This course explores aesthetic practices (visual art, music, dance, poetry) from the perspective of cultural anthropology. What is art and how is art differently constructed cross-culturally? Why and how do people make, consume, and identify with art? How can artistic practices help us to develop a deeper understanding of social issues such as race, class, gender, and inequality? In this course we will read a variety of ethnographic texts that illuminate these and related questions.

“To theorize is not to leave the material world behind and enter the domain of pure ideas where the lofty space of the mind makes objective reflection possible. Theorizing, like experimenting, is a material practice.”

(Karen Barad 2007: 55)

Course Description: This course introduces students to major theoretical currents in cultural anthropology. We examine classical and contemporary social theory together, with the goal of understanding how themes relevant a century ago continue to influence cultural anthropology and related disciplines. We read contemporary texts that revise or revisit classical theory alongside excerpts from or summaries of the original early works in order to gain a broad overview of some major questions social theorists have long grappled with: What does it mean to be an individual and also a member of a group? How does power operate? What is the relationship between economy, politics, and culture? The course also engages major contemporary themes such as race, gender, indigeneity, and the Anthropocene. From this class, students will gain a basic theoretical foundation from which to engage anthropological texts and fieldwork throughout their studies.

In this course, we learn about the craft of ethnographic writing. Students explore different techniques for collecting and analyzing qualitative data, and for expressing that analysis in clear and creative prose. We examine a variety of ethnographic texts for their style and craft, as well as their content. Each student writes an original piece based on qualitative data from their own graduate research or based on a theme related to their graduate research interests.

This course introduces students to major themes in linguistic anthropology, including racialized and gendered language, multilingualism, language loss, and the study of non-linguistic signs. We will learn how language not only reflects social relations, but plays a role in their very construction. By reading case studies drawn from diverse cultural contexts, we examine the implications of language in the study of power and inequality across race, gender, and class. We will explore real-world applications of research in these domains as they have affected educational policies and public debates in the United States and elsewhere.