Michael Dietler

21201. Intensive Study of a Culture: Chicago Blues. This course is an anthropological and historical exploration of one of the most original and influential American musical genres in its social and cultural context. The course traces the origins of the “Delta Blues” in the culture of African American sharecroppers of rural Mississippi, its transposition to Chicago during the “great migration” of the first half of the twentieth century, its development (in the bars and streets of Chicago’s Southside and Westside) into the tough, aggressive urban music that has come to be known as “Chicago Blues”, and its eventual spread to audiences outside the African American community. The course examines transformations in the cultural meaning of the blues and its place within broader American cultural currents, the social and economic situation of blues musicians, and the political economy of blues within the wider music industry.

21217. Intensive Study of a Culture: The Luo of Kenya. This course offers an overview of the history and contemporary culture of the Luo, a Nilotic-speaking people living on the shores of Lake Victoria. It examines the migration of the Luo into the region, the history of their encounter with British colonialism, and their evolving situation within the post-colonial Kenyan state.

26100/46500. Ancient Celtic Societies. This course explores the prehistoric societies of Iron Age "Celtic" Europe and their relationship to modern communities claiming Celtic ancestry. The course aims to impart an understanding of (1) the kinds of evidence available for investigating these ancient societies and how archaeologists interpret these data, (2) processes of change in culture and society during the Iron Age, and (3) how the legacy of Celtic societies has both persisted and been reinvented and manipulated in the modern world. Issues include the relationship between language, material culture, and society; colonial interaction; urbanization; art and religion; gender roles; and cultural identity in the construction of tradition.

362. Ceramic Analysis for Archaeologists. PQ: Consent of instructor. This course introduces students to the theoretical foundations and analytical techniques that allow archaeologists to use ceramics to make inferences about ancient societies. Ethnographic, experimental, and physical science approaches are explored to develop a realistic, integrated understanding of the nature of ceramics as a form of material culture and to assess both the kinds of interpretations of ancient people that can plausibly be made on the basis of their pottery and which techniques and research strategies may best serve to obtain useful information. Practical training in the use of the Ceramic Laboratories is included.

46100. Archaeology and the Politics of the Past. PQ: Consent of instructor. This seminar explores the use of the ancient past as a symbolic resource by modern communities and the social situation and responsibilities of archae-ologists in this process. Case studies from a variety of contexts are used to show how archaeology has been implicated in the politically charged con-struction of ethnic and regional identities and nationalist and colonialist mythologies in modern history. Current debates about the authority of competing interpretations of archaeological evidence, the right to control public representations of the past, and the contested ownership of archaeo-logical materials and sites are also discussed.

46600. Economic Archaeology. PQ: Consent of instructor. This course provides a critical examination of theoretical approaches to the anthropological analysis of economic action and systems, as well as a comparative perspective on the role of the economy in society and history and a grounding in the major methods and issues guiding archaeological research on ancient economies. The relationship of economic archaeology to the subfields of economic anthropology and economic history, its special methodological and theoretical problems, and its potential contribution, are explored.

46700. Colonial Landscapes. PQ: Consent of instructor; reading knowledge of French, Italian or Spanish recommended. This seminar will explore the ways in which both conscious strategies and practices of colonial control and the unintended effects of colonial encounters have altered the built environment which structures lived experience of the colonial situation for both alien agents and indigenous peoples. At the same time, it will seek to discern the ways in which the conjuncture of differing perceptions of the landscape have affected the experience of colonial encounters and transformations of identity. The seminar is especially concerned to explore possibilities for the archaeological investigation of ancient colonial landscapes; and the ancient Western Mediterranean will serve as a primary empirical focus against which general theoretical constructs and research strategies will be evaluated. Topics include the cultural economy of place and space; the guilt environment, habitus and social practice; monumentality, memory and ritual; networks of communication; cadasters and the agrarian landscape; and landscape and the inscription and contestation of colonial hegemony.

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.

56500. The Archaeology of Colonialism. This seminar is a comparative exploration of archaeological approaches to colonial encounters. It employs temporally and geographically diverse case studies from the archaeological and historical literature situated within a critical discussion of colonial and postcolonial theory. The course seeks to evaluate the potential contribution of archaeology both in providing a unique window of access to precapitalist forms of colonial interaction and imperial domination and in augmenting historical studies of the expansion of the European world-system. Methodological strategies, problems, and limitations are also explored.

58200. Material Culture & Consumption: Embodied Material Culture--Food, Drink, and Drugs in History. The Material Culture and Consumption seminar is designed to explore a series of current major research frontiers in the understanding of material culture. This domain of inquiry constitutes an exciting new convergence of interests among the fields of archaeology, cultural anthropology, history, and sociology; hence, the seminar seeks to explore the intersection of novel theoretical developments and empirical research among all these fields. The theme for this year’s seminar is "Embodied Material Culture": that is, objects which are produced specifically for consumption by ingestion into the human body. Readings and discussion will center around works that grapple with the social and cultural understanding of food, alcohol, and drugs in ancient and modern contexts. Their close association with the body and the senses, as well as their nutritive and psychoactive properties, make these forms of material culture an especially salient, symbolically charged form of "social fact" and make the study of their consumption a particularly revealing key to social relations, cultural concepts, and articulations of the domestic and political economies.