Courses

This First-Year Writing Seminar is devoted to the anthropological study of the human condition. Anthropology examines all aspects of human experience, from the evolution of the species to contemporary challenges of politics, environment, and society. The discipline emphasizes empirically rich field research informed by sophisticated theoretical understandings of human social life and cultural production. The diversity of anthropology's interests provides a diverse array of stimulating opportunities to write critically about the human condition. Topics vary by semester.

Full details for ANTHR 1101 - FWS: Culture, Society, and Power

A broad introduction to archaeology-the study of material remains to answer questions about the human past. Case studies highlight the variability of ancient societies and illustrate the varied methods and interpretive frameworks archaeologists use to reconstruct them. This course can serve as a platform for both archaeology and anthropology undergraduate majors.

Full details for ANTHR 1200 - Ancient Peoples and Places

An introduction to cultural anthropology through ethnographies, or the descriptive accounts of anthropologists. Through readings and lectures, students acquaint themselves with a number of cultures from several parts of the world. The cultures range in form from those of small-scale tribal societies to those of state societies. Throughout the course, we attempt to make sense of exotic cultures in their own terms. Attention is focused on variation in cultural patterns as they are expressed in social, economic, and ritual practices. In this encounter, the principles of anthropology, as a comparative enterprise that poses distinct cultural systems in relief, will be developed. Fiction, films, and exercises supplement the formal anthropological materials.

Full details for ANTHR 1400 - The Comparison of Cultures

The path to global citizenship begins with a facility for navigating cultural difference. How might we engage with communities, whether here in Ithaca or across the globe, whose pasts and present understandings are fundamentally different than our own? This course is designed to help students bring global engaged learning into their Cornell education. It introduces skills that are vital for intercultural engagement, including participant-observation research, ethnographic writing, and the habits of critical reflexivity. Students will complete projects with service learning placements in the Ithaca community. They will also begin an ePortfolio as they explore their identity and engage with the international community on campus.

Full details for ANTHR 1900 - Global Engagements: Living and Working in a Diverse World

These seminars offers an introduction to the humanities by exploring the historical, cultural, social and political themes. Students will explore themes in critical dialogue with a range of texts and media drawn from the arts, humanities, and/or humanistic social sciences. Guest speakers, including Cornell faculty and Society for the Humanities Fellows, will present from different disciplines and points of view. Students will make field trips to local sites relevant to the theme, and visit Cornell special collections and archives. Students enrolled in this seminar will have the opportunity to participate in additional programming related to the Society's annual focus theme and the Humanities Scholars Program for undergraduate humanities research.

Full details for ANTHR 2150 - Introduction to Humanities

This course will examine the natural history of wild chimpanzees with an eye toward better understanding the changes that would have been necessary in human evolutionary history to promote the emergence of human culture and political life. After an overview of early research and preliminary attempts to apply our knowledge of chimpanzee life to social and political theory, the class will focus on our now extensive knowledge of chimpanzees derived from many ongoing, long-term field studies. Topics of particular interest include socialization, alliance formation and cooperation, aggression within and between the sexes, reconciliation, the maintenance of traditions, tool use, nutritional ecology and social organization, territorial behavior, and the importance of kin networks. The question of whether apes should have rights will also be explored.

Full details for ANTHR 2310 - The Natural History of Chimpanzees and the Origins of Politics

This interdisciplinary course (with an emphasis in anthropology) will introduce students to the multiple routes/roots, lived experiences, and imagined worlds of South Asians who have traveled to various lands at different historical moments spanning Fiji, South Africa, Mauritius, Britain, Malaysia, United States, Trinidad, and even within South Asia itself such as the Tamil-speaking population of Sri Lanka. The course will begin with the labor migrations of the 1830s and continue up to the present period. The primary exercise will be to compare and contrast the varied expressions of the South Asian Diaspora globally in order to critically evaluate this transnational identity. Thus, we will ask what, if any, are the ties that bind a fifth-generation Indo-Trinidadian whose ancestor came to the New World as an indentured laborer or "coolie" in the mid-19th century to labor in the cane fields, to a Pakistani medical doctor who migrated to the United States in the late 1980s. If Diaspora violates a sense of identity based on territorial integrity, then could "culture" serve as the basis for a shared identity?

Full details for ANTHR 2410 - South Asian Diaspora

This course explores the major debates that define the study of contemporary Iran. Drawing from ethnographic works, literary criticism, intellectual histories and more, we will examine historical events and cultural developments from a diverse set of theoretical approaches. Topics include the Iranian revolution in comparative perspective, the Iran-Iraq war and its continued legacy, media forms and practice, contemporary film and literature, women's movements, youth culture, religious diversity, legal systems, techniques of governance, and more. Of particular interest will be the intersections of religion and secularism in Iranian society. Ultimately, it is the objective of the course to explore the diverse cultural, political, and material worlds that shape collective life and individual subjectivity in Iran today.

Full details for ANTHR 2415 - Anthropology of Iran

One of the most pressing questions of our time is how we should understand the relationship between nature, or the environment, and culture, or society, and whether these should be viewed as separate domains at all. How one answers this question has important implications for how we go about thinking and acting in such diverse social arenas as environmental politics, development, and indigenous-state relations. This course serves as an introduction to the various ways anthropologists and other scholars have conceptualized the relationship between humans and the environment and considers the material and political consequences that flow from these conceptualizations.

