graduate course listings
This internal catalog is updated regularly. Also, continue to check the Department bulletin board outside 232 Kroeber for changes (in Bold highlights).
NOTE: Many Graduate seminars are open to qualified Undergraduates.
ANTHRO 210: SPECIAL TOPICS IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: TBA
K. Milton 4 units M 10-12 5047 VLSB
Between-group violence occurs in such a wide range of environments and cultures that it seems to have a strong genetic basis. But it is far from obvious why selection should favor behaviors that increase the chances that the person possessing them will be killed or badly injured. This seminar will examine data about between-group and between-person violence and aggression in different cultures (including perhaps a look at aggression in at least one non-human primate,the common chimpanzee) and will discuss several theories proposed to explain the ubiquity of violence and variations in the rate of violence in human populations.
Several paperback books and various articles will be read and discussed. No midterm or final; participation in seminar discussion and preparation of one research paper by each participant will determine final grade. This seminar is taught jointly by K. Milton, Anthropology and S. Roberts, Psychology. Enrollment is limited. Seminar is open to interested graduate AND undergraduate students. Papers graded in accordance with academic level of participant.
ANTHRO 219: TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "LANGUAGE, MEDICINE, AND ETHICS"
S. Fleischman/A.Alpers 4 units Th 2-5 220 Stevens
(Cross-listed as: Health and Medical Science C272, and Linguistics 290L.)
Falling under the broad heading of Humanistic Medicine, the seminar proposes a below-the-surface look at the language of contemporary biomedicine and at issues of current concern in medical ethics in which language figures prominently. The seminar brings together concepts and methodologies from Law and (discourse-oriented) Linguistics, applying these analytical tools to the field of Medicine. Topics we propose to explore are:
--the doctor-patient relationship (to whom are duties owed?) and the language of doctor-patient communication;
--how we talk about heath and illness (words and grammar and their impact on illness sufferers; disease as an "it"), informed consent and competence;
--the linguistic construction of diseases (what ís in a name and why do disease names matter?)
--metaphors in medicine: biomedicine ís major metaphors (medicine is war, the body is a machine, the patient is a text/container, disease is an object, etc.) and the ideologies they support; the metaphors of body-parts and their illnesses; medicineís metaphorical exports (a cancer on society, blind to reason);
--medical language as an occupational register: its functions and dysfunctions
--the role of narrative in medicine and bioethics
--birth and death: ethical and linguistic issues
--the impact of bilingualism and medical multiculturalism
--the changing US health-care system and its impact on the doctor-patient relationship
By exploring these questions with a group of students/researchers from across disciplines, our goal is to shed clearer light on the values and ideologies that inform Western medicine and its practices, to create a(nother) bridge between Medicine and the Humanities.
ANTHRO 229B: ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH STRATEGIES
R. Tringham/ L. Wilkie 4 units W 2-5 101, 2251 College
This course is a required pro-seminar for first year graduate students in archaeology. In this semester the focus is on the design and implementation of archaeological research, with an emphasis on strategies for the retrieval and empirical study of material evidence in the field and laboratory. The seminar will also stress the constant interplay between theory and method in the design and implementation of research strategies, which is calculated to compliment your last semester's 229A course in theory.
The seminar is structured to a large degree around the process of developing, writing, submitting, and implementing a research project through the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF is the major governmental agency in this country that regularly funds "pure" archaeological research, both at senior and doctoral levels (Dissertation Improvement Grants). Many of you will probably be developing a Dissertation Improvement Grant for NSF at some point during your graduate career, and will probably prepare senior grants after you have received your Ph.D. Thus, it is in your professional interest to learn as early as possible what constitutes a "winning" proposal, one that will be judged positively by your professional peers.
Weekly readings and seminar discussions will explore topics germane for writing your NSF grant proposal, including preparing research designs, undertaking field and laboratory research and developing reasonable budgets. You should identify one or more research problems that you would like to address in a specific region of the world in developing your NSF grant proposal for this class.
Requirements: The requirements for the seminar include the preparation of an NSF grant proposal, participation in class discussions, and the critical review of book chapters and articles that will be assigned to you.
