DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY Course Descriptions Spring 2007

20100/40100. Inka and Aztec States (=LACS 20100/40305). This course is an intensive examination of the origins, structure, and meaning of two native states of the ancient Americas: the Inca and the Aztec. Lectures are framed around an examination of theories of state genesis, function, and transformation, with special reference to the economic, institutional, and symbolic bases of indigenous state development. The course is broadly comparative in perspective and considers the structural significance of insti¬tutional features that are either common to or unique expressions of these two Native American states. Alan Kolata. TuTh 1:30-2:50

20703. Introduction to African Civilization-3 (=SOSC 22700, AFAM 20703). This third quarter of African Civ focuses on postcolonial Africa. While mainstream media and even scholarly depictions of Africa continue to represent a continent rife with disorder, we will attempt to complicate such depictions through an examination of Africa's awkward place within the global economy, moral and political imaginary, and development apparatus. The first part of the course will examine classic anthropological theories of social order in African societies and then will move through later anthropological attempts to introduce movement and temporality to African social systems. Arriving in the postcolonial moment, we will look at anthropological and literary analyses of the African state, ethnic politics, and corruption. Finally we will turn to ethnographic descriptions of how African postcolonial subjects attempt to contend with such predicaments. Particular attention will be paid to moral discourses like witchcraft as well as moral reform movements like Pentecostalism in different national and ethnic contexts. Robert Blunt. TuTh 1:30-2:50.

21217. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Luo of Kenya. This course is designed to present an introduction to the Luo of Kenya, a Nilotic-speaking group of some 3 million people living on the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria. It is intended to convey a sense of contemporary Luo culture and society and the complex history that has led to the present moment. It is equally concerned to use the Luo case in order to give students a sense of the ethnographic practices and theoretical concerns of Anthropology - to show in detail how anthropologists study and represent other cultures. The Luo are of particular interest in this regard because there are many Luo academics and intellectuals who have published their own analyses and literary accounts of Luo culture and history. Hence, one has the opportunity to compare alien and indigenous representations. The Luo are also of particular interest because they have been traditionally a stateless society that has had to adapt over the past century to being incorporated into a colonial and post-colonial state, and this local history exposes in acute form some of the problems and contradictions that are found more generally in current African politics, law and economics. The course will focus upon such things as Luo kinship and marriage patters, Luo conceptions of space and time, Luo religion and the transformative effects of Christianity, the differences and connections between rural and urban contexts, the role of the Luo in colonial and post-colonial Kenyan history, and transformations of the moral economy and the gendered division of labor. Michael Dietler TuTh 12-1:20

20930. Race & Sexual Politics in Postaparthied South Africa (=CRPC 28106, GNDR 24802). Sexuality was, of course, deeply implicated in South Africa's colonial and apartheid history. With the emergence from that past come notions of equality, citizenship, nation, identity, and "human rights" which are grounded in particular relationships to race, but which have also meant unprecedented transformations in terms of sexuality. Witness for example the inclusion of "sexual orientation" in the constitutional equality clause and the groundbreaking activism of the Treatment Action Campaign. However, the ‘post apartheid' transition is also characterized by the persistence of apartheid logics and the incapacity of the new state to consolidate moral community and to transform the conditions of daily existence for most South Africans. This class will explore the complex ways in which sexuality figures in South Africa's transition and continues to be intimately linked to renegotiations of race. We will consider, for example, how sexuality features on some of the primary institutions of the national transition, as well as transformations in taxonomies of sex and identity, the embeddedness of sexuality in geography and space, and the increasingly pressing issues of HIV/AIDS and violence. Jennifer Spruill TuTh 9:00-10:20

21251/32200. Intensive Study of a Culture: Modern China. PQ Primarily for undergraduates. Contemporary China is often spoken of as undergoing deep and rapid social change. Certainly globalizing forces have been especially evident in all parts of China over the last couple of decades. At the same time, like the rest of East Asia and the Pacific Rim, China has developed distinctive social, cultural, and political forms, many of which circulate nationally and transnationally. This course will come to terms with both the processes of change that have characterized the last few decades and with a few recent social and cultural phenomena of interest. Because the scholarly literature lags behind the pace of transformation in China, we will draw on a wide variety of materials: ethnography, memoir, fiction films, essays, historical studies, short stories, websites. Emphasis in class discussions will be on grasping how contemporary Chinese realities are experienced from viewpoints within China - this is the sense in which the course is intensive study of a "culture." Readings and materials will be divided into several major units concerned with 1) historical memory, 2) rural China, 3) urban life, 4) labor migration, and 5) popular culture. Students will be encouraged to undertake, as a term project, their own investigation of some aspect of contemporary cultural change in China. Judith Farquhar. TuTh 1:30-2:50

