Course Descriptions

ENG 255 - Educational Linguistics (=EDU 255)

This course will introduce students to fundamental concepts in linguistics and tools for analyzing language in school-based and other instructional settings. Topics will include the structure of human languages, the development of communication, home-school literacy connections, classroom discourse, language diversity in education, language teaching and learning, academic literacy, and educational language policy. Students will complete problem sets, a short analytical paper, and a final research project.

ENV 214 - Energy, the Environment, and Engineering Design (=PHY 214)

An introduction to engineering design through a focus on energy and the environment.  Students work in teams to create computer-controlled models of energy-efficient buildings. Class meets for 2 hours 3 times/week in a combined discussion/laboratory setting with 3 hours of open laboratory activity per week.

Counts as an environmental natural sciences content course for the environmental studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Experimental Physics minor.
Satisfies the Natural Science requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Who Should Take This Class? This class welcomes all Davidson students, especially first- and second-year students that have not yet chosen a major, non-science major students, and students interested in Engineering and/or Environmental Studies. Students majoring in Physics and other STEM disciplines are also welcome in this class. There are no math or science prerequisites, and no prior experience in physics is expected. Of course, we will need to use math - at the level of high school algebra and trigonometry - in this course. The creative and open-ended nature of the labs and final design project will give all students the opportunity to work at an appropriate and rewarding level consistent with relevant STEM preparation. Students of all cultures, backgrounds, and abilities are welcome, valued, and appreciated in this class.

HIS 470 - Global War on Terror: A History

The US war in Afghanistan is now in its 17th year, the longest foreign war in American history. The Global War on Terror, however, has yet to be historicized. For the first time, this exploratory seminar does just that. It examines the history of the global war on terror by considering 9/11 and the era it inaugurated, while also consciously understanding it in relation to the forces of modern imperalism in the twentieth century. The seminar is structured as a “people’s history” of the global war on terror. It takes seriously the impact of global warfare from the standpoint of its victims. Topics include but are not limited to: definitions of terror and terrorism; European and Anglo-American histories of orientalism and Islamophobia; torture and torture legislation; drones, proxy wars, and war crimes; legislation and state led-initiatives of disapperances and entrapment; old and new formations of the national security state; how new technologies of violence and surveillance have reshaped domestic American policies; cold war politics in relation to contemporary conflagrations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; military occupations in relation to Palestine and Kashmir; refugees and displacement; suicide bombing; contemporary travel bans; and gender and feminist politics in relation to the war on terror. This seminar will involve weekly readings and discussion, films, documentaries, and one final paper.

Satisfies a requirement in the History major and minor.
 

AFR 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement

AFR 120 - Afro-Latin America (= LAS 120)

From Mexico to Brazil and beyond, Africans and people of African descent have fought in wars of independence, forged mixed race national identities, and contributed politically and culturally to the making of the Americas.  Even though Latin America imported ten times as many slaves as the United States, only recently have scholars begun to highlight the role blacks and other people of African descent played in Latin American history.  This course will explore the experiences of Afro-Latin Americans from slavery to the present, with a particular focus on Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.  In doing so, the course seeks to answer questions such as: What does it mean to be black in Latin America? Why has racism persisted in Latin America despite political revolutions claiming to eliminate discrimination? What are the links between blacks in Latin America and the United States? How have differing conceptions of “race” and “nation” caused the rise and decline of transnational black alliances between U.S. blacks and Afro-Latin Americans?  All course readings will be in English and will include memoirs, films, and first-hand historical documents in additional to scholarly books and articles.  

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major or minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 221 - Introduction to Caribbean Studies

In this course, we look out at the world from a Caribbean center. As such, we approach the history and formation of the region and its cultural diversity from a bottom-up view. This helps to better understand the various cultural processes of mixture, pluralism and engagement that came together to produce the Caribbean as a complex multicultural space today. Central mechanisms of “difference-making” in the colonial past and into the present such as racial hierarchy, shadism/colorism, ethnic groups, religious difference, class inequality, gender power, and sexuality are discussed to better appreciate the ways different groups in the Caribbean emerged and developed. The pitfalls and significance of the term “post-colonialism” is also examined.

The course aims to answer these questions through the history, development and contemporary culture of the Caribbean. The course also introduces the concept of multiculturalism as a continuum of political strategies and processes that range from the dangerous and conflict-inducing to the promotion of tolerance and the production of empathy. Lastly, the course provides the necessary intellectual concepts to articulate and connect global political economy to Caribbean history, culture and contemporary politics.

AFR 224 - Special Topics in AFR

Using the works of Caribbean women as its primary focus, the course attempts to locate Caribbean women’s intellectual production within a larger tradition that reads the texts of Black women writers as cross-border mediations. As cross-cultural dialogue, these works connect the lives of Black women across the diaspora and name empowering alternatives for their survival. Rather than organizing the works of these women geographically, the course attempts, then, to read their writing as part of a historical and literary continuum within the African diaspora in the Americas. This shared diasporic sensibility, the course argues, allows women to recognize their differences, even while it facilitates their meeting through coalition and partnership.

AFR 225 - Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop

Hip Hop may be one of the largest cultural movements the world has ever experienced - a cultural movement that has influenced everything from the music to which we listen, the clothes with which we adorn ourselves and to the words we speak. However hip hop culture is more than the music, the fashion and the style that is popular today. It transcends the commercialized products sold to mainstream U.S. America and the around globe. How so? Why did hip hop emerge? What does mainstream hip hop today represent? This course addresses these questions by tracing the historical and political context of the formation of hip hop; its expansion into a discourse of resistance; to its more mainstream contemporary global commodification. By tracing the philosophies, events and actors that have contributed to hip hop, this course simultaneously takes up the race, class, gender and sexual politics the space espouses. We will look critically at hip hop today, its problems as well as its possibilities. This is not a purely musical appreciation course. However, students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyric, videos and images throughout the span of the course.

