Chair: Lesley Sharp (Barbara Chamberlain & Helen Chamberlain Josefsberg ’30 Professor of Anthropology)
Professors: Nadia Abu El-Haj (Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Anthropology), Severin Fowles, Brian Larkin, Paige West (Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology)
Assistant Professors: Mara Green, Kaya Williams
Associate Professor of Practice: J.C. Salyer (Anthropology and Human Rights)
Professors Emeriti: Abraham Rosman, Nan Rothschild
Term Assistant Professors: Gina Jae, Camilla Sturm
For a list of other officers of the University offering courses in Anthropology, please see the Columbia Anthropology Department website: https://anthropology.columbia.edu/content/faculty-directory
Requirements for the Major
Every major is urged to acquire a general knowledge of three of the four fields of anthropology (social and linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and physical anthropology) and of their interrelationship. To this end, the student’s program should be designed in consultation with her adviser as soon as possible after the declaration of the major. Continuing and frequent meetings with the adviser are encouraged.
There are three tracks. For more information, please visit the Anthropology website: https://anthropology.barnard.edu/majoring-anthropology
Eleven courses are required for the major, including:
Code | Title | Points |
---|---|---|
ANTH UN1002 | THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE | 3 |
Select one of the following introductory courses: | 3 | |
ANTH UN1007 | THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN SOCIETY | 3 |
ANTH UN1008 | THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION | 3 |
ANTH UN1009 | INTRO TO LANGUAGE & CULTURE | 3 |
EEEB UN1010 | HUMAN ORIGINS & EVOLUTION | 3 |
ANTH UN3040 | ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY | 4 |
ANTH BC3871 | SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR I (Offered Fall Semester) | 4 |
ANTH BC3872 | SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II (Offered Spring Semester) | 4 |
Select six electives, one of which can be a third introductory level class and three of which must be 3000 level or higher. Moreover, the three 3000 level or higher seminars must be taken at Barnard or Columbia (not while on an exchange program during junior year).
In consultation with advisers, programs will be designed to reflect the students’ interests and plans—whether they intend to go on to graduate studies in anthropology or expect to enter other fields.
It is recommended that students who plan to major and in socio-cultural anthropology take ANTH BC3868 ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD RESEARCH IN NYC (y) before their senior year. Many seniors choose to incorporate a fieldwork component in their thesis research and having some experience of field methods is extremely important. Those interested in other sub-disciplines may wish to take this or another “methods” course and should consult their advisers. Students are also encouraged to check listings for courses offered by EEEB at Columbia for possible Anthropology credit, in consultation with the Barnard department chair.
Senior Essay
All students majoring in Anthropology are required to submit an essay of substantial length and scholarly depth. Such a paper will usually be written during the course of ANTH BC3871 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR I–ANTH BC3872 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II).
Double and Joint Majors
Students doing a double or joint major in Anthropology and another subject are required to register for at least one semester of ANTH BC3871 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR I– ANTH BC3872 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II.
Requirements for the Minor
The minor consists of five courses:
Code | Title | Points |
---|---|---|
ANTH UN1002 | THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE | |
Select one of the following introductory courses: | ||
ANTH UN1007 | THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN SOCIETY | |
ANTH UN1008 | THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION | |
ANTH UN1009 | INTRO TO LANGUAGE & CULTURE | |
EEEB UN1010 | HUMAN ORIGINS & EVOLUTION | |
Select three other Anthropology courses, two of which must be 3000-level. |
Course Offerings:
ANTH UN1002 THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE. 3.00 points.
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
Fall 2024: ANTH UN1002
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 1002 | 001/00004 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 263 Macy Hall |
Clare Casey | 3.00 | 63/90 |
Spring 2025: ANTH UN1002
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
ANTH 1002 | 001/10586 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 309 Havemeyer Hall |
Naor Ben-Yehoyada | 3.00 | 70/120 |
ANTH UN1007 THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. 3.00 points.
Mandatory recitation sections will be announced first week of classes.
An archaeological perspective on the evolution of human social life from the first bipedal step of our ape ancestors to the establishment of large sedentary villages. While traversing six million years and six continents, our explorations will lead us to consider such major issues as the development of human sexuality, the origin of language, the birth of “art” and religion, the domestication of plants and animals, and the foundations of social inequality. Designed for anyone who happens to be human
Fall 2024: ANTH UN1007
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ANTH 1007 | 001/00005 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 304 Barnard Hall |
Camilla Sturm | 3.00 | 71/90 |
ANTH UN1008 THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION. 3.00 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Mandatory recitation sections will be announced first week of classes. $25.00 laboratory fee.