Full details for ANTHR 2420 - Nature-Culture: Ethnographic Approaches to Human Environment Relations

An introduction to the anthropology of sex, sexuality and gender, this course uses case studies from around the world to explore how the worlds of the sexes become gendered. In ethnographic, ethnohistorical and contemporary globalizing contexts, we will look at: intersexuality and supernumerary genders; physical and cultural reproduction; sexuality; and sex-based and gender-based violence and power. We will use lectures, films, discussion sections and short field-based exercises.

Full details for ANTHR 2421 - Worlding Sex and Gender

Global Mental Health is a growing and important field within the general category of Global Public Health. Anthropology has an established and long history of contributing to the debates about cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as to the perennial questions of nature versus nurture in defining normal versus pathological ways of being human. Cross-cultural explanations for varied and/or universal forms of human subjectivity, affect, and personality are increasingly relevant given new research into neurological plasticity, genomics, and the dissemination and practice of evidence-based and pharmaceutically-oriented psychiatry at the expense of more holistic and culturally nuanced forms of care. We examine the efficacy of traditional and community-based mental health practices in non-Western contexts as well as the challenges to accessibile care posed by inequality and precarity, as well as the stigmas surrounding mental illness in varied cultural contexts.

Full details for ANTHR 2424 - Culture and Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives

The emergence of what has come to be called civilization marks a profound transformation in human culture, society, politics, economy, and psychology. The first civilizations have been variously described as the point of origin for artistic achievement and the genesis of social struggle, a victory over the state of nature and the source of human neurosis, the genealogical root of social inequality and the foundation for the rule of law. In this course we will examine the rise and fall of ancient civilizations at the same time as we interrogate the rise and fall of the concept of civilization itself in modern historical thought. Our primary focus will be a comparative archaeological examination of five pivotal case studies of early civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and the Maya lowlands. Alongside our explorations of these early civilizations, we will undertake a critical examination of current key issues in political anthropology, including the nature of kingship, the origins of cities, and the role of coercion in the formation of early polities. The course will examine the spread of civilization, including the development of secondary states, early empires, and the first world systems. We will conclude the class with an examination of the concept of civilization itself, its historical roots and its current prominence in geopolitical thinking and policy making. The goal of the class is to provide students with an understanding of the nature of the world's first civilizations and the potency of their contemporary legacy.

Full details for ANTHR 2430 - The Rise and Fall of Civilization

How do humans organize production, distribution, exchange, and consumption? What social, political, environmental, and religious values underlie different forms of economic organization? And how do they produce racial, ethnic, class, gender, and sexual inequalities? This course uses a range of historical and contemporary case studies to address these questions, in the process introducing a range of analytic approaches including formalism, substantivism, Marxist and feminist theory, critical race studies, and science and technology studies. Course themes include gifts and commodities; the nature of money, markets, and finance; credit and debt relations; labor, property, and value; licit and illicit economies; capitalism and socialism; development and underdevelopment.

Full details for ANTHR 2437 - Economy, Power, and Inequality

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

Full details for ANTHR 2729 - Climate, Archaeology and History

This introductory course explores the roles of amulets, love potions, curse tablets, and many other magical practices in ancient Greek and Roman societies. In this course, you will learn how to invoke the powers of Abrasax, become successful and famous, get people to fall desperately in love with you, and cast horrible curses on your enemies! We will also examine a range of ancient and modern approaches to "magic" as a concept: what exactly do we mean by "magic," and how does it relate to other spheres of activity, like religion, science, and philosophy? When people (in ancient times or today) label the activities of others as "magic," what are the social and political consequences of that act? As we investigate the practices that Greeks and Romans considered "magical," we will also explore what those practices can teach us about many other aspects of life in the past, such as social class, gender, religion, and ethnic and cultural identity.

Full details for ANTHR 2846 - Magic and Witchcraft in the Greco-Roman World

This seminar course is designed to give anthropology majors an introduction to classical and contemporary social and anthropological theory and to help prepare them for upper-level seminars in anthropology. The seminar format emphasizes close reading and active discussion of key texts and theorists. The reading list will vary from year to year but will include consideration of influential texts and debates in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century anthropological theory especially as they have sought to offer conceptual and analytical tools for making sense of human social experience and cultural capacities.

Full details for ANTHR 3000 - Introduction to Anthropological Theory

In recent years, feminist theory has begun to have an impact on archaeological thought. It is now recognized that gender is likely to have been a relevant dimension of social organization in past societies. Some archaeologists are also trying to take into account the differing interests and experiences of children, adults of reproductive age, and the elderly. This course will not be limited to any period or geographical area, but will range widely in examining how feminist theory has been applied to archaeological data and models. We will consider whether it is necessary to identify women and men, adults and children in the archaeological record in order to take gender and age into account. We will also examine the uses of archaeological data by contemporary feminists.

Full details for ANTHR 3269 - Gender and Age in Archaeology

This course considers race and religion as critical sites of lived experience and anthropological analysis with implications for how we approach difference and belonging, violence and inequality, and historical and contemporary forms of power. How does race matter when thinking about religion, how does religion matter when thinking about race, and how can we think race and religion together? In aiming to think race and religion together, this course does not take either term for granted. Rather, it considers racialization of religion and other racial-religious articulations as open questions. Topics include Jews and otherness; colonial convergences of race and religion; and religion, race, and place.