AFR 233 - Africana Political Economy: Any-blackness in Capitalist Development

This course will examine the various ways in which people of the African diaspora have shaped and been shaped by capitalist institutions using state and global institutions. There are 3 questions that animate this course: 1. How have the experiences of people of African descent from around the world shaped and interacted with capitalism in its various stages from mercantilism through to globalization? 2. What role have political institutions from liberal democracies to authoritarian regimes played in mitigating the effects of capitalism on people of African descent? 3. Are there alternate frameworks for thinking through a generative relationship between people of African descent and capitalism? 

Satisfies Africana Studies major Social Thought and Institutions requirement.
Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

AFR 235 - The 1959 Cuban Revolution (=HIS 362, =LAS 235)

This course explores the historical underpinnings of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, U.S.-Cuban relations, and how Cubans have experienced the changes the island has undergone in the past 100 years. Particular attention is given to people of African descent who make up over a one-third of the island’s population. This Cuban narrative illuminates a variety of themes including the spread of U.S. imperialism, Cuba’s fight for sovereignty, and race relations in the Americas.  

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies (Geographic Region: Latin American/Caribbean).
Satisfies a major or minor requirement in History.
Satisfies a major or minor requirement in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 250 - Black Women in Contemporary Performance

This course considers the ways in which Black women have operationalized performance as a site for cultural criticism and social commentary. Centering the work of artists including Josephine Baker, Katherine Dunham and others, students will investigate how the use of dance, music, song, costume and other performance elements are leveraged to both stabilize and interrupt audience assumptions about the possibilities of performance beyond entertainment or the stimulation of pleasure. The course will consider how notions of race, gender and sexuality are repeated as consistent performative acts and how these categories are crafted and expressed through the artistic choices of select Black women performers working across theatrical genres from the 1920s to the present.

Counts as an elective in the Cultural Production & Expression category of the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region = North America).
Satisfies a requirement in the Literary & Cultural Representations track of the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Counts as an elective for the Dance minor.
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 251 - Thugs, Jezebels, & Contemporary Politics

In the months prior to the 2016 presidential election, race relations in the United States were propelled into the American public consciousness with great force, although race has continually exerted an omnipresent influence on contemporary politics. Beginning with Clarence Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, this course will survey how discourse on black femininity, masculinity, sexuality, and class has impacted American politics from 1991 to the present. Topics for consideration include welfare reform, reproductive justice, mass incarceration, backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency, and white nationalist support for Donald Trump. Readings will also consider how black activists, lawyers, journalists, and politicians have responded to and resisted racism and sexism in contemporary politics.

Fulfills a Social Thought & Institutions requirement for the Africana Studies major (Geographic region: North America).
Fulfills a requirement in the History and Geneaologies track of the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
 

AFR 266 - Africa Shoots Back, in transl. (=FRE 366)

Africa Shoots Back examines West African cinema from its beginnings in the early 1960s to today.  The selection of films exposes students to new voices, perspectives and representations of Francophone West Africa from a West African perspective.  We will discuss issues of decolonization and post-colonial cultural economy, as well as analyze traditional African narrative strategies and new and unconventional images.
 

Fulfills a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Fulfills a requirement in the Film & Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Counts towards the French & Francophone Studies major and minor.
Satisfies requirement in Visual and Performing Arts.

AFR 282 - African American Literature: 18th - 19th Century (=ENG 282)

This course introduces students to some of the literature African Americans produced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Due consideration will be given to the conditions under which African American wrote, the complications attendant upon publication of their work, and the audiences to which the writings were mainly addressed. 

Satisfies the Diversity requirement of the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Counts as an elective in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 286 - African American Literature: 1900- (=ENG 286)

Satisfies the Diversity requirement of the English Department major.
Counts as Humanities elective in the Africana Studies major.
Counts as an elective in the Global Literary Theory Interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

AFR 290 - Oral History: Problems, Perspectives, & Possibilities

In this hands-on methods course, students will build interdisciplinary research skills focused on the theory and practice of oral history.  We will explore the theories, methods, and debates surrounding one of the oldest research tools: oral testimony.  Students will learn to critically evaluate oral sources and use oral histories in conjunction with other forms of research.  Students will engage with the practical aspects of oral history by completing and transcribing two oral history interviews.  In addition, students will gain a sophisticated understanding of individual and collective memory and the questions that both raise for writing oral history.  Each student will participate in a class oral history project.

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies
Satisfies a major requirement in Sociology
Satisfies a major requirement in CIS Educational Studies
Satisfies a minor requirement in Educational Studies
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement

AFR 292 - “Fake News,” Journalism and Ethics

Students will be taught how to use journalistic skills and ethics to better harness the power empathy adds to storytelling on extremely sensitive subjects such as race, politics, gender, etc. as well as learn how to navigate the world of political punditry and the growing fake news phenomenon.  The course will focus on how the media discourse marginalizes people of color, and African Americans in particular and how rhetorical shifts can lead to non-factual news reporting.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies a requirement in the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community Requirement.

AFR 297 - Caribbean Literature (=ENG 297)

The Caribbean is key to any understanding of the New World. Caribbean Literature takes students beyond the islands’ popular music, food, and landscapes to an understanding of the formation of cultures from Europe, Africa, and India that have produced two Nobel Laureates. In novels such as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, we see how love leads to the death of a young woman in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. We’ll understand, too, why and how Aime Cesaire rewrites Shakespeare’s The Tempest to allow for the resurrection of the spirit of Caliban’s mother, Sycorax. Students do not need to know theory to take this course.  