Corequisites: ANTH V1008
Corequisites: ANTH UN1108 The rise of major civilization in prehistory and protohistory throughout the world, from the initial appearance of sedentism, agriculture, and social stratification through the emergence of the archaic empires. Description and analysis of a range of regions that were centers of significant cultural development: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River Valley, China, North America, and Mesoamerica. DO NOT REGISTER FOR A RECITATION SECTION IF YOU ARE NOT OFFICIALLY REGISTERED FOR THE COURSE
Spring 2025: ANTH UN1008
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 1008 | 001/17254 | T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm 402 Chandler |
Clarence Gifford | 3.00 | 100/100 |
ANTH UN1009 INTRO TO LANGUAGE & CULTURE. 3.00 points.
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
Spring 2025: ANTH UN1009
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 1009 | 001/00645 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 405 Milbank Hall |
Elizabeth Green | 3.00 | 43/90 |
ANTH UN3040 ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY. 4.00 points.
Open to majors; all others with instructor's permission.
Prerequisites: an introductory course in anthropology.
Comprehensive and in-depth engagement with foundational and contemporary theoretical concepts and texts in Anthropology. Required of all Barnard students majoring in Anthropology (including specialized tracks). Permission of instructor required for non-majors. Not open to First Year students. Prerequisite: an introductory (1000 level) course in Anthropology
Fall 2024: ANTH UN3040
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 3040 | 001/00098 | M W 10:10am - 11:25am 202 Milbank Hall |
Alexander Maier, Brian Larkin | 4.00 | 29/35 |
ANTH UN3041 ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY II. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Required of all Barnard Anthropology majors; open to other students with instructor’s permission only. To be taken in conjunction with ANTH 3040, preferably in sequence.
The second of a two semester sequence intended to introduce departmental majors to key readings in social theory that have been constitutive of the rise and contemporary practice of modern anthropology. The goal is to understand historical and current intellectual debates within the discipline. This course replaces ANTH V 3041 - Theories of Culture: Past and Present.
ANTH UN3831 Cultures and Ecomomies: Explorations in Economic Anthropology. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 15. Priority given to juniors and seniors
This class explores the intersection of economy, culture, and society from a comparative, anthropological perspective. What have anthropologists learned about the different economic systems of the societies they study? How do economic practices and processes interact with the broader sociocultural worlds in which they are pursued and elaborated? What kind of concepts and methods do anthropologists draw on in their ethnographic (and archeological) researches into the diversity of human economic life? By reading classic and contemporary works in the field of economic anthropology, this class introduce students to longstanding discussions and debates about: economic rationality as a social form; the application of economic principles and methods to non-marketized societies; the nature of exchange and value; the sociocultural dimensions of monetarization and marketization; the role of gender and class in economic production; and the paradoxes of private property in everyday lives. Anthropology and economics have maintained a long and productive, if often combative, relationship with one another, and one of the aims of the course is to explore that relationship from a number of critical perspectives.
ANTH BC3871 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR I. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Limited to Barnard Anthropology Seniors. Offered every Fall. Discussion of research methods and planning and writing of a Senior Essay in Anthropology will accompany research on problems of interest to students, culminating in the writing of individual Senior Essays. The advisory system requires periodic consultation and discussion between the student and her adviser as well as the meeting of specific deadlines set by the department each semester. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors
Fall 2024: ANTH BC3871
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ANTH 3871 | 001/00097 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm Ll001 Milstein Center |
Camilla Sturm, Elizabeth Green, Fern Thompsett, Clare Casey, Gina Jae | 4.00 | 29/35 |
ANTH BC3872 SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Must complete ANTH BC3871x. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors. Offered every Spring. Discussion of research methods and planning and writing of a Senior Essay in Anthropology will accompany research on problems of interest to students, culminating in the writing of individual Senior Essays. The advisory system requires periodic consultation and discussion between the student and her adviser as well as the meeting of specific deadlines set by the department each semester
Spring 2025: ANTH BC3872
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ANTH 3872 | 001/00639 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 502 Diana Center |
Gina Jae, Clare Casey, Fern Thompsett, Elizabeth Green, Camilla Sturm | 4.00 | 28/32 |
EEEB UN1010 HUMAN ORIGINS & EVOLUTION. 3.00 points.
CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement
Lab fee: $25. Taught every fall.
