(photo from here)
Week 1
Tuesday, August 28: Introduction – What is Cultural Anthropology?
No readings due
Thursday, August 30: Translating Cultures
Readings due:
Horace Miner. 1956. "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." American Anthropologist 58, 3: 503-507.
Laura Bohannan. 1966. "Shakespeare in the Bush." Natural History. Aug/Sept: 28-33.
Zora Neale Hurston. Mules and Men. Pages 17-34.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 2
Tuesday, Sept. 4: Anthropological Approaches to Data and Knowledge
Readings due:
Napoleon Chagnon. 1968. "Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamo." The Fierce People. Pages: 150-162.
Clifford Geertz. 1973. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In his The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Pages: 412-453.
Thursday, Sept. 6: Fieldwork and Participant Observation
Readings due:
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2000. “Guest and Daughter” from her Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp: 1-38.
Bestor, Theodore. 2003. "Inquisitive Observation: Following Networks in Urban Fieldwork." Doing Fieldwork in Japan. Theodore Bestor, Patricia G. Steinhoff, and Victoria Lyon Bestor, eds. Pp. 315-334. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 3
Tuesday, Sept. 11: Kinship and Family Lives
Readings due:
Kahn, Susan Martha. 2004. "Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of Jewishness." In Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin and Linda Stone, eds. Oxford: Blackwell. Pages: 362-377.
Thursday, Sept. 13: Religion, Spirits, and Ritual
Readings due:
Turner, Victor. 1964. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society.
Worsley, Peter. 1999. “Cargo Cults.” In Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion. David Hicks, ed. Pp. 419-424. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Recording: “Tornado Prom” This American Life, May 26, 2008. 24 minutes. : mp3 file is here --> Prom
Viewing due:
Witchcraft Among the Azande. 1981. Director: André Singer. 52 minutes. To watch film go to Collab / Anth 1010 / Kaltura Media / Site Library
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
(photo from here)
Week 4
Tuesday, Sept. 18: Sex and Gender
Readings due:
Grinker, Roy Richard. 1997. “Houses in the Rainforest: Gender and Ethnicity among the Lese and Efe in Zaire.” In Perspectives on Africa. R. Grinker and C. Steiner, eds. Pp. 228-245. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Martin, Emily. 1991. "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." Signs 16(3): 485-501.
Thursday, Sept. 20: Sex and Gender, part 2
No new reading due. Use this time to review for the first exam.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 5
Tuesday, Sept. 25: First exam
No new reading due.
Thursday, Sept. 27: Social Structure and Social Organization
Readings due:
Knauft, Bruce. 2005. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 1-94.
No weekly writing assignment due this week.
Week 6
Tuesday, October 2: Globalization and Localized Meanings
Readings due:
Knauft, Bruce. 2005. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 95-180.
Viewing due:
Trobriand Cricket. Gary Kildea and Jerry Leach, dir. 53 minutes.
Thursday, October 4: Race, Ethnicity, and Difference
Readings due:
Regis, Helen. 2003. Fulbe Voices: Marriage, Islam, and Medicine in Northern Cameroon. Cambridge: Westview. Pp. 1-20.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 7
Tuesday, October 9 - Fall Reading Days
No class meeting
Thursday, October 11: Gifts and Exchange
Readings due:
Counts, David. 1998. "Too many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All: The Object Lessons in Living with Reciprocity." In Anthropology 98/99. Elvio Angeloni, ed. Pp. 83-86. Guilford: CT. Dushkin/McGraw-Hill Annual Editions.
Rethmann, Petra. 2000. "Skins of Desire: Poetry and Identity in Koriak Women's Gift Exchange." American Ethnologist 27(1): 52-71.
Viewing due:
Mardi Gras: Made in China. 2004. David Redmon, dir. 74 minutes.
FRIDAY:
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 8
Tuesday, October 16: Suffering, Poverty, and Violence in Anthropological Perspective
Readings due:
Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan. 1996. “Suffering and Its Professional Transformation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience.” In Things as they are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Michael Jackson, ed. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Pages: 169-195.
Viewing due:
God Grew Tired of Us. 2007. Christopher Quinn, dir. 90 minutes.
Thursday, October 18: Medical Anthropology
Reading due:
Farmer, Paul. 1990. "Sending Sickness: Sorcery, Politics, and Changing Concepts of AIDS in Rural Haiti." Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 4(1): 6-27.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
(photo from here)
Week 9
Tuesday, October 23: The Limits of Relativism?
Readings due:
Boddy, Janice. 1982. "Womb as Oasis: The Symbolic Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in rural Northern Sudan." American Ethnologist, 9(4): 682-698.
Thursday, October 25: Structure and Agency
Viewing due:
Hoop Dreams. 1994. Steve James, dir. 170 minutes.
* Note: Given this film’s length, I think it’s much easier to watch it on Hulu.com, here. Let me know if you have problems watching it.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox on FRIDAY.
Week 10
Tuesday, October 30: Class cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy
Thursday, November 1: Second Exam
No new reading due
No weekly writing assignment due this week.
No sections will meet this week.
Week 11
Tuesday, November 6: Sporting Cultures
Readings due:
Rhoden, William. 2006. "The Conveyor Belt: The Dilemma of Alienation." From his, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. Pages 171-195.
Viewing Due:
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*. 2008. Christopher Bell, dir. 107 minutes.
Thursday, November 8: Pop Culture
Tricia Rose. 2008. "Introduction" and "Hip Hop is not Responsible for Sexism.” In her, The Hip Hop Wars: What we talk about when we talk about hip hop – and why it matters. New York: Basic Books.
Pages: 1-30 and 149-166.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 12
Tuesday, November 13: Mediated Lives
Readings due:
Gershon, Ilana. 2010. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pages: 1-90.
Thursday, November 15 - No class meeting
I will be at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Use this time to work ahead for the next weeks.
No weekly writing assignment due this week.
Week 13
Tuesday, November 20: Publics and Public Cultures
Readings due:
Gershon, Ilana. 2010. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pages: 91-202.
Thursday, November 22 - No class meeting
Enjoy Thanksgiving break.
No weekly writing assignment due this week.
Week 14
Tuesday, November 27: Realities
Viewing due:
Trekkies. 1997. Roger Nygard, dir. 86 minutes.
Thursday, November 29: Applied Anthropology
Susan Blum. 2009. “Introduction,” and “Observing the Performance Self: Multiplicity versus authenticity.” From her, My Word! Plagiariam and College Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pages: 1-28, and 60-90.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Week 15
Tuesday, December 4 - Third Exam
No new reading due.
Thursday, December 6 - Group Reflection and Discussion
No new reading due.
Weekly writing assignment due at 1pm to dropbox
Final Proposal due - Tuesday, December 11 at 5pm to dropbox
There is no final exam during the final exam period.