Students may retake this course for credit when the topic/readings change with instructor’s permission.

Satisfies the diversity requirement of the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 298 - Race and American Journalism

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

AFR 300 - Afro-Cuban Feminisms (=LAS 300)

Black and mulata women have participated in constructing Cubanidad (Cuban nationalism) since the beginning of the Cuban republic in 1902. However, the largely male-dominated national narrative that has made Che Guevara’s “New Man” famous since 1959 frequently overshadows their interventions. Despite this public silence, Afro-Cubanas (Afro-Cuban women) have consistently challenged narratives of exclusion and contributed to antiracist and antisexist movements in Cuba. As theater critic, Inés María Martiatu Terry explained in 2011 one of the goals of the Afrocubanas movement is to “feminize negritude and to blacken feminism.”  

This course will analyze Afro-Cubana feminisms through a close reading of the work of four key black and mulata intellectuals and activists-Sara Gómez, Nancy Morejón, Daisy Rubiera, and Gloria Rolando. In doing so, it seeks to trace the legacy of the many black and mulata women who participated in revolutionary Cuba from the 1960s to the present. In particular, the course will examine how Afro-Cubanas have challenged negative stereotypes about black women, worked both inside and outside of Cuba’s state-sponsored women’s movement, and fought to create space for racial and sexual rights. All course readings will be in English and will include memoirs, films, and first-hand historical documents in additional to scholarly books and articles.

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies.
Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies the Histories and Genealogies major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

AFR 300-309 - Major Thinkers in Africana Studies

AFR 300B - Black Esthetics & Performance

This course will examine the development of the Black Aesthetic from its genesis in the 1920s, through the Black Arts Movement and into the contemporary period.  Students will examine primary source documents and artistic/ creative expressions from a range of disciplines (including dance, music, literature and visual art) to identify Black performance/ expressive aesthetics and to engage art as a mechanism through which culture, politics and identity may speak.

AFR 301 - Major Thinkers in Africana Studies: Zora Neale Hurston

Through the lens of Zora Neale Hurston’s life and work as an anthropologist, this course examines the following:  the politics of language and inequality, the perils and sanctity of segregation and the value of imagination in ethnographic writing.  Works to be examined during the course are Hurston’s biography, excerpts from her autobiography, plays, short stories, critical essays and one of her many novels.

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies (Geographical Region: North America).
Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

AFR 302 - Black Aesthetics & Performance

This course will examine the development of the Black Aesthetic from its genesis in the 1920s, through the Black Arts Movement and into the contemporary period.  Students will examine primary source documents and artistic/creative expressions from a range of disciplines (including dance, music, literature and visual art) to identify Black performance/expressive aesthetics and to engage art as a mechanism through which culture, politics and identity may speak.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region = North America).

AFR 303 - Major Thinkers in Africana Studies: W.E.B. Du Bois (=ENG 382)

This course will introduce students to the major works of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Readings will include (in chronological order): The Philadelphia Negro (1899); The Souls of Black Folk (1903); Dark Princess (1928); Black Reconstruction in America (1935); Color and Democracy (1945); and The World and Africa (1947) to name a few. They will be supplemented with secondary readings by: Booker T. Washington, Michael Rudolph West, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy, Adolph Reed, Lewis Gordon, Marina Bilbija, C. L. R. James and others.

Satisfies a requirement in Africana Studies.
Satisfies a major requirement in English.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement

AFR 304 - Poetics of Relation: James Baldwin (=ENG 415)

Poetics of Relation: James Baldwin - One of the country’s most important 20th century essayists, fiction writers, and playwrights, James Baldwin penetrated the consciousness of America with his eloquent and insightful writing. His words are a living legacy of the ways in which African Americans and members of LGBT communities have continued to prevail in the presence of unrelenting antipathy. His friend, Amiri Baraka, said of him: “This man traveled the earth like its biographer. He reported, criticized, made beautiful, analyzed, cajoled, lyricized, attacked, sang, made us think, made us better, made us consciously human or perhaps more acidly prehuman.”

Poetics of Relation is the rubric for a seminar in which students analyze relations between prominent writers– many of African descent–and specific cultures, landscapes or historical moments. Previous iterations of this seminar have focused on writings by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Derek Walcott, Vidia Naipaul, Wole Soyinka, and August Wilson.

In addition to close, analytical readings, substantive class discussions, oral presentations and  weekly one-two page MOUs, seminar participants will write a major essay which will be added to the existing Poetics of Relations digital site.

Cross-listed as ENG 415 in English for Major Thinkers credit
Satisfies a requirement in Africana Studies and Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies Literary and Cultural Representations track major requirement.
Satisfies English major requirement.
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement. 
Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.

AFR 305 - Major Thinkers in Africana Studies: Cedric Robinson & Sylvia Wynter

The course is designed to expose students to classical and foundational figures who have contributed to shaping major debates, theories, or methodological approaches to this interdisciplinary field. More broadly, the objective of the course is to enable students to gain competency in the primary, secondary, biographical, theoretical, and literary scholarship as it relates to the study of two major thinkers in the Africana intellectual tradition.

In particular, this course focuses on the works of Black Marxist Cedric Robinson and anti-colonial feminist Sylvia Wynter who offer us key theoretical frameworks and concepts to understand the racial order that underpins modern capitalism. In this course, we also discuss the production of organic and academic intellectuals who draw from these thinkers

AFR 320 - Growing up Jim Crow (= EDU 320, SOC 320)

Instructor
Kelly

Examines how a generation learned race and racism in the Age of Jim Crow. Through multiple and intersecting lenses, students will examine texts, such as oral histories, literary narratives, and visual representations of various topics.  Topics will include Jim Crow schooling, white supremacy, disenfranchisement, lynching, rape, resistance, interracial harmony, and desegregation.

