Fall 2009 Course Descriptions

Professor Blim -- Capitalist Crises
The seminar takes a long historical look at the variety of crises characteristic of capitalism since the 16th century. Emphasis will be placed on theories and cases. In the past quarter century, theories have gotten more sophisticated, and our knowledge cases more particular and nuanced. A third of the seminar’s sessions will be devoted to the present crisis, starting the crisis clock in the mid-1970s. The global origins and impacts of capitalism’s crises are central to the seminar’s work. Syllabus.
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Professor Cavanaugh -- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
This course examines the complex interrelationships among language, gender, and sexuality. We will consider how language is used in the construction of gender and sexuality and how gender and sexuality are expressed in and enacted through language, as well as how these intersect with race, class, religion, ethnicity, and distributions of power. The focus will be both theoretical and empirical. We will explore how understandings of the relationships of language and gender have changed over the last 3 decades since Robin Lakoff first theorized “Women’s Language,” and look at the more recent focus on language and sexuality. We will examine various important topics including: socialization, gossip, multilingualism, politeness, and the political economy of language, gender, and sexuality. Our readings will cover a broad ethnographic range. While much of the research on language and gender has been done in the United States, case studies will also include Brazil, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Austria.
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Professor Robotham -- Core Course in Cultural Anth: Contemporary Issues & Debates 1
This course introduces students to current issues and controversies in anthropology. It attempts to link these discussions to earlier concerns and approaches in order to provide a sense of the range of knowledge in the discipline. This material is intended as part of the preparation for the first exam in the Ph.D. Program. The course is also structured to give students an early opportunity to meet program faculty working in areas of common interest. Syllabus.
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Professor Rothman -- Core Course in Primate Ecology and Behavior
This graduate core course for the Physical Anthropology program provides an overview of the ecology, behavior, and social systems of nonhuman primates and examines variation in these aspects of primate biology from the perspectives afforded by evolutionary ecology and socioecological theory. The course provides an introduction to the grouping patterns, mating systems, foraging ecology, and individual behavioral strategies that characterize taxa from the major groups of primates. The course covers the fundamental theoretical perspectives that modern primatologists employ to study and understand the variation in primate social systems, including the theory of evolution by natural selection, the concepts of reproductive success, inclusive fitness, kin selection, and the basic principles of primate population biology and socioecology. We also use these core principles to examine the various survival, mating, and parenting strategies seen in primates and to explore how ecological factors differentially affect the dispersal decisions and the nature of social relationships - both competitive and cooperative - of male and female primates. Several weeks of the class are also devoted to a consideration of the roles that primates play in their natural ecosystems and to their conservation.
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Professor Strassler -- Human/Machine: The Anthropology of Technology
The relationship between human beings and technology has been one of the defining problematics of modernity. This course will look at the social, political and sensory dimensions of human encounters with technology and the ways that various technologies have extended and redefined the very concept of the human. This course will combine readings in the philosophy of technology with ethnographies of particular technologies such as radio, trains, cameras, medical imaging technologies, and computers. We will also explore how the study of technology challenges some of the underlying, defining premises of anthropology, leading to new directions in theory and ethnographic practice.
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Professor Verdery -- Anthropological Approaches to Property
This course examines some of the history of work on property in anthropology or relevant to it (we read some Locke, Maine, Fustel de Coulanges, Malinowski, and Gluckman) and then takes up a series of topics in current research.  These include privatization in Eastern Europe, cultural property rights, intellectual property issues, property and colonialism, property claims on the body, public goods and commons, and bioprospecting. The aim is to provide an overview that might help students settle on a research topic in this broad domain of inquiry.
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PhD Program in Anthropology - The CUNY Graduate Center
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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."