21310. Modern Readings in Anthropology: The Anthropology of Science and Medicine. This course is intended to serve as an introduction to some of the classics of science studies and medical anthropology and as an exploration of the use and relevance of science, particularly bioscience and medicine, in the global south. The first third of the course is dedicated to reading some of the classics in science studies and medical anthropology. We then move into reading ethnographies of science and medicine, and discussing how relevant some theories of science are to specific topics and cases. We will focus on the role of science in the developing world, particularly in Latin America, and what questions the use (strategic, intentional, or otherwise) of science and medicine by their respective practitioners pose for our conceptualizations of what science is, who does it, to what ends is it used, and how to think about the interrelationship between science and society. Katherine McGurn. MW 9:30-10:50

21417. Practice of Anthropology: Towards an Anthropology of Secularism. What consistency does the category of 'secularism' have across political and ideological contexts? How might anthropology as a discipline shed light on this category? This course addresses these questions from both a historical and comparative perspective. The course's first half will examine the history of secularization, including the articulation of religion as a social category, and the Enlightenment circumscription of religion within the ‘private' sphere. The second half of the course will consider contemporary cases in which secular and religious principles seem to collide: the crisis of secularism in India, the Rushdie affair, the Nursi movement in Turkey, and, the controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammed. Finally, the course will close with a close reading of a recent ethnography of Turkish secularism. Jeremy Walton. TuTh 12-1:20

21420. Ethnographic Methods. (PQ. 3rd year anthropology majors only. Limit 15). This course will Introduce undergraduates interested in anthropology to ethnographic theory and practice, and situate ethnography within social science research more generally. Students will be exposed to a wide range of investigative and analytical techniques used in ethnographic research and to multiple forms of interpretation and representation of ethnographic data. 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 and to incorporate various forms of media and technology. The course is restricted to 3rd and 4th year anthropology majors, and will be particularly useful for students intending to write senior theses the following year. A.C. Gilbert. TuTh 3-4:20

22105/32300. Anthropology of Science (=HIPS 21301). Focusing on ethnographic studies of scientific practices and objects, this course provides an introduction to contemporary science studies. Joseph Masco. Wed. 12:30-3:20 p.m.

22205/31700. Slavery and Unfree Labor. Contrary to widespread popular conceptions, American chattel slavery is only one of many historically known and ethnographically documented forms of unfreedom and exploitation. This course offers a concise overview of institutions of dependency, servitude, and coerced labor in Europe and Africa, from Roman times to the onset of the Atlantic slave trade, and compares their further development (or decline) in the context of the emergence of New World plantation economies based on racial slavery. We will discuss the role of several forms of unfreedom and coerced labor in the making of what we, today, recognize as the "modern world", and reflect on the manner in which ideologies and practices associated with the idea of a free labor market supercede, or merely mask, relations of exploitation and restricted choice. In addition, we will discuss some of the thorny issues raised by what is sometimes called "neo-slavery", and touch upon the troubling possibilities for the commodification of human body functions and body parts (such as surrogacy or organ trade) opened up by new biomedical technologies. Stephan Palmié. MW 12:00 Noon - 1:20 p.m.

