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.Topics for 2024-2025 may include:TitleInstructorFWS: Canoe Cultures in America: Commerce, Conquest, ContradictionsA. ArcadiFWS: Historytelling as RitualJ. LuriaFWS: Culture on TourC. RechtzigelFWS: Becoming Indigenous in AsiaY. Liang

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

Anthropology is the study of human beings. Sociocultural anthropology examines the practices, structures, and meanings that shape lived experience. But what does that mean? What do sociocultural anthropologists do, and how can their ways of knowing help us understand our interconnected world? This course introduces sociocultural anthropology-its methods, concepts, and characteristic ways of thinking. Together, we will examine how people live their lives: how we eat, work, play, and fight; how we bury our dead and care for our living; how we wield and acquiesce to power. Along the way, we will work to challenge Eurocentric models of human nature and human difference. And we will consider how anthropological tools can help address contemporary issues, from global health to climate change to racial justice.

Full details for ANTHR 1400 - Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the diverse cultures, histories and contemporary situations of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Students will also be introduced to important themes in the post-1492 engagement between Indigenous and settler populations in North America and will consider the various and complex ways in which that history affected - and continues to affect - American Indian peoples and societies. Course materials draw on the humanities, social sciences, and expressive arts.

Full details for ANTHR 1700 - Indigenous North America

Mesopotamia is often defined by firsts: the first villages, cities, states, and empires. Archaeology has long looked to the region for explanations of the origins of civilization. The modern countries of the region, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, have also long been places where archaeology and politics are inextricably intertwined, from Europe's 19th century appropriation of the region's heritage, to the looting and destruction of antiquities in recent wars. This introductory course moves between past and present. It offers a survey of more than 10,000 years of human history, from the appearance of farming villages to the dawn of imperialism, while also engaging current debates on the contemporary stakes of archaeology in the southwest Asia. Our focus is on past material worlds and the modern politics in which they are entangled. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ANTHR 2010 - Archaeology and the Middle East

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

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

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

Movements and activism are important sites of learning and creativity. As people organize, they experiment with new ways of relating to the world and educating one another. Anthropologists have examined movements as cultural practice, focusing on how people create meanings, develop identities, and generate knowledge. In this course, students will study contemporary activism in the US concerning issues such as race, the environment, food, housing, and migration. We ask: What knowledge(s) and ways of learning emerge within movements? In what ways does this learning support or undermine learning for democracy? How do collectives teach and learn “justice" and what futures do they enact in the present? Students will complete projects that allow them to learn from the local community.

Full details for ANTHR 2425 - Learning in Social Movement

“Civilization” carries heavy baggage. To “be civilized” is to be part of an admirable version of human culture, to appreciate and foster its finest achievements, to behave with intelligence and grace. The appearance of civilizations is often represented as a watershed in human history. We will examine the earliest societies in several regions – including Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes – that have been considered civilizations. We will compare their organization, expansion, and dissolution. Rather than search for a definition that separates civilizations from other kinds of societies, we will emphasize their diversity and their development from simpler predecessors.

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

What is justice, and for whom? This course draws on political and legal anthropology to address this question across different cultural, national, and international contexts. Political and legal anthropology is a core component of contemporary anthropology that provides tools and frameworks for challenging taken for granted assumptions about the concepts, processes, and institutions that govern our world. In this course, students will learn how to understand law and politics as cultural forms in social context. In addition to our main focus on the question of justice, we will consider questions and contestations related to rights, power, and governance. Throughout, the course emphasizes politics and law as dynamic and varied lived experiences.

Full details for ANTHR 2433 - Justice and Culture: An Introduction to Political and Legal Anthropology

This course offers an anthropological approach to the study of religious traditions and practices in South Asia: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. The course begins with a short survey of the major religious traditions of South Asia: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Islam. We look to the development of these traditions through historical and cultural perspectives. The course then turns to the modern period, considering the impact of colonialism, nationalism, and globalization upon religious ideologies and practices. The primary focus of the course will be the ethnographic study of contemporary religious practices in the region. We examine phenomena such as ritual, pilgrimage, possession, devotionalism, monasticism, asceticism, and revivalism through a series of ethnographic case studies. In so doing, we also seek to understand the impact of politics, modernity, diasporic movement, social inequality, changing gender roles, and mass mediation upon these traditions and practices. (ASIAN-RL)

Full details for ANTHR 2546 - South Asian Religions in Practice: The Healing Traditions

Did ancient Egyptians believe in the existence of souls? Why did they mummify the dead? Was the body of a pharaoh different from that of an ordinary person? This course sets the famous mortuary practices of ancient Egypt alongside treatments of living bodies and their immaterial components. We will read translated excerpts from ancient Egyptian texts?from magical spells recited for ancestors, to poetry on sex and death?while learning about items taken to the grave and monuments set up for posterity. In the process, we will reflect on contemporary representations of the past and evaluate the assumptions behind modern treatments of ancient artifacts and human remains. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ANTHR 2772 - Body and Spirit in Ancient Egypt

This course will explore the histories, representations, politics, and deeply embodied consequences of the nearly 80-year conflict that has come to characterize Palestinian life. This course engages how two relevant disciplines (anthropology and Palestine studies) have examined and unraveled "the question of Palestine" and how the politics of today have transformed how academic fields, humanitarians, politicians, and everyday citizens across the world have regarded the existential and political weight of that very question.

