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 Spring 2007/08General Anthropology
A408 Museum Practicum AUTH The Museum Practicum (1-4 cr.) provides students with the opportunity to gain hands-on work experience in museums while earning academic credit through Indiana University's Department of Anthropology. Practica require prior agreement and must be arranged with museum personnel and the course instructor, Professor Geoffrey Conrad, director of the William Hammond Mathers Museum (conrad@indiana.edu or phone 812-855-6873). number of practicum hours worked per week at the Mathers Museum varies according to the number of credit hours of A408 the student is enrolled in, and the semester of enrollment. A495 Individual Readings in Anthropology These courses provide opportunities for students to work on independent projects, create their own courses, and combine fieldwork, lab work, or other kinds of research in creative ways, under faculty supervision. Individual Readings in Anthropology (1-4 cr.) allows the student to work with a particular professor on a specific topic chosen by the student and agreed to by the professor. Field Study in Anthropology (3-8 cr.) gives the student a chance to earn academic credit for work "in the field."
G599 Thesis Research Above section for Master’s students only who have enrolled in 30 or more hours of graduate coursework applicable to the degree and who have completed all other requirements of the degree except the thesis or final project or performance. G599 Thesis Research Above section for Master’s students only who have enrolled in 30 or more hours of graduate coursework applicable to the degree and who have completed all other requirements of the degree except the thesis or final project or performance. A800 Research BioanthropologyB301 Laboratory in Bioanthropology This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the basic research techniques used by biological anthropologists through hands-on experience and an introduction to the literature of the field. The course is divided into two main sections. The first focuses on human skeletal anatomy, and the second covers methodologies used in forensic anthropology, paleontology, primatology, human growth and development, and population genetics. This course counts for the NMNS distribution requirement. B500 Proseminar in Bioanthropology Objectives Textbook Grades B528 Dental Anthropology This course is meant for graduate students with a strong interest in dental anthropology and for undergraduates who want to specialize in this topic. We will learn the descriptive and functional morphology of primate dentitions, stressing the nomenclature of crown features. Topics in human dentition will include enamel microstructure, development, wear, occlusion, odontometrics, discrete variability, and pathology. We will practice several methods, including drawing, formal description, replication, microscopy, metrics, and radiography. Each student will carry out a research project on some aspect of dental anthropology. We will discuss these informally as they develop during TEXT: Hillson, Dental Anthropology B568 The Evolution of Primate Social Behavior The Evolution of Primate Social Behavior has two principal aims. (1) We will become familiar with the variety of primate social organizations. Primate societies will be parsed into 5 basic systems, after which variations on these themes will be explored. You will learn that nonhuman primates vary from solitary, positively antisocial species, to animals that gather in groups of up to 300. Readings include scientific articles on reserve and a textbook, The Natural History of the Primates. There are 11 pages of reading per meeting. The class will view three short films, and two hour-long films. There will be three exams. B600 Ancient DNA General Information: This course explores the exploding field of ancient DNA research, including an historical perspective on the development of the science, and a review of the current trends and exciting new results. The ability to access ancient molecules (not only DNA but also proteins, lipids, and other interesting molecules) has opened new doors in our understanding of the prehistory of our planet. This course will focus on applications within Anthropology, but will also touch on palaeontological and forensic applications of this science, and will include discussion of the work currently in progress in the instructor's Ancient DNA laboratory in the IU Institute of Molecular Biology. Grades are based on discussion participation (100 points), written critical commentaries on 5 selected readings (20 points each for a total of 100 points) and a research paper (100 points). Thus, each component contributes 1/3 to the grade.. Prerequisites: B200 or equivalent, or permission of the instructor. Grading Information: Discussion participation will contribute 1/3 toward the final grade. Proper seminar discussion participation involves thoughtful consideration of the readings for each week, incorporation of relevant information from previous course readings or other sources, honest comment on both the readings and fellow students’ observations and interpretations, and the maintenance of common courtesy. Lack of attendance will affect participation grades. A mid-term assessment of discussion participation will be available on the Oncourse gradebook (50 points), and a second end-of-term assessment will also be posted (50 points). Five written critical commentaries are due on papers of your choice throughout the semester (worth 20 points each). These