Full details for ANTHR 3471 - Race and Religion

Examining the symbolic within cultural and social processes in Southeast Asia, anthropologists have produced contextually rich accounts of cultural uniqueness. Interpretive ethnographies tend, however, to downplay the role of power and domination. Using the traditional strengths of symbolic anthropology, this course examines how ritual, art, religion, and seeming traditions in contemporary Southeast Asian societies have been shaped by colonialism, war, nationalism, capitalism and socialism, and play a role in structuring ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. In addition to providing a broad and comparative ethnographic survey of Southeast Asia, this course investigates how culturally specific forms of power and domination are reflected in national politics, and in local and regional responses to the economic and cultural forces of globalization.

Full details for ANTHR 3516 - Power, Society, and Culture in Southeast Asia

The Latinx experience in the United States is, too often, predominantly shaped by law, state power, and police action. Drawing from a theoretical and methodological toolkit developed within the anthropology of law, this course considers how a spurious condition of illegality and the constitution of Latinxs as a population presumably in need, as  scholars Flores and Yúdice argued in a seminal 1990 article, have shaped individual and collective life among them and their communities. Although immigration is salient among the issues we will examine, it will not be the only one and we will stress how it articulates with multiple sociocultural and legal domains to suffuse and inform a variety of processes.

Full details for ANTHR 3762 - Law, Latinxs, Illegality

So you're enrolled in an upcoming study abroad program! Now what? How can you make the most of your experience? This half-semester course is designed to prepare students departing for any study abroad or domestic engaged learning programs. This course provides the opportunity to refine the skills necessary for cross-cultural encounters, including participant-observation research, ethnographic writing, and the habits of critical reflexivity. Students will research the culture and history of their destination and develop an ePortfolio to capture their experiences. They will also consider how to succeed in a foreign academic environment by engaging with the international community on campus.

Full details for ANTHR 3901 - Going Global: Preparing for Engaged Learning

How has your study abroad experience shaped you and your perspective on the world? What does it mean to be a global citizen? This half-semester course is designed for students returning from study abroad or other engaged learning programs. Students will reflect on topics such as identity, difference, and navigating cross-cultural encounters by writing narratives based on their experience and revising their ePortfolio. In doing so, they will grapple with culture shock and share moments of personal growth. They will also have the opportunity to contribute to the international community on campus.

Full details for ANTHR 3902 - Coming Home: Making the Most of Engaged Experiences

What are the historical factors that have led to food insecurity? In this course, we consider examples from around the world to engage with that question. We address both food production, including the sustainability of agriculture and food processing, as well as distribution, including political dynamics and markets. While encouraging interdisciplinarity, this course draws mostly on environmental archaeology and history and examines the role that the humanities and social sciences can play in shaping and promoting solutions to food insecurity. We begin with readings from diverse fields to explore critical concepts, then address case studies in broad chronological order, starting with food and colonialism, and moving into the development of corporate agriculture, international development, and food-related social movements.

Full details for ANTHR 4086 - Histories of Food Insecurity

One animal behaviorist speculates that big brains develop when species are social; that is, when they must read cues from members of their group to understand when to approach, when to flee, when to fight, when to care. This course looks not only at animals in their social lives, but also at animals in their lives with us. We ask questions about how species become entangled and what that means for both parties, about the social lives of animals independently and with humans, about the survival of human and animal species, and about what it means to use animals for science, food, and profit. The course draws on readings from Anthropology, Science & Technology Studies, and animal trainers and behaviorists.

Full details for ANTHR 4101 - The Entangled Lives of Humans and Animals

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

Full details for ANTHR 4216 - Maya History

This course is designed to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students a practical understanding of what anthropologists actually do in what has traditionally been understood as the field, a construction that has been contested We will examine situations that emerge in conducting fieldwork, and explore the ethical, methodological, theoretical, epistemological, and practical issues that are raised in the observation, participation in, recording, and representation of sociocultural processes and practices. Students are expected to develop a semester-long, local research project that will allow them to experience fieldwork situations.

Full details for ANTHR 4403 - Ethnographic Field Methods

We will read together a wide range of modern European texts-mostly but not exclusively by at least nominally Jewish authors, many of them working in the German intellectual tradition--accompanied by a range of works by Jacques Derrida that engage those thinkers and their texts. Authors will likely include Theodor w. Adorno, Saint Augustine, Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, Helene Cixous, Hermann Cohen, Sigmund Freud, Edmond Jabes, Emannuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Marx, and Gershom Scholem. We will thus be better able to participate in the current re-evaluation of Derrida's legacy, including his Jewishness, and we will read him, among other things, as a proponent of dialogue, sometimes loving and sometimes fiercely agonistic.

Full details for ANTHR 4428 - Reading Derrida and Others

How is citizenship both an ideal of formal equality as well as a mechanism for the elaboration of social inequity? Although the concept of citizenship is premised on liberal ideals of enfranchisement, the rise of xenophobic nationalisms globally have revealed the very notion of citizenship to be an exclusionary category of belonging. Introducing students to classic and contemporary theories of citizenship, this course examines both the contradictions in the theoretical underpinnings of citizenship that set up binaries of citizen and non-citizen, as well as the proliferation of documentary regimes that try to identify who is NOT a citizen. Questioning universal conceptualizations of citizenship which foreground the individual as the locus of rights and recognition, we will discuss anthropological approaches to understanding how people struggle for legal recognition and social belonging as members of collectivities. The thematic focus of the course will be borders, though materials will be drawn from other areas as well. 

Full details for ANTHR 4466 - Citizenship, Borders, and Belonging

This course examines theories of subjectivity and self-formation from a comparative, ethnographic perspective. We begin by examining classic and contemporary phenomenological, psychodynamic, semiotic, structuralist, and post-structuralist theories of self and subject formation. Moving into the ethnographic literature, we assess the utility of these models for understanding the selves of others, particularly in critical juxtaposition to multiple and alternate theories of the self and person as understood in different cultures. By examining debates in the anthropology of emotion, cognition, healing, and mental health we bring into sharper focus the particular theoretical and empirical contributions, as well as the failures, of anthropologists towards developing a cross-cultural psychology.

Full details for ANTHR 4467 - Self and Subjectivity

Jewish communities have thrived in diaspora since long before the destruction of the Second Temple. What binds and divides those communities? Diaspora may be the product of exile, but can also be a sign of group energy and creativity. And while a liturgical focus on Jerusalem and the Holy Land remains the lodestar for most diaspora Jewish communities, in the course of that long history many other places have served as homelands gained and lost. The interaction of ancient and modern Jewish diasporas with their contemporary empires provides insight into the comparison of empires old and new. Today debates rage about the desirability of sustaining Jewish life in diaspora versus the ingathering of Jews into the Jewish state. We will explore these issues and more.

Full details for ANTHR 4471 - Jewish Diasporas

This course offers a broad survey of contemporary Shi'i beliefs, practices, and politics with a focus on Twelver or Imami Shi'ism. Through a close examination of ethnographies, intellectual and political histories, theological writings, and more we will investigate the themes which define the politics and cultural practices of contemporary Shi'ism. In particular, we will highlight the ways in which Shi'is utilize their theological beliefs to negotiate and respond to the socio-political context of the times in which they live. The course begins by examining the early days of what would later be called "Shi'ism." We then examine the key theological concepts which distinguish Shi'ism from Sunnism, including themes of adalat (divine justice), shahadat (martyrdom), the Karbala paradigm, and the role of the imamate and clerical class. The rest of course is devoted to investigating the ways that Shi'ism informs and interacts with the social realm and vice versa, ranging from negotiations of the everyday to responding to moments of great civil and society unrest and to that which is called "sectarianism". Travelling from South Asia to the Middle East, from Africa to America, we will ultimately examine how Shi'i beliefs and identity act as a dynamic force for shaping the worlds in which they live today.

Full details for ANTHR 4637 - Shi'ism: Poetics and Politics

Therapeutic knowledge and practice in Africa have changed dynamically over the past century. Yet, questions about healing continue to be questions about the intimate ways that power works on bodies. Accounts of healing and medicine on the continent describe ongoing struggles over what counts as knowledge and who has the authority to intervene in social and physical threats. This class will discuss the expansion of biomedicine in Africa, the continuities and changes embodied in traditional medicine, and the shifting relationship between medicine, science and law. Our readings with trace how colonialism, post-independence nationalism, international development, environmental change and globalization have shaped the experience of illness, debility and misfortune today, as well as the possibilities for life, the context of care, and the meaning of death.

Full details for ANTHR 4682 - Medicine and Healing in Africa

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 4910 - Independent Study: Undergrad I

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 4920 - Independent Study: Undergrad II

Research work supervised by the thesis advisor, concentrating on determination of the major issues to be addressed by the thesis, preparation of literature reviews, analysis of data, and the like. The thesis advisor will assign the grade for this course.

Full details for ANTHR 4983 - Honors Thesis Research

Course will consist of several mandatory meetings of all thesis writers with the honors chair. These sessions will inform students about the standard thesis production timetable, format and content expectations, and deadlines; expose students to standard reference sources; and introduce students to each other's projects. The chair of the Honors Committee will assign the grade for this course.

Full details for ANTHR 4991 - Honors Workshop I

This course is a systematic engagement with issues in teaching anthropology to undergraduate students. Where there is broad agreement in other social sciences about what should be taught in undergraduate courses, no such common understanding exists in the field of anthropology. This course will explore the history of the teaching of anthropology, pedagogical issues unique to anthropology, and the pragmatics of teaching anthropology, especially the problems of teaching across cultures.

Full details for ANTHR 6015 - Teaching Anthropology, Teaching Culture

This course examines the history and development of anthropology as a discipline with emphasis on British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology. The course will trace major schools of thought -- Evolutionism, Functionalism, and Structuralism -- leading to the post-structural critique of culture. The latter part of the course will examine a range of  debates around anthropology's method and claims to theory beginning with the reflexive turn. Specifically, this part of the course will address how the recognition by anthropologists of the operations of power both in the world out there and within anthropology has led to diverse methodologies and theories that define contemporary anthropology.

Full details for ANTHR 6020 - History of Anthropological Thought

This seminar considers technologies of placemaking, with an emphasis on borders and belonging. It takes technology as something that is not self-evident as a category or form: rather, technology is approached as a concept that must be interrogated. For this reason, while much of the course focuses on technoscience and its intersections with borders and belonging, we begin instead with how ideas like the West, modernity, the nation-state, and borders work in and of themselves as technologies of place, belonging, exclusion, and violence. Topics include technologies of power, making and crossing borders, and placing technoscience.

