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Course Catalog

ANTH 513 Etnographic Approaches to Law and Conflict 3 Credits
The ways in which conflicts are understood and acted upon show a significant degree of variation from one social context to another. In this course we will try to understand the cultural processes that create this variation. We will use ethnographic material that is often the result of at least a year of field work, where the researcher observes and participates in the social and cultural life of the particular group. The ethnographies we will read will be about a diverse set of contexts such as Mexico, Iran, Turkey, New Guinea and urban America. Some of the questions we will tackle in particular will be; what are the different notions of justice -including fairness, equity etc.- that can be found in different cultural contexts? What is the relation of these different notions to the particular methods and mechanisms of resolving conflicts? When and how do these meanings and practices of justice contribute to the re-making of existing hierarchies-such as gender, age, status- and when and how do they come to challenge them?
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 515 Anthropology of the State 3 Credits
This course examines the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute and question the nation-state. It draws on perspectives on the state developed within other disciplines. Simultaneously, a distinctively anthropological understanding of the state is articulated by focusing on systems of meaning and belief; personhood and agency; everyday practices; and persistent structures and emergent forms. The course also examines how institutions which are considered to define the modern state, such as citizenship, sovereignty, territoriality, secularism, and violence, are manifested in and represented by ethnographic research and writing.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Summer 2013-2014 Anthropology of the State 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 521 Anthropology of Migration and the City 3 Credits
Migration stands out as one of the most characteristic and complex features of the 21st century as more people than ever, coming from increasingly more disparate places, are migrating to new destinations for a greater variety of reasons and under distinct circumstances. A shared aspect though is that most of these migrations are urban in nature, being concentrated in cities attracting human, financial and other flows from across the globe. This course explores how anthropological research is engaging with these new trends in global migration and urbanism, by focusing on different theoretical and ethnographic discussions around some of the key concepts emerging urban encounters, contact zones, everyday multiculture, everyday cosmopolitanisms and conviviality
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2022-2023 Anthropology of Migration and the City 3
Fall 2019-2020 Anthropology of the City and Migration 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 525 Anthropology of Affect 3 Credits
This course explores the realm of the intangible and the unseen to think through `vibes', `energies', and `sentiments? that are associated with situations in which cultural formations are blocked, suspended or mobilized. The task at hand is to attend to the ways in which non-cathartic states of feeling create affective spheres that mobilize public opinion. Building up on a multiplicity of resources ranging from visual material, Marxism, critical race theory, queer studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, and ethnographies of militarism, the course explores a domain of politics where that which is repressed is denied further by or returns in spectral forms in cultural memory. The course aims to stimulate reflection on affective concepts in the ethnographic contexts where they seem most at stake to explore the intersections of gender, race, labor, and militarism and to problematize the nationalist processes of fact and memory building.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2011-2012 Anthropology of Affect 3
Spring 2010-2011 Anthropology of Affect 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 526 Anthropology of the Body 3 Credits
The biological body has an undeniable physicality, yet at the same time, our experiences of our bodies and the ways in which we make sense of those experiences are inevitably embedded in and defined by the social. Taking an anthropological and paying attention to both discursive and phenomenological approaches, this introductory course will investigate the ways in which the body has been observed, classified, experienced and modified in different cultural contexts and disciplinary regimes.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2022-2023 Anthropology of the Body 3
Fall 2021-2022 Anthropology of the Body 3
Fall 2020-2021 Anthropology of the Body 3
Fall 2018-2019 Anthropology of the Body 3
Fall 2017-2018 Anthropology of the Body 3
Spring 2013-2014 Anthropology of the Body 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 528 Anthropology of Hope 3 Credits
In social theory, popular discourse and everyday practice, hope is often an assumed or desired sentiment but albeit one that is rarely seen as being in need of critical elaboration. This course takes hope as a key category of social analysis. It first compares different historical approaches that locate in hope the utopian spirit of times of revolution and certain religious doctrines that link hope to faith in the face of experiential misery. It then delves into contemporary ethnographies that engage with theories of affect as they pertain to hope. How does hope relate to other affective states such as desire and optimism (hope’s presumed affines) and melancholy and despair (its presumed opposites ?) Under what conditions does hope become cruel? Building on a critical tradition in social theory, it also assesses the potential role of hope in progressive politics and thought as a method of critique.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Fall 2014-2015 Anthropology of Hope 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 550 Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 3 Credits
