How do people live, love, work, pray,  parent, and play around the world? This course introduces students to the ways in which cultural anthropologists research human diversity. Students will learn about the different ways people understand racial categories and national identities; how they organize gender dynamics, sexualities, and families; how they generate belief systems and heal sickness; how they structure law, politics, and markets; and how they cope with transitions and upheaval. This course therefore raises questions about cultural diversity, social inequality, justice, and power, in a world shaped by global flows of people, money, media, and technology, and asks students to challenge their assumptions and consider alternative views. Open only to first-year and sophomore students.

Location

Morey Room 525 (MWF 11:50AM - 12:40PM)

Exploration of anthropological interpretation, research, and writing on the ways different peoples understand and deal with issues of illness and disease. Open only to first year and sophomore students.

Location

Morey Room 205 (MW 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

This course investigates the relationship between language and culture at the interface of linguistics and anthropology. It examines the ways in which language reflects the perception of the world, ways of life and beliefs of its speakers, creates rituals and maintains social ties, and is used by people of different ages, genders, social classes, and ethnicities.We will discuss hypotheses that try to explain the nature of relationship between language and culture and then turn to a wide variety of topics which are relevant for both linguists and anthropologists. These include, for instance, kinship systems, language of perception (e.g. colors, spatial relations), politeness across languages and cultures, and writing systems.

Location

Gavett Hall Room 310 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course will introduce students to the core research methods at the heart of contemporary anthropology, ranging from ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, interviews and life histories, to textual analysis and archives, and visual and audio recordings. We will ask, How did anthropology emerge as a discipline around particular methods, and why and how have they changed? What data are produced through specific methods, and how can those data help us answer particular questions? How do methods and theory relate? How are representational, ethical, and methodological concerns intertwined? Students will examine the history of anthropological methods, theories and critiques of methods, and ethical and regulatory issues associated with gathering data. The course will use readings, guest lectures by anthropology faculty, and primary research projects. Not open to first year students. Prerequisite: Ant 101.

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course examines the arguments and the rhetoric of radical thinkers who have tried to change the world rather than just interpret it since the revolutions of 1848

Location

Hylan Building Room 105 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

In this course we will explore the nature of personhood and structured inequality.  Alongside changing theoretical definitions of what personhood is – from social roles to ideologies and semiotic displays – we will read ethnographies that highlight the ways in which social values, practices, and institutions have shaped who and what people think they are.  Through an extended comparison between the US and South Asia, we will investigate categories of class, caste, and race to understand how social stratification and exclusion operate.  Debating whether “race” in the US is like “caste” in India (among other questions), we will search out the opportunities and limits of cross-cultural comparison.  We will view ethnographic and popular films and analyze a range of contemporary media in addition to readings.

Not open to first-year students. Instructor permission required

Location

Morey Room 205 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course provides an overview of peace and conflict in cross-cultural perspective. It relies on anthropological and other scholarship, lectures, discussions, and films to help students explore the broad topics of peace and conflict through the lens of the equally expansive concept of culture. This means, at a minimum, asking, and searching answers for, questions such as the following: What is violence? What is non-violence? Is war inevitable and natural? What, if anything, is ‘ethnic’ about conflict? How and why do some societies seem to have cultivated more harmonious and peaceful coexistence whereas others appear to have created a bias in favor of collective violence? What should we make of stylistic expressions of physical violence, as in the world of martial arts? How does ‘culture’ impact the relations between individuals and communities subscribing to different customs, ideals, or normative frameworks? How do history, politics, religion and a host of other qualitative factors impinge upon the inter-faith and intra-faith community relations, as individual and corporate actors in such communities create, uphold, defend, or reimagine the meanings of their sociocultural, ethno-racial statuses? The course will take up these and other questions through mainly ethnographic writings and audiovisual content about small- and large-scale societies in a number of contexts in different parts of the world.

Location

Harkness Room 210 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

How has migration from Latin America to the United States and Canada reshaped culture, society, and economy on both sides of the US/Mexico border? This course will use the contemporary experiences of Latin American migrants to explore broader themes of globalization, transnationalism, and international justice. Course materials will include scholarly studies of contemporary migration, investigative journalism, and film.

Location

Morey Room 502 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course on ethics in Islam centers on how Muslims conceive, articulate, and enact visions of a good life as it is lived individually and collectively. Muslims in contemporary societies face many challenging decisions regarding how to live a good life individually. Should I donate a kidney? How should I properly invest money? What kinds of food should I eat? Other questions extend into the social and political domains. What is a just society? What is our relationship to nature and the environment? What is the relationship between ethics and law?
 
Beginning from an historical perspective that looks at Qur’anic ethics, Islamic legal ethics, and philosophical ethics, the course will proceed to discuss several contemporary ethical issues through anthropological case studies. These include the halal food industry, Islamic finance and banking, bioethics, gender and sexual ethics, and environmental ethics. Additional topics may include topics related to human rights, poverty and social welfare, and religious liberty. In the process, we will also discuss different types of ethical theories (deontological, utilitarian, virtue, and care). Readings for the course will include primary texts (in English), secondary scholarship on Islamic ethics, and an array of ethnographic case studies for each topic.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course draws on anthropological and other social science scholarship to offer an introduction to the vast and complex geographic area glossed as the Middle East and diverse groups of people referred to as Middle Eastern. The course focuses primarily on the area’s Muslim populations by paying attention to everyday manifestations of local, national, regional, international, and global processes, mechanisms, dilemmas, challenges, and aspirations that variously unite or divide that particular demographic. By using an ethnographic lens, the course discusses topics such as migration, gender, religion, politics, culture, history, and tradition as they play out in the lives of Muslims in different countries in the region including, among others, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia. In support of its learning goals and to put a human face to these topics, the course will present several audiovisual materials (feature films, historical films, critical documentaries, news clips etc.) throughout the semester. The course also considers the variety of cultural patterns, social institutions, ideological positions, and behavioral adaptations common to the area.

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This is a required community-engaged research preparation course for the Local Ethnography and Archiving Fellowship. This course will provide an introduction to community engagement and ethnographic research ethics tailored to a local interdisciplinary project on race, space, and kinship. Curriculum will be rooted in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR), intersectional feminism, public history, Black geographies, and creative forms of research dissemination. Students will learn relevant local Rochester history and geography, and read interdisciplinary texts exploring concepts of racialized space, alternative kinship, experimental methods, and archival justice. This class is only open to students in the Local Ethnography and Archiving Fellowship (LEAF). Permission of instructor required.

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (F 9:00AM - 11:40AM)

Why have Americans quit jobs in record numbers during the pandemic?  What do you expect from a job – and is that different from your parents’ expectations?  What makes work meaningful?  In what ways does work shape who you are and how others see you?  In this Advanced Topics course, we will explore these questions as we consider work as a set of cross-culturally variable material and social practices.  We will read ethnographies and watch films that document work in different countries and locales – factories, offices, workshops, stores, fields, and homes – to investigate how “labor” is made and how gender and race/caste are reproduced alongside class.  Examining workplace practices alongside theoretical scholarship on labor will help us to understand transformations in capitalism as well as how people resist such changes and strive to remake capitalism.  At the end of the course, we will speculate on a future of automation, gig jobs, and growing precarity worldwide.  In addition to weekly readings and discussions, students will propose, develop, and present a semester-long research project.   

Note: open to declared ANT majors/minors who have taken ANTH 101 and a 200-level core course; graduate students by permission of instructor. 

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

For ANT 101, Cultural Anthropology. By application only. The TA program requires students to work in teams and to lead group discussion.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Internships will be graded on a pass/fail basis only.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.