commentaries are due at the beginning of class on the day for which the paper was read, and can be submitted either via Oncourse or in hard copy in class. At least two of these commentaries must be submitted by the midterm. These commentaries must be on original research papers (‘primary literature’) and will help you prepare to assess literature for your final research paper. A standard format, including specific questions, will be available for download from Oncourse. Also, please use the correct citation format in these papers (citation guideline will be available on Oncourse). A final research paper is due at the end of the semester. This paper should be 7-10 pages long for undergraduates, 15-20 for graduate students. It is meant to allow the students to explore a topic of interest in greater depth than was allowed in the course. The research paper is on a relevant topic of the student’s choice, but the instructor must approve this topic in advance. Additional information on the final research paper will be available on Oncourse. B600 Evolutionary Medicine This course will incorporate principles from evolutionary theory into our understanding of various infectious and chronic diseases common to human populations both past and present. Foci will include the evolution of human immune responses, basic principles of epidemiology and host-pathogen co-evolution, the evolutionary history of various pathogens, the evolution of sexual reproduction, and the evolution of pathogen virulence. Although proximate mechanisms involving physiology and immunity will be discussed, the focus will be to determine why such mechanisms have evolved in the first place. Readings are selected to reflect the general interests of natural and social scientists alike. At the end of this course, students will be able to effectively communicate to others how evolutionary research helps shed new light on medical research and practices. Ethnography and EthnologyE332 Jewish Women This course will be devoted to the analysis of women's place in Jewish society and culture. It will focus on images and representations related to women, on the gender dimension of Jewish kinship, family structures, and religious practices. A special attention will be given to the modification of traditional patterns in contemporary society and history and to Jewish female emancipation. Students will discuss the social experiences of Jewish women in various communities of Northern America, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. COURSE REQUIREMENTS 2. For graduate students READINGS E340 Indians of Mexico & Central America This course will explore the cultures of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America. It will emphasize current contexts, while recognizing historical processes of change that have shaped the
present profoundly. We will explore cultural, socioeconomic and political issues of major concern to indigenous groups, including land rights, intellectual property rights, political representation and E420 Economic Anthropology: Theories of Value This seminar offers a critical survey of past and recent debates in the anthropology of exchange to understand its relevance for research on the politics of sociocultural difference. Readings range from classical theoretical and ethnographic work concerning the gift/commodity distinction to current reformulations that use exchange, and more recently circulation and value, to explore the dynamics of history, social reproduction and power. Drawing on ethnographic work in Melanesia, Africa and the West, we will consider the role that theories of value may play in understanding the nature of neoliberal global capital. E480 Theory of Culture Change General Overview: This course surveys major conceptual and theoretical approaches to the study of culture change. It does so primarily through the medium of broad, topical lectures and with the aid of a few "classic" monographs. The lectures and the readings have been selected to illustrate a particular school of thought, an exemplary line of reasoning, a general ascription of cause that accounts for change, as well as methods and techniques appropriate to the study of culture change. Although primarily a lecture course, the format has been designed to allow time each week for questions and discussion. There will be additional opportunities to discuss specific readings in small groups moderated by the instructor. In this way the themes covered in the readings and in the lectures can be explored further and related one to the other. In another way, this course offers multiple approaches in how to read the immensely popular work by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel. If there are texts in this course they are: Return to Reason by Stephen Toulmin, The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert Simon, Understanding the Process of Economic Change by Douglas North, and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber. Embedded in this quartet of works are a series of monographs that can be related to one another through intellectual filiations and strongly expressed differences. They are: The Poverty of Historicism by Karl Popper, The Road to Serfdom by Frederick Hayek, The Great Transformations by Karl Polanyi. Plow, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History by Ernst Gellner; The Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer, and Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Assignments: All participants in this course--registered students and auditors alike--are required to