Spring 2002 Course Descriptions

ANTH 70200
Core Course in Cultural Anthropology: Contemporary Issues & Debates II
Professors Shirley Lindenbaum and Leith Mullings
GC: Fridays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

This course, like 70100, is designed to introduce students to the current issues, debates and controversies in cultural anthropology. This semester we consider anthropological perspectives on contemporary problems. We begin by examining globalization and modes of historical consciousness. Then we explore anthropological perspectives on such sites of inequality and difference as class, race, gender and sexuality. Next we reflect on the ways in which traditional anthropological topics have been reworked in the context of contemporary conditions. What has happened to kinship? What is the status of ethnographic writing? What are the new approaches to understanding development? Finally, we examine applied, advocacy and collaborative anthropology, exploring the intersection between the research process and social problems.
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ANTH 70400
Contemporary Anthropological Theory
Professors Talal Asad and Donald Robotham
GC: Thursdays, 11:45 - 1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

There is no permanent way of defining anthropology or "the core" of anthropology. What we have is a complex set of interconnected disciplines. Tracing the genealogy of anthropology would mean describing the coming together - and separation - of a number of problems, methods, and perspectives. It is not only "the four fields" that are contingently related (through a Boasian vision of anthropology as an evolutionary subject). Cultural anthropology itself represents contingent fields of study and intervention. That is why cultural anthropologists often talk past each other - and why it's easier for many of them to discuss intellectual issues with students in other disciplines than with "fellow anthropologists." This is not a new situation. Anthropology has been repeatedly shaped and reshaped as an academic discipline (perhaps more so than others because of its ambitious scope) by its contacts with other fields of study. That's part of the reason for the instability and challenge anthropology contains today. The most innovative work in anthropology has been done when its temporary boundaries are overstepped, when ideas and methods are borrowed from other disciplines and also argued with. Old Testament Studies (Robertson Smith), Classics (Frazer), Durkheimian sociology (Radcliffe Brown), Saussurian linguistics (Levi-Strauss), Marxism, Feminism, Literary criticism, Bio-sciences, etc. This course will concentrate on detailed readings of texts by anthropologists as well as by non-anthropologists. These will include such writers as Levi-Strauss, Leach, Douglas and Bourdieu; Wolf, Geertz, and Sahlins; Foucault, Koselleck, and MacIntyre; Rose and Nussbaum. Close, critical familiarity with these writings will be encouraged with a view to discussing some concepts that are used in anthropology today - structure, symbolic interpretation, class, world system, the self, history, and others. This is an intensive course, and those who register will be expected to have some prior familiarity with the history of anthropology.

COURSE OUTLINE

INTRODUCTORY SESSION
STRUCTURALISM
Text: C. Levi-Strauss, "The Scope of Anthropology" in Structural Anthropology, Volume 2.
REFLECTIONS ON THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF TIME
Text: E. R. Leach, "Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time" in Rethinking Anthropology.
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF "SYMBOLIC POWER"
Text: C. Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power" in Local Knowledge.
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND WORLD HISTORY
Text: E. Wolf, "Introduction" and "Afterword" in Europe and the People Without History.
MAKING ONE'S OWN HISTORY IN THE WORLD SYSTEM
Text: M. Sahlins, "Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of 'The World System'" in A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, edited by N.Dirks, G.Eley, S.Ortner.
AN ENQUIRY INTO HISTORICAL TIME
Text: R. Koselleck, "History, Histories, and Formal Structures of Time" and "Representation, Event, and Structure" in Futures Past.
THINKING ABOUT MODERN POWER Text: M. Foucault, "Governmentality," in The Foucault Effect, edited by G.Burchell, C.Gordon, P.Miller.
THE MORAL SELF IN THE POST-ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD
Text: Kelvin Knight (ed.), The MacIntyre Reader, Part II, 1998.
A CONCEPT OF EMBODIMENT Text: P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 1990, Book 1, Chapters 3-4.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND THE MODERN SELF
Text: N. Rose, "Assembling the Modern Self" in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by R. Porter. HUMAN RIGHTS IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD
Text: Martha Nussbaum.
CONCLUDING SESSION
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ANTH 71900
Exploring the Social Geography of New York City: A Multi-Media Ethnographic Approach
Professors Samuel Heilman and Susan Lees
GC: Wednesdays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
[cross-listed with SOC 82301]

This course will apply ethnographic techniques to examining the ethnic and social character of New York City. Students will use photo, video and audio tools to document and help understand the social geography of the city. The final product will be a multi-media document that will contain written text, visual and audio imagery. Each student will be expected to focus on a particular urban enclave in his or her project. Students will be taught how to use these various instrumentalities as part of the ethnographic enterprise.
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ANTH 72200
Seminar: Values and Economic Alternatives
Professor Michael Blim
GC: Thursdays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

