CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Human Society and Culture - V14.0001
Beidelman, #71504
Sociocultural anthropology offers a way of understanding both the commonalities of the human condition and the range of variation in human societies and cultures. It offers tools for making sense of the experience of people whose lives are different from our own, as well as putting our familiar world in illuminating new perspective. This course provides an introduction to the research methods commonly used by anthropologists (participant-observation), some of the key concepts and processes used in anthropological analysis (culture, social structure, exchange, ritual, symbolism, family and kinship, gender, ethnicity), and a glimpse at some far-away and close-to-home lifeways.

Anthropology of Language - V14.0017
Eisenlohr, #71515, (x-listed V97.0017, Anthro Jrs and Srs only), Prerequisite V14.0001
This course explores language use in everyday social and cultural contexts as one way to analyze social conflicts and social issues. Factors such as gender, ethnicity, social class and environment are examined for the ways in which they affect the organization of social interaction in both Western and non-Western societies. In addition, we will consider the ways in which children become socialized through the use of language, the social foundations of language change, how language affects thought and the role of literacy in society.

Medical Anthropology - V14.0035
Rapp, #71517, Prerequisite V14.0001
Medical Anthropology explores the intimate interactions between culture and health, past and present. The perspective taken in this course is that health and illness cannot be understood from a biological viewpoint alone (a tendency in a modern Western medicine), but are to be seen as influenced by the structures of society, as well as by different cultural beliefs and behaviors. This course examines issues of illness and health from both a historical and a cross-cultural perspective.

Religion and Media - V14.0220
Zito, #71521, (x-listed V90.0645)
An introduction to the longstanding and complex connection between religious practices and various media. The course will first analyze how human hearing, vision  and the performing body have been used historically  to express and maintain religious life through music, voice, images, words and rituals. Then we will spend at least half the course on more recent electronic media such as radio, film, television, video, and the internet. Students should note that an anthropological/historical perspective on studying religion will be pursued in the course. We will read, listen, view, log on, discuss and write. Prior coursework in religious studies, anthropology, or media studies the following areas would be helpful, but is not necessary if you are willing to work hard.

Issues I: Culture Through Food- V14.0320
Abercrombie, #73801
Like shelter, food is crucial to human life. It is not surprising therefore, that it has also been a central topic in anthropology. Whatever their diverse theoretical approaches, for cultural anthropology food is never "just food". Its significance can never be purely nutritional. Food is intimately tied up with social relations, including those of power, of inclusion and exclusion, as well as ideas about classification, the human body and human health. This course surveys a range of anthropological approaches to the study of food focusing on topics such as: Food, meaning and voice; food as symbol, feasts and famine, food an the self; food and the political economy; cannibalism and food taboos; food and the body; food and the politics of globalization. our ethnographic focus will be broad, and the range of readings eclectic. the course will include clips from feature and documentary film. Students will be asked to complete a number of short ethnographic and writing assignments throughout the semester utilizing the resources of New York City, as well as web and library research.

Issues II: Human Rights and Anthropology- V14.0321
McLagan, #74394. Prerequisite V14.0001
The international human rights movement grew out of the disasters of World War II. Half a century later, human rights ideals play an important and contested role in international relations. This course brings an anthropological perspective to the globalization of human rights in the post-cold war era. The discipline's commitment to "local culture" has meant that at various junctures, anthropologists have positioned themselves in critical opposition to universal values and transnational processes such as human rights. We will explore this legacy and then move on to consider the ways in which human rights is constituted as a field of action and how it is structured by transnational discourses and practices. Where are human rights institutionally located? What kinds of networks of solidarity do they create? How are human rights claims mediated through cultural production? We will examine these and other questions with the larger aim of understanding what contemporary human rights activism can tell us about the nature (constraints, possibilities) of political action and agency in late modernity. The course will have an important media component, as we will see several films on human rights situations, and students will be asked to do a small group project on human rights activism related to a particular region of the world (e.g. East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, U.S., etc.) which will be based on Internet/web research.

Topical Seminar: Race and Identity- V14.0800
Khan, #73799

Topical Seminar: Latino Studies - V14.0801
Rosaldo, #73802
The class emphasizes comparative perspectives on US Latinos, including the different national-origin groups both in the United States and in their homelands. A central theme is constructions of identity, the interplay of commodified impositions and self-representations, icons and selves. W will look a cinema, music, testimonios, and identities in context.