complete the readings on or before the dates specified in the class schedule. Each student who is registered in the course for credit will be required to complete three small (ca. 5-8 page) papers on the causal arguments offered for culture change by Popper, Polanyi, and Gellner and then apply what has been learned to a critical analysis of Diamond that will be the topic of the final paper (8-12 pages). E500 Proseminar in Cultural and Social Anthropology Above section graduate standing or permission of instructor In this seminar, we will examine contemporary theories and practices in cultural and social anthropology. Because human behavior and thought are at the core of social and cultural anthropology, we must pay attention to those changing contexts in which people craft their lives. This attention is particularly important in the post-paradigmatic state of the field in which there is no one or even several dominant theories. Rather, central issues such as displacement and the meaning of place in a world on the move, identity formation and representation in a world of blurred and shifting boundaries, the pull of the local and the global, environmental and social change, the unequal distribution of power and resources, the meaning of sacred and secular, and more, all engage anthropology, requiring a rethinking of approaches, theories, and ethical responsibilities. We go back and forth between models, theory and ethnography, between looking for general patterns across cultures and documenting difference, between academic contributions and application. We have developed concepts for talking about what we know that define the field, including culture, history, comparison, and ethnography. We will examine their trajectories as well as their utility in today's world. Finally, we will see how questions of agency, power, embodiment, and voice as well as new technologies have changed the discipline. The first two readings from Eric Wolf and Isaiah Berlin and the written assignment based on them will provide everyone with a common foundation in the history of some important concepts in the field. Authors whose work we will read include Anderson, Appadurai, Bourdieu, Colson, Comaroffs, Douglas, Foucault, Geertz, Stoller, Strathern,Tambiah, and Wolf. We may add others depending on class interests and guest lecturers. E527 Environmental Anthropology Environmental anthropology refers to the interdisciplinary study of the interactions between human populations and the environmental systems within which they exist. In this graduate level course we will be concerned not only with the theories which characterize this field, the history of those theories, and the methods used to carry them out but also with the current research agenda in human-environment interactions and what is known as Earth System Science. Required books: Course Requirements: Keeping up with the reading is job #1 A Paper Proposal is due after 3 weeks. It must include a "Statement of Problem, procedures and a "Preliminary Annotated Bibliography" (20%of grade) Final paper due on the last class meeting date (counts 40% of grade). E600 Reproduction, Culture & Identity Do babies play a role in defining their parents’ cultural, national, ethnic, or religious identity? Is the female womb a battleground in national politics? This course will take a positive approach to these questions, with the assumption that both women and the societies in which they live use their reproductive capacities as a fertile terrain for establishing the politics of identity. Students will explore the question of biological reproduction as being in direct relation to social and culture reproduction. They will study fertility and childbirth within different cultures, as well as the experience of infertility and its social responses in diverse cultural and political contexts. Requirements
Selected Bibliography E600 The Anthropology of Race This course explores the idea of race in cultural anthropological thought, with focus on three main themes. First, the course explores the history of this idea within anthropology, and in relation to such
disciplines as biology, sociology and philosophy. It secondly explores the global dissemination of the idea of race and the social realities that have come to be constructed around it; this phase of E600 Human Ecology from Space This course combines a historical review on the use of remote sensing in the social sciences, conceptual discussions on applications of remote sensing to social science problems and fieldwork, and a formal introduction to remote sensing data (aerial photo, satellite images) and techniques (digital and analogical) based on hands on laboratory sessions. The course will consist of a conceptual and a laboratory session each week. Students will take active role in both sessions and each student will be responsible for developing an individual project in their areas of research interest (dissertation and thesis related projects are especially encouraged). E600 Contemporary Latin American Social Movements This course offers students the chance to explore the diversity of grassroots politics, social movements, alternative democratic practices within contemporary Latin America. We will attempt to do so in both an academic and a practical sense: by not only reading about, writing about, and discussing social movements but also by attempting to become something like a social movement ourselves. The academic side of the course will introduce students to various Latin American social movements, provide an overview of the possible theoretical