Please find a list of courses taught with some regularity
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ANTH 5240, Relational Ethics
How might we begin to conceive relational ethics? In the attempt to think through this question, we will slowly read and discuss some important texts in anthropology and continental philosophy that have attempted to think and articulate relationality, being-with and ethics.
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ANTH 5270, Care and Abandonment
This seminar will explore the norms, embodied practices, material artifacts, and forms of reasoning which shape processes of care and abandonment across a range of contemporary cases. We will explore Foucault's writings on bio-power, how a focus on abandonment and abjection has altered the field of anthropology, and how care might relate to other concepts like kinship.
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ANTH 5360, World Mental Health
This course will examine mental health issues from the perspectives of biomedicine and anthropology, emphasizing local traditions of illness and healing as well as evidence from epidemiology and neurobiology. Included topics will be psychosis, depression, PTSD, Culture Bound Syndromes, and suicide. We will also examine the role of pharmaceutical companies in the spread of western based mental health care and culturally sensitive treatment.
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ANTH 5401, Linguistic Field Methods
Investigates the grammatical structure of non-European language on the basis of data collected in class from a native speaker. A different language is the focus of study each year.
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ANTH 5410, Phonology
An introduction to the theory and analysis of linguistic sound systems. Covers the essential units of speech sound that lexical and grammatical elements are composed of, how those units are organized at multiple levels of representation, and the principles governing the relation between levels.
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ANTH 5425, Language Contact
Considers how languages change as part of social systems and affected by historical processes. We will contrast language change through internal processes of drift and regular sound change with contact-induced language change involving multilingualism and code switching, language shift and lexical borrowing, the emergence of pidgin, creole, and intertwined languages, language endangerment, and computational tools for historical linguistics.
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ANTH 5440, Morphology
An overview of morphological theory within the generative paradigm. Covers notions of the morpheme, theories of the phonology-syntax interface (e.g., lexical phonology, prosodic morphology, optimality theory), and approaches to issues arising at the morphology-syntax interface (e.g., inflection, agreement, incorporation, compounding).
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ANTH 5465, Language and the Culture of Preservation
Why save endangered languages? What makes this work compelling to the diverse stakeholders involved? What kinds of obstacles do language preservation projects repeatedly encounter and why? This seminar explores language preservation as a cultural phenomenon in which issues of temporality, ownership, identity, and authenticity come to the fore.
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ANTH 5470 Language and Identity
In anthropology, where identity has become a central concern, language is seen as an important site for the construction of, and negotiation over social identities. In linguistics, reference to categories of social identity helps to explain language structure and change. This seminar explores the overlap between these converging trends by focusing on the notion of discourse as a nexus of cultural and linguistic processes.
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ANTH 5475, Multimodal Interaction
Students build knowledge and practice of analysis of peoples' joint-engagement in embodied interactions. How does action weave together multiple sensory modalities into semiotic webs linking interactions with more durative institutions of social life? Course includes workshops on video recording, and the transcription and coding of verbal and non-verbal actions. Prior coursework in Linguistics, Anthropology or instructor permission recommended.
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ANTH 5480, Literacy and Orality
This course surveys ethnographic and linguistic literature on literacy, focusing on the social meanings of speaking vs. writing (and hearing vs. reading) as opposed communicative practices, looking especially at traditionally oral societies.
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ANTH 5485, Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis looks at the patterns in language and language-use above the level of sentence grammar and seeks to apply the micro-level analysis of communicative interactions to understanding the macro-level processes of social and cultural reproduction. Topics include: symbolic interactionism, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse prosody, and digital analysis techniques.
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ANTH 5490, Speech Play and Verbal Art
This graduate-level seminar seeks to understand variation in language (and its significance for social relations and social hierarchies) by focusing on forms of language that are aesthetically valued (whether as powerful or as poetic) in particular communities. The course assumes some familiarity both with technical analysis of language and anthropological perspectives on social formations.
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ANTH 5610, Critical Medical Anthropology
This class focuses on critical issues in medical anthropology on topics of patienthood, healing and healers and the theoretical, methodological and ethnographic perspectives of anthropologists who integrate issues of politics, economics, power and resistance in understanding health, illness, healing as individually experienced and culturally shaped phenomena .
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ANTH 5620, The Middle East in Ethnographic Perspective
Survey of the anthropological literature on the Middle East & N. Africa. Begins historically with traditional writing on the Middle East and proceeds to critiques of this tradition and attempts at new ways of constructing knowledge of this world region. Readings juxtapose theoretical and descriptive work toward critically appraising modern writers' success in overcoming the critiques leveled against their predecessors.
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ANTH 5808 Method and Theory in Archaeology
Investigates current theory, models, and research methods in anthropological archaeology.
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ANTH 5840, Archaeology of Complex Societies
Examines archaeological approaches to the study of complex societies using case studies from both the Old and New Worlds.
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ANTH 5870, Archaeozoology
Laboratory training in techniques and methods used in analyzing animal bones recovered from archaeological sites. Include field collection, data analysis, and the use of zooarchaeological materials in reconstructing economic and social systems.
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ANTH 5875, Spatial Analysis and GIS in Archaeology
This course explores theories and techniques underlying spatial analysis and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in archaeological research. Topics covered in this hands-on course include construction and manipulation of spatial data, basic spatial statistics and landscape studies. Students are expected to work on their own research projects, involving the construction, analysis and modeling of environmental and social variables.
