Fall 2025
Why is nationalism dangerous in some contexts and a source of pride in others? How do ideas of national and cultural identity converge and challenge concepts of multiculturalism, diversity, and globalization? In this class, we will investigate the transnational flow of peoples, beliefs, and ideas into and out of East Asia and examine how such movements have sharpened as well as challenged national identities.
Fall 2025
Rather than organized strictly chronologically we will look at the challenges and forms of resistance to earlier
models of ethnographic film that have developed in response to globalization and the postcolonial
interrogation of anthropology, as well as the impact of Black Lives Matter, decolonization movements, and
the present Trump era on the practice of visual anthropology. What impact have these ethical and political
challenges to the practice of ethnography had or may have on the types of visual anthropology being created today?
Freshmen interested in Anthropology are encouraged to enroll in a GE Seminar taught by Anthropology faculty.
Spring 2025
Discourses of development seem to be all around us, saturating many of our shared commonsense conceptions of time, history, identity and change. Yet, while ideas of development are fairly ubiquitous, inflecting both large-scale political discussions as well as mundane understandings of what seems to be just or necessary, they are rarely ever defined.
Spring 2025
What is an archive? What gets archived by and for whom? What does it mean to preserve a collection of photographs, songs, recipes, audio, video, or any other kind of media? In this class, students take these questions as starting points for inquiries that bring ethnographic methods into conversation with arts-based research in two video projects—one group, one individual—addressed to alternative histories of topics they choose and develop over the semester.
Spring 2025
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.
Spring 2025
Throughout the course we will explore issues such as current threats to cultural heritage, the roles of public opinion and tourism in the protection and interpretation of cultural heritage, impacts of development, questions of authenticity and identity, international law, ethics, and emerging and non-traditional areas of the field.
Spring 2025
ANTH 470 is a course in applying media— text, photography, sound recording, video, drawing, animation—in ethnographic research and representation.
Spring 2025
Throughout the course we will explore issues such as current threats to cultural heritage, the roles of public opinion and tourism in the protection and interpretation of cultural heritage, impacts of development, questions of authenticity and identity, international law, ethics, and emerging and non-traditional areas of the field.
