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Gina A Jae
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Brian Larkin
  CULPA: 16 Info
• Instructor: Mahmood Mamdani
  CULPA: 21 Wikipedia h-index: 57 Info
• 3-9 points