Satisfies a requirement in the Sociology major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies a requirement in the Educational Studies minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

*Interlinked Memory Studies Courses
Five different courses that engage with phenomena of memory will link up once a week for common readings and discussions. Students will meet one day a week with their course instructor to engage in the discipline-specific study of memory. On the other day each week, students and faculty members in all five courses will meet together to compare and share different disciplinary and personal ideas about the study of memory; the creation and effects of memory; the representation of memory; and the social, cultural, and personal creative processes that make memory.  Participating courses are:

AFR 320 / EDU 320 / SOC 320 (Kelly) Growing Up Jim Crow
CIS 292 / PSY 292 (Multhaup) Collective Memory
ENG 204 (Parker) Introduction to Writing Fiction
GER 433 / HIS 433 (Denham) The Holocaust and Representation
​HIS 287 (Mortensen) Memory and Identity in the People’s Republic of China

AFR 321 - Special Topics in AFR

In all societies, present and historical, people have joined together to press for or against social change. In this course, we are most interested in the struggles of people who imagined and sometimes- even if only briefly- lived in ways other than those imposed violently by the “over-represented (Western bourgeois) ethnoclass human figure of Man”(Wynter 2003). We focus on the rebellions of the survivors of the Middle Passage who challenged the inequality of the races to re-define blackness and to counteract the imperial desires for Africans’ living deaths. We pay special attention to these visionary thinkers and doers who made claims on how to organize human (and non-human) life on the planet, thereby re-shaping modernity or rather giving shape to alternative modernities  (and in this case, Black modernities). Studying Black social movements in various historical and national contexts then allows us to ultimately reflect on more general questions about the nature of political power, conflict, and legitimacy, as well as the relationship between human agency, social structure, historical change, and identity formation and politics in the modern world.

AFR 329 - Women & Slavery in the Black Atlantic

From the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, over 12 million Africans were shipped to the New World. Of those who survived the Middle Passage, fewer than 500,000 arrived in the United States; the vast majority were dispersed throughout the Caribbean and South America. The experiences of enslaved women, as well as the relationships between free and enslaved women, are as diverse as the African diaspora. Given the broad geographical scope of Africans’ arrivals in the New World, this course will offer a comparative examination of women and slavery in the Black Atlantic. Topics for consideration include black women’s gendered experiences of slavery, white women’s roles in slave societies, and women abolitionists. The course will also examine how African and European conceptions of gender shaped the institution of slavery in the New World. Particular attention will be devoted to slavery in West Africa, Barbados, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States.

Fulfills an Historical and Geographical Investigations requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic region: Latin America & the Caribbean).
Fulfills a requirement in the History and Genealogies track of the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Fulfills a requirement in the History major and minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

AFR 330 - Gender & Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The purpose of this course is to continue a discussion on the debates, structures, and agents that inform international development in Africa but through the varied perspectives and experiences of African women. Their perspectives offer critical interventions into development discourses and practices traditionally viewed through masculine and Western lenses. In studying development from the African woman’s perspective, one is better able to engage both the successes and failures of this formal process we call “development” in Africa. By examining African women and their relationship to this process, we will also see the alternative frames of feminisms and knowledges that emerge from these realities. The core questions driving this course are: (i) what are the various development ideologies and processes that have shaped contemporary Africa? (ii) How have African women adopted, rejected, and/or creolized these ideologies and processes for the purposes of changing their cultural, political, and economic conditions? The course readings come predominantly from African women, although there are texts from non-African women and men that generally serve to highlight the larger discourses taking place around a particular topic. 

Satisfies Africana Studies major Social Thought and Institutions track requirement.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

AFR 331 - African Feminisms

In this course, we examine African feminisms as both a theoretical account and an activist praxis that considers how gendered differences are grounded in the complex realities of African women’s everyday experiences. Through explorations of how African women have used their diverse experiences to produce knowledge and challenge oppressive systems both in African and the world, writ-large, this course focuses on anti-colonial discourse, development, grassroots activism, and intellectual scholarship that advocates for gender equity and the liberation and autonomy of African people. Some of the core questions that guide this class are: what are African feminisms? What conditions created the need for different types of gendered responses from African women? How are the varied feminisms across Africa uniquely different from one another and from feminisms elaborated based on Western women? 

Through readings that centralize the scholarship of African feminists, we explore topics such as race, gender, and sexuality, class politics, the tensions of rural-urban/ traditional-modern dichotomies in Africa, transnational feminisms, reproductive justice, sexual violence, homophobia, heteronormativity, and the historicity and cultural specificity of the subordinations that African women adopt, negotiate, and/or resist. We will examine these concerns through a critical reading of a wide range of texts-from memoir, policy case studies, ethnography, novels, essays, and cultural criticism and sociopolitical analyses.

Satisfies Africana Sttudies major Social Thought and Institutions track requirement.
Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Theory requirement, or elective requirement of Sociology major.
Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.

AFR 340 - African American Intellectual History

Since their earliest arrivals in the New World, African Americans crafted liberatory ideas as they articulated a desire for equality, justice, and self-determination. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, black intellectual thought took shape against the backdrop of processes of enslavement, emancipation, racial violence, and state-sanctioned oppression. Indeed, the discursive spaces that black political thinkers created became major sites of knowledge production and provided momentum for black mobilization. Beginning with David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), this course will probe landmark texts by and about African American thinkers including Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X., and Angela Davis. Students will evaluate historical perspectives on topics including racial uplift, feminism, black nationalism, and Pan-Africanism. They will also identify major debates that shaped the development of African American intellectual history.

