Fall 2008 Undergraduate Courses
FALL 2008 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
105 INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY (3)
#293865 * T & Th * 2:00-3:20 p.m. * 355 Fillmore * STAFF
Understanding and appreciating different human groups and other primates. An introduction to the study of culture as a "given" (usually unconscious) way of understanding and as a choice (consciously selected) set of values. The first third of the course deals how human culture & behavior ("human nature") evolved, the second with how culture adapted in various non-Western ("primitive" and "prehistoric") societies, and the third with how these matters play out in modern society. LEC
106 INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (3)
#436642 * T & Th * 9:30-10:50 a.m. * 170 Fillmore * STAFF
Survey of important ideas about culture and society that have shaped anthropology. The principal institutions of culture: language, social organization, religion, spirituality, gender, economics, politics, artistic expression, etc., in their traditional ethnographic context and as they change through cultural contact. LEC
107 INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (3)
#235901 * M, W, F * 1:00-1:50 p.m. * 355 Fillmore * STAFF
For centuries preceding modern times, our uniqueness as a species was taken as a sign of special creation; we were not seen to be a part of nature. But as knowledge of human evolution, of our closeness to other primates, and of our adaptations to specific environments emerged, we have taken our place in the animal kingdom. Here we will learn how those insights developed, and about current methods of understanding human origins and the natural forces which have shaped us. LEC
108 INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY (3)
#496995 * M, W, F * 12:00-12:50 p.m. * 170 Fillmore * DR. EZRA ZUBROW
This course is designed to provide the student with a general introduction to the field of archaeology, including the methods and techniques archaeologists use to identify and investigate archaeological sites. The course will focus on some of the key issues in archaeology, from human evolution and origins of agriculture to the beginning of the modern age, including examples from both the Old World and the New World. Students will learn how archaeologists use material culture to construct interpretations of human behavior in the past. LEC
168 MYTH AND RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (3)
#493005 * M, W, F * 12:00-12:50 p.m. * 225 NSC * DR. ROGER D. WOODARD
In this course, we will investigate mythic and religious traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. Our study of myth and religion will, however, be comparative in emphasis. We will thus have a twofold goal: (1) to encounter the Greco-Roman traditions themselves and (2) through our comparative investigations, to attempt to identify the mythic and religious traditions which the Greeks and especially the more conservative Romans inherited from their Indo-European ancestors. About mid-semester, will begin to turn our full gaze upon comparative materials, but even as we are engaged in discovering the mythic and religious traditions of the ancient Indic, Iranian Celtic, Germanic and Hittite cultures, we will continue to encounter new materials and motifs from Greece and Rome. LEC
246 INTRODUCTION TO PRIMATE BEHAVIOR (3)
#351059 * T & Th * 9:30-10:50 a.m. * 355 Fillmore * DR. CAROL BERMAN
Behavior and social organization of nonhuman primates; current theories, evolutionary processes and research methods both in the field and in the laboratory. This course discusses the life cycles of various primate species, the biological and social problems they face (e.g., finding a place to live, finding food, finding protection from predators, growing up within a complex social group, finding mates, and rearing young who can survive and reproduce), and the solutions to these problems. There will be an emphasis on the ways observations of primates can be used to construct general principles about the evolution of behavior. Issues of particular interest to human social evolution will be discussed, for example, language studies with apes, cooperative hunting and tool-making. Field research will be emphasized, although laboratory studies will also be discussed where they lead to a greater understanding of the data from the field. LEC
265 PEOPLES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA (3)
#243876 * M, W, F * 10:00-10:50 p.m. * 351 Fillmore * DR. DAVID BANKS
(This course can be used to satisfy an Area Studies requirement.)
This course introduces students to the continuing problems of people to people relations in Asia and the West that emerged during the colonial era. Southeast Asia is a vital region which follows religions and social practices also found in other parts of Asia and beyond. This semester we will think about and study cultures of Java in Indonesia and of the Philippines through two substantial novels about these areas on the eve of independence and through anthropological materials. We will also make use of visual materials and sound recordings to help us get the feeling of Asia. Classes will consist of lectures, discussions and audio-visual presentations. Most sessions will include attempts to empathize with people in Asia and find out how they relate to important problems and situations. We will take little for granted. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions of the readings. LEC
333 NORTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY (3)
#160138 * Th * 2:30-5:10 p.m. * 322 Fillmore * DR. TINA THURSTON
(This course can be used to satisfy an Area Studies requirement.)