23035. Cuba in Socialism and Diaspora: Politics and Culture of a Severed Nation (=LACS 26101). This course examines the emergence and development of the conflict between the Cuban regime and its exiled opponents, by looking closely at the political culture of both sides of the Cuban national divide. It also considers the implications of this conflict for the broader Latin American and United States contexts. João Felipe Gonçalves TuTh 3:00-4:20

23710/43710. Decolonization/Pax Americana. Postcolonial theorists have, understandably, focused critical attention on colonial history and culture. But postcolonial predicaments closely relate to the political, economic, and security regime imposed upon the world after World War II by the US-led planners of the "new world order." This course will focus on Pax Americana and what it has meant for decolonization and the economic, cultural and political life of ex-colonies. Leading anticolonial and post colonial theorists (Gandhi, Fanon, Said, Subaltern Studies) will be read in connection with US contemporary and contrapuntal figures (Gandhi with Truman, Fanon with Wendell Willkie). Theorists of empire from Gibbon, Macaulay and Maine to Niall Ferguson and Hart and Negri will be contrasted with and connected to actual theorists and wielders of American power from Mahan and Upton, to Rostow and Kissinger, to Fukuyama, Powell, Haass and Rumsfeld. Particular attention will be given to the planning of the UN and related institutions, and then to institutional developments not anticipated by the planners of Pax Americana, including elite diaspora, peacekeeping missions, "new wars," "strange wars," "leveling crowds," terrorism and political army states, i.e., unanticipated new patterns of migration, military violence, political protest and even foundations of sovereignty. The premise of the course, which might be wrong, is that we are at the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end, of Pax Americana, and in any case that Pax Americana, in theory and reality, currently merits much better focused analysis and criticism than it has received. John Kelly. TuTh 1:30-2:50

24305/45105 Drugs: Culture and Context (=SSAD 60100). This course addresses the consumption, production, and distribution of drugs, as well as the representation and treatment of drug users, both in the U.S. and abroad. Course readings and discussions examine how substances move across history and social space, taking on different meanings and uses as they go. The course also explores the related questions of how and why different societies sanction, encourage, and prohibit particular kinds of drug use. Such comparisons reveal that our responses to drug use and users have as much to do with social norms and ideologies such as notions of gender, race and class as they do with the more-or-less deleterious effects of the substances themselves. The course also explores how the authorization of certain drugs in certain settings (e.g. binge drinking on college campuses) is connected not only to the social positions of users, but also to the marketplaces in which these drugs are exchanged. Thus, in the latter half of the course, students will attend to the production, distribution, and consumption of drugs in relation to processes of global capitalism. E. Summerson Carr. Mon 5:30-8:20.

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. R. Fogelson, M. Fred. Wed 5:30-8:20 pm. Haskell 315.

24905/41405. The Figuration of Social Thought and Action: Rhetoric (Trope) Theory in Anthropology. PQ Open to graduate students and to third- or fourth-year undergraduates. A consideration of the recent revitalization of interest in the role of rhetoric in shaping social relations and social action, as seen presently in Europe, this course will touch base with these recent projects although it will be mainly anchored in developments since the 1960s in American anthropology seeking "meaningful methods" by concentrating on figuration and con-figuration in culture and on the resultant "play of tropes" in and "emplotments" of social relations and social action. Some attention will be paid to the main anchoring theories from classical rhetoik and poetic thru Vico, Muller, Tylor, Frazer, Malinowski, Boas, Radin, Sapir and Jakobson, to the work of contemporary anthropologists and linguists. James W. Fernandez TuTh 4:30-5:50 p.m.

25210/45210. Ethnographic Strategies: Critical Readings in Recent Anthropology. An inquiry into contemporary ethnographic strategies. William Mazzarella Wed 9:30-12:20.

25700/35700. Globalization: Empirical and Theoretical Elements (=SOCI 20114/30114, GEOG 21700/31700, LAWS 73901). This course will examine how different processes of globalization transform key aspects of, and are in turn shaped by, major institutions, such as sovereignty and citizenship, and major processes, such as urbanization, immigration, digitalization. Particular attention will got to analyzing the challenges from theorization and empirical specification.
Transnational processes such as economic globalization confront the social sciences with a series of theoretical and methodological challenges. We want to go beyond international economic analyses focused on macro level cross-border flows and understand what it means to study globalization at a variety of scales of analyses, down to the most detailed approaches requiring field work. Saskia Sassen. Tues, 3:00-5:50.