Full details for ANTHR 6100 - Borders Belonging Technoscience

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

Full details for ANTHR 6256 - Maya History

In recent years, feminist theory has begun to have an impact on archaeological thought. It is now recognized that gender is likely to have been a relevant dimension of social organization in past societies. Some archaeologists are also trying to take into account the differing interests and experiences of children, adults of reproductive age, and the elderly. This course will not be limited to any period or geographical area, but will range widely in examining how feminist theory has been applied to archaeological data and models. We will consider whether it is necessary to identify women and men, adults and children in the archaeological record in order to take gender and age into account. We will also examine the uses of archaeological data by contemporary feminists.

Full details for ANTHR 6269 - Gender and Age in Archaeology

This course is designed to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students a practical understanding of what anthropologists actually do in what has traditionally been understood as the field, a construction that has been contested We will examine situations that emerge in conducting fieldwork, and explore the ethical, methodological, theoretical, epistemological, and practical issues that are raised in the observation, participation in, recording, and representation of sociocultural processes and practices. Students are expected to develop a semester-long, local research project that will allow them to experience fieldwork situations.

Full details for ANTHR 6403 - Ethnographic Field Methods

This course considers race and religion as critical sites of lived experience and anthropological analysis with implications for how we approach difference and belonging, violence and inequality, and historical and contemporary forms of power. How does race matter when thinking about religion, how does religion matter when thinking about race, and how can we think race and religion together? In aiming to think race and religion together, this course does not take either term for granted. Rather, it considers racialization of religion and other racial-religious articulations as open questions. Topics include Jews and otherness; colonial convergences of race and religion; and religion, race, and place.

Full details for ANTHR 6471 - Race and Religion

Examining the symbolic within cultural and social processes in Southeast Asia, anthropologists have produced contextually rich accounts of cultural uniqueness. Interpretive ethnographies tend, however, to downplay the role of power and domination. Using the traditional strengths of symbolic anthropology, this course examines how ritual, art, religion, and seeming traditions in contemporary Southeast Asian societies have been shaped by colonialism, war, nationalism, capitalism and socialism, and play a role in structuring ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. In addition to providing a broad and comparative ethnographic survey of Southeast Asia, this course investigates how culturally specific forms of power and domination are reflected in national politics, and in local and regional responses to the economic and cultural forces of globalization.

Full details for ANTHR 6516 - Power, Society, and Culture in Southeast Asia

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

Full details for ANTHR 6729 - Climate, Archaeology and History

The Latinx experience in the United States is, too often, predominantly shaped by law, state power, and police action. Drawing from a theoretical and methodological toolkit developed within the anthropology of law, this course considers how a spurious condition of illegality and the constitution of Latinxs as a population presumably in need, as  scholars Flores and Yúdice argued in a seminal 1990 article, have shaped individual and collective life among them and their communities. Although immigration is salient among the issues we will examine, it will not be the only one and we will stress how it articulates with multiple sociocultural and legal domains to suffuse and inform a variety of processes.

Full details for ANTHR 6762 - Law, Latinxs, Illegality

What are the historical factors that have led to food insecurity? In this course, we consider examples from around the world to engage with that question. We address both food production, including the sustainability of agriculture and food processing, as well as distribution, including political dynamics and markets. While encouraging interdisciplinarity, this course draws mostly on environmental archaeology and history and examines the role that the humanities and social sciences can play in shaping and promoting solutions to food insecurity. We begin with readings from diverse fields to explore critical concepts, then address case studies in broad chronological order, starting with food and colonialism, and moving into the development of corporate agriculture, international development, and food-related social movements.

Full details for ANTHR 7086 - Histories of Food Insecurity

We will read together a wide range of modern European texts-mostly but not exclusively by at least nominally Jewish authors, many of them working in the German intellectual tradition--accompanied by a range of works by Jacques Derrida that engage those thinkers and their texts. Authors will likely include Theodor w. Adorno, Saint Augustine, Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, Helene Cixous, Hermann Cohen, Sigmund Freud, Edmond Jabes, Emannuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Marx, and Gershom Scholem. We will thus be better able to participate in the current re-evaluation of Derrida's legacy, including his Jewishness, and we will read him, among other things, as a proponent of dialogue, sometimes loving and sometimes fiercely agonistic.

Full details for ANTHR 7428 - Reading Derrida and Others

How is citizenship both an ideal of formal equality as well as a mechanism for the elaboration of social inequity? Although the concept of citizenship is premised on liberal ideals of enfranchisement, the rise of xenophobic nationalisms globally have revealed the very notion of citizenship to be an exclusionary category of belonging. Introducing students to classic and contemporary theories of citizenship, this course examines both the contradictions in the theoretical underpinnings of citizenship that set up binaries of citizen and non-citizen, as well as the proliferation of documentary regimes that try to identify who is NOT a citizen. Questioning universal conceptualizations of citizenship which foreground the individual as the locus of rights and recognition, we will discuss anthropological approaches to understanding how people struggle for legal recognition and social belonging as members of collectivities. The thematic focus of the course will be borders, though materials will be drawn from other areas as well. 

Full details for ANTHR 7466 - Citizenship, Borders, and Belonging

This course examines theories of subjectivity and self-formation from a comparative, ethnographic perspective. We begin by examining classic and contemporary phenomenological, psychodynamic, semiotic, structuralist, and post-structuralist theories of self and subject formation. Moving into the ethnographic literature, we assess the utility of these models for understanding the selves of others, particularly in critical juxtaposition to multiple and alternate theories of the self and person as understood in different cultures. By examining debates in the anthropology of emotion, cognition, healing, and mental health we bring into sharper focus the particular theoretical and empirical contributions, as well as the failures, of anthropologists towards developing a cross-cultural psychology.

