DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY Course Descriptions Spring 2006

20100/40100. Inka and Aztec States (=LACS 20100/40305). This course provides a comparative study of the emergence, organization, and transformation of the two historically-documented states of the native Americas: the Inka and the Aztec. Students will have the opportunity to analyze ethnohistorical and archaeological data in order to critically evaluate models of the pre-industrial "state" while gauging the anthropological significance of either convergence or particularity in the historical development of these centralized political formations. Within this comparative framework, emphasis will be placed on investigating state ideological programs, the operation of hierarchical political economies, and processes of imperial expansion. Therefore, we will appraise the formation of culturally distinct bureaucratic structures and evaluate varied mechanisms of social control and administration. In turn, the way in which local peoples complied with, manipulated, or resisted imperial economic extraction and religious ideologies constitutes an important subject of inquiry. Ultimately, a comparison of Aztec and Inka state institutions will permit an intensive examination of critical issues related to the study of ancient complex society. These include: the establishment of divine kingship and royal dynasties; the effects of the state on changing gender, kinship, and class relations; the rise of new ideologies of space, inequality (alterity), and ethnogenesis; the role played by institutionalized violence and militarism in the maintenance of elite power structures; the varied success of state-sponsored cults in reproducing imperial hegemony; and the impact of centralized administration on everyday life and identity politics. Edward Swenson. MW 3:00-4:20

20531. Gender and Labor in Global Perspective (=INST 29304, GNDR 29301). In this course, we will attempt to examine cultural constructions of labor and gender as they impact one another across a series of cultures. While productive "labor" or "work" is often envisaged as a stereotypically male activity, we will try to think through a series of problems that run against the grain of this stereotype: first, we will ask how women play a role in producing economic value within a number of different societies in often unrecognized ways; second, we will ask how various "divisions of labor" help to produce and reinforce culturally constructed notions of gender; finally, we will ask to what use a critical examination of gender can have for a critical re-examination of our most cherished intellectual notions about "the economy."
Central to the course is an examination of gender and labor within anthropological fieldsites and other empirical locations around the globe. Looking at agricultural practices and forms of exchange in Melanesia will help us appreciate the anthropological complexity and cultural centrality of the relation between labor and gender. Likewise, perspectives from Malaysian and Thai capitalism and from the "post-socialist" countries of Eastern Europe will help us to refine the categories that we will use during the rest of the course.
We will also focus on problems such as: men and industrial work; women, domesticity and value-production; the role of gender in economics as a science of value; and the emergence of a high-tech global economy and its impact on gender roles. Kenneth McGill. MW 1:30-2:50.

21246. Intensive Study of a Culture: Haiti (=LACS 21246). This course explores Haitian culture and society through historical and ethnographic studies of crisis and disorder, from the personal crises of sickness and trauma to wider crises of political and economic forms. Emphasis will be given to the democratic movement in Haiti, from the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship to the present political crisis. We will also consider the problems and possibilities of various forms of cultural representation, including ethnography, fiction, and film. Greg Beckett. TuTh 12:00 Noon-1:20.

21247. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Caucasus. The Caucasus occupies a distinctive place within both the ancient and modern anthropologicalimagination. From the summit of Mt. Ararat (Noah's legendary refuge) to the peaks of Mt. Elbrus (mythical prison of the exiled Prometheus), the Caucasus has been consistently anchored to enduring tropes of disobedience, punishment, and redemption. This mythic moral precariousness has long provided profound depth to the regions perceived geographic liminality, betwixt and between the continental worlds of Europe and Asia (a theme central to the early 20th century novel Ali and Nino). The regions extraordinary diversity in languages and ethnicities has generated a deep suspicion of the region by those surrounding it and sparked profound social tragedies. But it has also stimulated an artistic curiosity that has generated profound meditations on culture and social life. This course will explore the Caucasus through an examination of its archaeology, history, literature, music and film. We will examine the entanglement of the regions history with its internal and external representations in order to get a sense of the array of forces shaping the region today. Adam T. Smith. Thurs 3:00-5:50