This is an introductory course in human evolution. Building on a foundation of evolutionary theory, students explore primate behavioral morphology and then trace the last 65 million years of primate evolution from the earliest Paleocene forms to the fossil remains of earliest humans and human relatives. Along with Behavioral Biology of the Living Primates this serves as a core required class for the EBHS program
Fall 2024: EEEB UN1010
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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EEEB 1010 | 001/12060 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm 602 Hamilton Hall |
Jill Shapiro | 3.00 | 38/86 |
EEEB 1010 | AU1/18645 | M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Othr Other |
Jill Shapiro | 3.00 | 6/6 |
ANTH V3810 Madagascar. 4 points.
Enrollment limit is 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Non-Anthropology majors require the instructor's permission.
Critiques the many ways the great Red Island has been described and imagined by explorers, colonists, social scientists, and historians—as an Asian-African amalgamation, an ecological paradise, and a microcosm of the Indian Ocean. Religious diasporas, mercantilism, colonization, enslavement, and race and nation define key categories of comparative analysis.
ANTH V3873 Language and Politics. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Language is central to political process. While all agree that language is used to symbolize or express political action, the main focus of this course is on how language and other communicative practices contribute to the creation of political stances, events, and forms of order. Topics addressed include political rhetoric and ritual; political communication and publics; discrimination and hierarchy; language and the legitimation of authority; as well as the role of language in nationalism, state formation, and in other sociopolitical movements, like feminism and diasporic communities. Since this course has the good fortune of coinciding with the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, we will make significant use of campaign rhetorics as a means of illustrating and exploring various themes.
ANTH UN3861 Anthropology of the Anthropocene. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20. Priority given to majors in Anthropology.
This course focuses on the political ecology of the Anthropocene. As multiple publics become increasingly aware of the extensive and accelerated rate of current global environmental change, and the presence of anthropogenesis in ever expanding circumstances, we need to critically analyze the categories of thought and action being developed in order to carefully approach this change. Our concern is thus not so much the Anthropocene as an immutable fact, inevitable event, or definitive period of time (significant though these are), but rather for the political, social, and intellectual consequences of this important idea. Thus we seek to understand the creativity of "The Anthropocene" as a political, rhetorical, and social category. We also aim to examine the networks of capital and power that have given rise to the current state of planetary change, the strategies for ameliorating those changes, and how these are simultaneously implicated in the rhetorical creation of "The Anthropocene".
Spring 2025: ANTH UN3861
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ANTH 3861 | 001/00647 | M 6:10pm - 8:00pm 113 Milstein Center |
Patrick Nason | 4 | 8/15 |
ANTH V3660 Gender, Culture, and Human Rights. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH BC3868 ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD RESEARCH IN NYC. 4.00 points.
This course provides the aspiring anthropologist with an array of primarily qualitative methodological tools essential to successful urban fieldwork. As such, it is a practicum of sorts, where regular field assignments help build one’s ability to record and analyze social behavior by drawing on several key data collection techniques. Because we have the luxury of inhabiting a large, densely populated, international city, this class requires that you take a head-first plunge into urban anthropology. The NYC area will define the laboratory for individually- designed research projects. Be forewarned, however! Ethnographic engagement involves efforts to detect social patterns, but it is often a self-reflexive exercise, too. Readings provide methodological, analytical, and personal insights into the skills, joys, and trials that define successful field research
Spring 2025: ANTH BC3868
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 3868 | 001/00640 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 407 Barnard Hall |
Kaya Williams | 4.00 | 22/35 |
ANTH V3917 Social Theory and Radical Critique in Ethnic Studies. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH UN3921 Anticolonialism. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20.
Through a careful exploration of the argument and style of five vivid anticolonial texts, Mahatma Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins, Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi's Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, this course aims to inquire into the construction of the image of colonialism and its projected aftermaths established in anti-colonial discourse.
Fall 2024: ANTH UN3921
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 3921 | 001/10327 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm 963 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
David Scott | 4 | 12/15 |
ANTH V3922 The Emergence of State. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
The creation of the earliest states out of simpler societies was a momentous change in human history. This course examines major theories proposed to account for that process, including population pressure, warfare, urbanism, class conflict, technological innovation, resource management, political conflict and cooperation, economic specialization and exchange, religion/ideology, and information processing.
ANTH UN3939 ANIME EFFECT: JAPANESE MEDIA. 4.00 points.
