ANTH 445: African American Anthropology

Anthropology has undergone dramatic changes in recent decades. Historically, anthropologists resembled what Renato Rosaldo (1989) characterized as the “Lone Ethnographer” riding off into the sunset in search of the “native.” Today, those so-called natives are vigorously gazing and talking back as students, professors, and attentive audiences, with palpable implications for how anthropology is practiced. Anthropologists also conduct fieldwork in unprecedented places, including their own communities. This course’s focus on African American Anthropology is, in many ways, an outgrowth of these transitions. In this course, we will map out the parameters of “African American Anthropology,” beginning with early constructions of race and pioneering ethnographic studies of African Americans in the U.S. Later, we will explore how ongoing research on race and African American culture, as well as contributions by African American/feminist scholars, helped to both shape and shift the scope of anthropological inquiry over time. Finally, we will review new directions in the study of race and African American culture in anthropology. In pursuit of these goals, we will mine scholarship within and beyond the field of anthropology. We will also review relevant films, sounds, and images that further illuminate the place of race and African Americans in the ever-evolving field of anthropology. Our scholarly quest will traverse multiple texts, authors, places, and times, and home in on key offerings by Black ethnographers, to ultimately reveal how anthropological research concerning race and African Americans inform the discipline’s quest to understand what it means to be human.