21248. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Aymara (=LACS 21248). Aymara-speaking peoples of highland Bolivia and southern Peru constitute a diverse group linked through common elements including social structure, religion, and cosmology. In Bolivia, where they constitute one-third of the population, they have gained significant political power and were central actors in uprisings such as October 2003's Guerra de Gas (Gas War). This course provides an overview of Aymara societies, striving to maintain awareness of the complexity and diversity within that category. Students will gain an understanding of the Aymara peoples and their interactions with the global capitalist system. Knowledge of Spanish is helpful but not required. Clare Sammells. TuTh 1:30-2:50.

21304/42100. Modern Readings in Anthropology: Kinship and Every Day Life. PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. Once the focus of fierce debate in anthropology and social theory, in recent years the topic of kinship seems to have given way to broader concerns, such as globalization and the politics of identity. Yet the problem of kinship often resurfaces. This course provides a critical survey of debates, old and new, in the study of kinship with an eye towards exploring their relevance to research on the reproduction and erosion of sociocultural difference. Readings range from classical treatments to recent reformulations that use kinship as a lens for exploring the dynamics of history, memory, and power. Danilyn Rutherford. Wed 9:30-12:20.

21305/45300. Modern Readings in Anthropology: Explorations in Oral Narrative: The Folk Tale (= HUCL 45300). Class limited to thirty-five students. This course studies the role of storytelling and narrativity in society and culture: comparison of folk tale traditions; the shift from oral to literate traditions and the impact of writing; the principal schools of analysis of narrative structure and function; and the place of narrative in the disciplines law, psychoanalysis, politics, history, philosophy, and anthropology. Story per¬formance and contemporary storytelling in America are considered and encouraged. James Fernandez. 4:30-5:50 TuTh

21420. Ethnographic Methods. (PQ. 3rd year anthropology concentrators only. Limit 15). This course will introduce undergraduates interested in anthropology to the tradition and practice of ethnography. Students will be exposed to a wide range of investigative and analytical techniques used in ethnographic research and to multiple forms of interpretation and presentation of ethnographic data beyond the traditional monograph. Students will be required to apply the methods discussed in class through small field assignments to be carried out within the city of Chicago, and through a final ethnographic project which will be developed in consultation with the instructor. Students will be encouraged to develop innovative and creative ethnographic projects, incorporating various forms of media and technology, and which can be carried out in collaboration with local community partners.
We will begin with a quick overview of some foundational texts in anthropology, focusing specifically on the canonization of fieldwork and the ethnographic method as an essential component of the discipline. We will then briefly review some fundamental shifts in the ethnographic project, including recent propositions for rethinking the nature of fieldwork and of the field itself. In the third week students will deliver in-class presentations on contemporary ethnographies, thus exposing the class to a wide range of ethnographic projects, approaches, and possibilities. We will then move quickly to a discussion of ethics and models for collaboration as students begin to construct their own projects. The second half of the quarter will be devoted to practical and substantive exploration of the most common components of ethnographic research, and to the development of individual projects. Yarimar Bonilla. WF 3:00-4:20.

22400/34900. Big Science and the Birth of the National Security State (= HIPS 21200). This course examines the mutual creation of big science and the American national security state during the Manhattan Project. It presents the atomic bomb project as the center of a new orchestration of scientific, industrial, military, and political institutions in everyday American life. Exploring the linkages between military technoscience, nation-building, concepts of security and international order, this class interrogates one of the foundational structures in the modern world system. Joseph Masco. Wed 10:30-1:20.