The seminar explores the role of values in the orientation of economies, with an eye toward developing alternative economic scenarios based upon values most often associated with social justice and democracy. The seminar conducts an initial review of relevant theoretical literature focussing, though not exclusively on Weber and Polanyi, and an examination of the social inequalities on a worldwide scale. Then, the seminar analyzes some promising economic alternatives, using material based either upon existing practices or currently circulating hypotheses about what might work better in some cases than actually existing capitalism.
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ANTH 72400
Seminar: Crime and Criminalization in Global Perspective
Professor Jane Schneider
GC: Tuesdays, 4:15 - 6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

Following a brief overview of how crime is defined and theorized in other disciplines, this course will explore four literatures of relevance to contemporary anthropology. First we will sample the "histories from below" of crime and criminalization, focusing on England (e.g. Thompson, Hobsbawn), Mexico (Vanderwood), India (Guha, Subaltern Studies group), Italy (Hobsbawm, Blok), the Balkans (Herzfeld). Concerned for the most part with banditry, piracy, and "property crime" in contexts where powerful actors have instituted new definitions of property, these readings highlight theoretical difficulties surrounding the definition of crime and who is doing the defining. A final set of readings in this section will revisit this issue in relation to former Soviet bloc states (e.g. Verdery, Humphrey).

A second set of readings will consist of ethnographic and first person accounts of organized crime groups, enabling discussion of such issues as the role of kinship and talent in recruitment, the significance of initiations and rituals to maintaining "criminal reliability," relations of gender and age in "crime families," prisons as sites of organization and continuity, ways of normalizing violence. We will use the Sicilian mafia as one case study.

Third, taking a commodity chain approach to heroin and cocaine, we will read ethnographic accounts of the effects of illegal narcotics trafficking on producing communities, consuming communities, and nodes of articulation between them. The fourth and final segment of the course will consider contemporary "wars" on crime and drugs, both within the United States and in the United Nations and international human rights community. It is expected that this juxtaposition of drug trafficking with a consideration of the "wars" against it will re-evoke the issues surrounding crime and criminalization raised in the first section of the course. An overall goal of the semester will be to grapple with the theoretical and political implications of the vitality in world history of both crime formations and criminalization processes.
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ANTH 72500
Seminar: Anthropology for the Public
Professor Leith Mullings
GC: Thursdays, 4:15 - 6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

Anthropology has a great deal to contribute to formulating critical questions and proposing solutions to the central issues of our time. This seminar explores the role of anthropological knowledge in shaping public debate and social policy, through research, practice and advocacy. After interrogating the domains of theoretical, applied and advocacy anthropology, we will consider successful examples of the use of anthropology in reframing and influencing public discussion, policy and advocacy. Based on the interests of the seminar participants, these may range from global processes such as structural adjustment, war and militarization, and the environment, to more local issues such as urban displacement, the prison-industrial complex, education, public health and social welfare policies. The seminar will also consider writing styles and other communication techniques appropriate for reaching non-academic audiences; uses of media and other forms of information dissemination; and community collaboration in research.
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ANTH 72900
Ethnology and Ethnography of the United States
Professor Ida Susser
GC: Tuesdays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

This course considers theoretical approaches to ethnographic research in the United States. We will read ethnographies, both older works and contemporary research from a variety of perspectives, placing such works in the context of historical, political/economic and cultural analyses of the U.S. We will consider issues raised about conducting fieldwork research in the US, and questions related to reflexivity and political responsibility. In the light of the dramatic events the US is now experiencing, we will discuss changing approaches to class, global relations and cultural representations of groups and power in the US.
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ANTH 77000
Core Course in Linguistic Anthropology
Professor Miki Makihara
GC: Tuesdays, 11:45 - 1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

Language is one of the most important resources in the conduct our social life. Linguistic behavior is the central focus of many social settings, and it is also on linguistic evidence that we base many of our evaluations of the world around us. Yet attitudes toward language and how we use language are highly dependent on social and cultural factors, which also influence how and why language changes. This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology (the study of the relationship between language and culture and of the use of languages in socio-cultural context). We will examine the nature of language, its role in our social life, and linguistic and anthropological theory and methodology through reading ethnographic and sociolinguistic case studies and discourse analyses. Topics examined include: linguistic and communicative competence, linguistic structure and use, language universals, linguistic relativity, language acquisition and socialization, verbal politeness, the relationship between language change and variation, gender, ethnicity and nationalism, language and political economy, bilingualism, and linguistic ideology.
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ANTH 78200
Bilingualism
Professor E.H. Bendix
GC: Tuesdays, 4:15 - 6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
[cross-listed with LING 75400]

PREREQUISITE: A minimum of an introductory course in linguistics such as LING 70100 or ANTH 77000.