25905. Introduction to the Musical Folklore of Central Asia (=NEHC 20766/30765, EEUR 23400/33400, MUSI 23503/33503). This course explores the musical traditions of the peoples of Central Asia, both in terms of historical development and cultural significance. Topics include the music of the epic tradition, the use of music for healing, instrumental genres, and Central Asian folk and classical traditions. Basic field methods for ethnomusicology are also covered. Extensive sue is made of recoedings of musical performances and of lave performances in the area. K. Arik. Wed 12:30-3:20

26105. Ancient African Societies. (=AFAM 2xxxx) This course explores Africa's rich archaeological past, tracing broad historical trends from the beginning of the Holocene 10,000 years ago up to the time of European voyages. This long period was marked by sweeping transformations across the continent: changes in subsistence and lifestyles; development of trading networks, metallurgy, and craft specialization; and the rise of complex societies. One of our goals will be to examine these processes, their local expressions, and the complex matrices of peoples, objects, and ideas in which they were rooted. This exploration will be paired with a critical assessment of the social contexts that frame our understanding of ancient African societies. What we know of Africa's past has been colored by factors that have little to do with the continent's prehistory, including intellectual currents, scientific debates, over prejudice, muted racism, colonial ideologies, and global political economy. In picturing Africa as a place of timeless chaos and utter otherness, contemporary discourses have done much to sever Africans from their own histories and thwart the growth of perspectives sensitive to the continent's dynamic cultural past. By tacking back and forth between past and present, we will try to paint a more nuanced portrayal of ancient Africa, one of distinct cultural worlds sharing ever widening spaces of historical experience. François Richard. TuTh 10:30-11:50

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. M. Silverstein. TuTh 1:30-2:50.

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. P. Friedrich, K. Mitova. Thurs 9:00-11:50.

27915/47815. Advanced Methods in Discourse Analysis (=LING 27310/37310) PQ: Language in Culture 1 & 2, Discourse Analysis, or consent of instructor. This class is intended for students who already have a background in discourse or linguistic analysis and/or linguistic anthropology. In it, students will gain hands-on experience in the collection, transcription and analysis of discourse data. Regular class periods will be focused on the theoretical background and conceptual tools relevant for the study of language-in-use. Students will be introduced to contemporary usage-based theories of language structure with the aim of enabling an understanding of the cognitive, interactional and historical motivations for the shape of linguistic resources, and situating our focus on language as a resource for social action. We will also consider-and evaluate through application to interacitonal data-several different subdisciplinary approaches to and case studies of, the discourse and culture nexus, with a focus on evaluating the type of data-collection and ethnographic questions most suitable to students' own proposed research topics. During supplementary weekly lab sessions, students will have an opportunity to learn and practice software and recording technologies as well as to share their data with the group in an informal workshop-style format. Robin Shoaps. TuTh 3:00-4:20, Lab Mon 9:30-10:20

2860/38600. Apes and Human Evolution (= BIOS 23253, HIPS 23700, EVOL 38600). A critical examination of the ways in which data on the behavior, morphology and genetics of apes have been used to elucidate human evolution, with particular emphasis on bipedalism, hunting, meat-eating, tool behavior, food sharing, cognitive ability, language, self-awareness, and sociability. Visits to local zoos, films, and demonstrations with casts of fossils and skeletons. R. Tuttle. MW 9:30-10:20, Fri 9:30-11:20

31800. Religious Movement of Native North America. New Agers essentialize and romanticize Native American religions. Religious beliefs and practices are assumed to be primordial, eternal, and invariable. However a closer examination reveals that Native American religions are highly dynamic and adaptive, ever reactive to internal pressure and external circumstances. Perhaps the most dramatic forms of religious change are the transformations that anthropologists recognize as nativistic or revitalization movements. These movements on one level represent conscious breaks with an immediate negative past and they anticipate a positive future in which present sources of oppression are overcome. Such movements have occurred fairly regularly in the historical record and doubtless occurred prehistorically as well. Indeed the collective memory of such events may be enshrined in myths. Many contemporary Native American movements, be they political and/or religious, can be understood as sharing similar dynamics to past movements. Classic accounts of the Ghost Dance, often considered to be the prototypical Native American religious movement, analysis of the Handsome Lake Religion among the Senecas, and other Native American religious movements will also be examined. R. Fogelson. TuTh 3:00-4:20.