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
Spring 2025: ANTH UN3939
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 3939 | 001/11052 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 467 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Marilyn Ivy | 4.00 | 16/15 |
ANTH UN3946 African Cultural Production. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 15.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor required.
This course examines new African popular music, fashion, film, and visual arts through course readings, film, and current exhibits and events in NYC.
ANTH V3949 Sorcery and Magic. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 40.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
An introduction to the occult sides of making history, colonialism, and transforming reality through the study of south American shamanism, magic in Shakespeare's Tempest, sexual magic in politics and dictatorships, the uncanniness in Freud's hysterics, and William Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night.
ANTH UN3970 BIOL BASIS OF HUMAN VARIATION. 4.00 points.
Enrollment limited to 15.
Prerequisites: ANEB V1010 and the instructor's permission.
Prerequisites: ANEB UN1010 and the instructor's permission. Biological evidence for the modern human diversity at the molecular, phenotypical, and behavioral levels, as distributed geographically
ANTH V3977 Trauma. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission.
Investing trauma from interdisciplinary perspectives, the course explores connections between the interpersonal, social, and political events that precipitate traumatic reactions and their individual and collective ramifications. After examining the consequences of political repression and violence, the spread of trauma within and across communities, the making of memories and flashbacks, and the role of public testimony and psychotherapy in alleviating traumatic reactions.
ANTH V3979 Fluent Bodies. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
The recent proliferation of writings on the social significations of the human body have brought to the fore the epistemological, disciplinary, and ideological structures that have participated in creating a dimension of the human body that goes beyond its physical consideration. The course, within the context of anthropology, has two considerations, a historical one and a contemporary one. If anthropology can be construed as the study of human society and culture, then, following Marcel Mauss, this study must be considered the actual, physical bodies that constitute the social and the cultural.
ANTH V3980 Nationalism. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Intended for seniors, but not necessarily anthropology majors.
This course will cover the basic readings in the contemporary debate over nationalism. It will cover different disciplinary approaches and especially look at recent studies of nationalism in the formerly colonial world as well as in the industrial West. The readings will offer a mix of both theoretical and empirical studies. The readings include the following: 1) Eric Hobsbawm's Nationalism since 1780; 2) Ernest Gillner's Nations and Nationalism; 3) Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities; 4) Anthony Smith's The Ethnic Origins of Nations; 5) Linda Coley's Britons; 6) Peter Sahlins's Boundaries; and 7) Partha Chatterjee's The Nation and Its Fragments.
ANTH W4065 Archaeology of Idols. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
Explores 40,000 years of the human creation of, entanglement with, enchantment by, and violence towards idols. Case studies roam from the Paleolithic to Petra and from the Hopi to the Taliban, and the theoretical questions posed include the problem of representation, iconoclasm, fetishism and the sacred.
Cross-Listed Courses:
Africana Studies (Barnard)
AFRS BC3556 Ethnography of Black America. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
This course critically examines ethnographic texts about Blacks in the United States, focusing as much on what they proffer about Black American culture as on the various socio-political contexts in which this body of scholarship has been produced. The goal is to advance an understanding of the larger social forces undergirding the production not only of formations of Black culture, but also of knowledge about Black America. A further goal is to foster a critical understanding of the anthropological enterprise itself.
Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
EEEB GU4700 RACE:TANGLED HIST-BIOL CONCEPT. 4.00 points.
Enrollment limited to 15. Priority given to EBHS majors/concentrators.
From Aristotle to the 2020 US census, this course examines the history of race as a biological concept. It explores the complex relationship between the scientific study of biological differences-real, imagined, or invented and the historical and cultural factors involved in the development and expression of "racial ideas." Scientific background not required. [Additional hour for film screenings weekly in second half of the semester--attendance at films is mandatory.] Please note that this course DOES NOT fulfillment the SC requirement at the College or GS.
Spring 2025: EEEB GU4700
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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EEEB 4700 | 001/15090 | M W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 652 Schermerhorn Hall |
Jill Shapiro | 4.00 | 13/12 |
Other Offerings Not Taught This Year:
ANTH V3853 Moving Truths: The Anthropology of Transnational Advocacy Networks. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Transnational advocacy is an increasingly important dimension of contemporary globalizations, reconfiguring relations of knowledge, power, and possibility across cultures and societies. As sites for enacting expertise, activism, and legality, transnational advocacy networks are crucial for not only making claims and causes mobile across locales, but for making hem moving within locales -- affective and effective. While transnational advocacy networks are often studied by political scientists, this course focuses on a growing body of anthropological and ethnographic research.