This course is a broad survey of North American peoples, with emphasis on times prior to European colonization. Course readings and discussions will be organized around regional cultural traditions (e.g. Arctic, Subarctic, Northwest, Midwest and Great Plains, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Great Basin, and West Coast) covering 20,000 years of development. We will try to avoid a culture historic view and use contemporary theory to view North American prehistory as a dynamic series of cultural changes and continuities, relating to many highly varied cultures with different pasts and different trajectories, involving ways of life as diverse as foraging, agriculture, and urban-centered societies. Topics of discussion will range from material culture such as art, artifacts, architecture and cultural landscapes, to cultural structures such as kinship, economy, sociopolitical organization and sacred beliefs, stressing how archaeologists use both field/laboratory methods and theories to connect matieral things with vital 'non-tangible' aspects of the prehistoric past: beliefs, actions, and practices. We will also review colonial encounters between Europeans and Native Americans and the historical archaeology of Europeans and Africans in colonial America. We will finish the semester with a discussion of contemporary ethical and social issues of concern to the ongoing dialogue between Native American people and archaeologists today. LEC
348 FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY OSTEOLOGY (3)
#152525 * M * 4:00-6:40 p.m. * 170 Fillmore * DR. JOYCE SIRIANNI
Lecture, demonstration and laboratory work; fundamentals of human skeletal anatomy will be covered. Procedures and applications in contemporary and historical human biology and in archaeology will be considered, with stress placed upon both technical approach and theoretical application. This lecture and laboratory course demonstrates the fundamentals of human skeletal biology and anatomy. Procedures and applications used in evaluating archaeological and contemporary human populations will be stressed. Forensic applications will be considered. LEC
353 OLD WORLD PREHISTORY (3)
#103344 * M, W * 2:00-3:20 p.m. * 170 Fillmore * DR. PETER F. BIEHL
(This course can be used to satisfy an Area Studies requirement.)
This course is an upper division survey of the prehistory of the Old World (Africa, Europe, and Asia) from early hominids through complex societies (from ca. 2.5 million years ago to ca. 2000 BC). Within a coherent theoretical framework, the course attempts to bring together a wide range of topics in Old World archaeology such as subsistence strategies of the earliest humans, transition to farming, origins and development of social complexity, urbanism and state formation. LEC
377 MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT, SORCERY (3)
#347644 * M, W, F * 11:00-11:50 am * 355 Fillmore * DR. PHILLIPS STEVENS
Understanding the nature of magic and the anthropology of sorcery and witchcraft beliefs around the world and throughout history offers insights into some fundamental aspects of human belief and behavior. Of special interest to us will be the numerous details of such beliefs that are culturally universal, suggesting that we’re dealing with something fundamentally human. We will consider such beliefs in traditional cultures, and in Western history, and we will look at "occult" interests and fears in contemporary America. LEC (Pre-requisite: Junior/Senior status)
384 BOOKS OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS (3)
#089481 * T & Th * 11:00 a.m.-12:20 p.m. * 352 Fillmore * DR. DENNIS TEDLOCK
(Satisfies an Area Studies requirement)
The ancient Maya painted inscriptions on pottery, modeling them in stucco, and carved them in stone. The also wrote on long sheets of paper, folded accordion-fashion to make books with jaguar-skin covers. These books were instruments for seeing; they made it possible for readers to recover the perfect sight that humans had enjoyed before the gods misted their vision. Readers could know what was far away, or what had happened in the past or was about to happen, whether in the divine realms of the sky and the underworlds or in the human realm on the surface of the earth. The temporal framework for these happenings was provided by a calendar that took account of the movements of the sun, moon, planets, stars, and seasons.
Four Mayan books survived in hieroglyphic form, having escaped the bonfires of the sixteenth-century missionaries. Other books survive because Mayan scribes created alphabetically written versions (in their own languages) after the Spanish conquest and (in some places) continued to add new chapters as late as the eighteenth century. The best known alphabetic works are the Chilam Balam or “Jaguar Priest” books, written in Yucatec Maya, and the Popol Vuh or “Council Book,” written in Quiché Maya. In addition, a great deal of ancient knowledge was and is transmitted orally, all the way down through the millions of speakers of Mayan languages who live in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras today.
In the case of the ancient inscriptions and books, we will examine the results of recent breakthroughs in the decipherment of the Mayan script and even learn to read some hieroglyphs,
picking up some basic knowledge of astronomy in the process. In the case of the alphabetically written books and contemporary oral sources, we will read English translations of narratives, prayers, speeches, chants, and songs, at the same time listening to what some of these forms sound like in the original languages.
The assigned reading, in addition to multiple handouts that will include the latest news about decipherment, will be as follow: Michael Coe and Mark van Stone, Reading the Mayaglyphs; Linda Schele, David Freidel and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years of the Shamans Path; Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and Rabinal Achi: A Mayan Drama of War and Sacrifice. LEC (Satisfies an Area Studies requirement)
Please note: Books of the Ancient Mayas is cross-listed as ENG 382 and APY 384. You may register either through APY or English. . If you register through English, be sure to bring it to the attention of the APY Undergraduate Office.
394 RELIGION AND HEALING IN NATIVE SOUTH AMERICA (3)
(Satisfies an Area Studies requirement)
#161071 * * T & Th * 9:30-10:50 am * 351 Fillmore * STAFF
This course surveys the contemporary religions and healing practices of Native South Americans through the ethnographies of a variety of South American groups. We will explore Native South American concepts of time, space, power, order, destruction and renewal and their manifestations in birth, initiation, healing and death rituals. The purpose of the course is to understand different worldviews and practices that will help us re-think our way or conceiving the world and our role in it. LEC
421 UNDERSTANDING CHINA: CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION
#143875 * T, Th * 12:30-1:50 p.m. * 354 Fillmore * DR. EVERETT ZHANG
(This course satisfies an Area Studies requirement)
China is among the fastest changing places in the world today and has become the fourth largest (or third) economy, which led to some prediction of “China’s century” here in the U.S. How do we define “China” as a culture, a society, a tradition, and a place? How do we understand what has changed, what is emerging, and where China is heading?
Where do the traditions of Chinese culture, the documenting of which was once the trade mark of anthropology of China, stand now? Traditions such as folk religions, kinship, family, Chinese medicine, marriage, gender, material culture (food, e.g.), and so on, have been undergoing transformation and reinvention under modernity including several decades of Maoist socialism and the rise of the post-Mao consumer society.
This course gives an overview of those historical processes, focusing on the dramatic transformation over the past several decades. We pay special attention to the contradictions in the transformation: how transnationalism intersects with nationalism, how the decentralized social life intersects with the sovereignty of post-Mao developmental state, how the memories of socialism affect the current cultural politics and the economic culture, how social re-stratification intersects with increasing mobility, how China stands as an example against the sweeping thesis of Westernization on the one hand and a caveat to the oversimplified critique of neo-liberalism on the other hand. In the end, we will return to the question early anthropologists of China asked: how is it possible to understand China as an integrated culture without missing its diversity?
Primarily using ethnographies, this course also makes use of coverage from the media and documentary.
This course is intended to be an upper level undergraduate course, but for those who are interested in China, this can be an introductory course but with higher intensity than an introductory course. LEC
443 ADVANCED PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: PALEOPATHOLOGY (3)
#451210 * T * 3:00-5:40 p.m. * 158 Spaulding * DR. JOYCE SIRIANNI
This seminar is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates who have some background in physical anthropology. Students in this seminar will learn about diseases that leave their marks on bone; how to recognized distinctive patterns of various disease, and understand the potential impact on ancient populations. SEM
448 HUMAN GENETICS/LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES (3)
#357180 * W * 2:00-4:40 p.m. * 158 Spaulding * DR. CHRISTINE DUGGLEBY
(Pre-requisite: Human Genetics or other genetics course; or permission of instructor)
Recent advances in genetic technology have presented the scientific and lay community with ethical and legal problems yet to be resolved. The objective of this course is to provide an opportunity for informed discussions of such issues relating to contemporary human/medical genetics. SEM
488 KINSHIP AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE (3)
#193784 * M, W, F * 12:00-12:50 p.m. * 352 Fillmore * DR. DAVID BANKS
(With permission of the instructor, this course can satisfy the Practicum requirement for majors)
A central goal of the course is to enable students to view kinship in this society. We will look at some of the famous contributions to kinship studies of the past and relate these to recent developments. Classes will be divided about equally between lectures and discussions and presentations. We will also concentrate on differences between cultures in the areas of marriage and friendship. LEC
494 SENIOR SEMINAR (3) Anthropological Approaches to Contemporary Social Issues
#382716 * M, W * 1:00-2:20 p.m. * 352 Fillmore * DR. PHILLIPS STEVENS
(Recommended for students applying to graduate programs in anthropology. For seniors in Anthropology only.)
Drawing from anthropological theory and practice, we will look closely at some of the problems that deeply concern people today, including: social/economic problems in the inner city, the suburbs and the rural areas; the family (including “family values”), gender relations, other social relations; public education and the schools; ecological considerations in the market system; treatment of the elderly; child abuse and neglect; violence; drug addiction, alcoholism and other addictions; incest; homosexuality and homophobia; racism; anti-Semitism; xenophobia; “hate crimes”; alternate religions, alternative medicine, “New Age” ideologies; “cults”, militant protest movements (e.g. “militias”); youth gangs; Satanism and other folkloric fears; religious fundamentalism; others. We will consider the unique contributions anthropology can make to understanding many of the social issues. Some salient theories in cultural anthropology will be reviewed. Principles of scientific inquiry and research methodology will be emphasized, to assist students in conducting individual research projects.
Requirements include: (1) regular attendance and participation; (2) a short paper early in the semester; (3) completion of reading from assigned materials which, with theoretical material presented in the class, will form the basis for (4) a mid-term test; and a semester-long research project to be (5) presented orally to the seminar, and (6) submitted in writing by the end of the semester.
This satisfies the practicum requirement for the major. SEM
495 SUPERVISED TEACHING (Variable credit)
Permission of Instructor and faculty advisor is required.
#166372 * S * 12:00-2:00 pm * 158 Spaulding * DR. JOYCE SIRIANNI
496 INTERNSHIP (Variable credit)
Prior to registration: Permission of Faculty Advisor is required, as well as submission of completed Record of Internship Data form.
Visit the ithe Undergraduate Office (380 Fillmore) for information, instructions, forms and registration number.
499 INDEPENDENT STUDY (Variable credit)
Prior to registration: Permission of instructor and submission of completed forms are required.
Visit the Undergraduate Office (380 Fillmore) for instructions, Independent Study Form, and Registration Number.