INTRO TO LANGUAGE & CULTURE
This is an introduction to the study of the production, interpretation, and reproduction of social meanings as expressed through language. In exploring language in relation to culture and society, it focuses on how communication informs and transforms the sociocultural environment.
- MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth M Green
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
LAB METHODS ARCHAEOLOGY
Only the most recent chapters of the past are able to be studied using traditional historiographical methods focused on archives of textual documents. How, then, are we to analyze the deep history of human experiences prior to the written word? And even when textual archives do survive from a given historical period, these archives are typically biased toward the perspectives of those in power. How, then, are we to undertake analyses of the past that take into account the lives and experiences of all of society’s members, including the poor, the working class, the colonized, and others whose voices appear far less frequently in historical documents? From its disciplinary origins in nineteenth century antiquarianism, archaeology has grown to become a rigorous science of the past, dedicated to the exploration of long-term and inclusive social histories.
“Laboratory Methods in Archaeology” is an intensive introduction to the analysis of archaeological artifacts and samples in which we explore how the organic and inorganic remains from archaeological sites can be used to build rigorous claims about the human past. The 2022 iteration of the course centers on assemblages from two sites, both excavated by Barnard’s archaeological field program in the Taos region of northern New Mexico: (1) the Spanish colonial site of San Antonio del Embudo founded in 1725 and (2) the hippie commune known as New Buffalo, founded in 1967. Participants in ANTH BC2012 will be introduced to the history, geology, and ecology of the Taos region, as well as to the excavation histories of the two sites. Specialized laboratory modules focus on the analysis of chipped stone artifacts ceramics, animal bone, glass, and industrial artifacts.
The course only demands participation in the seminars and laboratory modules and successful completion of the written assignments, but all students are encouraged to develop specialized research projects to be subsequently expanded into either (1) a senior thesis project or (2) a conference presentation at the Society for American Archaeology, Society for Historical Archaeology, or Theoretical Archaeology Group meeting.
- TR 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Severin Fowles
CULPA: 24
Info
- 4 points
Gender Archaeolxgy
GENDER ARCHAEOLXGY
This seminar critically reexamines the ancient world from the perspective of gender archaeology. Though the seedlings of gender archaeology were first sown by of feminist archaeologists during the 70’s and 80’s, this approach involves far more than simply ‘womanizing’ androcentric narratives of past. Rather, gender archaeology criticizes interpretations of the past that transplant contemporary social roles onto the archaeological past, casting the divisions and inequalities of today as both timeless and natural. This class challenges the idea of a singular past, instead championing a turn towards multiple, rich, messy, intersectional pasts. The ‘x’ in ‘archaeolxgy’ is an explicit signal of our focus on this diversity of pasts and a call for a more inclusive field of practice today.
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Camilla Sturm
CULPA: 2 Info - 4 points
INFRASTRUCTURES
Infrastructures are the built networks moving goods, commodities, people, energy, waste organizing human action in modern societies. This course critically examines the work of infrastructures globally. It examines issues of urbanism, racial infrastructures, infrastructural breakdown and emergency, postcolonial infrastructures, climate change, and extraction.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Brian Larkin
CULPA: 16 Info - 4 points
The Politics of Care
THE POLITICS OF CARE
Semester:
What are the consequences of entrenched inequalities in the context of care? How might we (re)imagine associated practices as political projects? Wherein lie the origins of utopic and dystopic visions of daily survival? How might we track associated promises and failures as they travel across social hierarchies, nationalities, and geographies of care? And what do we mean when we speak of “care”? These questions define the scaffolding for this course. Our primary goals throughout this semester are threefold. First, we begin by interrogating the meaning of “care” and its potential relevance as a political project in medical and other domains. Second, we will track care’s associated meanings and consequences across a range of contents, including urban and rural America, an Amazonia borderland, South Africa, France, and Mexico. Third, we will address temporal dimensions of care, as envisioned and experienced in the here-and-now, historically, and in a futuristic world of science fiction. Finally, and most importantly, we will remain alert to the relevance of domains of difference relevant to care, most notably race, gender, class, and species.