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ANTH 5880, Gender in Archaeology
Explores the range of case studies and theoretical literature associated with the emergence of gender as a framework for research in archaeology.
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ANTH 5885, Archaeology of Colonial Expansions
Exploration of the archaeology of frontiers, expansions and colonization, focusing on European expansion into Africa and the Americas while using other archaeologically-known examples (e.g., Roman, Bantu) as comparative studies. Prerequisite: For undergraduates, ANTH 4591 senior seminar or instructor permission.
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ANTH 5891, Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundary Interaction
The focus of this class is the nature of sociopolitical interaction across boundaries and imperial frontier regions, using multidisciplinary research and different scales of analysis. Among other disciplines, this includes archaeology, ethnohistory and history. Some of the case studies comprise the ancient frontiers of imperial formations in the ancient World, the pre-Columbian Americas, and those in the US and beyond.
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ANTH 7010, History of Anthropological Theory
Introduces major historical figures, approaches, and debates in anthropology (sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological), with a focus on understanding the discipline's diverse intellectual history, and its complex involvement with dominant social and intellectual currents in western society.
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ANTH 7020, Contemporary Anthropological Theory
Explores the major recent theoretical approaches in current anthropology, with attention to their histories and to their political contexts and implications.
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ANTH 7040, Ethnographic Research Design and Methods
Seminar on ethnographic methods and research design in the qualitative tradition. Surveys the literature on ethnographic methods and explores relations among theory, research design, and appropriate methodologies. Students participate in methodological exercises and design a summer pilot research project. Prerequisite: Second year graduate in anthropology or instructor permission.
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ANTH 7050, Ethnographic Writing and Representation
Seminar on the craft of ethnographic writing and the ethical, political, and practical challenges of describing studied people in scholarly books and articles. What can student researchers do during fieldwork to help them write better dissertations more easily? How should they analyze and present field data? Prerequisite: ANTH 7040 or instructor permission. Suitable for pre- and post-field graduate students.
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ANTH 7060, Dissertation Research Proposal Workshop
A workshop for graduates preparing dissertation proposals and writing grant applications. Each student prepares several drafts of a proposal, revising it at each stage in response to the criticisms of classmates and the instructor.
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ANTH 7100, Indigenous Landscapes
This course engages with ways that historical process are inscribed in landscapes, which are the traditional territories of indigenous communities and have also been shaped by colonialism, extractive enterprise, and nature conservation. It challenges students to examine their assumptions to examine ways in which dominant values and stories are inscribed in landscapes and made to appear natural and how indigenous peoples contest these processes. Prerequisite: Graduate status or instructor permission.
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ANTH 7290, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture
The concepts of identity, authenticity, and culture are central to most nationalist ideologies, in which the nation’s existence and identity are thought to be manifested in and through an authentic national culture. Nation-states use many agencies, institutions, and practices (like the post office, museums, support for the arts, calendrical celebrations, and patriotic rituals) that together make a “politics of culture” that fosters an ideologically desired version of national identity. Initial case studies will be drawn from Canada and the US. Students will research case studies of their choice, drawn from any region or period.
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ANTH 7350, The Nature of Nature
This course explores the evolution of Nature as a concept and a human-created realm of reality, particularly in relation to colonialism and globalization. It focuses on environmental politics of diverse people who do not relate to reality as a separate object called Nature. It also addresses the idea that we are living in the Anthropocene, a moment in which humans have become a force of Nature, and Nature perhaps no longer exists.
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ANTH 7370, Power and the Body
Study of the cultural representations and interpretations of the body in society.
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ANTH 7400, Linguistic Anthropology
An advanced introduction to the study of language from an anthropological point of view. No prior coursework in linguistics is expected, but the course is aimed at graduate students who will use what they learn in their own anthropologically-oriented research. Topics include an introduction to such basic concepts in linguistic anthropology as language in world-view, the nature of symbolic meaning, language and nationalism, universals and particulars in language, language in history and prehistory, the ethnography of speaking, the nature of everyday conversation, and the study of poetic language. The course is required for all Anthropology graduate students. It also counts toward the Theory requirement for the M.A. in Linguistics.
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ANTH 7440, Language and Emotion
This course explores emotion from the perspectives of cultural anthropology and sociolinguistics. Topics include: emotion in the natural vs. social sciences; cross-cultural conceptions of emotion; historical change in emotion discourses; emotion as a theory of the self; the grammatical encoding of emotion in language; (mis-) communication of emotion; and emotion in the construction of racialized and gendered identities.
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ANTH 7450, Native American Languages
Surveys the classification and typological characteristics of Native American languages and the history of their study, with intensive work on one language by each student. Some linguistics background is helpful.
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ANTH 7480, Language and Prehistory
This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics (the study of how languages change over time) and the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory. Considered is the use of linguistic evidence in tracing prehistoric population movements in demonstrating contact among prehistoric groups and in the reconstruction of daily life. To the extent that the literature permits, examples and case studies will be drawn from the Mayan language area of Central America, and will include discussion of the pre-Columbian Mayan writing system and its ongoing decipherment. Fulfills the comparative-historical requirement for Linguistics graduate students.