34814. Anthropology and Literature: World Poetry (=SCTH 32720). 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. P. Friedrich. Wed 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. TuTh 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

41901. The Crowd. At the end of the nineteenth century, the figure of the unruly, affect-laden crowd appeared as both the volatile foundation and the dystopian alter ego of the democratic mass society. By the middle of the twentieth century, following the traumatic excesses of communism and fascism in Europe, the crowd largely disappeared from polite sociological analysis - to be replaced by its serene counterpart, the communicatively rational public. At the turn of the twenty-first century, however, the previously demonized crowd has unexpectedly returned, now in the valorized guise of ‘the multitude' - in part as a result of a growing sense of the exhaustion of the categories of mainstream liberal politics.
This seminar tracks the trajectory of the crowd, from mass to multitude, through a series of classic readings and recent interventions. Students will be responsible for classroom presentations as well as a term paper based on the readings. William Mazzarella. Fri 9:30-12:20

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. Mon 9:30-12:20

42910. Anthropology of Media. Media are profoundly transforming the ways in which people perceive and interact with their surroundings. This course introduces students to anthropological approaches to the study of the production, circulation, and reception of media, tacking between theoretical approaches and ethnographic studies with an eye towards the tricky issue of identifying methods through which to study media practices. Anthropological approaches to media have considered their effects on the transformation of space-time relations, the shaping of political identities, and the constitution of complex (social, political, economic, institutional, and/or creative) connections among people and groups. Anthropologists have analyzed the possibilities and limitations offered by media such as the voice, photography, television, radio, cassette tapes, videotapes, newspapers, advertising, and the Internet as they are mobilized in distinct settings. Focusing on research on materiality & place, the state & globalization, and religion & selfhood, we will analyze the co-determinate relationships among institutional structures, technological developments, and social and political contexts of diverse kinds of media practice. Amahl Bishara. Mon 12:30-3:20

45110. Global Intimacies (=HUDV 42215) Filipina nannies who leave their children at home and move to the United States to care for other peoples children. Young women (and men) who provide sex to tourists in the Dominican Republic. Women in Russia, Latin America and throughout Africa who go on the Internet to try and find husbands. The growing sense that youth in many parts of the world are increasingly implicated in violence, in part because they find themselves unable to project themselves into the future they want to achieve. All of these examples suggest that globalization is as much about the reorganization of intimacy as it is about the reorganization of space, time, and production: clearly the two are intertwined.
The goal of this class is to interrogate the links between globalization and intimate social relations of various kindswe focus particularly on ethnographies about romance/sex/trade one the one hand, and youth and familial parent/child relationships on the other. In so doing, I am aware that we run the risk of casting our net too broadly, and that it could be argued that Internet marriage and studies of youth are totally unrelated. However, I would argue that this is not in fact the case, and that the study of youth and the study of sexual intimacy are interwoven in complicated ways, offering two key sites through which to think about the relationship of globalization to intimate social relations. Readings include Tsing's Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Povinelli's The Empire of Love, and Rofel's Desiring China, among others. Jennifer Cole. Thurs 1:30-4:20.

46710. Archaeology of African Global Encounters. In this course, we will explore different dimensions of the African experience as it unfolded roughly over the past 500 years. Combining archaeology, anthropology, and history, and drawing from multiple repertoires of sources ( artifacts, texts, images, oral traditions), we will investigate Africa's intensifying encounters with global political economy, from the Atlantic era to the 'age of globalization'. On one level, this involves analyzing historical contexts, processes, and effects across the continent - perhaps following the threads of what Jane Guyer has called the 'turbulence and loss' of Africa's historical past. In parallel fashion, we must also reflect on global encounters as spaces for the production of new historical imaginations that have profoundly shaped anthropological projects. Rather than following a historical or geographical narrative, we will examine different moments, locales, and historicities through a suite of topical lenses: landscapes, states and power, 'identities' and ethnicity, entanglements and embodiment, political economic mosaics, colonialism, modernities, politics, and the postcolony. François Richard. Wed 3:30-6:20.

