Spring 2025 Courses
ANT 600 M002 - People, Power Politics
Instructor: Lauren Woodard
Time/Location: Tu/Th 11:00-12:20, Tolley 204
Course Description:
In this course, we will explore the social lives of “the state”. Drawing on theory and ethnographic case studies from around the world, we will ask: What is the state, and how does it work? How and where does the state materialize, and how do individuals come to embody it? What is the relationship between sovereignty, violence, and legitimacy, and between expertise and security? Key themes will include citizenship and belonging, bureaucracy, expertise, marginalization and exclusion, and resistance and alternatives.
ANT 600 M003 - Sensory Anthropology Across Multispecies Relations
Instructor: Amanda Hilton
Time/Location: Tu/Th 9:30-10:50, Eggers 012
Course Description:
This course combines sensory anthropology, an approach advocating the importance of multiple ways of knowing with the body/mind, with more-than-human or multispecies studies. Multispecies anthropology focuses on the relationships between humans and “nature”, including with specific plants and animal species, as well as with land/seascapes, questioning assumed ways of understanding human-environment interaction, and inviting us to learn about and imagine different, more ethical, kinds of relationships with the other- and more-than-human. We study Indigenous scholarship and perspectives, which are foundational to the field, and examples from all over the world.
ANT 624 M001 - Negotiation: Theory and Practice
Instructor: Robert Rubinstein
Time/Location: Tu 5:00-6:30, Online
Course Description:
This course is a general introduction to the theory of negotiation and to the skills associated with successful negotiation practices. Each student will have an opportunity to develop their own capacities to be a more proficient and successful negotiator. In this course students examine negotiation theory, learn negotiation skills, and gain experience by practice. They subject that practice to criticism and reflection. The course takes students from simple two-person negotiations through more complex multi-party negotiations. The course considers the fundamental aspects of negotiation, the tension between distributive and integrative negotiation, and the importance of preparation.
ANT 629 M001 - Transformation of Eastern Europe
Instructor: Lauren Woodard
Time/Location: Tu/Th 2:00-3:20, Tolley 110
Course Description:
Whether as a specter, lurking behind Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”, or a region rife with ethnic conflict, nationalism, and populist authoritarian leaders, the region of “Eastern Europe” has long been exoticized was Western Europe’s Other. In this course, we will trace the origins of the idea of “Eastern Europe”, interrogating what it means, enables, and obscures. We will then explore recent sociopolitical developments, including discourses on socialism, collapse, crisis, and Europeanization and the politics of belonging, with a focus on ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality, and gender. Throughout the course, we will ask how Eastern Europe fits into and shapes debates about memory, the nation, and belonging, from occupying the position of the Othered subject to offering ideological alternatives.
ANT 646 M001 - Caribbean Archaeology
Instructor: Theresa Singleton
Time/Location: M 2:15-5:00, Marley 306
Course Description:
Caribbean archaeology from the region’s early prehistory through the historic period. Cultural diversity, indigenous societies, Hispanic and colonial impacts, and the African Diaspora. This course will explore Caribbean prehistory, cultural geography, the period of contact and ethnohistorical accounts of indigenous groups and early colonial settlements, and the historical archaeology of the Caribbean, providing an in-depth overview of thematic issues revolving around cultural interaction and transformations.
ANT 648 M001 - Imperial Remains: The Archaeology of Colonialism
Instructor: Guido Pezzarossi
Time/Location: Tu/Th 12:30-1:50, HBC 323A
Course Description:
This course provides an introduction to the archaeology and anthropology of colonialism, with a particular focus on the variety of approaches to the study of colonization and the disparate experiences that unfold within colonial contexts. This course will have two main themes: 1) a critical overview of some of the most important approaches to the study of colonial encounters and their outcomes, ranging from acculturation, creolization, world-systems, postcolonial and various “entanglement” perspectives, and 2) an appraisal of issues of materiality, colonial discourse, identity, race, gender, resistance/power, class, agency, and capitalism as they apply to colonial contexts. Case studies will be drawn from a variety of contexts in both Old and New World, and prior to and after European colonization in 1492.
