Spring 2005 Courses

Cultural Anthropology, Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology

ANTH 00000- Colloquium on Teaching Undergraduate Anthropology
GC: Alternate Wednesdays 6:30-8:30 PM, Room 6402, 0 credits
Professor Michael Blim
NOTES:
Students do not register for this workshop.
Workshop meets on alternate Wednesdays.

ANTH 70000- Current Topics in Anthropology
GC: F 4:15-6:15 PM, Room C198, 0 credits [66169]
Professor Louise Lennihan

ANTH 70200- Core Course in Cultural Anthropology: Contemporary Issues and Debates II
GC: F 2:00-4:00 PM, Room 6496, 3 credits [66170]
Professors Leith Mullings and Jeff Maskovsky
NOTE:
Open only to Level 1 Graduate Center Anthropology students.

This course, like 70100 in the fall, is designed to introduce students to the current issues, debates, and controversies in cultural anthropology. This semester we consider anthropological perspectives on such sites of inequality and difference as class, race, gender, and sexuality. Next we reflect on the ways in which contemporary 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.

ANTH 70400- Contemporary Anthropological Theory
GC: W 11:45 AM -1:45 PM, Room 6496, 3 credits [66171]
Professor Talal Asad
NOTE:
Open only to Level 1 Graduate Center Anthropology students.

There is no permanent way of defining anthropolgy or "the core" of anthropology. What we have is a complex set of interconnected disciplines. Tracing the geneaology 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 evolution 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 criticsm, 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.

ANTH 71200- Diaspora
Hunter: M 5:30-7:20 PM, Room 712 HN, 3 credits [66172]
Professor Jacqueline Nassy Brown

What is "diaspora"? Is it a population that lives outside of its original homeland? An ethnic community spread across nation-states? Or is diaspora a state of mind? Does the term mean the same thing to various diasporic peoples around the world? Or to anthropologists and other scholars? This graduate seminar will explore the politics of diaspora, including the efforts at defining and theorizing this complex form of community, identity and subjectivity. Themes will include nations and nationalism, immigration, transnationalism and globalization, place, ethnicity, race, and gender. The course will likely include the following "usual suspects" in the field of disapora: Jews, Blacks, and South Asians.

ANTH 71700- Anthropology of Aesthetics
GC: R 11:45 AM - 1:45 PM, Room 6493, 3 credits [66173]
Professor Jonathan Shannon

What can anthropology bring to the study of aesthetics? What might an aesthetic anthropology (versus "the anthropology of art") be like? This course examines how anthropologists and others in the human sciences have approached the study of aesthetic forms. Beginning with a review of conceptions of art, expressive culture, and performance, we will explore aesthetics from a number of theoretical perspectives (Kantian, Marxian, Boasian, Freudian, Structuralist, Phenomenological, Postmodern, etc.) and in such contexts as Africa, the Americas, Melanesia, and the Middle East. In addition to ethnographic case studies focusing on music, dance, visual, and verbal art, we will explore aspects of the aesthetics of everyday life experience. Students will research and present a project on aesthetic theory and practice in a specific ethnographic context. The end result will be a better appreciation of the role of the sensate body in aesthetic experience, and the power of aesthetic practices and performance to transform our world.

ANTH 71800- Religion, Morality and the State
GC: W 2:00-4:00 PM, Room 6493, 3 credits [66174]
Professor Mandana Limbert

The notion that modernization is always accompanied by secularization is no longer tenable. And, yet, while the anthropology of religion has often avoided analysis of the ways modern nation-states shape religious or secular subjects, anthropological studies of the state have tended to skirt the affective, the bodily and the politics of the moral. This course will explore a range of understandings of both religion and statehood, as well as how religion and nation-states mutually help constitute one another. We will discuss various ethnographic and theoretical approaches, including Rousseau, Marx, Chatterjee, Asad, and Messick, in order to explore the relationship between states and moral or religious orders, a relationship that is sometimes seen as regulative, oppositional or appropriative. We will discuss debates and assumptions about the rise of the liberal state and private religion, transformations in forms of religiosities and moralities, the management of domestic life, religion as a transnational imaginary that can challenge nation-state regimes and developmentalist and humanitarianist policies and discourses that claim grounding in moral formations.