ANTH V3015 Chinese Society. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Social organization and social change in China from late imperial times to the present. Major topics include family, kinship, community, stratification, and the relationships between the state and local society.
ANTH V3044 Symbolic Anthropology. 3 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Exploration of the manner in which various anthropologists have constructed “culture” as being constituted of a set of conventional signs called “symbols” and the consequences of such a construal. Among the authors read are the anthropologists Valentine Daniel, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi-Strauss, Sherry Ortner, David Schneider, Margaret Trawick, and Victor Turner; the social theorists Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber; the semioticians Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce; and the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.
ANTH V3055 Strategy of Archaeology. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH W3201 Introductory Survey of Biological Anthropology. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH UN3300 Pre-Columbian Histories of Native America. 3 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 40.
This course explores 10,000 years of the North American archaeological record, bringing to light the unwritten histories of Native Americans prior to European contact. Detailed consideration of major pre-Columbian sites is interwoven with the insight of contemporary native peoples to provide both a scientific and humanist reconstruction of the past.
ANTH V3525 Introduction to South Asian History and Culture. 3 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Examines four major aspects of contemporary South Asian societies: nationalism, religious reform, gender, and caste. Provides a critical survey of the history of and continuing debates over these critical themes of society, politics, and culture in South Asia. Readings consist of primary texts that were part of the original debates and secondary sources that represent the current scholarly assessment on these subjects.
ANTH V3700 Colloquium: Anthropological Research Problems in Complex Societies. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3820 Theory and Method in Archaeology. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3824 Fantasy, Film, and Fiction in Archaeology. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3903 Cities: Ethnoarchaeology, Archaeology and Theory. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20, plus instructor's permission required.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
This course will examine cities in comparative perspective, over time and space, from several viewpoints. We will examine how and when they develop, how they function, and what urban life is like. Is the urban experience the same for all residents? At all times? In all places? We will begin with theory and some urban history and then focus on New York as a laboratory, from its origins to the present. The course involves a kind of archaeology called "ethnoarchaeology" in which we look at living societies and communities in order to gain a better understanding of past and present. Our examination of contemporary urban life pays special attention to spatial organization and order, the geography of power in the urban landscape, and to material things, as these are the kinds of data that archaeologists typically focus on.
ANTH V3913 Ancient Egyptian Culture. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Ancient Egypt was one of the most advanced cultures in antiquity. This course will go beyond the pyramids and pharaohs to investigate the culture and daily life of the ancient Egyptians from the Old Kingdom to the Hellenistic period. Students will learn about ancient Egyptian magic, emotion, cosmogony, education, recreation, travel, and diplomacy by reading ancient Egyptian folklore, dream spells, love poetry, wisdom texts, religious hymns, and royal propaganda in translation. In addition to exploring the laws, occupations, and medical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, we will also analyze how gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability were constructed and represented.
ANTH V3920 Economy and Society in Prehistory. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Enrollment limited to 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Introduction to Archaeology or permission of the instructor required.
ANTH V3940 Ethnographies of the Mid East. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Previous enrollment in an Anthropology course. Sophomore standing. Enrollment limited to 20 students.
Explores the themes that have shaped ethnographic literature of the Middle East. These include topics such as colonialism, gender, Islam, nationalism and the nation-state.
ANTH UN3661 South Asia: Anthropological Approaches. 4 points.
This course draws on ethnography, history, fiction, and other genres to think about diverse peoples and places in the region known as South Asia. Rather than attempt to fix or define "South Asia" as a singular category, we will explore how particular social and scholarly categories through which dimensions of South Asian life have come to be known (such as caste, class, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, and kinship) are experienced, negotiated, and reworked by actual persons in specific situations. By examining both categories and practices, we will ask: What kinds of relationships exist between the messiness of everyday life and the classifications used by both scholars and "local" people to describe and make sense of it? How do scholarly and bureaucratic ideas not merely reflect but also shape lived realities? How do lived realities affect the ways in which categories are named and understood? In addressing such questions, categories sometimes thought of as stable or timeless emerge as, in fact, contingent and embodied.
ANTH V3943 Youth and Identity Politics in Africa. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor is required.
Examines ways in which African youth inevitably occupy two extremes in academic writings and the mass media: as victims of violence, or as instigators of social chaos. Considers youth as generating new cultural forms, as historically relevant actors, and informed social and/or political critics. At the core of such critiques lie possibilities for the agentive power of youth in Africa.
