SOAN

Utilizing key aspects of the ethnographic approach and methodology, and complemented with a constellation of interdisciplinary scholarly material tethered to anthropology, this course turns the ethnographic lens on the recent American past. Through a sequential trajectory comprising student-led explorations of American cultural ephemera, students assemble an analytic and empirically-grounded understanding of the evolving American zeitgeist in the decades preceding the postmodern and neoliberal turn.

This course grounds an understanding of many of our social and cultural conflicts within two dominant systems: First, a political-economy that has operated largely in the interests of the elite and thereby produced a level of economic inequality not seen in the United States in at least a century; second, an American empire that, despite continuing displays of force and the stationing of troops across the globe, is showing clear signs of overreach and decline.

Climate change has recently become shorthand for Global Warming, the clearcutting of rainforests, and the burning of fossil fuels. Yet while anthropogenic climate change on the global scale is indeed a modern phenomenon, climate change itself is nothing new, and human societies have been negotiating their natural world for millennia; adapting to changing conditions by inventing new technologies, adopting new social structures, and even modifying the landscapes around them.

Ethnography is the study of human cultures. Ethnographic methods are the constellation of research tools that anthropologists (and nowadays, many others) use in exploring, understanding, and writing about human cultures. This course introduces students to the methodological craft of ethnographic inquiry, and includes an examination of the historical development of this methodological toolkit, the theoretical implications of this approach to research, the ethical considerations paramount to ethnographic research, and the practical concerns involved in "doing" ethnography.

This course covers experimental and quasi-experimental design, the design of social surveys, and techniques of data analysis appropriate for each type of design. Individual student research projects are required.

Anthropological theory sees the world through a disciplinary lens that focuses on culture -- shared understandings -- while looking broadly and holistically at the human condition across a broad range of times and places. This course invites students to "think anthropologically" as they become familiar with the various lines of thought that have characterized anthropology since its earliest days to the present. In addition, students learn to grapple theoretically with contemporary problems and articulate their thoughts on them in terms of relevant anthropological theorists.

This course offers an in-depth survey of sociology's foundational theoretical perspectives. Students analyze, compare, and apply the ideas of a range of classic and contemporary social theorists, and in doing so develop a keen appreciation for how the lens we use to think about and perceive various social phenomena profoundly shapes our questions and conclusions about the world. The course focuses on the kinds of questions that have been asked by influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers, as well as the theories they have constructed to answer them.

Past societies are often divided into "prehistoric" and "historic" based on the existence of ties with Western culture. Following this dichotomy, archaeology has long contributed to a Colonialist perspective of selective literacy. In attempt to deconstruct said tendency, this course explores the multiplicity of circumstances in which archaeologists study a past for which historical records exist.

This course examines major social movements in terms of their forms, aims, and implications, as well as the research and theories deployed to make sense of them. In particular it explores these movements' recruitment and organizational tactics, resource mobilization, strategy, and effects on public policy. It also analyzes their relation to political institutions, socioeconomic structures, and cultural formations, including mass media and official agencies.

This course is an introduction to the sub-discipline of linguistics within the broader discipline of anthropology. The course covers methods used and theories formulated in the study of language in anthropology. These include the structure of language; language through history; a comparison between human and non-human modes of communication; the innate human capacity for language; the relationship between language, thought, and culture; and the study of language, power, and identity. A cross-cultural perspective is emphasized in this class.