ANTH 73200- Ethnology and Ethnography of Latin America
GC: R 4:15-6:15 PM, Room 6496, 3 credits [66175]
Professor Maria Lagos

This course examines major theoretical issues and debates in Latin American studies, in particular those relating to processes of state formation and nation building. A central aim of the course is to trace the geneaology of these debates in order to examine how scholars have approached the study of power and culture in Latin America. Selected topics include: the challenges and legacies of colonialism; agrarian and urban transformations; the historical construction of national and subaltern identities; class, ethnic and gender relations.

Recommended preliminary reading for students who are not familiar with Latin American histories:

• Peter Winn. Americas, Second edition (California University Press, 1999); and
• Eduardo Galeano. Open Veins of Latin America, 25th edition (Monthly Review Press, 1997).

ANTH 77000- Core Course in Linguistic Anthropology
GC: W 4:15-6:15 PM, Room 6494, 3 credits [66176]
[Cross-listed with LING 79100]
Professor Miki Makihara
NOTE:
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology and Linguistic students.

Language is one of the most important resources in the conduct of 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.

ANTH 80800- Doctoral Dissertation Writing
GC: F 2:00-4:00 PM, Room 6402.01, 3 credits [66177]
Professor Shirley Lindenbaum
NOTE:
Open only to Level 3 Graduate Center Anthropology students.

ANTH 81600- Environmentalism and the Politics of Nature
GC: T 4:15-6:15 PM, Room 4422, 3 credits [66178]
Professor Neil Smith

ANTH 82200- Readings in Equality
GC: R 2:00-4:00 PM, Room 6493, 3 credits [66179]
Professor Michael Blim

This seminar is composed of two parts. First, we will address what we mean by equality in the philosophically defensible sense, and explore some of the foundational literature on equality from social contract theorists through the modern radical and liberal philosophical traditions ending in Rawls, Dworkin, and Sen. Second, using a notion of economic equality developed in the first part of the seminar, we will examine remedies to economic inequality executed both in domestic and global settings. Regarding the United States, we will analyze the choices and consequences entailed in the historical establishment of the U.S. welfare state, as well as equality value of various proposals creating a guaranteed annual income. Regarding global issues, we will assay the value of proposals for greater equity among the world's populations, including not only those proposed by the Washington establishment, but also those put forward by the global justice movement.

ANTH 82303- Field Methods and Proposal Writing
GC: T 4:15-6:15 PM, Room 6300, 3 credits [66180]
Professor Louise Lennihan
NOTE:
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology students.

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.

ANTH 83300- Archaeology Field and Lab Methods
Hunter: F 5:30-7:20 PM, Room TBA, 3 credits [66181]
Professor Tom McGovern

ANTH 84100- World of the Vikings
Hunter: T 5:30-7:20 PM, Room TBA, 3 credits [66634]
Professor Tom McGovern

ANTH 84400- Contract Archaeology
Brooklyn: W 11:15 AM - 1:15 PM, Room TBA, 3 credits [66183]
Professor Arthur Bankoff

Contract archaeology (also sometimes called rescue archaeology, CRM, or public archaeology) is archaeological research conducted under the aegis of federal, state or local legislation, often in advance of highway construction or urban development. The archaeologist or archaeological firm is contracted to identify, evaluate and manage threatened sites. More archaeologists in the United States are employed by contract firms, either full or part time, at some point in their careers than are employed in academic archaeology. Graduate students in an academic setting often have to develop the skills necessary for successful entry into the entrepreneurial world of contract archaeology by themselves. This course will offer a survey of the national, state and local enabling legislation, analyze the history, development and practice of contract archaeology in the United States, and provide the student with instruction and practice in the various phases of contract work (excepting actual fieldwork). Guest lecturers from local and national firms and agencies will bring their expertise to bear on specific topics.

ANTH 89000- Seminar in Physical Anthropology
GC: F 2:00-4:00 PM, Room C198, 3 credits [66184]
Professor Eric Delson

ANTH 89901 - Independent Study/Research
in Cultural Anthropology
3-9 credits
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology students.
Permission of instructor and EO is required.

ANTH 89902 - Independent Study/Research in Archaeology
3-9 credits
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology students.
Permission of instructor and EO is required.

ANTH 89903 - Independent Study/Research
in Linguistic Anthropology
3-9 credits
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology students.
Permission of instructor and EO is required.

ANTH 89904 - Independent Study/Research
in Physical Anthropology
3-9 credits
Open only to Graduate Center Anthropology students.
Permission of instructor and EO is required.

ANTH 90000 - Dissertation Supervision
1 credit

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."