Satisfies Africana Studies major Historical and Geogrpahic Investigations track requirement.

AFR 360 - History of the Caribbean: Race, Nation, and Politics (= LAS 360, HIS 360)

This course explores the history of the Caribbean from pre-Colombian times to the present. The goal of the class is to trace the emergence of modern Caribbean nations beginning from their status as slave colonies of the not-so-distant past within an emphasis on the central role the Caribbean islands have played in global history.  Particular emphasis is given to the maintenance of European and North American imperial enterprises and the elaboration of racial ideologies growing out of the diversity that has characterized the island populations.  Issues to be addressed include colonialism, piracy, sugar revolution, slavery and emancipation, national independence, tourism, and Caribbean migrations. Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica will be the main areas under consideration, although texts from other islands such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Martinique are included.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in Latin American Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the History major or minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 364 - Black Paris

Black Paris focuses on the deep engagement of peoples of African descent with the City of Light from Fredrick Douglass to Ta-Nehisi Coates. We will examine the full variety of black cultures that have taken shape in dialogue with Paris, including poetry, prose, journals and magazines, music, and film in English and French by African American (J. Baldwin, Richard Wright, etc.) as well as Francophone Caribbean (F. Fanon, A. Césaire) and African (A. Mabanckou, Manu Dibango) artists and intellectuals.

Satisfies a requirement in Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies a Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies a cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 371 - Critical Race Theory in Education (=EDU 371)

This course introduces students to the development of critical race theory as a specific theoretical framework to explain or to investigate how race and racism are organized and operate within the United States.  The course will have a sociological focus with emphasis on critical race scholarship that includes, but is not limited to, an analysis of double consciousness, colorblindness, intersectionality, whiteness as property, racial microaggressions, and structures of power.  Students will also explore central tenets and key writings advanced in the 1990s primarily by African American, Latino/a, and Asian American scholars in law, education, and public policy.  The course is both reading intensive and extensive with a major writing assignment that addresses a theoretical problem that grows out of the course topics and discussions. 

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies a minor requirement in Educational Studies.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

AFR 374 - Contemporary Race Theory (=SOC 374)

(Cross-listed with SOC 374.) Race, along with class and gender (and sexuality), continues to be one of the central themes in sociological research.  In most of the subfields of the discipline, researchers of all stripes believe race to be an explanatory variable.  This, however, does not mean that sociologists have one theory of race.  In fact, there are raging debates about exactly what they mean when they evoke the term.  In this class, we will engage with some of the most recent theories about race.  Because some of the debates are built on those of decades past, we will spend the first third of the course establishing the foundational terms of the conversations.  The second third will be organized around a handful of provocateurs.  We will read portions of their original offerings and then read responses from their critics.  The final third will focus on two topics that are proving to have significant impact on theorizing race: immigration and genomics.

Satisfies a requirement in the Sociology major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographical region: North America).

AFR 383 - Black Literary Theory (=ENG 483)

(Cross-listed with ENG 483)

This course will bring together readings both literary and critical/theoretical, beginning with Frantz Fanon’s seminal Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Taking Fanon as its point of departure, then, this course will necessarily turn to a discussion of the recent discourse on Afro-pessimism and black optimism, attempting to introduce students to important issues and questions of race, race relations, anti-black racism, black sociality, the universality of whiteness, the fungibility of the black body, and of the vulnerability and precarity of black life; and together we will think more closely about how the complex and “unthinkable” histories of slavery, colonialism, and the Middle Passage, for examples, continue to challenge the representational limits and potentialities of traditional literary genres and modes of emplotment. In addition to Fanon, authors will include Orlando Patterson, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, Jared Sexton, and Fred Moten.

Counts as a humanities elective for the Africana Studies major.
Counts as a senior seminar and fulfills the diversity requirement for the English major.
Counts as a literature elective for the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

AFR 395 - Seminar in Africana Studies

AFR 400 - Research Methods in Africana Studies

This course will introduce students to the unique methodological questions raised by Africana studies. We will explore the methodological problems inherent in Africana studies research-what are the challenges to answering the questions raised by Africana scholars? More importantly, this course engages the different frameworks for conducting Africana scholarship that are derived from the experiences of people in the African diaspora.

AFR 495 - Africana Studies Capstone

Advanced Seminar in Africana Studies.

AFR 498 - Advanced Independent Study

AFR 499 - Honors Thesis

ANT 101 - Introductory Cultural Anthropology

Required course for the major in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement for the minor in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall and Spring)

ANT 102 - Humankind Evolving

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.
.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 108 - Introduction to Archaeology

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 205 - Racism

Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 207 - Foragers, Farmers, and Chiefs of the Ancient World

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 208 - Early Cities and States

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 211 - Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

Instructor - Neuman

What is the relationship between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia? How does the hatred of Jews and Judaism link up with or depart from the hatred of Muslims and Islam? One issue shared by these ideologies of hatred is that religious beliefs and practices are rendered as similar to essentialized notions of biological difference. This course will draw on a variety of readings and viewpoints to examine and assess the character, content, and impacts of these ideologies, noting their similarities and differences, while also engaging their direct or indirect relation to Jewish-Muslim/Jewish-Arab relations, both positive and negative.