Upper level seminar; 4 points
Summer:
What do we mean when we speak of “care”? How might we (re)imagine practices of care as political and moral projects? What promises, paradoxes, or failures surface amid entrenched inequalities? And what hopes, desires, and fears inform associated utopic and dystopic visions of daily survival? These questions will serve as a scaffolding of sorts for this course, and our primary goals are fourfold.
First,
we will begin by interrogating the meaning of “care” and its potential relevance as a political project in medical and other domains.
Second,
we will track care’s associated meanings and consequences across a range of contents, communities, and geographies of care.
Third
, we will remain alert to the temporal dimensions of care, as envisioned and experienced historically, in the here-and-now, and in the futuristic world of science fiction.
Finally,
we will consider the moral underpinnings of intra-human alongside interspecies care.
Enrollment limited to 10; 4 points
- F 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Gina A Jae
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
Viral Knowledge, Vital Methods
Beginning from a material and metaphorical construction of the viral, we consider the circulation of pandemics and of knowledge as multi-scalar events of world-making (and breaking). This seminar applies the slow(er) methods of ethnographic research as vital to an apprehension of complex ecologies. This course engages with how social theory “gets done” by means of collaborative research strategies to appreciate social processes as they are at once locally experienced, historically contingent, and globally shared. Drawing from reflexive methodologies including the extended case method, students will learn to apply and refine theory, write analytically, and communicate their findings for inter-disciplinary audiences. Upper level seminar; 4 points
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Gina A Jae
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
ANTHROP OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
ANTHRO OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
This course focuses on the political ecology of the Anthropocene. As multiple publics become increasingly aware of the extensive and accelerated rate of current global environmental change, and the presence of anthropogenesis in ever expanding circumstances, we need to critically analyze the categories of thought and action being developed in order to carefully approach this change. Our concern is thus not so much the Anthropocene as an immutable fact, inevitable event, or definitive period of time (significant though these are), but rather for the political, social, and intellectual consequences of this important idea. Thus we seek to understand the creativity of The Anthropocene as a political, rhetorical, and social category. We also aim to examine the networks of capital and power that have given rise to the current state of planetary change, the strategies for ameliorating those changes, and how these are simultaneously implicated in the rhetorical creation of The Anthropocene.
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Patrick F Nason
Info - 4 points
ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD RESEARCH IN NYC
This course provides the aspiring anthropologist with an array of primarily qualitative methodological tools essential to successful urban fieldwork. As such, it is a practicum of sorts, where regular field assignments help build one’s ability to record and analyze social behavior by drawing on several key data collection techniques. Because we have the luxury of inhabiting a large, densely populated, international city, this class requires that you take a head-first plunge into urban anthropology. The NYC area will define the laboratory for individually- designed research projects. Be forewarned, however! Ethnographic engagement involves efforts to detect social patterns, but it is often a self-reflexive exercise, too. Readings provide methodological, analytical, and personal insights into the skills, joys, and trials that define successful field research.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Kaya N Williams
Info - 4 points
SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II
Prerequisites: Must complete ANTH BC3871x. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors. Offered every Spring. Discussion of research methods and planning and writing of a Senior Essay in Anthropology will accompany research on problems of interest to students, culminating in the writing of individual Senior Essays. The advisory system requires periodic consultation and discussion between the student and her adviser as well as the meeting of specific deadlines set by the department each semester.
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- 4 points
SOCIAL CONTEXTS IMMIGRATN LAW
Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.
- M 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
J.C. Salyer
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
CLIM CHNG/GLOBAL MIGR/HUM RGT
While the existence of processes of anthropogenic climate change is well established, predictions regarding the future consequences of these processes are far less certain. In no area is the uncertainty regarding near and long term effects as pronounced as in the question of how climate change will affect global migration. This course will address the issue of climate migration in four ways. First, the course will examine the theoretical and empirical literatures that have elucidated the nature of international migration in general. Second, the course will consider the phenomena of anthropogenic climate change as it relates to migration. Third, the course will consider how human rights and other legal regimes do or do not address the humanitarian issues created by anthropogenic climate change. Fourth, the course will synthesize these topics by considering how migration and climate change has arisen as a humanitarian, political, and economic issue in the Pacific. Human Rights elective.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
J.C. Salyer
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
ENVIRONMNT & CULTURAL BEHAVIOR
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Paige West
CULPA: 41
h-index: 23
Info
- 4 points