ARCHAEOLOGY AND PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Human Evolution - V14.0002
Harrison, #71505
Lab section 002, # Wednesday 11:00-12:15
Lab section 003, # Wednesday 12:30-1:45
Lab section 004, # Wednesday 2:00-3:15
Lab section 005, # Wednesday 3:30-4:45
Investigates the evolutionary origins of humans. The study of human evolution is a multidisciplinary endeavor, involving a synthesis of concepts, techniques and research findings from a variety of different scientific fields, including evolutionary biology, paleontology, primatology, comparative anatomy, genetics, molecular biology, geology and archaeology. Explores the different contributions that scientists have made towards understanding human origins and provides a detailed survey of the evidence used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of our own species. Students must register for one of the recitations/laboratories scheduled for this class.

Archaeology: Early Societies and Cultures - V14.0003
Wright, #71510
Lab section 002, # Monday 2:00-3:15
Lab section 003, # Monday 3:30-4:45
Lab section 004, # Tuesday 9:30-10:45
Lab section 005, # Tuesday 11:00-12:15
Archaeology: Early Societies and Cultures provides a solid grounding in the objectives, theories, methods and historical development of modern anthropological archaeology, as well as an overview of significant transformations in human culture over the past 2.5 million years. These latter topics include the origins of tool-making, the first hunters, the emergence of bioculturally modern humans, the origins of symbolism, the advent of plant and animal domestication, and the development of cities and states. These transformations in various parts of the world serve as case studies to illustrate the process by which archaeologists recover and study the archaeological record, and then infer from that record the vivid details of ancient societies (climate and landscape, settlement patterns, trade and exchange, technology, symbolic and cognitive systems, religion and social organization).

Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution - V14.0050
Anton, #73797, Prerequisite V14.0002
This course will survey the fossil evidence for human evolution from our earliest ancestors up to the origin and dispersal of modern humans. We will focus on the biology and adaptations of the fossil hominin groups, as well as on their phylogenetic relationships. Major debates in paleoanthropology will be discussed. Course requirements include two midterms, three quizzes, and a final series of essay questions.

Primate Ecology - V14.0054
Jolly, #73796, Prerequisite V14.0002
Why do some primates live in large social groups while others are solitary and yet others live in pairs or cooperatively breeding families? Why are strong social hierarchies seen in some primate taxa but not in others? How do multiple species of primates often manage to coexist in the same habitat? Why are social relationships in some primate species characterized by strong bonds among females while such bonds are absent in other primates societies? Why do some species of primates show marked geographic variability in behavior and social structure? The answers to these and other questions lie in understanding the relationships between each species and its ecological and social setting and in understanding each species' phylogenetic history. In this course, we explore the diversity of primate social systems and the evolutionary relationships among the primates, and we will discuss many of the general ecological laws that have been proposed by evolutionary biologists as the keys to understanding important features of primate behavior and ecology.

Surveys of Regional Prehistory - V14.0216
White, #73800, Prerequisite V14.0003
When Julius Caesar described the customs of the native inhabitants of Gaul in his account of his campaigns, he was writing of a land where agriculture had been practiced for nearly 5000 years with out the emergence of the societal organization of the state. During these 5000 years, however, the lands of temperate Europe had witnessed a remarkable series of social and economic transformations that represented a transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to urban chiefdom. Along the way, these hunter-gatherers became agriculturalists and stockherders, learned to use metals, and developed social structures as complex as any found in other Old World civilizations. The goal of this course is to examine these changes in prehistoric Europe from about 8000 B.C. to the arrival of the Romans.

Topical Seminar: Human Behavioral Ecology - V14.0511
Di Fiore, #74395

Topical Seminar: Voices of the Dead - V14.0512
Jolly, #73795
For anthropologists, human remains are an important source of information about the biology and culture of extinct societies, and a point of contact between socio-cultural, archaeological and biological specialties. This course will focus on cases -- such as the mummies of Peru and Egypt, the bog people of Europe, and the Iceman of the Alps -- whose extraordinary preservation or context has made them into "post mortem celebrities", playing a role in present-day society, as well as bearing witness to the world in which they lived and died.


CULTURAL MAP COURSES

World Cultures: Iran? V55.0533
Varzi, #

PHYSICAL MAP COURSES

Natural Sciences II: Human Origins? V55.0305
Disotell, #73961

Prof. Todd Disotell
Director of Undergraduate Studies
todd.disotell@nyu.edu

Nicole Hughes
Undergraduate Secretary
nicole.hughes@nyu.edu