Anthropology

Courses

ANTH 500a, The Development of the Discipline: Contemporary Themes  Douglas Rogers

The major theoretical orientations in social and cultural anthropology (especially in the United States and Europe), their historical development and importance, their relation to one another and to other disciplines. The seminar is reserved for first-year doctoral students in Anthropology.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 501a, Anthropology and Classical Social Theory  Paul Kockelman

Readings of primary texts in classical social theory, especially the writings of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of these theorists in the early development of anthropology and social science more broadly. The course is reserved for first-year graduate students in Anthropology.
T 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 502a, Research in Sociocultural Anthropology: Design and Methods  Marcia Inhorn

The course offers critical evaluation of the nature of ethnographic research. Research design includes the rethinking of site, voice, and ethnographic authority.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

ANTH 513a, Language, Culture, and Ideology  J. Joseph Errington

Influential anthropological theories of culture are reviewed with critical reference to theories of language that inspired or informed them. Topics include American and European structuralism; cognitivist and interpretivist approaches to cultural description; work of Bakhtin, Bourdieu, and various "critical theorists."
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 531b / ARCG 531b / CLSS 815b / EALL 773b / HIST 502b / HSAR 564b / JDST 653b / NELC 533b / RLST 803b, Sensory Experiences in Ancient Ritual  Carolyn Laferriere and Andrew Turner

A comparative exploration of the role the senses played in the performance of ancient and premodern ritual, drawing from a range of ancient traditions including those of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and from cultural traditions of the Near East, India, China, and the New World. Placing particular emphasis on the relationship between art and ritual, we discuss the methods available for reconstructing ancient sensory experience, how the ancient cultures conceived of the senses and perception, and how worshipers’ sensory experiences, whether visual, sonic, olfactory, gustatory, or haptic, were integral aspects in their engagement with the divine within religious ritual. This seminar incorporates material in the Yale Art Gallery.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 533b, Bilingualism in Social Context  J. Joseph Errington

The linguistic phenomenon of bilingualism is presented through broad issues in social description inseparably linked to it: growth and change in bilingual communities; bilingual usage, social identity, and allegiance; and interactional significances of bilingual speech repertoire use.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 538a / GLBL 838a, Culture and Politics in the Contemporary Middle East  Marcia Inhorn

This interdisciplinary seminar is designed to introduce students to some of the most pressing contemporary cultural and political issues shaping life in the Middle East and North Africa. The course aims for broad regional coverage, with particular focus on several important nation-states (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq) and Western interventions in them. Students should emerge with a keener sense of Middle Eastern regional histories and contemporary social issues, as described by leading scholars in the field of Middle Eastern studies and particularly Middle Eastern anthropology. Following a historical introduction, the course is organized around three core themes—Islam, politics, modernity—with movement from the macropolitical level of Islamic discourse and state politics to the most intimate domains of gender, family life, and contemporary youth culture. Through reading, thinking, talking, and writing about a series of book-length monographs, students gain broad exposure to a number of exigent issues in the Middle Eastern region, as well as to the ethnographic methodologies and critical theories of Middle East anthropologists. Students are graded on seminar participation, leadership of seminar discussions, two review/analysis papers, and a comparative written review of three books. Required for Council on Middle East Studies (CMES) graduate certificate students. Recommended for Middle East concentrators in other disciplines.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

ANTH 541a / HIST 965 / PLSC 779a, Agrarian Societies: Culture, Society, History, and Development  Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, James Scott, and Elisabeth Wood

An interdisciplinary examination of agrarian societies, contemporary and historical, Western and non-Western. Major analytical perspectives from anthropology, economics, history, political science, and environmental studies are used to develop a meaning-centered and historically grounded account of the transformations of rural society. Team-taught.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 559b / ARCG 559b, Introduction to Experimental Archaeology  Roderick McIntosh and Ellery Frahm

Experimental archaeology is one of the most important tools to develop and test models that link human behaviors and natural forces to the archaeological record. This class explores the elements of good experimental design and procedures.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

ANTH 560b / AFST 516b, African Migration and Diaspora  Vivian Lu

This seminar examines the politics of migration to, from, and within Africa. We explore intercontinental, regional, and rural-urban migratory circuits and diasporic formations to consider mobility and immobility in relation to race, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial travel accounts and trade diaspora histories to black critical theory and fiction, we examine theorizations and representations both about migration and by diasporic peoples to unsettle and retheorize imaginaries of globalization, nationalism, and the politics of belonging.
T 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 561b, Anthropology of the Global Economy for Development and Conservation  Carol Carpenter

