ANTHRCUL 458 - Topics in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology
Section 002 - The Sensorium: Art, Life, and Online Worlds with Jennifer Hsieh
W4:00PM - 7:00PM

This class examines sensory perception—hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch—as a mode of ethnographic inquiry as well as an object of cultural analysis. The class begins with an investigation of vision in the history of Western philosophical traditions and proceeds to examine the legacy of a hierarchy of the senses in the study of diverse cultures and everyday knowledge practices. By analyzing the historical, cultural, and political valences behind sensory experience, the class will rethink classical modes of participant-observation outside of a visualist paradigm, as well as engage in ongoing anthropological debates about the senses as an area of shared, cultural knowledge. We will explore multimedia, experimental forms of representation and consider how anthropological investigations of the senses may be re-configured through genres such as graphic novels, podcasts, food blogs, video games, and other hybrid forms. As this course will be taught online, students will reflect on the sensorial experience of remote learning, investigate ways to conduct digital ethnography, and formulate research methods that reframe sensory studies in a time of social-distancing.Intended Audience:This course is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

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ANTHRARC 296 - Topics in Archaeology
Section 001 - Making Things: Three Million Years of Materials and Culture, with Robin Beck
MWF11:00AM - 12:00PM

This course explores the connections between the discovery of new materials -- such as ceramics, concrete, precious stones and metals, glass, steel, plastics, and semiconductors -- and social transformations worldwide. To see these connections, the course will fuse basic concepts in materials science and engineering with perspectives and methods from anthropological archaeology. From ancient cities and Roman baths, to steel foundries and Tupperware parties, to virtual communities and nanomedicine, we will learn how the physical properties of different materials intersect with cultural variables like gender, race, power/authority, religious beliefs, values, and financial and political systems to shape human civilization. By connecting lessons from the past to the inventions of cutting-edge materials, we will also explore the future social impacts of new materials in medicine, construction, transportation, clean energy, sports, and other areas. This course will explore both how materials shape society and how society shapes material innovations.

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ANTHRARC 492 - The Archaeology of the Pacific
Section 001, with Henry Wright
TuTh11:30AM - 1:00PM

Area survey course on the archaeology of Australia, New Guinea, and the Pacific Islands (Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia) from the time of first human settlement to European discovery.

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ANTHRBIO 201 - How Humans Evolved
Section 001, with Stacy Rosenbaum
TuTh2:30PM - 4:00PM

This course will examine a fundamental question in the life and social sciences: how did humans evolve? The class will address the principles of evolution, and explore what the fossil record plus the behavior and morphological characteristics of modern primates (human and non) can tell us about the evolutionary history of our species. It will also address how environmental and cultural variation interacts to produce differences between modern human populations.

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ANTHRBIO 364 - Nutrition and Evolution
Section 001, with Maureen J Devlin
TuTh11:30AM - 1:00PM

In this course, we will trace the evolution of human nutrition, and consider how recent changes in diet, exercise, reproduction, and lifespan affect our fitness in the modern world. Modern humans often live in environments that differ fundamentally from the environment in which we evolved, with both positive and negative consequences for health. Lectures will review: 1) The basic physiology of human nutrition, 2) Human diet in the context of other primates and our hominin ancestors, 3) Consequences of under- and overnutrition, 4) Special topics including reproduction, lifespan, and the recent obesity epidemic.

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ANTHRCUL 101 - Introduction to Anthropology
Section 001, with Leigh Stuckey
TBA

This course introduces students to anthropology and its four subdisciplines (archaeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology), providing a glimpse of the field's history, present status, and importance. We'll look at the concepts and methods that typify the discipline and frame anthropology's comprehensive, holistic worldview. The course looks especially at cultural and ethnic diversity, and the interactions leading to structures of dominance, inequality, and resistance. 

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ANTHRCUL 272 - Language in Society

Section 001, Words Matter, with Michael Lempert 
TuTh11:30AM - 1:00PM

This course introduces linguistic anthropology, the study of language in the comparative social and cultural context. Some of the questions we address include, What is "language," and why do anthropologists study it? How and to what extent does speaking a particular language construct a culturally specific model of the social and natural world, a sense of 'reality'? How do our linguistic perceptions influence the ways we recognize social differences, such as those based on ethnicity, race, class, and gender? How do linguistic practices and perceptions of language reinforce social divisions and relationships of unequal power?

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ANTHRCUL 252 - Law and Culture
Section 001, with Jatin Dua
TuTh1:00PM - 2:30PM

This course examines the question of law and the social, historical, and cultural contexts within which norms about legality and illegality are produced. Specifically, we focus on how ideas of what law is and how it works emerge not just from doctrines in courtrooms, but are embedded in everyday practice including those of populations considered to lie outside the law — from drug dealers on street corners to pirates on the high seas. This course is organized into three parts. In Part I, we focus on questions of definitions such as: - What is law? - Does every society have laws? - What is the function of law? Part II then turns to a set of thematic topics from courtrooms to human rights tribunals, from constitutions to contracts, from the rights of prisoners to the legal status of software and human organs in order to study the social, political, and economic context within which law functions. Part III emphasizes populations deemed to lie outside the rule of law. 

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ANTHRCUL 101 - Introduction to Anthropology
Section 002, with Thomas Chivens
TBA

This course introduces students to anthropology and its four subdisciplines (archaeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology), providing a glimpse of the field's history, present status, and importance. We'll look at the concepts and methods that typify the discipline and frame anthropology's comprehensive, holistic worldview. The course looks especially at cultural and ethnic diversity, and the interactions leading to structures of dominance, inequality, and resistance. It teaches students ways of learning and thinking about the world's many designs for living in time and space. We'll cover topics like the nature of culture, race, and ethnicity; human genetics, biological evolution, and the fossil record; primate (monkey and ape) behavior; the emergence of agriculture, cities, and states; language and culture; systems of marriage, kinship, and family; sex-gender divisions; economics, politics, and religion in global perspective; theories of development, power and social change; technoscience and emerging media; world systems, global assemblages, and contemporary cultural predicaments.

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