46800. Ethnoarchaeology and Material Culture. This seminar explores the theoretical contributions and research methods of the still developing hybrid subfield of anthropology designed to aid archaeological interpretation by undertaking ethnographic research emphasizing the social understanding of material culture. It also attempts to show the potential ethnoarchaeological research to provide a privileged site of conjuncture between the interests of archaeology and cultural anthropology. The course will proceed primarily by means of a close critical examination of selected ethnoarchaeological case studies and readings in material culture theory. The goals of the course include developing: (1) an appreciation of the range of theoretical approaches being applied to the study of material culture and their relative utility for archaeological interpretation, (2) an understanding of the special problems raised by the process of archaeological interpretation and the nature of archaeological data, and (3) a critically astute competence in evaluating, designing, and executing the techniques and research strategies of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork. Michael Dietler. Wed 12:30-3:20

48400. Fieldwork in the Archives (=Hist 67700). This is a methods seminar designed for both archaeology and sociocultural graduate students interested in, or already working with, archival materials and original texts. The goal of the course is to develop a tool-kit of epistemological questions and methodological approaches that can aid in understanding how archives are formed, the purposes they serve, their relation to the culture and topic under study, as well as how to search archives effectively and read documents critically. We will survey different types of documents and archives often encountered in fieldwork, and sample approaches taken by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists from contexts as diverse as the ancient Near East to 1970's Cuba. This seminar will also be driven by the problems and examples that students bring to the discussion. A major outcome will be a research paper that uses original documents from the student's own fieldwork or from locally available archive sources identified during the course. Shannon Dawdy. Fri 10:30-1:20

51020. Making Up People (=PHIL 51503, ENGL 65303, HIPS 26301). How do classifications of people interact with the people classified? To what extent do new classifications bring new kinds of people into being? To what extent is there a "looping effect" so that people resist classification, forcing the classifications themselves to change? Many case studies have been published -- child abuse, multiple personality, the criminal personality, the poverty line, etc. This seminar aims at providing a more general theoretical analysis of such phenomena, but will also include a detailed account of autism from 1908 to the present, and, in less detail, of the emergence of the Body Mass Index and its effects. Each student will write one paper on one kind of person or behavior. Two types of topics will be encouraged, genius and suicide, but each student may prepare an archaeology of any kind of person of interest, after discussion with the instructor. Ian Hacking. TuTh 10:30-1:20 April 5-May 1.

51025. Culture, Convention, and the Clinic (=SSA 50501). This seminar focuses on the relationship of cultural conventions, clinical interventions, and political processes. Engaging in what can best be understood as an anthropology of social work, we will traverse the "micro-macro" divide that has long characterized the profession. Thus, on the one hand, we will explore the ethical and political dimensions of contemporary therapeutic practices, such as "culturally-sensitive" psychiatry, narrative therapy, and the ever-thriving self-help movement. On the other hand, we will address how social welfare policies and practices -- like welfare reform -- are increasingly framed and understood in clinical terms. We will read ethnographic studies of homeless shelters, community-based clinics, psychiatric wards, welfare offices, all of which demonstrate that social work is a site where normative cultural ideas about sanity, citizenship, selfhood, and human difference are practiced and policed. Throughout the quarter, we will also attend to how social work interventions and institutions have challenged and redefined, as well as reproduced and reified, cultural conventions. Indeed, we will find that to think about social work is to think about technologies of change. E. Summerson Carr