23030/51510. Portuguese Colonialism, Lusophone Post-Colonialism: Brazil, Cape Verde, Portugal (=LACS 27750/37750). Within contemporary social science literatures on identity issues in the former Portuguese colonies, there is no escaping the theme of miscegenation. Whether criticized as racist strategy or democratic myth, the treatment of race as a discursive concept, be it categorized or referenced as ‘mixed' or ‘pure', is generally analytically compromised; the discursive properties that culturally reference or recognize racial distinctions (properties that do not conceptually distinguish forms of racial thinking, be they ‘biological' or ‘cultural') subsequently treat racial differences as ontologically real, or real in the sense that they represent discernable realities or experiences. The objective of this course is not to dislodge or even question "ambiguous" vs. "certain" racial narratives, nor to presume or identify some "truth" about racial origins or essences. Rather this course considers the political processes that have historically fated continued analytic reflections on the myths and contradictions of miscegenation in Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Goa, Mozambique and Portugal. This course will also focus on the post-colonial reconfigurations of race, ethnicity and national identity; these will be approached from a "post-lusotropicalist" perspective - one that takes into account contemporary debates on identity politics but that does not forget that Lusotropicalism has been established as a hegemonic cultural discourse. Miguel Vale de Almeida, Kesha Fikes. Thurs 1:30-4:20

23101-23102-23103. Introduction to Latin American Civilization I, II, III. (=HIST 16100-16200-16300, LTAM 16100-16200-16300, LACS 4700-34800, SOSC 26100-26200-26300) PQ: Completion of the general education requirement in social sciences. May be taken in sequence or individually. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. For course description, see History. This three-quarter sequence introduces students to the history and cultures of Latin America, including Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean Islands. The first quarter examines the origins of civilizations in Latin America with a focus on the political, social, and cultural features of the major pre-Columbian civilizations of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec, concluding with the Spanish and Portuguese conquest. The second quarter considers the evolution of colonial societies, the wars for independence, and the emergence of Latin American nation-states in the changing international context of the nineteenth century. The third quarter addresses the twentieth century, with a special emphasis on the challenges of economic, political, and social development in the region. D. Borges, A. Kolata, Autumn; D. Borges, Winter, E. Kouri, Spring. MWF 1:30-2:20

24300/40300. Medicine and Culture (=HiPSS 273). Class limited to fifty students. Diverse systems of thought and practice concerning health, illness, and the management of the body and person in everyday and ritual contexts are examined. This course seeks to develop a framework for studying the cultural and historical constitution of healing practices, especially the evolu¬tion of Western biomedicine. Jean Comaroff. TuTh 10:30-11:50.

24511/34502 The Anthropology of Museums II (=SOSC 34600). This two-quarter seminar will examine various organizational and ideological features of museums from an anthropological perspective. The readings -- both theoretical and ethnographic -- cover a wide range of subjects, among which are the Columbian Exposition, the Holocaust, interactive exhibitions, and the art market. In addition, the course includes visits to museums around Chicago with guest professionals as guides into the culture of museums. A fieldwork experience will be an integral part of the Spring quarter. Raymond Fogelson, Morris Fred. Wed 5:30-8:20 pm. Haskell 315.

25305/35410. Anthropology of Food and Cuisine. Contemporary human foodways are not only highly differentiated in cultural and social terms, but often have long and complicated histories. Anthropologists have long given attention to food - but up until quite recently, they have done so in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion. Food has figured prominently in theories of gift exchange, religious sacrifice, classificatory systems, the analysis of social structure and symbolic systems, but also political economy, cultural ecology, and applied work in famine-modeling, food security, and medical anthropology. More recently, food and eating have become the focus of an anthropology of the body, and have come to figure in attempts to theorize sensuality and the politics of pleasure and suffering. This course will explore several such themes with a view towards both the micro- and macro-politics of food by examining a range of ethnographic and historical case studies and theoretical texts. It takes the format of a seminar augmented by lectures (during the first few weeks), scheduled video screenings, and individual student presentations during the rest of the course. Stephan Palmié. MW 1:30-2:50.

25906. Shamans and Epic Poets of Central Asia (=NEHC 20766/30766, EEUR 20766/30766). This course explores the rituals, oral literature, and music associated with the nomadic cultures of Central Asia. Kagan Arik, Wed 1:30-4:20.