Geographic regions such as the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) are human constructions based on ideas about space and difference, rather than naturally existing categories. This course starts with a critical analysis of the making of the MENA region, which covers about 25 countries from Morocco to Iran, as a historical and political process. In an effort to move beyond the predominantly Orientalist constructions of this region in mainstream discourses, we will read critical ethnographic studies of the historical, political and cultural processes that have shaped human lives in this diverse cultural space.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Fall 2013-2014 Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 3
Spring 2005-2006 Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 554 Migration and Citizenship 3 Credits
This seminar will inquire into the global movement of people in relation to the increasingly variegated definitions and practices of citizenship. Through ethnographic accounts of border-crossings around the world, we will pay particular attention to the everyday experiences of migrants on the one hand, and to the political, cultural and legal discourses of citizenship that shape and constrain those experiences on the other. We will assess the significance of the spread of global capitalism and of transnational legal norms in relation to the changing relationship between state sovereignty, immigrants, and citizenship. We will also pay attention to the ways in which hierarchies of class, ethnicity and nation find expression in the politics of international migration and citizenship.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2015-2016 Migration and Citizenship 3
Fall 2014-2015 Migration and Citizenship 3
Fall 2013-2014 Migration and Citizenship 3
Fall 2012-2013 Migration and Citizenship 3
Fall 2010-2011 Migration and Citizenship 3
Spring 2009-2010 Migration and Citizenship 3
Spring 2008-2009 Migration and Citizenship 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 565 Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest 3 Credits
This course will expore the nature of social protest in various parts of the world. It will examine the dynamics of massive revolutionary movements, and yet also the challenges of understanding diverse and less-publicized forms of protest and mobilization. We will examine forms of protest related to human rights, labor conditions, indigenous mobilization, ethnicity and nationalism, religion and gender in the context of increasing globalization. The course will both explore particular case studies of mobilization as well as introduce students to key questions about the role of culture, memory, mass media, and other forces in the making of social mobilization.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Fall 2012-2013 Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest 3
Fall 2008-2009 Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest 3
Fall 2006-2007 Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 568 Ethnography: Fieldwork and Writing in Anthropology 3 Credits
Ethnography refers both to the main qualitative research methods and the written product of anthropological research. This course aims to familiarize students with the tools of conducting ethnographic research, while also giving them an opportunity to put these tools into practice. Throughout the course, various aspects of and approaches to doing and writing ethnography will be critically examined.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Fall 2023-2024 Etnography: Fieldwork and Writing in Anthropology 3
Fall 2021-2022 Etnography: Fieldwork and Writing in Anthropology 3
Fall 2018-2019 Etnography: Fieldwork and Writing in Anthropology 3
Spring 2015-2016 Etnography 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 569 Anthropology and History 3 Credits
What happens when anthropologists take up history? The recent interest of anthropology in history will be examined in this course through the close reading of a selection of contemporary ethnographies (books produced by anthropologists on the basis of field research).
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2010-2011 Anthropology and History 3
Fall 2007-2008 Anthropology and History 3
Fall 2006-2007 Anthropology and History 3
Spring 2004-2005 Writing Culture (ANTH669) 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements:
 
ANTH 571 Anthropology of Europe 3 Credits
Anthropology is conventionally perceived as the study of non-European societies, however, recent critical approaches have stressed the importance of turning the anthropological gaze to western societies, and in particular, of ''provincializing Europe.'' Through recent ethnographies of different nation-states and social spaces in Europe, the course will examine historical and contemporary constructions of ''Europeanness,"; debates over multiculturalism, cultural citizenship and ''Islamaphobia''; migration and ethnicity; and the uneasy relation of Eastern Europe and postsocialism to Western Europe an the EU.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Spring 2012-2013 Anthropology of Europe 3
Fall 2009-2010 Anthropology of Europe 3
Fall 2008-2009 Anthropology of Europe 3
Fall 2007-2008 Anthropology of Europe 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite: __
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements: