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New York University
Department of Anthropology
Graduate Courses
Spring 2009
New York University / Department of Anthropology
GRADUATE COURSES—SPRING 2009
MONDAY
2:00-4:45pm
G14. 3393 RAPP
Culutres of Biomedicine
Room 612
G14.3394 DiFIORE
NYCEP Behavior Core
Room 706
G14.3391 GEISMAR
Museum Anthropology
240 Greene Street, Room 410
5:00-7:35pm
G14.3397 WHITE/ TRYON
TS: Arch Modern Hum. Origins
Room 706
(open to advanced undergraduates)
TUESDAY
9:00-12:00
G14.1219, VAIL
Video Production II
**SPECIAL TIME: 9.30 – 12:30pm**
ROOM 502
2:00-4:45pm
G14.1636 MYERS
History of Anthropology
Conference Room
G14.2700 ROGERS
Ethnographic Methods
Room 612
6:00-9:00pm
G14.1216 GANTI
Culture and Media II
Kriser Room
WEDNESDAY
2:00-4:45pm
G14.3396 ABERCROMBIE
Hauntings: Contested Memory After State
Violence
KJCC 404W
G14.3395 KHAN/ SIU
Comparative Diasporas
Conference Room
G14.3392 DISOTELL
Phylogenetic Methods
Room 706
5:00-7:35pm
G14.1330 GINSBURG
Constructing America
Conference Room
THURSDAY
2:00-4:45pm
Video Production Lab
**SPECIAL TIME: 2.00 – 4.00pm**
Room 612
G14.1040, SCHIEFFELIN
Linguistic Anthropology
Room 706
5:00-7:35pm
G14.1212 CRABTREE
Faunal Analysis for Arch
Room 706
(open to advanced undergraduates)
G14.3398 MARTIN
Public Anthropology
28 Mercer, 10th Floor Conference Room
Classes held at 25 Waverly Place unless otherwise noted. All classes are reserved for Anthropology students only, unless otherwise
noted. Outside students require instructor permission.
Spring 2009
G14.1040
G14.1212
G14.1216
G14.1219
G14.1330
G14.1636
G14.2700
G14.3391
G14.3392
G14.3393
G14.3394
G14.3395
G14.3396
G14.3397
G14. 3398
Linguistic Anthropology
Faunal Analysis for Arch
Culture and Media II
Video Production II
Constructing America
History of Anthropology
Ethnographic Methods
Museum Anthropology
Phylogenetic Methods
Cultures of Biomedicine
Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation
Comparative Diasporas
Hauntings: Contested Memory...
TS: Arch Modern Human Origins
Public Anthropology
G47.4747—Maintaining Matriculation
Section 001 (MA Students): 30538
Schieffelin
Crabtree
Ganti
Vail
Ginsburg
Myers
Rogers
Geismar
Disotell
Rapp
DiFiore
Khan/ Siu
Abercrombie
White/Tryon
Martin
CALL #
30055
31357
30057
30058
30060
30062
31294
31354
31356
31358
31352
31293
31355
31353
31468
Section 004 (PhD Students): 30541
G14.1040: Linguistic Anthropology: Schieffelin
Thursday, 2:00-4:45pm
In this course we explore the ways in which the study of language and the study of culture
have mutually influenced each other in terms of theories, methods and substantive issues.
Topics include the relationship among language, thought and culture, including: the role of
language in social interaction, language and speech in ethnographic perspective, language
ideology, language genesis, maintenance and change, and the acquisition of linguistic and
social knowledge.
G14.1212: Faunal Analysis for Arch: Crabtree
Thursday, 5:00-7:35pm
Faunal analysis or zooarchaeology is the study of animal bones recovered from archaeological
sites. The goals of faunal analysis include the reconstruction of past hunting, scavenging, and
animal husbandry practices, as well as the study of site formation processes. The faunal
analysis course will cover the identification and analysis of archaeological animal bone remains.
The course will also examine some of the ways in which faunal data have been used in
archaeological interpretation. This course is also open to qualified undergraduates with the
permission of the instructor.
G14.1216: Culture and Media II: Ganti
Tuesday, 6:00-9:00pm
In the last decade, a new field -- the ethnography of media -- has emerged as an exciting new
arena of research. While claims about media in peoples lives are made on a daily basis, surprisingly
little research has actually attempted to look at how media is part of the naturally occurring lived
realities of people's lives. In the last decade, anthropologists and media scholars interested in film,
television, and video have been turning their attention increasingly beyond the text and empiricist
notions of audiences, (stereotypically associated with the ethnography of media), to consider,
ethnographically, the complex social worlds in which media is produced, circulated and consumed,
at home and elsewhere. This work theorizes media studies from the point of view of cross-cultural
ethnographic realities and anthropology from the perspective of new spaces of communication
focusing on the social, economic and political life of media and how it makes a difference in the
daily lives of people as a practice, whether in production, reception, or circulation.
After some introductory session on precursors to the current research during and after
World War II and the new scholarship on the broad historical and ideological context that
shaped early ethnographic film, the class will be organized around case studies that interrogate
broader issues that are particularly endemic to questions of cross-cultural media including
debates over cultural imperialism vs. the autonomy of local producers/consumers, the
instability and stratification of reception, the shift from national to transnational circuits of
production and consumption, the increasing complicity of researchers with their subjects over
representations of culture. These concerns are addressed in a variety of locations, from the
complex circulation of films, photos, and lithographs demonstrates the historically and
culturally contingent ways in which images are read and used; to the ever increasing range of
televisual culture, from state sponsored melodramas, religious epics and soap operas, to
varieties of public television; to the activist use of video, radio, the Internet, and small media.
G14.1219: Video Production II: Vail
Tuesday, 9:30am – 12:30 pm
This is the second part of the year-long video production seminar and concentrates on the
production and completion of the independent video projects begun in the fall part of the
course. This semester will consist of continued work on the projects and production meetings
to present and discuss the works in progress. The course concludes with a public screening of
finished projects in early May.
G14.1330: Constructing America: Ginsburg
Wednesday, 5:00-7:35pm
Ethnographic research in and about North America is relatively new in the history of anthropology,
although it now has a robust foundation, sometimes called the anthropology of North America. This
seminar will take a sociology of knowledge approach to the field. The first few weeks will address the
creation of North America culture as an ethnographic object in the context of the development of
anthropology and related fields, as these projects have been negotiated in relation to more broadly
articulated concerns that shape and reorder the cultural landscape. Organized chronologically and topically,
it will explore both how anthropologists and fellow travelers study American culture and, in that process,
how we as well as our subjects are simultaneously engaged in constructing it. After the first four weeks, we
will be reading an ethnography every week, covering a range of issues, from social movements to
science/medicine and media, indigeneity to immigration, religion to regionalism
The course is designed for graduate students in Anthropology and American Studies who are
involved in research in/about North America. Anyone who does not fit that description must have
permission of the instructor to take the course.
Students are expected to keep up with the readings, contribute to seminar discussions, and make class
presentations. Formal work includes two critical book reviews with oral and written presentations (8-10pp.);
and a term paper (15-20pp.) which can be submitted in the form of a research proposal.
G14.1636: History of Anthropology: Myers
Tuesday, 2:00-4:45pm
This course is meant to provide tools for situating contemporary anthropological thought
within the historical development of the discipline. It will treat selected themes and scholars in
British and American anthropology from the late 19th century through the 1970s. We will be
concerned not only with key texts in the history of the field -- a conventional intellectual
history of the development of some of the significant debates defining the field over time -but also with some critical history of the development of the field within larger contexts that
have shaped the changing conditions of the production of anthropological thought. The scope
is necessarily selective rather than comprehensive, and aims to provide students with the
means to fill in missing chapters through their independent work for this and other courses.
G14.2700: Ethnographic Methods: Rogers
Tuesday, 2:00-4:45pm
In this course we will explore theories and methods of ethnographic research, drawing from
both epistemological discussions and monographic examples to examine the links between the
research questions asked and the kinds of data sought, as well as between the data sought and
data-collection techniques. Over the semester, each student will pursue a mini-fieldwork
project in NYC as a context for practicing an array of ethnographic methods.
G14.3391: Museum Anthropology: Geismar
Monday, 2:00-4:45pm
This course takes as its starting point the importance of museums and collecting in the
foundational period of the discipline of anthropology and traces the role that ‘cultural objects’
have had in thinking about cultural difference, and within cultural analysis. We will also
examine the role of museums as sites of fieldwork and as generators of research methodologies
focused on material culture. The ways in which museums consolidate emergent theories of
material culture will be elicited through a series of workshops at the American Museum of
Natural History. Students will investigate the history and nature of the anthropology
collections, as well as thinking through the forms of knowledge engendered by artifacts.
Working in the Science galleries, we will examine the status of anthropology as a natural
science and consider the public representation and materialization of science - students will be
required to undertake their own mini-ethnography in the museum. Other topics will include
global trends in the emergence of new museums of culture, cultures of dealing and collection,
and the place of anthropological collections in art museums. Please note that many classes will
meet at the AMNH and a significant amount of assignment research will take place at the
museum.
G14.3392: Phylogenetic Methods: Disotell
Wednesday, 2:00-4:45pm
This course will focus on both the theoretical aspects of phylogenetic reconstruction and the
practical aspects of inferring phylogenies using a variety of analytical approaches and computer
software packages. Distance techniques, maximum parsimony, and likelihood methods, along
with network and Bayesian approaches will be compared, contrasted, and implemented. While
the primary emphasis will be on the analysis of molecular data, most approaches will be
applicable to other types of systematic data.
G14.3393: Cultures of Biomedicine: Rapp
Monday, 2:00-4:45pm
Over the last 100 years, biomedicine as a sphere of ideas and practices has made increasingly
powerful claims to define the conditions of human life and death. In this process, scientific
authority has moved to the fore. How did medical expertise-as-science get established? What keeps
it in place, and how are contests about it mounted? This seminar will look at the many historical
processes through which biomedical power is constituted by addressing topics such as: the
discovery/invention of bodies, systems, populations; public health and governance; the material
culture of scientific medicine; the emergence of diagnostic categories and pharmacologies; the role
of biostatistics. The history, sociology, and ethnography of medicine provide our content. While
much scholarship has been generated on Western/ cosmopolitan science and medicine, interacting
civilizational and subaltern traditions drawn from colonial/ post-colonial regions of the globe are
central to our work, as well. This course is located at the intersection where science studies and
anthropological approaches to biomedicine meet.
G14.3394: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation : DiFiore Monday, 2:00-4:45pm
This graduate core course for the NYCEP program provides an overview of the ecology,
behavior, and social systems of nonhuman primates and examines variation in these aspects of
primate biology from the perspectives afforded by evolutionary ecology and socioecological
theory. The course first provides an introduction to the grouping patterns, mating systems,
foraging ecology, and individual behavioral strategies that characterize taxa from the major
groups of primates, then covers the fundamental theoretical perspectives that modern
primatologists employ to study and understand the variation in primate social systems
including the theory of evolution by natural selection, the concepts of reproductive success,
inclusive fitness, and kin selection, and the basic principles of primate population ecology and
socioecology. With this background, we then use these core principles to examine the various
survival, mating, and parenting strategies seen in primates and to explore how ecological
factors differentially affect the dispersal decisions and the nature of social relationships - both
competitive and cooperative - of male and female primates. The final weeks of the class are
devoted to a consideration of the roles that primates play in their natural ecosystems and to the
conservation of nonhuman primates.
G14.3395: Comparative Diasporas: Khan/ Siu
Wednesday, 2:00-4:45pm
This is a graduate seminar that explores the theoretical and methodological issues in the study of
comparative diasporas. Diaspora conventionally has described the process by which immigrants
and their descendants create home, community, and identity as they sustain cultural and social ties
with their homeland (real or imagined), place of residence, and other co-"ethnics" living elsewhere.
In the past two decades, diaspora has reemerged as a provocative and highly contested analytical
concept across both the humanities and social sciences. Why has diaspora drawn so much
attention? What makes it such a seductive yet controversial concept? Must "diaspora" necessarily
be linked to immigrants and immigration? What are the analytical possibilities and limitations of
the concept of diaspora? This seminar will address these questions, among others, by evaluating
the current uses of the concept and debates about it.
Through close examination of several case studies, we will discuss diaspora as both an
analytical concept and an empirical process. Students will explore the political-economic conditions
that engender diasporic formations, the particular cultural-social dimensions that facilitate their
reproduction, and the symbolic significance of “diaspora” to the communities involved. These foci
will help us examine ?issues of identity and subjectivity as well as their construction and
representation, while analyzing the histories and cultural formation of diasporic communities.
G14.3396: Hauntings: Contested Memory after State Violence
Wednesday,
2:00-4:45pm
The course examines how memory relates to history and politics, developing a concept of history
that goes beyond the empirical, taking into account subjectivity, affect, and the afterlife of the past
in the present. A central theme is the relation of memory to citizen action and sovereignty, through
notions of political and social engagement based on patrimony, inheritance and generational
transmission. The concept of transindividual personhood (filiative, social, corporate, and juridical)
will be explored throughout. Central to the course will be a critique of liberal modernity’s view of
emancipation as a rupture with the past and neo-liberal late modernity’s compulsory obsolescence,
both of which discredit memory as reactionary or, at best, irrelevant. A key issue will be the role of
memory in democratizing societies with a violent past, recognizing that memories can be divisive as
well as reparative, and are always subject to contestation. We will be concerned with social memory
as a transindividual phenomenon, and with historical memory as the expression of demands for
transitional justice. A particular interest will be the role of (often enforced) forgetting in creating
phantoms which return to demand reparation. This course bridges the disciplines of ethnography
and urban history (Abercrombie) and textual criticism and cultural studies (Labanyi). The course
will assume that interdisciplinarity does not mean ironing out disciplinary differences, but working
through the productive tensions between them. Students will be encouraged to reflect on these
differences, by being exposed to unfamiliar materials, methodologies, and reading, while sharing
with their fellow students their respective disciplinary strengths. The course will bring together case
studies from Spanish America and Spain, rarely done beyond the colonial period. The materials
studied will include commemorative events, folkloric performances, reenactments, museums,
monuments, legislation, political and historical debates, citizen groups, web sites, testimonies, film,
fiction, photography, comics, video games. We will be concerned particularly with the role of
narrative in giving form to concepts of transindividual and transgenerational personhood; other
expressive modes to be explored are embodiment, visuality and materiality. The concept of material
memories – embedded in landscapes and objects – will be of considerable importance. The course
will be accompanied by a lecture series, held at the King Juan Carlos Center and open to the public.
G14.3397: TS: Arch Modern Human Origins:White/Tyron Monday, 5:00-7:35pm
One of the key areas of debate in paleoanthropology today is the emergence and dispersal of
biologically and culturally modern humans. The goal of the seminar is provide students with
the scientific foundation to contribute to this debate and to understand its significance in a
broader anthropological context. Using readings, discussion, and student-driven presentations,
this seminar will examine various dimensions of this hotly debated issue, including the history
of investigation, relevant methodological, interpretive and epistemological issues, and a detailed
survey of the empirical data from our African roots to the subsequent global dispersal and
replacement of hominin populations that included the Neanderthals.
G14.3398: Public Anthropology: Martin
Thursday, 5:00-7:35 pm
This course will focus on critical examination of classic and contemporary works that shed
light on anthropology's changing place in the public sphere. Readings will draw from Gramsci,
Fanon, Bourdieu, Mills, Freire, Mead, Graeber, Scheper-Hughes, Rabinow, Bourgois, Taussig,
Farmer, Nader, Eriksen, Lutkehaus, Abu-Lughod, Bunzel, for example. With the help of
practicing journalists, we will explore how and why the place of anthropology in the public
sphere has changed since the time of Boas and Margaret Mead.
In conjunction with these readings and visiting writers, the course will involve several workshops
devoted to developing practical ways of extending the insights of cultural anthropology beyond the
academy. In the light of the newly emerging public faces of anthropology and allied disciplines
(Anthropology Now, Contexts, Terrain), we will collaboratively develop works in such genres as
podcasts, interactive web sites, photo essays, and short articles. The course can be taken for various
amounts of credit and the workload will be adjusted accordingly.