Detailed descriptions of Undergraduate and Graduate courses may be found under the accordion headings below. Additional information and registration details, including days and times, and classroom locations, may be obtained from the Course Directory and Vergil.
Summer 2025 Course Listing
For information on class days and times, enrollment limits, enrollment status, course fees, and classroom locations, visit the Online Directory of Classes at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
COURSES IN SOCIOCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY SUMMER TERM 2025
For information on class days and times, enrollment limits, enrollment status, course fees, and classroom locations, visit the Online Directory of Classes at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
Anthropology S1002 THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE. 3 pts. Subterm: 05/27-07/03 (A). instructor: Maxine Weisgrau. The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Using ethnographic case studies, the course explores the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief systems, arts, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.
Anthropology S3009 THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF ISLAM. 3 pts. Subterm: 05/27-07/03 (A). Instructor: Hala Habib. This course centers on the constantly changing ambivalent everyday lived realities, experiences, interpretations as well as the multiple meanings of Islam and focuses less on the study of Islam as a discursive tradition. Furthermore, the course challenges stereotypes of Islam, and of people who one way or another can be called Muslims; most often perceived as a homogenous category through which all Muslim societies are imagined. The course is divided into six parts. The first part introduces the idea of “anthropology of Islam” through different readings in anthropology and various, experiences, practices, dimensions of Islam as a relationship between humans and God. In the second part, the focus is to listen to Islam and connect the different sonic bodies of Islam to power and politics. The third part interrogates preconceived ideas about Islam, gender, feminism, and agency. The fourth part studies Islam, body, sexuality and eroticism. The fifth part is concerned with Islam, youth culture, identity, belonging and rebellion. The last part critically analyzes Islam, modernity, orientalism, post-colonialism and not least today’s fear and notion of imagined enemies.
Anthropology S3722 THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF VIOLENCE. 3 pts. Subterm: 07/07-08/15 (B). Instructor: Rishav Kumar Thakur. This course will explore contemporary anthropological approaches to the issue of violence with an exploration of three particular themes. Our main focus will be on the idea of representation, ethnographically and theoretically, of the concept of violence. First, we will look at how violence has been situated as an object of study within anthropology, as a theoretical concept as well as in practice. We will then look at the issue of terrorism and how anthropology as a discipline contributes to understanding this particular form of violence. Finally, we will consider gender-based violence with close attention to the colonial/post-colonial settings where Islam is a salient factor. Gender based violence is one of the main forces producing and reproducing gender inequality. We will pay particular attention to the concept of the 'Muslim woman' in both the colonial and colonized imagination.
Anthropology UN3751 Personhood. 4 pts. Subterm: 05/27-07/03 (A). Instructor: Maria Jose de Abreu. This seminar seeks to engage with materials that question personhood. Drawing on both fictional and non-fictional accounts, we will be involved with textual and visual documents as well institutional contexts in order to revisit such notion under contemporary capitalism. We will cover topics like rites of passage and life cycle, the role of the nation state and local communities in defining a person, the relation between self and non-self, between the living and the dead. We will likewise address vicarious forms of personhood through the prosthetic, the avatar or the heteronomous. But we will also look into forms of dissipation and/or enhancement of personhood through bodybuilding, guinea-piging and pharmo-toxicities. As a whole, the course will bring to light how the question of personhood cross-culturally relates to language, performativity, religion, technology, law, gender, race, class, care, life and death.
Overview: https://summer.sps.columbia.edu/current-columbia-students
Course Registration: https://summer.sps.columbia.edu/current-columbia-students/course-registration
Tuition: https://summer.sps.columbia.edu/current-columbia-students/tuition
Academic Calendar: https://summer.sps.columbia.edu/academic-calendar