Full details for ANTHR 7467 - Self and Subjectivity

Jewish communities have thrived in diaspora since long before the destruction of the Second Temple. What binds and divides those communities? Diaspora may be the product of exile, but can also be a sign of group energy and creativity. And while a liturgical focus on Jerusalem and the Holy Land remains the lodestar for most diaspora Jewish communities, in the course of that long history many other places have served as homelands gained and lost. The interaction of ancient and modern Jewish diasporas with their contemporary empires provides insight into the comparison of empires old and new. Today debates rage about the desirability of sustaining Jewish life in diaspora versus the ingathering of Jews into the Jewish state. We will explore these issues and more.

Full details for ANTHR 7471 - Jewish Diasporas

Independent reading course on topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7520 - Southeast Asia: Readings in Special Problems

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7530 - South Asia: Readings in Special Problems

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7550 - East Asia: Readings in Special Problems

This course offers a broad survey of contemporary Shi'i beliefs, practices, and politics with a focus on Twelver or Imami Shi'ism. Through a close examination of ethnographies, intellectual and political histories, theological writings, and more we will investigate the themes which define the politics and cultural practices of contemporary Shi'ism. In particular, we will highlight the ways in which Shi'is utilize their theological beliefs to negotiate and respond to the socio-political context of the times in which they live. The course begins by examining the early days of what would later be called "Shi'ism." We then examine the key theological concepts which distinguish Shi'ism from Sunnism, including themes of adalat (divine justice), shahadat (martyrdom), the Karbala paradigm, and the role of the imamate and clerical class. The rest of course is devoted to investigating the ways that Shi'ism informs and interacts with the social realm and vice versa, ranging from negotiations of the everyday to responding to moments of great civil and society unrest and to that which is called "sectarianism". Travelling from South Asia to the Middle East, from Africa to America, we will ultimately examine how Shi'i beliefs and identity act as a dynamic force for shaping the worlds in which they live today.

Full details for ANTHR 7637 - Shi'ism: Poetics and Politics

Healing and medicine are simultaneously individual and political, biological and cultural. In this class, we will study the expansion of biomedicine in Africa, the continuities and changes embodied in traditional medicine, and the relationship between medicine, science and law. We will explore the questions African therapeutics poses about the intimate ways that power works on and through bodies. Our readings will frame current debates around colonial and postcolonial forms of governance through medicine, the contradictions of humanitarianism and the health crisis in Africa, and the rise of new forms of therapeutic citizenship. We will examine the ways in which Africa is central to the biopolitics of the contemporary global order.

Full details for ANTHR 7682 - Medicine and Healing in Africa

Full details for ANTHR 7901 - Towards an Anti-Racist and Decolonial Anthropology: Histories

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7910 - Independent Study: Grad I

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7920 - Independent Study: Grad II

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7930 - Independent Study: Grad III

A broad introduction to archaeology-the study of material remains to answer questions about the human past. Case studies highlight the variability of ancient societies and illustrate the varied methods and interpretive frameworks archaeologists use to reconstruct them. This course can serve as a platform for both archaeology and anthropology undergraduate majors.

Full details for ARKEO 1200 - Ancient Peoples and Places

Recent events in the USA and across the globe have drawn attention to the dynamic and highly political role that statues play within public life. But why do so many societies create statues, and why do they set them up in prominent spaces? How do statues work? And why do they loom so large in the public imagination? Looking both to Ancient Greece and Rome and the modern West, this course examines the social, political, religious, and erotic power attributed to statues across diverse periods and contexts, paying special attention to current events in the USA. We will explore topics including the foundational role of statues for political states (from the Athenian Tyrannicides to the Statue of Liberty), the commemorative function of statues (such as victory monuments and war memorials), the destruction of statues (from Christian iconoclasm to Confederate monuments), creative "statue-hacks" (from Rome's Pasquino to Wall Street's "Fearless Girl") and objects of cult (from Olympian Zeus to weeping Madonnas). The course will encourage students to consider statues relevant to themselves and their communities, including the Cornell cast collection, statues on campus, and those in your own home town.

Full details for ARKEO 1704 - Statues and Public Life

These seminars offers an introduction to the humanities by exploring the historical, cultural, social and political themes. Students will explore themes in critical dialogue with a range of texts and media drawn from the arts, humanities, and/or humanistic social sciences. Guest speakers, including Cornell faculty and Society for the Humanities Fellows, will present from different disciplines and points of view. Students will make field trips to local sites relevant to the theme, and visit Cornell special collections and archives. Students enrolled in this seminar will have the opportunity to participate in additional programming related to the Society's annual focus theme and the Humanities Scholars Program for undergraduate humanities research.