26900/46900. Archaeological Data Sets. This course focuses on the methodological basis of archaeological data analysis. Its goals are twofold, first to provide students with an opportunity to examine research questions through the study of archaeological data, and second to allow students to evaluate evidential claims in light of analytical results. We will consider data collection, sampling and statistical populations, exploratory data analysis, and statistical inference. The course is built around computer applications and, thus, will also provide an introduction to computer analysis, data encoding, and data base structure. Mark Lycett. TuTh 9:00-10:30. Lab Wed 9:30-12:20

27001-27002-27003//37001-37002-37003. Introduction to Linguistics I, II, III (= Ling 20100-20200-20300/30100-30200-30300, SOSC 21700-21800-21900). PQ: Must be taken in sequence. This course is an introductory survey of methods, findings, and problems in areas of major interest within lin¬guistics and of the relationship of linguistics to other disciplines. Topics include the biological basis of language, basic notions of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, basic syntactic typology of language, phonetics, phonology, morphology, language acquisition, linguistic variation, and linguistic change. I Yakubovich. TuTh 1:30-2:50.

27120/37120. Language in Face to Face Interaction (=HUDV 27120/37120; LING 27120/37120). The course provides a basic introduction to and fundamental grounding in interactional sociolinguistics, particularly as it developed in sociology and then moved into anthropology. We will first consider foundational ideas about how concepts of self and other and of social reality emerge in social interaction, in the work of George Herbert Mead, Alfred Schutz, Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel. Then attention will turn to the development of conversation analysis in this tradition by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson. The rest of the course will address ways that ideas in this tradition have been expanded upon and combined with other intellectual traditions to yield the complex and varied approaches to language in face to face interaction that we work with today. Susan Philips. TuTh 3:00-4:20.

27610. Creation and Creativity (=BPRO 27600, SCTH 32540) PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. This seminar will explore several creation stories from anthropological, literary, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. We will compare the accounts of the beginning in Genesis, Hesiod's Theogony, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Bhagavad Gita, the Maya's Popol Vuh, and other sources, including Native American ones. We will explore the ways cosmic creation has been imagined in world culture. Are there universals, and what is culturally specific? We will also try to delineate human literary creativity and ask questions about the relationship between individual creativity and the cultural myths of creation. Special attention will be paid to creation motifs such as, "chaos/order," "one/two creators", "beauty of creation/terror of destruction," and "creation from above/below," as well as to the carnal and erotic imagery of the creation accounts. We will consider at least one modern theory of the beginning of the universe. Paul Friedrich, Katya Mitova. Thurs 9:00-11:50.

28300/38200. Comparative Primate Morphology (=EVOL 38200, HIPS 23500). This course carries 200 units of credit. Functional morphology of locomotor, alimentary, and reproductive systems in pri¬mates is studied. Dissections are performed on monkeys and apes. Russell Tuttle. MWF 1:30-4:20

28410/38810. Zooarchaeology. (=NEAA 20035/30035)  PQ: Any introductory course in archaeology. This course provides undergraduates and graduate students with an introduction to the use of animal bones in archaeological research. Students will gain hands-on experience analyzing faunal remains from an archaeological site in the Near East. The class will also address some of the major theoretical and methodological issues involved in the use of animal bones as a source of information about prehistoric societies. The course will consist of lectures, laboratory sessions, and original research projects using collections of animal bone from the archaeological excavations at Hacnebi, Turkey. Topics to be covered include: 1) identifying, ageing and sexing animal bones; 2) zooarchaeological sampling, measurement, quantification, and problems of taphonomy; 3) computer analysis of animal bone data; 4) reconstructing prehistoric hunting and pastoral economies, especially: animal domestication, hunting strategies, herding systems, seasonality, and pastoral production in complex societies. Gil Stein. TuTh 11:30-11:50.

32003. Topics in Native North America: Black Indians (=MAPS 32000). This course covers 500 years of African, African-American and Native American relations omitted or obfuscated in much of the American historical record. Photographic and oral historic evidence will help to fill in some of the gaps; biographical sketches will personalize the historical narrative. The chronological structure of the course is complemented by weeks presentations of ongoing research on recognized Black Indians.  R. Fogeslon, AT Straus, Fri 1:30-4:20.