The seminar explores topics in the anthropology of the global economy that are relevant to development and conservation policy and practice. Anthropologists are often assumed to focus on micro- or local-level research, and thus to have limited usefulness in the contemporary, global world of development and conservation policy. In fact, however, they have been examining global topics since at least the 1980s, and very little current anthropological research is limited to the village level. More importantly, the anthropological perspective on the global economy is unique and important.
Th 9:30am-12:20pm

ANTH 570a, Anthropology of Information  Paul Kockelman

This course is about the digital and computational mediation of meaning. In some sense, it is about human-based significance in relation to machine-based sieving. We read classic works in media studies, cybernetics, computer science, semiotics, anthropology, and critical theory. Key topics include the relation between meaning and information; the relation between interpretation and computation; and the relation between interaction and infrastructure.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 571b, Modern Indonesia  J. Joseph Errington

Political and cultural dynamics in contemporary Indonesia explored from historical and anthropological perspectives. Major ethnic groups, key historical dynamics, political culture, and interaction between modernization and traditional lifeways. Issues of ethnicity, gender, religion, and economy in situations of rapid social change.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 572b, Disaster, Degradation, Dystopia: Social Science Approaches to Environmental Perturbation and Change  Michael Dove

This is an advanced seminar on the long tradition of social science scholarship on environmental perturbation and natural disasters, the relevance of which has been heightened by the current global attention to climate change. The course is divided into three main sections. The first consists of central questions and debates in the field: social dimensions of natural disasters, the discursive dimensions of environmental degradation, focusing on deforestation; and the current debate about the relationship between resource wealth and political conflict, focusing on the "green war" thesis. The second focuses on anthropological and interdisciplinary approaches to climate change and related topics, encompassing canonical anthropological work on flood and drought; cyclones, El Niño, and inter-annual cycles; ethno-ecology; and risk. Additional lectures focus on interdisciplinary work. The final section consists of the classroom presentation of work by the students. Prerequisite: ANTH 581a or 597a.
Th 1pm-3:50pm

ANTH 575b / EAST 575b, Hubs, Mobilities, and Global Cities  Helen Siu

Analysis of urban life in historical and contemporary societies. Topics include capitalist and postmodern transformations, class, gender, ethnicity, migration, and global landscapes of power and citizenship.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 588a, Politics of Culture in Southeast Asia  Eve Zucker

The course analyzes how Southeast Asian nations promote national culture as part of political and economic agendas. It also explores Southeast Asian cultural and political diversity to rescue the possibility for cultural difference within a global world.
W 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 597a, Social Science of Conservation and Development  Carol Carpenter

This course is designed to provide M.E.M., M.E.Sc., and doctoral students with the opportunity to master the essential social science literature on sustainable development and conservation. Social science makes two contributions to the practice of development and conservation. First, it provides ways of thinking about, researching, and working with social groupings—including rural households and communities, but also development and conservation institutions, states, and NGOs. This aspect includes relations between groups at all these levels, and the role of power in these relations. Second, social science tackles the analysis of the knowledge systems that implicitly shape development and conservation policy and impinge on practice. In other words, we analyze communities but also our own ideas of what communities are. We also examine our ideas about sustainable development and conservation, and we look at development and the institutions that implement it from the perspective of communities. The emphasis throughout is on how these things shape the practice of sustainable development and conservation. Case studies used in the course have been balanced as much as possible between Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, and Latin America; most are rural and Third World (largely due to the development and conservation focus). The course includes readings from all noneconomic social sciences. Readings are equally focused on conservation and development. The goal of the course is to stimulate students to apply informed and critical thinking (which means not criticizing others, but questioning our own underlying assumptions) to whatever roles they may come to play in sustainable development and conservation, in order to move toward more environmentally and socially sustainable projects and policies. The course is also designed to help students shape future research by learning to ask questions that build on, but are unanswered by, the social science theory of conservation and development. No prerequisites. This is a requirement for the joint F&ES/Anthropology doctoral program and a prerequisite for some advanced F&ES courses. Open to advanced undergraduates. Three hours lecture/seminar.
T 1pm-3:50pm

ANTH 598b, Advanced Readings: Social Science of Conservation and Development  Carol Carpenter