Full details for ARKEO 2150 - Introduction to Humanities

The emergence of what has come to be called civilization marks a profound transformation in human culture, society, politics, economy, and psychology. The first civilizations have been variously described as the point of origin for artistic achievement and the genesis of social struggle, a victory over the state of nature and the source of human neurosis, the genealogical root of social inequality and the foundation for the rule of law. In this course we will examine the rise and fall of ancient civilizations at the same time as we interrogate the rise and fall of the concept of civilization itself in modern historical thought. Our primary focus will be a comparative archaeological examination of five pivotal case studies of early civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and the Maya lowlands. Alongside our explorations of these early civilizations, we will undertake a critical examination of current key issues in political anthropology, including the nature of kingship, the origins of cities, and the role of coercion in the formation of early polities. The course will examine the spread of civilization, including the development of secondary states, early empires, and the first world systems. We will conclude the class with an examination of the concept of civilization itself, its historical roots and its current prominence in geopolitical thinking and policy making. The goal of the class is to provide students with an understanding of the nature of the world's first civilizations and the potency of their contemporary legacy.

Full details for ARKEO 2430 - The Rise and Fall of Civilization

The course surveys the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt from its prehistoric origins down to the early first millennium bce. Within a chronological framework, the following themes or topics will be considered: the development of the Egyptian state (monarchy, administration, ideology), social organization (class, gender and family, slavery), economic factors, and empire and international relations.

Full details for ARKEO 2668 - Ancient Egyptian Civilization

With megacities, long-distance trade, and fluid identities, the Roman empire can seem uncannily close to our modern world. This course adopts a thematic approach to explore whether this is a valid parallel, based on archaeological evidence ranging from temples to farms, from wine containers to statues.

Full details for ARKEO 2711 - Archaeology of the Roman World: Italy and the West

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

Full details for ARKEO 2729 - Climate, Archaeology and History

This course offers a survey of the art and culture of China from the Neolithic period to the twenty-first century to students who have no previous background in Chinese studies. The course begins with an inquiry into the meaning of national boundaries and the controversial definition of the Han Chinese people, which will help us understand and define the scope of Chinese culture. Pre-dynastic (or prehistoric) Chinese culture will be presented based both on legends about the origins of the Chinese and on scientifically excavated artifacts. Art of the dynastic periods will be presented in light of contemporaneous social, political, geographical, philosophical and religious contexts. This course emphasizes hands-on experience using the Chinese art collection at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art for teaching and assignments. In addition to regular sections conducted in the museum, students are strongly encouraged to visit the museum often to appreciate and study artworks directly.

Full details for ARKEO 2800 - Introduction to the Arts of China

This introductory course explores the roles of amulets, love potions, curse tablets, and many other magical practices in ancient Greek and Roman societies. In this course, you will learn how to invoke the powers of Abrasax, become successful and famous, get people to fall desperately in love with you, and cast horrible curses on your enemies! We will also examine a range of ancient and modern approaches to "magic" as a concept: what exactly do we mean by "magic," and how does it relate to other spheres of activity, like religion, science, and philosophy? When people (in ancient times or today) label the activities of others as "magic," what are the social and political consequences of that act? As we investigate the practices that Greeks and Romans considered "magical," we will also explore what those practices can teach us about many other aspects of life in the past, such as social class, gender, religion, and ethnic and cultural identity.

Full details for ARKEO 2846 - Magic and Witchcraft in the Greco-Roman World

Undergraduate students pursue topics of particular interest under the guidance of a faculty member.

Full details for ARKEO 3000 - Undergraduate Independent Study in Archaeology and Related Fields

In recent years, feminist theory has begun to have an impact on archaeological thought. It is now recognized that gender is likely to have been a relevant dimension of social organization in past societies. Some archaeologists are also trying to take into account the differing interests and experiences of children, adults of reproductive age, and the elderly. This course will not be limited to any period or geographical area, but will range widely in examining how feminist theory has been applied to archaeological data and models. We will consider whether it is necessary to identify women and men, adults and children in the archaeological record in order to take gender and age into account. We will also examine the uses of archaeological data by contemporary feminists.

Full details for ARKEO 3269 - Gender and Age in Archaeology

Various American Indian civilizations as well as diverse European cultures have all exerted their influences on the organization of town and city living. The course considers how each culture has altered the landscape in its own unique way as it created its own built environments.

Full details for ARKEO 3600 - Pre-Industrial Cities and Towns in North America

Students will learn method and theory on museum design and curation. The course also provides hands-on experience in designing and building exhibits for State Parks in the Finger Lakes. For the outreach component, students will work with staff from State Parks and Friends of the Parks.

Full details for ARKEO 4020 - Designing Archaeological Exhibits

What are the historical factors that have led to food insecurity? In this course, we consider examples from around the world to engage with that question. We address both food production, including the sustainability of agriculture and food processing, as well as distribution, including political dynamics and markets. While encouraging interdisciplinarity, this course draws mostly on environmental archaeology and history and examines the role that the humanities and social sciences can play in shaping and promoting solutions to food insecurity. We begin with readings from diverse fields to explore critical concepts, then address case studies in broad chronological order, starting with food and colonialism, and moving into the development of corporate agriculture, international development, and food-related social movements.

Full details for ARKEO 4086 - Histories of Food Insecurity

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

Full details for ARKEO 4216 - Maya History

The Phoenicians have long been an enigma, a people defined by distant voices. Originating from present-day Lebanon, they were Semitic speakers, renowned seafarers and transmitters of an innovative alphabet that transformed how Mediterranean and Near Eastern folk wrote their languages. Having left us virtually no texts of their own, their history has resembled a patchwork of recollections from Old Testament and Hellenistic times. Recent archaeological discoveries, however, reveal patterns of trade, colonization and socioeconomic transformations that make the Phoenicians less enigmatic while raising new questions. Our class explores the third and second millennium Canaanite roots of the Phoenicians, as well as the Biblical and Greco-Roman perceptions of their early first millennium heyday. We will explore the Phoenician homeland and its colonies, and investigate their maritime economy, language, and religion through both archaeological and textual sources. Temporally the focus is on Phoenician rather than Carthaginian or Punic history, thus up to about 550 BCE. The class has a seminar format involving critical discussions and presentations of scholarly readings, and requires a research paper.

