Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A consideration of key themes in contemporary anthropology. Addresses theoretical and methodological questions by examining the work of contemporary anthropologists conducting research in diverse locations around the world.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course explores anthropology's efforts to communicate across boundaries of time, space, language, and culture.  It is an introduction to key ideas and concepts in anthropology via a study of the discipline's most distinctive contribution to the social sciences—ethnography.  Defined by one introductory anthropology textbook as "gathering information on contemporary cultures through fieldwork and firsthand study," the word ethnography stands for a complex amalgam of certain principles of method, representation, and analysis.  How do anthropologists learn to “see” culture and social organization in the course of fieldwork? How are generalizations built up out of everyday interactions with people in the course of research? What role does translation play in making sense of ways of life? What techniques allow us to analyze cultural meanings and social forms, such that we can claim to provide a true account? To explore these questions, we will read two ethnographies closely.  Our study of these two texts will be contextualized by discussion of articles and excerpts from important moments in the history of debate in anthropological theory. This course is organized around close study of the required readings, class discussions, writing exercises and study groups based on these readings, and background mini-lectures from the instructor. Active student participation is required in this reading-intensive course.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

This course creates opportunities for students to:

• Develop an understanding of how the knowledge goals and norms of the discipline of anthropology have changed over time;
• Consider what constitutes an ethnographic mode of attention, and distinguish among different approaches;
• Analyze how the European colonial context shaped the discipline and consider alternatives to this tradition;
• Develop skills in close reading and alternative interpretations of ethnographic texts;
• Use visualization to understand abstract concepts;
• Use writing as a means to develop understanding of complexity and to express interpretations based on textual evidence.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

1 notebook 7" x 9" or larger, unlined

REQUIRED READING: