Spring 2021 Undergraduate Course List

August 04, 2020

Spring 2021 Undergraduate Course List

 

Courses in Sociocultural Anthropology:

 

ANTH UN1002y The Interpretation of Culture.  3 pts. Naor Ben-Yehoyada.  The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Case studies from ethnography are used in exploring the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief system, art, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.  Recitation sections:  TBA.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN1009y Introduction to Language and Culture.  3 pts. Gretchen Pfeil.  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. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN2005y The Ethnographic Imagination.  3 pts. Rosalind Morris.  Introduction to the theory and practice of ethnography, the intensive study of peoples' lives as shaped by social relations, cultural images, and historical forces. The course consists of critical reading of various kinds of texts (classic ethnographies, histories, journalism, novels, and films) and of the ways in which understanding, interpreting, and representing the lived words of people, at home or abroad, in one place or transnationally, and in the past or the present, can be accomplished. Recitation sections: TBA.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN2724y Anthropology of Climate Change.  3 pts.  Paige West.  Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

WMST UN3522y Senior Seminar II. 4 pts.  Vanessa Agard-Jones.  Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN3665y (SUBTERM A) Politics of Care.  4 pts.  Gina Jae.  Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA 

 

 

 

ANTH UN3725y (SUBTERM B) The Politics of Recognition.  4 pts.  Elizabeth Povinelli.  This course examines the contemporary history of struggles for recognition, reform and revolution as articulated around the politics of recognition. The course is genealogical in spirit, beginning with a set of texts that have provided the touchstone for contemporary theory and practices of politics and then moving to more recent engagements with the same. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN3831y (SUBTERM A) Culture & Economies. 4 pts. Gretchen Pfeil.  Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN3932y (SUBTERM A) Climate Change.  4 pts. J.C. Salyer. Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA    

 

ANTH V3933y Arabia Imagined. 4 pts. Brinkley Messick. This course explores Arabia as a global phenomenon. It is organized around primary texts read in English translation. The site of the revelation of the Quran and the location of the sacred precincts of Islam, Arabia is the destination of pilgrimage and the direction of prayer for Muslims worldwide. It also is the locus of cultural expression ranging from the literature of the 1001 Nights to the broadcasts of Al Jazeera. We begin with themes of contemporary youth culture and political movements associated with the Arab Spring. Seminar paper.CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement.   Method of Instruction:  TBA 

 

ANTH V3939y (SUBTERM A) The Anime Effect: Media and Technoculture in Japan 4 pts. Marilyn Ivy. 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.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

CSER UN3942y Race and Racisms. 4 pts.  Catherine Fennell.  Course description to be announced. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH UN3998y Supervised Individual Research Course In Anthropology 2-6 pts. A Prerequisite: the written permission of the staff member under whose supervision the research will be conducted.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

 

 

 

ANTH UN3999y The Senior Thesis Seminar in Anthropology.  4 pts. Zoe Crossland.  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 to CC and GS majors in Anthropology only. It requires the instructor’s permission for registration. Students must have a 3.6 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept in order to be considered. Interested students should communicate with the thesis instructor and the director of undergraduate study 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. Enrollment limit is 15. Requirements: Students must have completed the requirements of the first semester of the sequence and seek instructor approval to enroll in the second. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH G4143y Accusation. 3 pts. Rosalind Morris. This course examines the politics and practices of collective accusation in comparative perspective. It treats these phenomena in their relation to processes of political and economic transition, to discourses of crisis, and to the practices of rule by which the idea of exception is made the grounds for extreme claims on and for the social body. Usually, but not exclusively, enacted through forms of expulsion. We will consider the various theoretical perspectives through which forms of collective accusation have been addressed, focusing on psychoanalytic, structural functional, and poststructuralist readings. In doing so, we will also investigate the difference and possible continuities between the forms and logics of accusation that operate in totalitarian as well as liberal regimes. Course readings will include both literary and critical texts.  Enrollment limited to 15. Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH GU4175y Zora.  3 pts. Vanessa Agard-Jones.  Zora Neale Hurston—Barnard College ‘28 and a once-graduate student in Columbia’s department of Anthropology—was a pioneering chronicler of Black folklore, a student of Black expression, and a creative imaginer of Black worlds via her novels, short stories, plays and poetry. From her travels throughout the U.S. South, to Haiti, Jamaica, and beyond, Hurston took as her mission a diasporic articulation of Black life in the Americas. In this seminar, we ask what a deep reading of Hurston’s oeuvre can teach us about the history of Anthropology, about the blurry borders between fiction and ethnography, and about the legacies that her work leaves—in communities of scholarly practice and beyond.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

AFAS GU4520y Race and the Articulation of Difference.  3 pts.   Steven Gregory. Course description to be announced.  Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courses in Archaeology:

 

ANTH UN2028y Think like an Archaeologist:  Introduction to Method and Theory.  3 pts.  Hannah Chazin.  This course provides a comprehensive introduction to methods and theory in archaeology – by exploring how archaeologists work to create narratives about the past (and the present) on the basis on the material remains of the past. The course begins with a consideration of how archaeologists deal with the remains of the past in the present: What are archaeological sites and how do we ‘discover’ them? How do archaeologists ‘read’ or analyze sites and artifacts? From there, we will turn to the question of how archaeologists interpret these materials traces, in order to create narratives about life in the past. After a review of the historical development of theoretical approaches in archaeological interpretation, the course will consider contemporary approaches to interpreting the past.  $25.00 lab fee and Enrollment limit is 100.    Method of Instruction:  TBA

 

ANTH V3007y Holy Lands, Unholy Histories: Archaeology before the bible. 3 pts. Brian Boyd. This course provides a critical overview of prehistoric archaeology in the Near East (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 prehistoric and "biblical" 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 prehistoric archaeology.  Method of Instruction:  TBA