ANTHRO 230-1: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "THEORY AND METHOD IN CULTURE CONTACT STUDIES"
K. Lightfoot CANCELLED
ANTHRO 230-2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "THE BIOARCHAEOLOGY OF CULTURE CONTACT IN THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS"
C. Larsen 4 units Th 2-5 101, 2251 College
The vast region extending from Florida to California, encompassing what historian Herbert E. Bolton called the Spanish Borderlands, has been a focus of study by historians and anthropologists for decades. The region was the northern frontier of New Spain during the colonial era, and played a pivotal role in the expansion of Spainís influence during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Biological anthropology offers a unique perspective on the impact of the arrival of Europeans in the region on native populations. This seminar will focus on the record of the human skeleton in helping us to understand the nature of culture contact and the enormous changes in health and behavior for native populations in a variety of settings. The seminar will also consider the impact of European contact in the New World generally on health and lifeways of native populations.
Prerequisites: None.
Requirements: Active participation in a discussion setting. Each participant will be responsible for a tribal group or region within the Spanish Borderlands, and will prepare a research paper and presentation based on previous and ongoing work by bioarchaeologists working in that region.
Required texts: (1) Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. N.D. Cook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. (2) Bioarchaeology of Native American Adaptation in the Spanish Borderlands. B.J. Baker and L. Kealhofer. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. (3) Native American Demography in the Spanish Borderlands. C.S. Larsen. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.
Professor Clark Larsen is a specialist in bioarchaeology, the field of anthropology that focuses on the study of human remains from archaeological contexts. He has long been fascinated with just about anything ancient, especially bones and teeth of earlier humans, and what they tell us about our past. For the last 15 years or so, he has directed the La Florida Bioarchaeology Project, a multidisciplinary research project that has investigated the impact of European contact on native populations from the present-day states of Georgia and Florida. He has recently begun a project looking at population collapse in medieval Denmark at the time of the Black Death, via the study of skeletons dating from the 10th through 15th centuries. Professor Larsen is a visiting professor at Berkeley whose permanent home base is in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
ANTHRO 230-3: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "RESEARCH PROBLEMS IN MICROMORPHOLOGY FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS"
W. Matthews 4 units Tu 10-12 16 Hearst Gym
lab hours Th 9-12 16 Hearst Gym
This course will enable students to learn and explore use of the microscope in detecting traces of behavior and environment within settlements and landscapes. We will focus on micromorphological study of large (13.5 x 6.5 cm) resin-impregnated thin sections through depositional sequences. This technique will enable students to analyse at high-resolution diverse sediments and bioarchaeological and micro-artifactual remains within their microstratigraphic context. Analysis of component morphology and micro-contextual relationships is furnishing new information on the pre-depositional, depositional and post-depositional histories of archaeological deposits and site formation. We will explore how analysis of variation in the character of microstratigraphic sequences provides tangible information on changes in uses of space and microenvironment within different areas and life-histories of buildings, settlements and landscapes. The case-studies examined will be drawn from key early agricultural and urban sites in Western Asia, including Catalhoyuk in Turkey and Tell Brak in Syria.
The course will include two inter-related components, a lecture and discussion meeting followed by a laboratory session. The course will progress from step by step introduction to different archaeological deposits and stages in thin section description, to full description of specific context types, and a final period of individual selected research. We will discuss the relevance of each category of observation to a range of archaeological contexts and questions, and examine associated concepts. The subjects and materials which will be examined include architectural materials, fire-installations and combustion, discard, sequences of floors and deposits within domestic and ritual contexts and external areas, settlement abandonment and collapse, ethnoarchaeology and experiment, post-depositional alterations, and landscapes. Students may be graded according to participation, and results in laboratory exercises, tests and a mid-term and final paper.
Analysis of these materials and subjects will provide students with skills for studying depositional sequences in other complex settlements and semi-arid environments, including the American Southwest.