Satisfies the major and minor in Anthropology

Satisfies the interdisciplinary minor requirement in Middle East Studies

Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement

Satisfies the social-scientific thought requirement

ANT 219 - Reproduction and Childrearing: Biology and Culture

An overview of the anthropology of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing. Topics addressed include fertility and infertility (female and male), maternal and child healthcare systems, infant feeding, and motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood in cross-cultural and historical perspective. ​

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies a requirement in Social-Scientific Thought

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies

Meets the cultural diversity graduation requirement

ANT 220 - Religion, Society, and Culture

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 227 - Environmental Justice in Latin America

This course addresses human-environment relations in Latin America from the standpoint of environmental history and ethnographic case studies in the region. Issues such as biodiversity, land use and agriculture, transnational flows of natural and food resources, ethnoecology, and social mobilization around environmental issues are examined using theoretical perspectives from cultural and political ecology.  Particular attention is given to the relationship between indigenous peoples and the environment and to alternative models of “development” in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Brazil.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.
Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring; offered alternating years.)

ANT 231 - Health and Healing in Ghana

Sickness in Ghana has traditionally been viewed as an illness that affects a person’s entire being, including the spiritual and the supernatural realms. It takes more than just treatment of physical systems to restore health.  In Ghana, herbal medicine remains a prevalent method of health care, and the World Health Organization estimates that at least 60% of Ghanaians rely on herbal medicines.   A traditional healer, defined as a person who is recognized by his/her community as a competent healthcare provider, uses herbs, animal as well as mineral substances for patient care. Traditional methods are based on social, cultural, and religious principles, including knowledge, attitudes and beliefs regarding the physical, mental and social well-being a community. 

Although biomedicine is the most popular medical system in the world due to globalization and Western hegemony, this experiential learning course introduces students to an array of conceptualizations of health, wellness, and illness in the Ghanaian context as well as the epidemiology of diseases that are prevalent in Ghana. Through lectures, discussions and shadowing, this course explores the socioeconomic and political ecological factors in the prevalence of diseases like malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever, health policy and implementation within biomedical settings, and traditional Ghanaian healing practices such as bone setting, plant-based medicines and sorcery/shamanism and its illness etiologies, and diagnostic and treatment methodologies. Faculty at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Technology and Science (KNUST) will also discuss case studies on traditional practices, allied health, and the challenges and efficacy of both biomedical and traditional medicines in Ghana.

Satisfies major requirements in Anthropology, Africana Studies as well as Health and Human Values (discussed in consultation with Patrick Baron).

Counts as 200-level elective requirements for Anthropology and the Social Thought and Institutions category of the Africana major

Satisfies elective requirement for Anthropology minor.

Satisfies elective requirement for the Health and Human Values Interdisciplinary minor.

Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement

Prerequisites & Notes
This course is part of the summer 2019 Davidson in Ghana Program.

ANT 232 - Contemporary Ghanaian Society and Culture

Fulfills a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Fufills a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Offered in alternating years as part of the Davidson in Ghana summer program.

ANT 233 - Performance in West Africa

This course will examine performance aesthetics and traditions from various West African Cultures and contexts.  Special consideration will be given to how these approaches to music and dance shape in particular inform the diasporic cultural practices of Afro-descended people in the US and Caribbean.

Satisfies a requirement in the Anthropology major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement

ANT 234 - African Popular Culture

Though ethnographic texts, this course explores the intersections of gender, ethnicity and class in African societies in the 20th and 21st centuries. This course also examines representations of Africa within the nation-state and transnationally. Topics of discussion include tourism, national identity and ethnicity, popular culture, the dichotomies of urban and rural Africa and the cultural politics of development and the state.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satifies a cultural production and expressions requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

ANT 238 - Global Masculinities

An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Men’s Studies based on texts from anthropology, sociology, and film and cultural studies. This course will spotlight the diversity of men’s lives across the globe, by focusing on various masculinities, including “nerds,” “jocks,” “gay men,” “drag queens,” “butch lesbians,” “trans-men,” and “soldiers.” In so doing, it will highlight how masculinity intersects with race, class, age, language, sexuality, religion, and nationality to create various models of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities that co-exist and compete with one another within a global capitalist system of homosocial bonding and rivalry.

Counts as a 200-level elective in the Anthropology major and minor.
Counts in the Society and Politics track of the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

 

ANT 239 - Love, Sex and Globalization

How do people experience globalization in their intimate lives? Too often, people understand it simply in terms of the corporate domination of the world by US elites and multinational companies. Missing have been complex accounts of how political-economic and technological transformations shape-and are shaped by-love, sex, and intimacy. Using the interdisciplinary lens of anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, international relations, literature, and film and media studies, this course will seek to unravel the binaries of global/local, economic/intimate, and proximate/distant by which we understand globalization. Among the topics of discussion will be gay marriage, mail-order brides, transnational adoption, international sex work, militarism, and social media.

Satisfies a requirement in the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor (Society & Politics Track).

ANT 251 - Mesoamerican Civilizations

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 252 - Ancient Maya Civilization

An exploration of ancient Maya Civilization, from its beginning, ca.2,000 BCE, to its clash with European invaders, ca. 1.500 CE. Emphasis will be placed on the chronological transformations and geographical variability in the: 1) Interactions between people and their environment; 2) Architecture, technology, art, and writing system; 3) Settlement and urbanism; 4) Political organization; 5) Economy and trade; and 6) Ideology and Religion.