approaches to understand them, and equip students to undertake a rigorous comparative analysis of them. The course will entail an explicitly comparative framework based on readings and a few films focused around the analytics of ethnicity/race, gender, resources, human rights, electoral strategies, and the environment. Running parallel to (and possibly even against) the academic discussion are the more practical and experimental efforts we will undertake. The experimental question we hope to give a practical answer to is the following: As a group how can we (or, indeed, can we at all) devise plans and engage in activities to join an existing social movement or constitute one of our own during (and possibly after) this course? This will entail a fundamentally different format for interaction between students and between student and instructor than is typical in most academic settings. As a result it will also require a considerable amount of active participation in rethinking the nature and possibilities for us as a politically invested, social collective. The course is a joint undergraduate/graduate class and the readings and requirements are divided accordingly. E606 Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology This course moves students from a passive to an active role as ethnographers. You will learn how to select and refine research questions, identify appropriate places and methods for answering your questions, enter into effective and ethical fieldwork relations and assess what you are learning as you work. Discussions of assigned readings and with guest faculty about their ongoing research strategies will address research proposal design, forms of documentation, archival and narrative analysis, survey and interviewing techniques, use of new technology and software, multi-sited ethnography and activist approaches. Students will prepare a draft research proposal and experiment with diverse methods to experience the practical realities of implementing and interpreting them and to reflect on the choices and contradictions they present. E624 Native American Art This course will explore Native American visual arts from Pre-European contact times to the present day. Issues relating to the context of colonialism, the collecting, exhibition, and repatriation of Native American art, art and identity, gender roles, and commodification of the arts will be addressed. E626 Coffee Culture Production & Market Do you start your day with coffee? Coffee is an integral part of life for consumers and producers around the world, and it is one of the world’s most valuable commodities in terms of total trade dollars. This course will consider the diverse expressions and ramifications of “coffee culture,” from the farmers who see it as their life, to the buyers and traders who know it as a living, to the consumers who start their day with cups of java. We will explore the historical roots of coffee production and trade, including its roles in nation-building and international power relations, and its modern implications for environmental change, economic justice, and economic development. Alternatives to dominant coffee production and marketing practices will be considered, such as Fair Trade coffee, shade-grown coffee, and organic coffee. In light of the recent crisis in coffee prices, we will address the impacts of market volatility on producers, processors, distributors and consumers. Why do consumers in the United States see little change in coffee prices while international prices experience drastic declines? We will place current events in the context of coffee's volatile history, including the continuing controversies over coffee and health. The course will be run as a seminar, and involve a fieldwork dimension in Bloomington’s coffee shops. Students will be graded on their participation in class discussions, fieldwork, a midterm exam, a research paper, and class presentations. E677 Performing Nationalism Around the globe social and cultural groups express resistance to domination through the performance of symbolic forms such as ritual, religion, song, narrative, the novel, language, food, film/tv, etc. Equally common, the nation state utilizes the same resources from its indigenous cultures or created out of symbolic resources to produce unity, loyalty and patriotism. These symbolic and artistic forms constitute a powerful force in the phenomenon we label "nationalism." This course deals with the process that accomplishes these purposes, whether domination or resistance. While related to the distribution and flow of power at any time, these processes are especially crucial in periods of transition, war, or political upheaval. After several sessions devoted to discussion of theories of nationalism we will focus on ethnographic studies in different parts of the world, emphasizing the processes by which nationalism operates, the forms through which it communicates,(such as popular culture, religion, war, spectacle), the changes forms undergo in order to express the desired goals, and processes of resistance. Not only will we consider nationalism of the dominant cultural group, associated with or supported by the state, but we will view cultural nationalism performed by minority groups. The course will conclude with a consideration of the relationship between the national and transnational or global forces. Students may choose a symbolic form from the present or the past as their subject and will write two related papers (one short and one long) on a specific ethnographic site and specific symbolic