ANTHRO 230-4: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "NEW THEMES IN SOUTHWEST PREHISTORY: RECENT SHIFTS IN THEORY AND METHOD IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST"
M.S. Shackley 4 units Th 10-12 111 Kroeber
Current archaeological research in the American Southwest is redefining our concept of the adoption of agriculture in North America, our view of historically defined culture areas (Hohokam, Salado, Mogollon, Sinagua, Anasazi), and the Southwest's former position as a region defining American archaeological method and theory. The seminar will begin with a historical review of Southwestern archaeology and move on to the current methodological and theoretical issues. The seminar will be taught in conjunction with the multi-media distance learning undergraduate course in Southwest Prehistory (Anth 122). Graduate students in the seminar are not required to take the undergraduate course.
ANTHRO 230-X: CURRENT TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY"
I. Hodder 2 units M 1-4 101, 2251 College
Description not available.
ANTHRO 240-B: FUNDAMENTALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY
P. Rabinow 5 units Tu 2-5 in 115 Kroeber, and Th 2-4 in 117 Kroeber
Anthropological theory and practice--following the rest of the world--have been undergoing important restructuring in the past decades. The course is organized to reflect this fact. We will begin by looking at recent debates about the nature and purpose of anthropology. This will provide a starting point for reading a series of classic ethnographies in new ways as well as examining some dimensions of the current research agenda in cultural anthropology.
Students will be required to present a series of classroom presentations as well as two papers.
ANTHRO 250-R: ANALYSIS OF FIELD DATA: "DISSERTATION WRITING"
N. Scheper-Hughes 4 units M 1-3 117 Kroeber
Instructor Approval Only: attend first class meeting to apply for admission to course, and obtain a class entry code.
This is a dissertation write-up seminar. It is limited to a total of 10 socio-cultural and medical anthropology graduate students who are in the process of writing their dissertations. In a collegial and mutually supportive atmosphere, students will present during the semester a dissertation outline and two chapters in progress for seminar response and discussion. One or more seminar meetings will be devoted to book and article publishing strategies.
ANTHRO 250-V: TOURISM,ART AND MODERNITY
N. Graburn 4 units W 2-4 117 Kroeber
This seminar will explore some of the core features of modernity and modernizing forces in the contemporary world. Touristic processes are emblematic of modernity and are a major force in the transnational penetration to hinterlands and the III and IV Worlds. Art may now be created as a measure of modernity, both to express new national identities and as resistance to cultural appropriation. Other art forms are preserved from pre-modernity, but used the same way.
This course is intended for students in the social sciences preparing for, carrying out, or writing up research on these topics, including writing field statements. The emphasis will be on topics of immediate professional interest to the students and the instructor. Books and journals on reserve include:
Important journals on reserve in the Anthropology Library, Kroeber Hall, include:
Please see instructor for more details.
ANTHRO 250X-2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "STRUCTURALISM AND SINCE"
X. Liu 4 units F 10-12 117 Kroeber
This seminar is designed to trace the paradigmatic shift from structuralism to poststructuralism in anthropology and beyond. The main purpose is to provide a critical assessment of the poststructuralist mode of inquiry by means of examining how it has departed from, and yet remained to be linked to, its structuralist "siblings." In other words, this seminar will focus on similarities and differences between these two conceptual paradigms in thought, in hope of situating our current theoretical vogue in the context of an intellectual history. The seminar is divided into two parts. The first part aims at a systematic treatment of the structuralist enterprise: its methodology, its theoretical projection, and its influence in social and human sciences. The second part deals with three debates provoked by poststucturalism, i.e., 1) the question of history, 2) the problems of humanism and Marxism, and 3) postmodern anthropology.
Prerequisites: Some elementary understanding of classic social theory.
Required texts:
ANTHRO 250X-3: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "ANTHROPOLOGY OF HUMANISM"
P. Rabinow 4 units Th 12-2 117 Kroeber
This seminar will explore, ethnographically and anthropologically, some recent manifestations of humanism. Its goal is to think about changing conceptions and practices constitutive of "humanity." These subjects include: the genome project, "human rights discourse," humanitarianism (such as doctors without borders), etc.
The seminar will also address the issue of method: specifically how contemporary ethnography is distinctive (how, if at all, it differs from first-rate journalism).
