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 10:25AM - 11:15AM)

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)

A general introduction to a specific issue in anthropology that is relevant to contemporary politics and society, such as inequality, reproduction, race, migration, and the environment. Topics will vary each semester based on faculty expertise. No previous experience in anthropology is necessary.

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

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

Bausch & Lomb Room 270 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Location

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

Some of the world's major music traditions, including theater music from China and Japan, Indian and Indonesian classical music, ritual and ceremonial music from West Africa, Eastern Europe, and the United States. Focuses on musical sound structures as well as social, political, and religious contexts for musical performances.

Location

Strong Auditorium Room 011 (TR 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.

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

Lechase Room 181 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Location

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

What is the relationship between law, courts, and justice? This course will consider a variety of cross-cultural notions of law and justice in order to examine the power of “the law” in the contemporary world. We will use examples of cultural practices that shift from legal to illegal (or vice versa) such as marijuana use,  abortion, or same-sex marriage to consider how legality is constructed and ask questions about power, control, and justice, and the notions of individuals, family, community and nation at their core, at local, national, and global levels. We will examine case studies with specific emphasis in the Rochester area as well as around the world.

Location

Lattimore Room 210 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

In Black Skins, White Masks, Frantz Fanon wrote, “O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” In the United States, popular cultural understandings of race have often located blackness within the body: in DNA, in blood, in skin, in hair texture, in facial features. How does race get mapped onto the body? In this interdisciplinary course on race and embodiment, students will encounter texts and writing assignments prompting them to think critically about how black bodies ‘matter’ in the contemporary U.S. Course materials and assignments will encourage students to explore how blackness intersects with other social categories such as gender and class at the site of the body, while exploring how these categories are socially constructed and can and should be troubled, blurred, and contested in the practice of social life. The dual themes of intersectionality and visuality will act as a frame for our explorations.

Location

Hylan Building Room 105 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

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 uses film, novels, and historical studies to examine the following themes in the making of modern Africa: the forging of new national identities, creation of wage laborers, and the restructuring of agricultural work, gender, and social age. Students will also explore how African women and men have sought to redefine their place in the global economy before, during and after the Cold War, against the backdrop of new opportunities and challenges presented by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, hunger, international debt, and engagement with China.

Location

Lechase Room 103 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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

(W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This seminar considers anthropological scholarship on waste and wasting, as materiality and practice.  We will ask, What counts as waste, why and how and with what effects? What is wasting as a practice, according to whom, and what are its effects? How are cultural ideas about waste and wasting produced in historically contingent ways, in relation to particular economic, political, and cultural systems? How can analyzing waste and wasting help us to understand and perhaps transform systems of power? We will look at examples both locally and globally, ranging from toxic post-industrial sites, to landfills or sewers, to wasting bodies. This is an advanced topics seminar that requires weekly participation and a semester-long research project. Prerequisites: ANTH 101 and ANTH 200

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.