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

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Discussion section for ANTH2017.

• 0 points

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Discussion section for ANTH2017.

• 0 points

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Discussion section for ANTH2017.

• 0 points

Mafias and Other Dangerous Affiliations

Discussion section for ANTH2017.

• 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

NATIVE AMERICA

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Audra Simpson
  CULPA: 5 Wikipedia 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

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.

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

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

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
• 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 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 4 points

OBJECT HISTORIES

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 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.

• F 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.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 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

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

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

THING THEORY

• 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

METHOD & THEORY IN ARCHAEOLOGY

METHOD & THEROY IN ARCHAEOLOGY

This course is a seminar on research design in anthropological archaeology. It examines the links among theory, method, and data analysis in project design and interpretation.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Terence N D'Altroy
  CULPA: 37 Info
• 3 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

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

RESEARCH IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research and tutorial in archaeology for advanced graduate students.

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

RESEARCH IN SPECIAL FIELDS

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Individual research in all divisions of anthropology and in allied fields for advanced graduate students

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

WEDNESDAY SEMINAR

WEEKLY SEMINAR

All anthropology graduate students are required to attend. Reports of ongoing research are presented by staff members, students, and special guests.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Zoe Crossland
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• 0 points