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

Hylan Building Room 202 (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)

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

Morey Room 501 (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

Lattimore Room 441 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

Close reading and textual analysis of writings that defined key issues of Western social theory. The course considers thinkers such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, and their attempts to understand the nature of modern industrial civilization, including the origins and consequences of capitalism. Restriction: Permission of instructor required for first-year students.

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

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 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

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.

Location

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

In this introduction to linguistic anthropology, we will take as our starting point the idea that language does not merely describe the world; rather, linguistic practices play a key role in constituting social relations and cultural formations. Communication enables us to form social groups, to create and sustain social differences, to share cultural conceptions of the world, and to learn models of behavior.  Through ethnographic case studies, we will explore each of these issues in turn.  We will examine how language works as a communicative system and consider the relationship between communication and culture.  We will explore language differences within society and the role of language in the production of social identities and power relations.  Finally, we will approach language as a cultural product, exploring traditions of performance and communicative genres (narratives, ritual speech, poetry, slang, etc.).  In addition to classic and contemporary readings, we will watch films and video clips from popular media, and analyze advertisements, newspaper articles, and political speeches.  Quizzes and a series of written assignments will help students learn to think like a linguistic anthropologist.

Location

Lechase Room 103 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course explores the legal, political, and philosophical dimensions of the concept of indigenous people; how it differs from overlapping concepts such as peasantry, race, ethnicity, language, culture, and religion; how its definition varies according to the history of colonialism in different parts of the world; and why this movement gained momentum after the end of the Cold War.

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Rochester sits in one of the world’s most explicitly carceral landscapes, with more than a dozen state prisons within a 90 min drive. This co-taught course is a collaborative ethnographic research project designed to examine how the presence of prisons in towns around Rochester reflects and shapes the political, economic, and cultural lives of those who live in the region. Students will be introduced to methods and practices of ethnography and conduct firsthand research on the cultural politics of prison towns. Through assigned reading, students will learn about the history, sociology, and cultural logics of Rochester and the wider region, and of mass incarceration. What does a prison mean for a person living near one? How does the presence of prisons shape people’s notions of justice, citizenship, and punishment? How do these nearby but largely invisible institutions shape the ways that we live in Rochester? Recommended prior courses: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology or Incarceration Nation

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 269 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course uses film, novel, 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, from their homes and workplaces, and as part of nationalist or national liberation movements during and after the Cold War, have sought to redefine their place in the global economy against the backdrop of new opportunities and challenges presented by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, hunger, international debt, and engagement with China.

Location

Meliora Room 205 (TR 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

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

Is money the root of all evil? Does capitalism act as a corrosive force on culture, dissolving communities, and transforming people into utility-maximizing self-interested individuals? Are money, calculation, and interest fundamentally incompatible with morality, affect, and sentiment? We will examine these questions among others through an examination of classic and contemporary debates in anthropology on gifts, money, commodities, markets, debts, and exchange and through discussion of ethnographic studies of Wall Street bankers, casinos, therapists, sex workers, corrupt businesspeople, and more.

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.

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.

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

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