Required Text: Foucault, Michael. The Politics of Truth (Semiotexte)
ANTHRO 250X-4: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "GENEALOGIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY"
D. Moore 4 units Th 4-7 117 Kroeber
This graduate seminar engages the intersections of political economy, anthropology, and cultural theory. We will focus on the relationships among cultural processes, diverse forms of power, and social inequalities. While Marxian political economy serves as a point of historical departure, we will traverse a diverse terrain of theoretical positions ranging from neo-Gramsican cultural politics to feminist, post-structural, and postcolonial theories. Historical and Ethnographic studies complement a series of influential conceptual debates that revolve around the following themes: Classes, Agency, and Social Reproduction; Cultural Materialism; Articulations of Race and Class; The Crossroads of Class and Gender; Cultural Constructions of Work; Conceptualizing Households; Capitalism(s) and Cultural Representation; Commoditization and Consumption; Yearning Beyond Socialism; and Postcolonial Development.
Required texts (will most likely be):
ANTHRO 250X-5: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "RETHINKING ETHNOPSYCHIATRY II"
S. Pandolfo 4 units W 2-5 333 Kroeber
Description not available.
ANTHRO 250X-6: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "ADVANCED RESEARCH IN ANTHROPOLOGY"
L. Nader 4 units W 12-2 313 Kroeber
Senior undergraduates working on a Senior Honor Thesis with Professor Nader are required to take this seminar.
ANTHRO 250X-7: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND IDENTIFICATION"
J. Borneman 4 units Th 10-12 117 Kroeber
This seminar examines the construction of political authority and identification, with a specific focus on periods of change to liberal-democratic regimes. Hence two questions will guide us: How do regimes end and leaders die? If the symbolization of the leaders' living body was central to tyrannical authority, is the public symbolization of their dead bodies now central to successor forms of authority? As case studies, we will draw from research on the totalizing and patricentric regimes that spanned most of this century, 1917 to the present. This seminar, then, will serve as an introduction into a comparative social anthropology of the closure of traumatic political regimes, of its symbolic forms, political consequences, and probable futures. Participation will involve experimentation with the representation of content and form of political authority. Concerning content, we will read works on political authority and identification that consider conditions under which political authority and identification is restructured in a regime change. Regime changes are events, such as revolutions, revolts, defeats or liberations, in which a "people" think that they have made a break with past forms of authority. The focus will be on theorizing the "end" and "death" as a moment of putative rupture in the authority of tyrannical regimes. Concerning form, we will work with three representational forms: audio-visual essay, electronic website, and written essay. The seminar will alternate between collective discussions of texts, sounds, and images. For projects, participants will be asked to select a regime change, to examine original images, sounds, and texts, and to work with different representational forms. Required readings consist of journal articles and chapters in books; they are available to copy from the instructor.
ANTHRO 250X-8: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "VIOLENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY" (ADDED CLASS: CCN 03031)
M. Ferme 4 units M 10-12 117 Kroeber
This course will address key aspects of the current debate on the links between sovereignty and violence in anthropology and in social theory. Anthropologists have addressed creatively this connection, especially in relation to the "national order of things," citizenship, and alternative models of community. We will examine how classic texts in political theory (by Weber, Arendt, Carl Schmitt, and others) have been received and applied to analyses of contemporary political events. In particular, we will raise questions about contemporary forms of sovereignty, the normalization of exceptional rule ushered in, according to some, by the colonial state (Mamdani), imperialism as a whole (Arendt), and by the Nazi and other genocidal states of the twentieth century (Arendt, Agamben).
Some contemporary thinkers argue that classic forms of sovereignty are seeing their demise, or that they are undergoing radical reconfigurations. For example, how do the figures of the refugee, the migrant, and the stateless challenge the territorial and imagined integrity of the nation-state--let alone concepts of citizenship? What forms of political engagement are introduced in the wake of sovereignty (what replaces the Enlightenment figure of the sovereign individual, the bearer of legal and natural rights)? What is the effect of new forms of sovereignty, such as the "productive" and reproductive forms of control predicated on disciplining institutional practices that generate "docile bodies"--the prison, the hospital, the school, etc. (Foucault)?