52605. Advanced Readings: Africanist Anthropology. Jean/John Comaroff. Tues 3:00-5:50. Starts April 3.

54410. Hybridity. Ever since the late 1980s when James Clifford discovered that the "pure products" had "gone crazy", and Ulf Hannerz alerted us to the fact that the "world" was "in creolization", notions of "hybridity" and "hybridization" (and their various conceptual relatives such as mestizaje, creolization, syncretism, and so forth) have enjoyed increasing currency in our discipline. Often seen as the results of globalization-induced and medially accelerated Hyperdiffusionism, "hybrids", it seems, are the ubiquitous sign of a postmodern denouement of both "cultures" as "we knew them" (once, when we were "modern"), and the antidote to older anthropological reifications. How ironic then that while the "hybrid" obviously gestures toward what Marilyn Strathern has called "post-plural" conceptions of culture, the languages that are supposed to make it analytically visible often hearken back to the vocabularies of regimes of "breeding" ("hybrid" or "creole"), religious orthodoxies ("syncretism"), systems of racial exclusion and domination ("mestizaje"), or other institutional mechanisms and practices that reproduce and police categorical boundaries - often in order to stabilize particular distributions of power and privilege.  This experimental course aims less to scrutinize the analytical utility of the conceptual language these terms appear to put at our disposal, than to probe into the epistemological conditions and taxonomic politics that make "the hybrid" thinkable in the first place, and seemingly "good to think" at the current moment. The central question it poses is: how do we know that something is "hybrid" (or not)? After a very brief initial survey of contemporary "hybridology" and the forms of analysis it seeks to supercede, we will take our departure from Bruno Latour's suggestion that "hybrids" are the inevitable products of practices of categorical "purification". In line with this, we will examine the politics of classificatory discernment, recognition, and naturalization that are productive of both the "purities" and the "hybrids" that appear to stand out, and even ostensibly militate, against them. After a foray into taxonomics and "natural kind" philosophy, we will discuss an array of case studies concerning the maintenance of classificatory infrastructures and categorical boundaries in regard to species, sex, language, race, and distinctions between humans and animals, nature and society, persons and things, and life and death. My hunch is that we might conclude that contemporary "hybridity"-talk is epistemologically problematic and politically troubling because far from destabilizing normalized categorical schemes, it necessarily reinforces precisely those distinctions that make "hybrid anomalies" visible in the first place. However, I remain entirely open to be convinced of the merits of hybridity (or rather: conceptualizations of it that I have, so far, failed to take into account). Stephan Palmié. Tues 10:30-1:20.

55700. Tradition, Temporality and Authority. The opposition between modernity and tradition, and between modern and traditional societies, has long been questioned within social theory. But many of the crucial presuppositions that made this opposition seem initially plausible still remain, having gone largely unexplored and unquestioned. Nowhere is this more evident than in the scholarship on Islam and the Middle East. In this seminar, we look into some of these presuppositions, especially ones about time and history. Going between texts in history and philosophy and ethnographies of Islam, we will attempt to rethink the idea of tradition by exploring the links between ideas of temporality, authority, and embodiment. Hussein Agrama. Wed 12:30-3:20.

56912. Text/Artifact: Advanced reading seminar in archaeology. (PQ Doctoral students only, others require consent.) This is a student-initiated reading seminar exploring the epistemological roles of texts and artifacts in archaeological work. The themes we will explore relate to a conference to be held on campus on May 18, however students need not be participants in the conference to enroll. The questions we will consider (taken from the collaboratively written abstract) include: "How does the nature of our evidence shape the questions we ask and the methods we use to answer them? In what ways are these forms of evidence combined, juxtaposed, and contrasted? Is it useful to read texts as artifacts, artifacts as texts, and what does this entail? What are the paradigms for approaching hybrid forms of text, object, and image? How do we treat those geographical and temporal contexts that lie somewhere between prehistory and history? Do our sources and practices inscribe boundaries or inspire collaborations between the disciplines? How do the conditions of our specialties as Andeanists, Egyptologists, Modernists, etc., inform comparison, or even envy and longing for the evidence of the other?"
Each student will be responsible for designing a small section of the syllabus around a question that interests them, or to share problems taken from their own field of research. Reading selections will also include monographs written by invited speakers. This will be a readings-heavy course with no final writing requirement, although students giving papers at the conference will have an opportunity to workshop their papers in this setting. Shannon Dawdy. Thurs 9:00-11:50.

57201. Seminar on Language Variation and Change.  This course uses a critical evaluation of William Labov's approach to language variation and change to engage the relationship between sociolinguistics and linguistic history. We will assess, among a number of topics, Labov's theorization of inter-idiolectal and inter-lectal variation and his use of the concepts of ‘apparent' vs. ‘real' time to interpret language change, paying attention to how he addresses the Weinreichian "actuation problem." We will also consider the role that quantitative analysis can play in the study of language norms and the concepts of language change in several different current formulations. Some familiarity with the social study of language or with historical linguistics is presumed. Salikoko Mufwene, Michael Silverstein Arr.

58300. Readings: Andean Ethnohistory. This course critically examines the early Colonial Period literatures related to the social and institutional arrangements of the indigenous peoples of the Andes. The course will analyze the conditions of production and modes of interpretation of these literatures, and examine the extent to which they are useful for understanding Pre-Hispanic and early Colonial period social formations. Alan Kolata. Wed. 9:30-12:20.