Full details for ARKEO 4550 - Archaeology of the Phoenicians

Curated fashion exhibitions are fabricated sites where research practice, creative design, storytelling, and aesthetics converge in order to convey visual and material narratives for public consumption. In this course, students will learn about curatorial practice more broadly and the display of fashion artifacts more specifically through theory and practice. Students will work collaboratively to curate a fashion exhibition using the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection. For additional information visit the Society for the Humanities website.  

Full details for ARKEO 4651 - Curating Fashion Exhibitions

Independent work under the close guidance of a faculty member.

Full details for ARKEO 4981 - Honors Thesis Research

The student, under faculty direction, will prepare a senior thesis.

Full details for ARKEO 4982 - Honors Thesis Write-Up

Graduate students pursue advanced topics of particular interest under the guidance of a faculty member(s).

Full details for ARKEO 6000 - Graduate Independent Study in Archaeology

Students will learn method and theory on museum design and curation. The course also provides hands-on experience in designing and building exhibits for State Parks in the Finger Lakes. For the outreach component, students will work with staff from State Parks and Friends of the Parks.

Full details for ARKEO 6020 - Designing Archaeological Exhibits

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

Full details for ARKEO 6256 - Maya History

In recent years, feminist theory has begun to have an impact on archaeological thought. It is now recognized that gender is likely to have been a relevant dimension of social organization in past societies. Some archaeologists are also trying to take into account the differing interests and experiences of children, adults of reproductive age, and the elderly. This course will not be limited to any period or geographical area, but will range widely in examining how feminist theory has been applied to archaeological data and models. We will consider whether it is necessary to identify women and men, adults and children in the archaeological record in order to take gender and age into account. We will also examine the uses of archaeological data by contemporary feminists.

Full details for ARKEO 6269 - Gender and Age in Archaeology

Introduction to the theory, history, and practice of Historic Preservation Planning in America, with an emphasis on understanding the development and implementation of a preservation project. The course discusses projects ranging in scale and character from individual buildings to districts to cultural landscapes; as well as topics such as preservation economics, government regulations, significance and authenticity, and the politics of identifying and conserving cultural and natural resources.

Full details for ARKEO 6620 - Perspectives on Preservation

Curated fashion exhibitions are fabricated sites where research practice, creative design, storytelling, and aesthetics converge in order to convey visual and material narratives for public consumption. In this course, students will learn about curatorial practice more broadly and the display of fashion artifacts more specifically through theory and practice. Students will work collaboratively to curate a fashion exhibition using the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection. For longer description and instructor bio visit http://societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu/courses. For additional information visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ARKEO 6651 - Curating Fashion Exhibitions

Various American Indian civilizations as well as diverse European cultures have all exerted their influences on the organization of town and city living. The course considers how each culture has altered the landscape in its own unique way as it created its own built environments.

Full details for ARKEO 6660 - Pre-Industrial Cities and Towns in North America

Introduction to core readings in Greek and Roman art and archaeology. 

Full details for ARKEO 6701 - Advanced Readings in Archaeology

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

Full details for ARKEO 6729 - Climate, Archaeology and History

Archaeology studies the past through its material remains. In doing so, it builds on wide-ranging theories and methods to develop its own disciplinary toolbox. This graduate seminar explores this toolbox, treating a topic of broad theoretical and/or methodological interest such as emerging topics in archaeological thought, the history of archaeological theory, key archaeological methods, themes that tie archaeology to the wider domain of the humanities and social sciences, or some combination of the above. The seminar is taught by various members of the Archaeology faculty, each of whom offers their own version of the seminar. The seminar is required for incoming CIAMS M.A. students, and needed for CIAMS membership for Ph.D. students.

Full details for ARKEO 7000 - CIAMS Core Seminar in Archaeological Theory and Method

What are the historical factors that have led to food insecurity? In this course, we consider examples from around the world to engage with that question. We address both food production, including the sustainability of agriculture and food processing, as well as distribution, including political dynamics and markets. While encouraging interdisciplinarity, this course draws mostly on environmental archaeology and history and examines the role that the humanities and social sciences can play in shaping and promoting solutions to food insecurity. We begin with readings from diverse fields to explore critical concepts, then address case studies in broad chronological order, starting with food and colonialism, and moving into the development of corporate agriculture, international development, and food-related social movements.

Full details for ARKEO 7086 - Histories of Food Insecurity

The conquests and death of Alexander served as catalysts for major cultural transformation. Throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, Greco-Macedonian dynasties came to rule over foreign populations in places as diverse as Egypt, the Near East, Central Asia, and northwestern India. The resulting interactions, conflicts, collaborations, and entanglements produced new practices, new forms of material culture, and new constructions of "Hellenicity."

Full details for ARKEO 7743 - Archaeology of the Hellenistic Mediterranean

Students, working individually with faculty member(s), prepare a master's thesis in archaeology.

Full details for ARKEO 8901 - Master's Thesis