form that expresses nationalism, national identity, transnationalism or specific elements of this process. (Examples: religious movements that oppose a dominant force, a Latin American indigenous dance that represents the nation; Mexican-American Charreada; a precolonial African state based on law). Students will also be expected to write a written response for each class session. A few guest speakers who are working on this topic will be included as well. The latter portion of the class will be devoted to student presentations. Readings will include theoretical studies of nationalism and modernity,(Imagined Communities, and National Identities for example) as well as some historical readings that contextualize this process in relation to larger sociopolitical contexts. LinguisticsL500 Proseminar in Language & Culture This graduate-level seminar is an intensive introduction to the anthropological study of language. In it we examine language as a cultural system and speech as a socially embedded communicative practice through which social relations and cultural forms are constituted. We pay particular attention to the key concepts of text and context. What exactly is a text? What do we really mean when we talk about sociocultural context or when we claim to be contextualizing ethnographic knowledge? Other topics include the relation of language to other sign systems, speech acts and performativity, speech genres, ritual language, oratory, language and politics, and ideologies of language. This seminar has several goals: (1) to help students develop a critical awareness of the place of language in the constitution of social relations; (2) to provide them with a comprehensive understanding of theory and practice in the field of linguistic anthropology; and (3) to equip them with the analytic tools needed to understand and evaluate contemporary research in this field. L511 Elementary Lakota (Sioux) Language II This course is the 2nd in a four-semester sequence designed to introduce students to the language and culture of an American Indian people, the Lakota (Western Sioux) of North and South Dakota. Study is designed around an introductory Lakota language textbook, weekly lessons, tape recordings, and readings on Lakota culture. The course requires both oral and written exercises (inside and outside the classroom), and will teach both speaking and reading. ArchaeologyP600 Food in the Ancient World Co-taught by Prof. Sonya Atalay and Prof. Stacie King Course Description: We will meet once a week in a seminar format. Students will read articles and book chapters to discuss in class, keep an online food journal with weekly entries, write a research paper on a topic of their own choice, and give a class presentation. Students enrolled in P399 and P600 will meet together and each class session will be co-moderated by Prof. Sonya Atalay and Prof. Stacie King. P600 Indigenous Archaeology How do Indigenous people around the world do archaeology? How do they protect their sacred sites and places and build and manage knowledge about their pasts? Indigenous groups globally have been increasingly vocal about their desire to maintain control over their own heritage; and debates over who owns, speaks for, and writes the stories of the past now play a prominent role in archaeology. This has led to: reburial and repatriation legislation; increased collaboration with descendent communities; further development of ethics guidelines; and the rise of intellectual and cultural property research. These debates set new directions for an archaeological practice that is politically aware of, sensitive to, and harmonious with, the goals of Indigenous peoples around the globe – forming a new area of archaeology called ‘Indigenous Archaeology’. This course takes a global approach and utilizes book chapters, journal articles, site reports, and documentary films to examine the rise of Indigenous archaeology. You will explore ways that archaeologists and Indigenous peoples are working together to shape a shared future. Core issues to be investigated include: What are some Indigenous ways of interpreting, teaching about, and managing the past? What is the role of science in this process? What is decolonization and postcolonial theory – how do they relate to archaeology? What does all this mean for the future of archaeology around the world? How does this affect people outside the field of archaeology – people such as Indiana farmers, ordinary citizens, or a non-anthro major? P600 Cultural Resource Management Cultural resource management (CRM) is a public-oriented aspect of archaeological research. In this course we will explore the decision-making process that archaeologists use in providing for the preservation and conservation of prehistoric and historic sites, structures, and artifacts. Topics covered include the legal and ethical issues surrounding the management of cultural resources, project design and budgets, project implementation, National Register nomination and review procedures, and CRM as a research focus. Many archaeologists do CRM work at some point in their careers, and it represents the majority of archaeological research done within the United States. Students will gain an understanding of field methods and procedures used in CRM, the research potential of CRM, and the possibilities for applying archaeological methodology to solve problems encountered when cultural resources are impacted by land development. Students will do practical, hands-on projects and simulations.
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