Requirements: Participation and active engagement with readings, 4 or 5 page-long responses to readings, and a final paper.
ANTHRO 250X-9: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "SOCIAL INEQUALITY" (ADDED CLASS: CCN 03527)
G. Berreman 4 units Th 10-12 180 Barrows
Content will be drawn from the following, in a manner reflecting the interests of seminar participants. Contemporary social stratification in complex societies (e.g., U.S., India, Japan) with attention to such structures of inequality as "race," class, caste, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age and stigmatized identities of many sorts. Issues may include transnationalism. globalization, migration, immitgrant status, "minority" statuses ("tribal," indigenous, etc), and such policies and processes as affirmative action, assimilation, colonialism (internal and external), resisitance, etc. Attention will also be directed to issues of equality and inequality in non-stratified societies, such as acephalous, foraging societies and societies with "big-man" and "chiefly" organization (most of which are horticultural).
ANTHRO 250X-10: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOC/CULT ANTHRO: "ANTHROPOLOGICAL DEMOGRAPHY" (ADDED CLASS: CCN 03530)
E. A. Hammel 4 units W 10-12 204, 2232 Piedmont
Description not available.
ANTHRO 251: RESEARCH DESIGN
J. Ogbu 4 units W 4-6 117 Kroeber
This seminar is designed to cover the following issues: (a) history and theories of ethnography; (b) planning and designing ethnographic research (what you do before going to the field, writing the research proposal); and (c) implementing the research (what you do in the field, and after).
Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
Requirements: (a) Regular seminar attendance; (b) weekly reading and discussion; and (c) a grant proposal as a final product. Students will be graded on all three activities.
ANTHRO 260: PROBLEMS IN FOLKLORE: "THE FOLKTALE"
C. Goldberg 4 units Th 10-12 F318 Haas
An overview of international scholarship on fictional folk narratives. Topics include: generic distinctions, structure, stability and variation, reference tools, feminist and psychological interpretations, fieldwork, narrators and their audiences, and the relation of folktales to culture. In addition to individual research projects, students will work together on a comparative analysis of a particular tale.
ANTHRO 280G: OCEANIA
L. Lindstrom 4 units W 12-2 117 Kroeber
Seniors interested in the South Pacific are encouraged to enroll.
From the era of Haddon, Layard, Malinowski, and Mead to the present, the Pacific region--that celebrated "laboratory of culture"--has excited much anthropological debate and theorizing. This seminar reviews cultures of Oceania, past and present, focusing particularly on anthropological issues that Pacific scholarship has informed. These issues include theories of personhood and gender, invented tradition and the politics of culture, crises of ethnographic representation and the basis of ethnohistorical truth, knowledge and power, cultural tourism, and so forth. We read a number of recent monographs and view video documentaries that address general anthropological issues with Pacific data. Seminar participants write 2-3 page response essays to these monographs and documentaries and also undertake one longer research paper. For additional information on the course (until 12/20/98), email lindstroml@centum.utulsa.edu.
For information on Professor Lindstrom, please see the description for Anthro 189, Language and Culture.
ANTHRO 290: SURVEY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
C. Hastorf 1 unit M 4-6 160 Kroeber
The departmental seminar, which is held on alternate Mondays from 4-6 p.m. in 160 Kroeber throughout each semester, presents a range of speakers on current topics in anthropology. Speakers and topics are announced prior to the event on the glassed-in bulletin board opposite the main office (232 Kroeber). All students are invited; however, enrollment is strictly limited to and required of all Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Demography graduate students who have not been advanced to candidacy.
RELATED COURSES IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS
FOLKLORE 250B: FOLKLORE THEORY & TECHNIQUES
A. Dundes 4 units W 4-6 332 Giannini
This seminar is a survey of the history of development of Folklore and Folkloristic theory and method worldwide. Assignment includes writing a research paper for possible publication.
Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor.
Document last
modified January 15, 1999.
For questions about this server, please
contact
hollyh@uclink4.berkeley.edu