ANT 652 M001 - Anthropology and Public Policy
Instructor: Robert Rubinstein
Time/Location: W 2:15-5:00, Falk 201
Course Description:
In this seminar we examine anthropological contributions to public policy development and implementation, and we consider how public policies affect people’s lives. Students will examine the nature of public policy, how anthropologists' engagement with public policy has developed since about the mid-1900s, and explore the anthropological study of public policy, including the socio-cultural understandings of risk, the role of values in policy and research, and the construction of authoritative knowledge. the subsequent section of the course examines anthropological studies of particular policy domains.
ANT 663 M001 - Global Health
Instructor: Sandra Lane
Time/Location: M 5:15-8:00, Falk 100
Course Description:
This course examines global health from an anthropological perspective. It explores the political and social circumstances which shaped the development of international health. It examines how culture shapes both the conditions under which people experience morbidity and mortality and their responses to illness. Topics considered include the development of international health, epidemiological and anthropological research methods, gender and health, reproductive health, infectious disease, health and inequality, and the health consequences of war.
ANT 673 M001 - Peace and Conflict in the Balkans: Anthropological Perspectives
Instructor: Azra Hromadžić
Time/Location: M 2:15-5:00, Maxwell 205A
Course Description:
The global politics of peace-building, reconciliation, and democratization are providing a blueprint for postconflict reconstruction projects in many areas around the world, including the Balkans. This course introduces students to the dominant scholarly portrayals and historical approaches to this controversial region; focuses on the period of socialism, ethnic nationalism and the wars of Yugoslav dissolution; addresses the local efforts of international humanitarian interventions, with a special focus on the politics of reconciliation and policies of reconstruction, especially in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; and examines the (re)emerging connections, processes, and expectations in the region.
ANT 681 M001 - Ethnographic Techniques
Instructor: Kyrstin Mallon Andrews
Time/Location: M/W 3:45-5:05, Hall of Languages 105
Course Description:
This course will introduce students to the ethnographic approaches and methodologies through focused readings alongside a project where students will apply ethnographic techniques throughout the semester. It provides a foundation for understanding historical and contemporary contexts of ethnographic research, as well as the ethical questions raised in the process of conducting research alongside communities impacted by colonialism, unequal relations of power, environmental injustices, and intergenerational traumas. This course will explore the practice of ethnographic research while simultaneously analyzing ethnography as a form of knowing and representing knowledge.
ANT 711 M001 - Current Anthropological Theory
Instructor: Mona Bhan
Time/Location: F 9:30-12:15, 205A Maxwell
Course Description:
This course constructs an anthropological account of the contemporary anthropological thought: an embodied, transnational, and historicized analysis of power relations that shape what kind of knowledge is produced, authorized, and made foundational. We will read about social hierarchies, institutional privileges, state and military interests, funding constraints and allowances, and historical incidents that have shaped what comes to count as anthropological knowledge, what questions and methodological approaches are deemed suitable, and who can be recognized as an expert. In this course we will read the work of key philosophers and scholars who shaped (and continue to shape) anthropological theory in the late 20th and 21st centuries. In addition, we will engage with the work of scholars, often women or people of color and indigenous scholars, whose work has not received adequate attention in the anthropological “canon”.
ANT 741 M001 - Archaeological Theory
Instructor: Chris DeCorse
Time/Location: W 2:15-5:00, 205A Maxwell
Course Description:
This course examines several major theoretical approaches that have been important in shaping archaeological scholarship during the past 20-30 years, emphasizing historical archaeology and evaluating the applications of theories to the study of archaeological data. We will consider several theories, analytical approaches, and archaeological practices, including Agency and Practice, Materiality and the New Materialism, Archaeology of Capitalism, Post-colonialism, Indigenous and Community-based Archaeologies, Heritage and Archaeology, and Contemporary Archaeology. We examine these perspectives to understand how they structure varying approaches to the analysis of power relations, inequality, production, consumption, exchange, identity formation, religion, and the social construction of gender, class, or race and religiosity.