Full details for ANTHR 2925 - The Anthropology of Palestine

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

This introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production. (PMA-AU)

Full details for ANTHR 3110 - Documentary Production I

This lab introduces students to the collaborative, intellectual, and practical operations of a Visual Anthropology Lab. Students gain practical experience working as part of a team to support ongoing research, programming, and production while developing independent and collective projects. The course emphasizes hands-on participation in lab maintenance, scheduling, event planning, and research development. Activities include reading recent issues of journals such as Visual Anthropology Review and Multimodal Anthropologies, audiovisual analysis, and works-in-progress critiques. Students build professional skills by writing book, film, or exhibition reviews, conducting interviews, and proposing curations and programming. Designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates engaged in independent research.

Full details for ANTHR 3190 - Laboratory in Visual Anthropology

The archaeology of European settler colonialism is a fast growing and increasingly important field of both world history and anthropological archaeology. Drawing upon insights provided by a relatively long period of Historical Archaeological research, scholars are increasingly attempting to understand the origins and effects of European colonialism on a global scale. In this course we will explore the dominant themes in global Historical Archaeology. We will explore how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of the origins and nature of European colonialism and capitalism, as well as the mutual interactions among Europeans, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and their descendants. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 3210 - Historical Archaeology: A Global Perspective

Who determines who can marry whom, where, and when? This is a classic problem in social anthropology. The rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud were also concerned with such questions. Their proposed answers and dilemmas reveal tensions between the communities living in the Land of Israel and those in Babylonian diaspora. We will consider broadly the relation between space and kinship, and will focus our time on Chapter 4 of the tractate Kiddushin. Some reading knowledge of Rabbinic Hebrew-Aramaic required.

Full details for ANTHR 3414 - Geography and Genealogy in the Talmud

In this course, we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, and how this past is formulated as national heritage in present-day modern Asian states. We examine how Asian states and their royal traditions first came to be, including Hindu, Buddhist, and East Asian kings and emperors, and how the legacy of these glorious pasts is reinterpreted and staged as national heritage. Our examples will include Cambodia's Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions, as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, China, and more. We will use readings, films, lectures and in-class student presentations on many topics. The course also serves as a prerequisite to the separate in-country Winter semester course Heritage, History, and Identity in Cambodia (ANTHR 3590/6590). (ASIAN-SC)

Full details for ANTHR 3520 - Kingship, Nation, and Heritage in Asia

The common perception of ethnicity is that it is a natural and an inevitable consequence of cultural difference. Asians overseas, in particular, have won repute as a people who cling tenaciously to their culture and refuse to assimilate into their host societies and cultures. But, who are the Asians? On what basis can we label Asians an ethnic group? Although there is a significant Asian presence in the Caribbean, the category Asian itself does not exist in the Caribbean. What does this say about the nature of categories that label and demarcate groups of people on the basis of alleged cultural and phenotypical characteristics? This course will examine the dynamics behind group identity, namely ethnicity, by comparing and contrasting the multicultural experience of Asian populations in the Caribbean and the United States. Ethnographic case studies will focus on the East Indian and Chinese experiences in the Caribbean and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Indian experiences in the United States.

Full details for ANTHR 3703 - Asians in the Americas: A Comparative Perspective

An introduction to belief systems in ancient Mexico and Central America, emphasizing the blending of religion, astrology, myth, history, and prophecy. Interpreting text and image in pre-Columbian books and inscriptions is a major focus. (ARKEO-RLAC)

Full details for ANTHR 4256 - Time and History in Ancient Mexico

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 4257 - The Archaeology of Houses and Households

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. We will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While we will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. You will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 4264/ARKEO 4264) offered in the spring. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 4263 - Zooarchaeological Method

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 4272 - Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement

What are the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing? How is this genre, what many would call the signature of cultural anthropology, distinct from other modes of scholarly writing? What are its possibilities, limits and effects? In this course we will read classic and experimental ethnographies and undertake exercises in ethnographic writing as a means to investigate ethnography as epistemology, genre and craft.

Full details for ANTHR 4418 - Writing Ethnography: Theory, Genre and Practice

This course is a site of exploration and praxis in creative/critical knowledge production. Drawing from anthropology, feminist studies, and Black studies, we will examine scholarship that advances creative epistemologies and reimagines the relationship between creativity, critique, and theory building. Course materials will include ethnographic, autoethnographic, autotheoretical, experimental, and public-facing texts, along with graphic ethnographies and multimodal visual and audio projects. What does creative/critical knowledge production allow us to understand that conventional scholarly modes are not designed to illuminate? How do creative/critical practices enable us to tell new stories, reach different audiences, and build new communities? Students will examine these questions theoretically and practice producing knowledge through creative/critical modalities.