ANTH V3951 Pirates, Boys, and Capitalism. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3952 Taboo and Transgression. 4 points.
Instructor's permission is required.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
The transgression of taboos is the basis of crime, sex, and religion in any society. As "the labor of the negative", transgression is also a critical element in thought itself. Working through anthropology of sacrifice and obscenity, as well as relevant work by Bataille, Foucault, and Freud, this course aims at understanding why taboos exist and why they must be broken.
ANTH V3961 Subsequent Performances. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Enrollment limited to 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Priority given to upper class Anthropology and Music majors; students must attend operas outside of class.
Explores the dynamic interaction between operatic compositions (especially Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro) and their subsequent performances, with particular emphasis on the cultural, political, and economic contexts that shape both the original composition and the following reproductions. Critical apparatus includes Abbate and Butler.
ANTH V3962 History and Memory. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3975 Anthropology of Media. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Enrollment limited to 16.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Provides a critical overview of the theoretical engagement between anthropology and media theory. It explores the relationship between technologies and transformations in ideas of time, space, and sociability; and examines what it means to live in a mediated society.
ANTH V3983 Ideas and Society in the Caribbean. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Focusing on the Anglo-Creole Caribbean, this course examines some aspects of popular culture, literary expression, political change, and intellectual movements over the past thirty years.
ANTH V3988 Race/Sexuality Science and Social Practice. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 26.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
Scientific inquiry has configured race and sex in distinctive ways. This class will engage critical theories of race and feminist considerations of sex, gender, and sexuality through the lens of the shifting ways in which each has been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, and managed in (social) science and medicine.
ANTH UN3993 World Archaeologies/Global Perspectives. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 15.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission and at least one of the following: ANTH V1007, ANTH V1008, or ACLG V2028.
This capstone seminar explores global archaeology from a postcolonial perspective. We will address the history of archaeological interpretation and explore the politics and practice of archaeology by
considering specific case studies from around the world. The seminar fulfills the major seminar requirement for the archaeology major
ANTH V3994 Anthropology of Extremity: War. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH W4002 Controversial Topics in Human Evolution. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and introductory biological/physical anthropology course.
ANTH W4011 Critical Social Theory. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Enrollment limited to 30.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: junior standing.
ANTH W4022 Political Ecology. 3 points.
Enrollment limit is 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
Analyzes global, national, and local environment issues from the critical perspectives of political ecology. Explores themes like the production of nature, environmental violence, environmental justice, political decentralization, territoriality, the state, and the conservation interventions.
ANTH W4625 Anthropology and Film. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
ANTH V3899 Food, Ecology, Globalization. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to 20.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
EEEB UN3204 Dynamics of Human Evolution. 4 points.
CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement
Enrollment limited to 13. Priority is given to EBHS majors/concentrators.
Seminar focusing on recent advances in the study of human evolution. Topics include changing views of human evolution with respect to early hominin behavior, morphology, culture and evolution. [Either Dynamics of Human Evolution or Neandertals is taught every other year.]
ANTH UN3947 TEXT, MAGIC, PERFORMANCE. 4.00 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. This course pursues interconnections linking text and performance in light of magic, ritual, possession, narration, and related articulations of power. Readings are drawn from classic theoretical writings, colonial fiction, and ethnographic accounts. Domains of inquiry include: spirit possession, trance states, séance, ritual performance, and related realms of cinematic projection, musical form, shadow theater, performative objects, and (other) things that move on their own, compellingly. Key theoretical concerns are subjectivity - particularly, the conjuring up and displacement of self in the form of the first-person singular I - and the haunting power of repetition. Retraced throughout the course are the uncanny shadows of a fully possessed subject --within ritual contexts and within everyday life
Spring 2025: ANTH UN3947
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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ANTH 3947 | 001/10591 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 963 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
John Pemberton | 4.00 | 18/17 |
EEEB UN3215 FORENSIC OSTEOLOGY. 3.00 points.
CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement
Taught every other year. Enrollment limited to 15. Priority given at first class session to EBHS majors/concentrators.
Prerequisites: no prior experience with skeletal anatomy required. Not appropriate for students who have already taken either EEEB G4147 or EEEB G4148.
Prerequisites: no prior experience with skeletal anatomy required. Not appropriate for students who have already taken either EEEB GU4147 or EEEB GU4148. An exploration of the hidden clues in your skeleton. Students learn the techniques of aging, sexing, assessing ancestry, and the effects of disease, trauma and culture on human bone