REQUIREMENTS: Several assignments and a choice between a term report or a final examination assignment.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: The sociopolitical and linguistic factors in bilingualism. Different cultural models of "a language" and "bilingualism," including those of language professionals. Individual bilingualism and societal bilingualism. Bilingual education and national language planning: misconceptions and ideal vs. real practices. Politics vs. sound research in the measurement of bilingual children's intelligence. Language maintenance and language shift. Code switching and mixing in interpersonal manipulation of community values. Phonological, morphosyntactic, and discourse-pragmatic interactions of languages in contact. Geographic areas of structurally converging languages (areal linguistics). Language contact and pidginization and creolization. Decreolization and the African-American dialect continuum as language contact. Likely, possible, and "bizarre" mixed languages around the world.

READINGS selected from such sources as:
Hamers, J., and M. Blanc. 1999. Bilinguality and bilingualism, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milroy, L., and P. Muysken, eds. 1995. One speaker, two languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomason, S.G. 2001. Language contact. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Weinreich, U. 1953, 1974, etc. Languages in contact. The Hague/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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ANTH 79000
Core Course in Evolutionary Morphology
Prof. F. S. Szalay
Hunter College: Tuesdays, 5:30 - 8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits

Lecture and laboratory survey and analysis of selected areas of morphology from the perspective of evolutionary analysis. It is an introduction to a synthetic field of evolutionary biology (a combination of comparative functional-adaptive, developmental, and phylogenetic analyses) and to the anatomy of selected areas of mammalian musculoskeletal morphology, emphasizing primates. A brief review of primate phylogeny and the principles of stratigraphic paleontology is appended at the end in order to bridge neontological and paleontological aspects of the course. As the syllabus indicates, some difficult and judicious selecting had to be exercised in order to choose a realistic survey for one semester. Some detailed accounts are presented so that you may appreciate the critical interplay of the empirical data and conceptual perspectives. Understanding this subject is difficult without being made aware how new information is obtained, and how the testing of historical-narrative explanations against such information is conducted. Evolutionary morphological analysis is not equivalent to any one of its critical components such as anatomy, phylogenetics, or functional-adaptive analysis. It is an integrated perspective of these various research areas.

Readings: Books and reprints at Hunter College Library and at NYU.

Requirements: a) laboratory reports; b) occasional analytical reviews of articles and chapters, to be prepared and handed in before the appropriate lectures and labs; c) a brief outline of a proposed project in evolutionary morphology which integrates the various perspectives presented in the course. This proposal is to be handed in three weeks before the final exam for a first reading, then an updated version handed in along with the various reports at the time the final is taken; d) final exam.

TOPICS COVERED IN THE SEQUENCE SHOWN ON THE TENTATIVE SYLLABUS BELOW

1. The nature of evolutionary morphology as practiced today. Brief review of the interrelationship of evolutionary theory with taxonomy and systematics.
2. Development: ontogenetic constraints and pathways (up to neurulation). Discussion of chronological shifts in development (heterochronies) and the general topic of allometry. We deal with the details of specific developmental patterns under skull, teeth, sense organs, etc.
3. Bone development, muscle, joint, ligament etc. biology and adaptations.
4. The head from developmental and functional-adaptive perspectives. Jaw mechanics. Sense organs. Ear region.
5. Laboratory on skull and feeding strategies.
6. Development of teeth and dentitions, their history and adaptive biology; laboratory on dental evolution.
7. Evolution, mechanics, and adaptive modifications of the pectoral and pelvic girdles and the axial skeleton. Joint mechanics and paleobiology; locomotion and posture in a terrestrial and arboreal environment; laboratory.
8. Stratigraphy and paleontology.
9. Some connections between evolutionary theory, systematics, and functional and ecological morphology: the merging of different perspectives in evolutionary morphology; survey of primate evolution.