An advanced seminar on the social science theory of sustainable development and conservation, designed as an M.E.M. capstone course and to give M.E.Sc. and doctoral students a wider theoretical context for analyzing and writing up their research. The course traces the conceptual history of the social science theory of sustainable development and conservation, focusing on theories of power, governmentality, and capitalism. It examines relations between these theories, alternative theories, and how this history influences the field. The course covers the works of Michel Foucault most relevant to development and conservation, important social scientists who have used Foucault's ideas (e.g., James Ferguson, Timothy Mitchell, Tania Li, Donald Moore, David Mosse), alternative theories of power (e.g., James Scott, Bruno Latour), applications of Foucault's ideas to development (selections change every year), applications of Foucault's ideas to the environment (especially Arun Agrawal, Timothy Luke, Bruce Braun), theories of resistance (Michel Foucault, James Scott), and Foucault-influenced views of the economy and capitalism (Mitchell, Ferguson, Aiwa Ong, Li, Anna Tsing, among others). Students are expected to use the course to develop, and present in class, their own research and writing. Prerequisite: ANTH 561b, 582a, or 597a. Enrollment limited to twelve.
T 9:30am-12:20pm

ANTH 600b, Contemporary Social Theory  Louisa Lombard

An overview of central themes and debates in contemporary social theory, with a focus on the integration of theory and research, rather than a hermeneutical analysis of particular theoretical texts. Concentrating on questions of power, inequality, the self, and community, assessment of the relevance of sociological theory to advancing an understanding of the complexities of late-twentieth-century Western society. Critical theory, feminist theories, postmodernism, and the contributions of individual theorists are reviewed and critiqued.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 601b, Meaning and Materiality  Paul Kockelman

This course is about the relation between meaning and materiality. We read classic work at the intersection of biosemiosis, technocognition, and sociogenesis. And we use these readings to understand the relation between significance, selection, sieving, and serendipity.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 630a / ANTH 430a / E&RS 531a / RUSS 430a / RUSS 630a, Post-Pravda: Truth, Falsehood, and Media in (post-)Socialism and Beyond  Dominic Martin

Following the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal, it has been declared that Euro-America has entered a 'post-truth' era. Academics, politicians and the media use this term, often connecting it to Russia, without explicit formulation of what it is or might be. This upper-level seminar discusses recent social scientific work in socialist and postsocialist countries to outline a coherent conceptual and empirical picture of a 'post-truth' situation. The works under discussion theorize the relationship between power and knowledge in socialism and postsocialism through the discursive productions of journalists, bloggers, actors, secret policemen, musicians, politicians, and others. Mapping the intricacies of knowledge, personhood, and expression within socialism and postsocialism, these authors present broader arguments about the epistemic roots of the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe and Russia and the rise of authoritarian populism. The seminar considers how socialist and postsocialist uses of media and linguistic productions foreshadowed, and latterly have come to intersect with, the production and consumption of media and information in Europe and the United States.
T 9:25am-11:15am

ANTH 639a / AFST 639a, Africa, Politics, Anthropology  Louisa Lombard

A historical-anthropological study of politics in Africa. How have anthropologists made sense of the workings of African politics, both those of state and nonstate actors? This course charts how African states came into being, how they operate, and how state agents and the people they govern negotiate legitimacy, authority, and belonging.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ANTH 643a, Primate Behavior and Ecology  Eduardo Fernandez-Duque

Socioecology of primates compared with that of other mammals, emphasizing both general principles and unique primate characteristics. Topics include life-history strategies, feeding ecology, mating systems, and ecological influences on social organization.
TTh 9am-10:15am

ANTH 647a / AMST 637a / WGSS 652a, Transnationalism and Mobility: Theories and Paradigms  Inderpal Grewal

This course focuses on transnational research by examining its theoretical and methodological reliance on paradigms of “mobility.” Based on concepts coming from migration studies, ethnic and race studies, postcolonial studies, and critical theory, transnational research has now become ubiquitous. Much of this work in its most exciting manifestations works against traditional approaches to nation, area, and migration, providing new ways to conceptualize subjects, states, epistemologies, and ontologies. It has also emerged within the disciplines with practitioners who think not in term of comparative or area research, but through flows, movements, networks, and unstable boundaries. The course examines the importance of this body of research in understanding histories and genealogies of colonialism and modernity. We also look at how historians are producing exciting work that refuses to remain within the boundaries of international area studies; anthropologists who are redrawing the “field” of research; and, importantly, the emergence of a feminist approach to transnationalism and mobility that has also impacted WGSS. The course brings together a broad area of research that looks at the ways in which modernity—especially Western modernity—has included conceptualizations of movement and speed, travel and mobility. We investigate these mobile modernities to understand also what is seen as outside such modernity. In doing so, the course brings an interdisciplinary feminist cultural analysis to theories of transnationalism and postcoloniality.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

ANTH 651b / WGSS 651b, Intersectionality and Women's Health  Marcia Inhorn

bsp;965a, Directed Research in Physical Anthropolgy  David Watts

By arrangement with faculty.
HTBA