32103. Culture and Power, Part II: Subjectivities (=HUDV 32213). In this class, the second quarter of the two part sequence Culture, Power, Subjectivity, we focus closely on the question of subjectivity and the formation of subjects, and how these questions have been addressed in contemporary social theory. Readings will include Althusser, Foucault, Butler, Bakhtin, and Voloshinov, among others. The goal of the class will be both for students to acquire a basic familiarity with diverse approaches to the question of how subjects and subjectivity are formed. Given the fundamental tension between post-structuralist approaches and the assumptions about subjectivity derived from psychological anthropology, one of the goals of the class will be to think about if any bridging between these approaches is either possible or desirable. Jennifer Cole. Wed. 3:00-5:50.

34814. Anthropology and Literature: World Poetry. This course will explore fundamentals of poetry and poetics on a world basis: the music of language, theory of tropes, poetry and myth, linguistic-poetic relativism, the unique individual, sociopolitical context, the moral intention of the poet, metaphysical questions, and so forth. The four poetic worlds to be central this year are: T'ang Chinese (e.g., Tu Fu), Russian (i.e., Pushkin), native American (e.g. Quechua, Eskimo), and three American poets (Dickenson, Frost, Hughes). Brief introductions to other poetic worlds (e.g., Villon, Baudelaire, haiku). Texts to be used in part: J. Rothenburg's Technicians of the Sacred, E. Weinberger's Anthropology of Classic Chinese Poetry. Paul Friedrich. Fri 9:30-12:20.

37302. Phonology II (=LING 20900/30900). PQ: Anthro 373. The principles of generative phonology are introduced and studied in detail, emphasizing the role of formalism and abstractness in phonological analysis. The emphasis is on Sound Pattern of English theory, with brief discussion of more recent autosegmental and metrical models. Jason Riggle. MonWed 1:30-2:50.

37500. Morphology (=LING 21000/31000). PQ: Anthro 373. This course deals with linguistic structure and patterning beyond the phono¬logical level, primarily from a structuralist point of view. It concentrates on analysis of grammatical and formal oppositions and their structural relation¬ships and interrelationships. J. Sadock. MW 3:00-4:20.

39001-02. Archaeological Theory/Method. PQ: Required for first-and second-year graduate students in archaeology; open to undergraduates only with consent of instructor; this course carries 200 units of credit. This course provides an intensive critical orientation to the logics of archaeological interpretation and aesthetics of archaeographic representation from the 19th century to the present. Students will engage in close readings of canonical theoretical texts in order to track the major philosophical shifts in the discipline from its antiquarian origins through postmodernity. Simultaneously, we will examine the reports from a group of landmark research projects in order to document how theory was put into practice. In addition to lectures and discussion sessions, students will conduct a series of debates intended to expose the central tenets underlying the primary paradigm shifts of the last century. Kathleen Morrison. TuTh 1:30-4:20

40801. Memory Practices (=HUDV 30801/40801). PQ Undergrads w/ consent of instructor. This course considers the social, psychological and cultural underpinnings of memorythat elusive faculty which is so central to the constitution of self and social life. We will start the class with an introduction to several coreways of thinking about memory: as structured by social groups (Halbwachs), as a cognitivecapability (Bartlett, Neisser), and as an important part of the human psycho-dynamic makeup (Freud and his interlocutors) and as embodied practice (Connerton/Mauss/Bourdieu). Having sketched out some tools for thinking about memory, we will move on to consider the variety of different kinds of memory, and how memory is constituted through diverse social practices, the effect of different kinds of technology on memory, and the role of memory in social and political struggle. Jennifer Cole. Tues 9:00-11:50