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ANTH 79800
Quantitative Methods in Physical Anthropology
Prof. Vincent H. Stefan
GC: Fridays, 10:00 - 1:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits This class is structured to provide an introduction to the theory and application of quantitative statistics in anthropology. The course is designed for entering graduate students with the minimum analytic background. It will provide the basic analytical tools necessary to conduct and evaluate anthropological research, and lay the foundation for more advanced courses in statistical analysis (multivariate analysis, morphometric analysis, etc.). The major focus of the class is on learning the tools necessary to conduct the statistical analyses of data sets. Topics to be covered include both descriptive and inferential statistics: basic statistic concepts, frequency distribution, descriptive statistics, probability, hypothesis testing, difference between means, analysis of variance (ANOVA), non-parametric analysis, simple linear regression, correlation analysis, and analysis of frequencies. Examples from archaeology, biological anthropology, biosocial anthropology, and ethnology contexts will be presented whenever possible to provide a broad perspective. The statistical analysis package, "Statistica", will be utilized to perform and illustrate the statistical methods discussed in class.

Course Requirements:
There will be an in-class written midterm and final examination, and a take-home analytical final. There will also be periodic problem sets assigned throughout the semester. The problem set assignments will contribute 20% to your class grade, the midterm 30%, and the in class and take-home finals 50%.
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ANTH 82300
Seminar: Self, Body, Other
Prof. Vincent Crapanzano
GC: Wednesdays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits
[cross-listed with CL 74000] This seminar will be devoted to a theoretical consideration of notions self, body, and other, and by extension desire and power, in contemporary social, literary-critical, and philosophical thought. We will give critical attention to classificatory (cognitive), phenomenological, dialectical, pragmatic, psychoanalytic, structural and post-structural approaches. My perspective will be ethnographic, less in the sense of looking for "causes" and "explanations" for contemporary articulations of these prevailing notions than in putting them into question by calling attention to contrastive modes of articulation and understanding. We will consider, for example, the way notions of the body have served to anneal a certain approach to the individual, psyche, language, desire, and death. We will look at the "denuding" of relationship that is perpetuated by an abstract dialectic of self and other. We will look at masking -- fashion and make-up -- in terms of self- and other- alienation, projection, and the "hovering" within the non-space between mirror and mirror image and by extension other reflecting media: the screen, the word. Readings will include works by Hegel, Foucault, Freud, Bataille, Lacan, Kristeva, and Butler as well as more substantive literary and ethnographic ones. Two short workshop papers will be required as well as one longer research paper.
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ANTH 82303
Field Methods and Proposal Writing
Prof. Louise Lennihan
GC: Fridays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits This course is designed as a workshop in which students will prepare a full-scale research proposal suitable for submission to funding agencies and for the Second Examination. Its purpose is to provide students with time, advice and feedback on proposal writing and the funding process. The aims of the workshop are (a) to assist in refinement of your research topic and its presentation; and (b) to allow you to anticipate as much as possible about the review and funding process. Classes will include discussion of such practical questions as the varying requirements of different funding agencies, how to a budget, how to obtain research affiliation abroad, etc. as well as discussion of research design and proposal writing. Students will be expected to complete various assignments designed to take them through the process of writing a proposal. Students will also be required to critique thoroughly various drafts of classmates' proposals. The final grade will be based on these assignments and a revised draft of a complete proposal.
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ANTH 83300
Archaeological Field and Laboratory Methods
Prof. Sophia Perdikaris
Brooklyn College: Tuesdays, 3:15 - 5:15 p.m., Rm. 538NE Ingersoll, 3 credits Intensive instruction in archaeological field and laboratory methods and techniques through lectures and hands-on assignments. The course will cover artifact curation, collection management, laboratory procedures, drawing and recording, cast making, mapping, remote sensing, soils and sediments, museum studies and outreach. The course requirements are a series of assignments reflecting the various topics introduced.
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ANTH 83800
Archaeology of the Bronze Age: Ancient Societies in Transition
Prof. Arthur Bankoff
Brooklyn College: Tuesdays, 12:55 - 2:55 p.m., Rm. 3203 James Hall, 3 credits A seminar course (limit 10 students) intensively studying the time period of the Bronze Age in Europe (roughly 3000 BC -700 BC, depending on which part of Europe is in question). Among topics investigated through the reading and discussion of primary (site reports) and secondary (syntheses) materials will be: are there cultural/structural commonalities among the Bronze Age cultures of Europe? If so, what differentiates the cultures of the Bronze Age from those of earlier and later periods? If not, what is the utility of this temporal subdivision? Are there new social/economic/ religious structures apparent in the Bronze Age? What are the effects of the broadening use of metals? Why are there so many different new artifact types? And so on.A reading knowledge of some European language other than English is preferable, but not required. Basic archaeological background is necessary. Students will give oral seminar presentations and prepare a written paper.
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PhD Program in Anthropology - The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309
phone: 212.817.8005 fax: 212.817.1501 email:

This departmental publication supplements the official Bulletin of The Graduate School as well as the current Graduate Center Student Handbook and "Announcement of Courses."