Satisfies Anthropology major and minor requirement
Satisfies Latin American Studies major and minor requirement
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement
Satisfies cultural diversity requirement

ANT 253 - Latin American Society and Culture Today

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies one of the introductory course requirements in Latin American Studies.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 257 - African Roots, American Soils

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Fulfills a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

ANT 261 - Science, Policy, and Society

How do scientific theories and methodologies, religious beliefs and practices, and technological innovations affect the way we perceive the world around us? This course, an introduction to Science, Technology and Society (STS), is designed to be an inquiry into questions that involve the production and cultural meanings of scientific knowledge and technological change. This course will compare the function and rhetoric of scientific “truths” to other modes of truth-production and consider the ways in which science is culturally produced and in turn reproductive of cultural norms in Western society, including the adoption of Western scientific practices and institutions by non-Western societies and the management of science and technology in social and economic practices.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

ANT 263 - Social Change

This course examines issues in social activism from both a theoretical and ethnographic perspective. How do social activists think about and make social change happen? By examining theories and issues in social justice, from macro-level issues in the international arena to local mobilization for community issues, this course will introduce students to social movement and civil society theory. This course will study social movements, community activism, and the cultural practices of community groups.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017.)

ANT 265 - Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring 2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 267 - Food and Culture

This course introduces the ways in which food practices shape societies and cultures throughout the world. Food ways will be examined from an anthropological perspective for their social and cultural implications; this is not a survey of nutritional or dietetic sciences. Topics to be covered include: the use of food in social contexts, the symbolism of food, and the political economy of food.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 271 - Human Ecology

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 272 - Forensic Anthropology

The application of the techniques used in biological anthropology to the law. Various topics and methodologies related to the identification of human skeletal remains, including the excavation of human remains, estimation of age-at-death and sex, trauma analysis, cause and manner of death, and mass disasters are introduced.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 273 - Bioarchaeology

The study of human and non-human remains from archaeological sites to reconstruct past human behavior and biology, and their environmental and cultural conditions. Topics include human skeletal indicators of diet, activity level, and disease, and faunal skeletal indicators of ancient human behavior, such as hunting and paleoecology.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies depth (not breadth) course requirement in the Natural Science and Social Science tracks of the Environment Studies major.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 275 - Monkeys, Apes, Humans

We examine the extant species in the primate order, our closest living relatives, from evolutionary and ecological perspectives to better understand humankind and the evolution of human characteristics such as bipedality, large brains, concealed ovulation, and extensive culture. Diverse anatomy and social behaviors of non-human primates such as foraging strategies, mating systems, sexual dimorphism, intelligence, and communication are addressed.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 277 - Ancient Food and Foodways

This course studies how premodern societies acquired, prepared, served, exchanged, and consumed their food. By exploring archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and (ethno-)historical sources, students will learn about hunting and gathering, the emergence of horticulture, intensive agricultural practices, food preparation, storage, and transportation technologies. In addition, students will learn about the economic, political, and ideological roles played by food in the archaeological past. This course does not focus on a world area or time-period, but rather covers cultures from across five continents and dating from ca. 10,000 BCE to 1,500 CE.

Satisfies Anthropology major and minor requirement
Satisfies Environmental Studies major and minor
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement

ANT 290 - Ethnographic East Asia

This course introduces students to the major themes in the anthropology of China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea. Through studying recent transformations in kinship, political economy, constructions of gender, and national identities, students will also gain a basic grounding in the geography and twentieth-century history of the region as a whole.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall)

ANT 291 - Social Networks & Social Media

This course introduces students to the theories and methods necessary for doing research in digital anthropology. Digital anthropology is the study of the impact of information technology on social relationships and human culture. Because of advancements in information and communication technology (as well as globalization), the everyday life of the people and communities that we study are increasingly being shaped by cyberspace, digital media and communication, and online social groups. Throughout the semester, students will conduct fieldwork, communicate, and write commentary on the internet, including social media, websites, and digital media production. Emphasis is placed on developing the critical and methodological skills needed for doing fieldwork virtually, but no previous computer programming is expected or required.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Data Science interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years)

ANT 299 - Special Topic in Anthropology

Topic TBA

ANT 310 - Politics, Society, and Culture

Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies Communication Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 315 - Queer Enthnographies

This course will look at the growing body of queer ethnographies about non-normative genders and sexualities in Western and non-Western countries. Beginning with classic monographs on same-sex sexuality such as Esther Newton’s Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (1972), we will move onto examine contemporary ethnographies of nonnormative sexualities in United States and around the world, including C.J. Pascoe’s Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (2011) and Margot Weiss’ Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (2011). By interrogating ethnography’s generative but contentious relationship with LGBT Studies and feminist, queer, post-structuralist, and postcolonial theories, we will assess how applicable Western queer theory is to the non-Western world.

Satisfies a requirement in the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor (Society & Politics Track).

ANT 319 - Contradictions in Contemporary Motherhood: Culture, Biomedicine, Political Economy

Contemporary mothering happens at the crossroads of conflicting forces and discourses. This seminar frames motherhood as a window on women’s changing rights and status, and as a fruitful topic for feminist theorizing. Readings will situate the topic in its historical, rhetorical, and cross-cultural contexts and will also explore the globalized networks of migration that increasingly affect motherhood.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring)

ANT 321 - Borderlands, Identity, and Rights

Samson

Advanced study of how borders and borderland regions shape social, religious, political, and economic relationships in Latin America, and examination of the tensions created when people and resources cross cultural and political borders. Particular emphasis on Mexico and Central America, as well as the Latino experience in the United States.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

ANT 323 - Human Rights in Latin America

Anthropological perspectives on human rights agendas in Latin America. Case studies examine the tension between universal and culturally relative conceptions of human rights in relation to issues such as state violence, violence directed toward minorities, and social justice movements.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies major & minor elective credit in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 325 - Environment, Economy, & Culture

Cultural perspectives on human-environment relations and linkages between the environment and the global economy. Special emphasis on the integration of current knowledge in ecological anthropology, economic production, and the impact of human activity on the environment. Environmental justice issues and proposals for sustainable development are included.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific requirement.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 327 - Religious Pluralism in Twenty-first Century Latin America

The emphasis in this course is on the contemporary religious pluralism that has resulted from the encounter of the Old World with the New. Religious change in Latin America since Vatican II and the advent of liberation theology is examined alongside the burgeoning presence of Protestantism in the region during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to indigenous and Afro-Latin American traditions. Case studies in the course are selected for their use of ethnographic methods, and the geographic focus centers on the Andean region, Mesoamerica, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

Satisfies the World Religion, History of Religions, Religion and Culture requirement of the Religious Studies major.

Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major.

Satisfies the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives requirement.

ANT 335 - Debunking Race

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought  requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 340 - Medical Anthropology

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Offered in alternating years.

ANT 341 - Globalization

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 343 - Feminist Anthropology

Explores how gender ideologies shape the exercise of power upon men and women in different societies and cultures. Topics include the construction of masculinity and femininity, commodification and consumption of gender, social position, agency, and the political economy of gender. Emphasis on developing an understanding of different theoretical perspectives in the cross-cultural study of gender.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 351 - The Senses and Sensualities

Guided by the premise that the body mediates human understanding about the world, this seminar examines anthropological investigations about the cultural production of the senses (sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell). The readings for the course focus on the diverse ways the senses are organized across cultures and shaped by context, language, identity and society. Students will have an opportunity engage in various sensory related projects through the semester.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

ANT 354 - Art and Writing of the Ancient Maya

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 355 - Archaeology of Politics

This seminar focuses on the political organization of a diverse set of premodern cultures. Course themes include egalitarianism, social complexity, hierarchy, political institutions, governments, and political economy. Students will learn about different world cultures with distinct political organizations, focusing on archaeological data like architecture, settlement, portable technology, art, written documents, and burials. Through ancient politics, students will also explore archaeological topics such as trade and commerce, warfare, religion, migrations, environments, political collapse, and ethics. This course will help students understand the contemporary world thanks to broadening their appreciation of political possibilities.

Satisfies Anthropology major and minor requirement
Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement
Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement

ANT 356 - Art, Myth, and History of Ancient Central Mexico

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 357 - Language Before History

This course considers three questions concerning the early history of language: 1) at what stage of human evolution did language appear; 2) what were the reasons behind the spread of the major language families; 3) when and where did literacy first develop and under what circumstances.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.
Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 360 - Anthropology of Development and Environmental Sustainability

Issues of development and sustainability from the standpoint of environmental anthropology and anthropological approaches to development theory. Considers the human face of development, including local and global scales of analysis, environmental justice, and discourses of community sustainability.

Satisfies a major & minor requirement in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Satisfies depth and breadth course requirement in the Social Science track of the Environmental Studies major or interdisciplinary minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 370 - Theory in Anthropology

Theoretical and interpretive perspectives in modern cultural anthropology. Issues include functionalism, historical analysis, cultural evolution, ecology, cultural materialism, structuralism, and symbolic analysis. Writings of major thinkers, including Radcliffe-Brown, Harris, Levi-Strauss, Douglas, Geertz, Turner, Godelier, and Sahlins.

One of the courses satisfying the Theory requirement for the major in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
ANT 101 or permission of the instructor. (Fall)

ANT 371 - Ethnographic Writing and Research

Approaches to ethnographic and ethnohistorical research and analysis in cultural anthropology. Examination of selected studies that demonstrate a variety of approaches to the study of single cultures and to cross-cultural comparisons. Students design and complete research projects. With advance departmental approval, an off-campus ethnographic field school course may be substituted for credit toward the major.

One of the courses satisfying the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.

Prerequisites & Notes
ANT 101 or permission of the instructor. (Spring)

ANT 372 - Visualizing Anthropology

Introduction to the theories and methods necessary for making ethnographic films. Students will conduct fieldwork and make a documentary film on a particular aspect of social and cultural behavior. Emphasis is placed on developing the critical skills needed for resolving some of the ethical, technical, and aesthetic problems that may emerge during the documentation of social and cultural behavior.

One of the courses satisfying the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies interdisciplinary major and minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 373 - Decolonizing Anthropology Theory

This course examines the theoretical and interpretive perspectives of contemporary anthropologists outside of the US and Europe. Disciplinary issues such as the “crises of representation” alongside the decolonization of the Global South will be explored. Writings that explore the tensions between the universal and particular, theory and practice, power and knowledge and the limits of objectivity and subjectivity will also be discussed.

One of the courses satisfying the Theory requirement for the major in Anthropology.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
ANT 101 or permission of the instructor.

ANT 374 - Methods in Forensic Anthropology

This course concerns forensic taphonomy, the study of postmortem and postdepositional processes that occur in human and non-human animals in the medicolegal context. Students will design research projects on the decomposition process in piglets, and learn to collect, analyze, interpret, and present data.

One of the courses satisfying the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)

ANT 375 - Human Osteology

One of the courses satisfying the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 376 - Comparative Skeletal Anatomy and Function

A comparative study of animals in various taxa, including humans, and the reconstruction of diet, locomotion, and evolutionary history from skeletal anatomy. Applications in paleoanthropology, primatology, zoology, and biomechanics.

One of the courses satisfying the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Not offered 2016-2017; offered in alternating years.)

ANT 377 - Imaging the Earth

Satisfies the Methods requirement for the major and minor in Anthropology.
Counts as an elective in the Data Science interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies Environmental Studies major requirement.
Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered in alternating years.)