41200. Anthropology of History (=HIST 44901). Anthropologists have long been concerned with the temporal dimension of human culture and sociality, but, until fairly recently (and with significant exceptions), have rarely gone beyond processual modeling. This has dramatically changed. Anthropologists have played a prominent role in the so-called "historic turn in the social sciences", acknowledging and theorizing the historical subjectivities and historical agency of the ethnographic "other", but also problematizing the historicity of the ethnographic endeavor itself. The last decades have not only seen a proliferation of empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated historical ethnographies, but also a decisive move towards ethnographies of the historical imagination. Taking its point of departure from a concise introduction to the genealogy of the trope of "historicity" in anthropological discourse, this course aims to explore the possibilities of an anthropology of historical consciousness, discourse and praxis - i.e. the ways in which human groups select, represent, give meaning to, and strategically manipulate constructions of the past. In this, our discussion will not just focus on non-western forms of historical knowledge, but include the analysis of western disciplined historiography as a culturally and historically specific form of promulgating conceptions of the past and its relation to the present. Stephan Palmié. Tues 1:30-4:20

42000. Anthropological Methods. (PQ: Required of 2nd year social/cultural/linguistic anthropology graduate students. Others only with consent of the instructor.) This course provides a critical introduction to the methods of anthropology, paying special attention to topic formation, deployment of theoretical resources, techniques of engagement in "fields," and the politics and ethics of fieldwork and ethnographic knowledge production. Our approach will combine readings in critical anthropology relevant to methodological practice with workshop-style demonstrations of particular techniques for gathering and analyzing field material. The limits and powers of ethnography (broadly construed) will be explored through exploratory engagement with students' ongoing projects and a few examples of anthropological writing. This course is intended to help students develop the tools needed to develop their own research objects and strategies while reflecting critically on anthropology as a practice. Judith Farquhar. Fri 10:30-1:20.

47300. Historical Linguistics (=LING 21300/31300). A. Yu. TuTh 10:30-11;50

52200. Proposal Preparation. Michael Silverstein. ARR

52210. Archaeological Research Design. Shannon Dawdy. Fri 1:30-4:20.

57210. Honorification in Interaction (HDUV 41001, LING 57210). Linguistic honorification is one most obvious ways culture and social structure are encoded in language. Lexical and morphological aspects of language structure in particular are regularly ideologized locally and by linguists as having to do with the negotiation of respect, politeness, and hierarchical status differentiation. Such forms and their meanings have been richly documented, yet there has been relatively little examination of honorifics in actual socially situated language use until quite recently. The purpose of this course is to consider how our understanding of linguistic honorifics is altered by examination of the use of linguistic honorifics in face to face interaction. We will address some concepts that have shaped current understandings of honorifics, such as speech style, speech register, and the concept of honorifics itself. We will then examine recent examples of research on honorifics in face to face interaction and also engage in a collaborative analysis of transcripts of the use of Tongan chiefly lexical honorifics in several kinds of public institutional settings in Polynesian Tonga. Issues include the relations between language ideologies and language use, the relations between linguistic honorification and other semiotic systems, and the links between the strategic use of honorifics and broader sociocultural processes such as ethnic identity construction and nation state building processes. Susan Philips. Wed 1:30-4:20.

57709. Linguistic Anthropology Seminar: Linguistic Anthropology of Qualia: Iconicity, Indexicality, Iconic Indexicality. Michael Silverstein. ARR

58900. Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Ideology. This course presents an intensive study of archaeological approaches to ritual practice, religious symbols, and ideological worldviews within a comparative cross-cultural framework. Students will examine key theoretical paradigms in the anthropology of religion (from Durkheim to Bloch and beyond) while probing the ways in which inferences on social process, political structures, and prehistoric belief systems can be made from ritual contexts preserved in the material record. Therefore, emphasis will be placed on critically evaluating both archaeological methods deployed in the analysis of ancient ritual as well as theoretical formulations commonly proposed by archaeologists to interpret the material signatures of ceremonial activity. Themes addressed in the course include: a critique of functionalist interpretations of prehistoric religion popular in current archaeological research; the intersection of power and ritual experience; the materialization of religious performance and the aesthetics of ideological production; ritual as a technology of production; and the archaeological investigation of extant world religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism (with a particular focus on the potential political controversies posed by such research). Edward Swenson. Tues 10:30-1:20.