Full details for ANTHR 4438 - Creative Epistemologies: Experiments in Knowledge Production

This seminar explores the educational lives and schooling experiences of girls and women, broadly inclusive, through ethnographic studies conducted in the U.S. and various regions of the world. Drawing on the anthropology of education and decolonial feminist theories, we ask: How do girls, women, and gender non-conforming people construct ways of knowing through prisms of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, class, nation, and citizenship? In what ways do gendered narratives of development and risk, and forms of structural violence, shape their educational experiences and futures? Importantly, we consider girls and women as active learners and educators who craft their own lives and literacies across home, school, and community. We will identify diverse modes of feminist praxis and the possibilities for liberatory education.

Full details for ANTHR 4458 - Girls, Women, and Education

The materiality of art as willful agents will be considered from ontology to an Indigenous expression of more than human relations. Located at the intersection of multiple modernities, art and science; the shift from art historical framings of form over matter and connoisseurship to viewing materiality as an active process that continues to map larger social processes and transformation will be discussed. Archives will be sites of investigation across varied Indigenous geographies marking place, space, bodies and land. This class is designed to introduce the latest methodologies in the field of art history, material culture and Indigenous Studies. Students will consult the archive, do hands-on evaluation of art, material culture, and expand their historic and theoretical knowledge about materiality. Beyond the theoretically and historically grounded critique this class provides, it will also introduce students to working with original documents and / or conduct on-site research. Students will consult the Cornell University library holdings of the Huntington Free Library's Native American Collection and conduct original archival research with historic and contemporary art and material culture at Haudenosaunee cultural centers, museums and exhibitions spaces through a class trip or individual visits (TBD).

Full details for ANTHR 4774 - Indigenous Spaces and Materiality

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 introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production.

Full details for ANTHR 6110 - Documentary Production I

This lab introduces students to the collaborative, intellectual, and practical operations of a Visual Anthropology Lab. Students gain practical experience working as part of a team to support ongoing research, programming, and production while developing independent and collective projects. The course emphasizes hands-on participation in lab maintenance, scheduling, event planning, and research development. Activities include reading recent issues of journals such as Visual Anthropology Review and Multimodal Anthropologies, audiovisual analysis, and works-in-progress critiques. Students build professional skills by writing book, film, or exhibition reviews, conducting interviews, and proposing curations and programming. Designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates engaged in independent research.

Full details for ANTHR 6190 - Laboratory in Visual Anthropology

The archaeology of European settler colonialism is a fast growing and increasingly important field of both world history and anthropological archaeology. Drawing upon insights provided by a relatively long period of Historical Archaeological research, scholars are increasingly attempting to understand the origins and effects of European colonialism on a global scale. In this course we will explore the dominant themes in global Historical Archaeology. We will explore how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of the origins and nature of European colonialism and capitalism, as well as the mutual interactions among Europeans, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and their descendants. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 6210 - Historical Archaeology: A Global Perspective

This required seminar for the new graduate minor in media studies considers media from a wide number of perspectives, ranging from the methods of cinema and television studies to those of music, information science, communication, science and technology studies, and beyond. Historical and theoretical approaches to media are intertwined with meta-critical reflections on media studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Close attention will be paid to media's role in shaping and being shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and other politically constructed categories of identity and sociality.

Full details for ANTHR 6400 - Thinking Media Studies

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

In this course, we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, and how this past is formulated as national heritage in present-day modern Asian states. We examine how Asian states and their royal traditions first came to be, including Hindu, Buddhist, and East Asian kings and emperors, and how the legacy of these glorious pasts is reinterpreted and staged as national heritage. Our examples will include Cambodia's Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions, as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, China, and more. We will use readings, films, lectures and in-class student presentations on many topics. The course also serves as a prerequisite to the separate in-country Winter semester course Heritage, History, and Identity in Cambodia (ANTHR 3590/6590). (ASIAN-SC)

Full details for ANTHR 6520 - Kingship, Nation, and Heritage in Asia

The common perception of ethnicity is that it is a natural and an inevitable consequence of cultural difference. Asians overseas, in particular, have won repute as a people who cling tenaciously to their culture and refuse to assimilate into their host societies and cultures. But, who are the Asians? On what basis can we label Asians an ethnic group? Although there is a significant Asian presence in the Caribbean, the category Asian itself does not exist in the Caribbean. What does this say about the nature of categories that label and demarcate groups of people on the basis of alleged cultural and phenotypical characteristics? This course will examine the dynamics behind group identity, namely ethnicity, by comparing and contrasting the multicultural experience of Asian populations in the Caribbean and the United States. Ethnographic case studies will focus on the East Indian and Chinese experiences in the Caribbean and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Indian experiences in the United States.

Full details for ANTHR 6703 - Asians in the Americas: A Comparative Perspective

Explores the ways Mesoamericans understood the world and their place in it, and the ways they constructed history as these are reflected in the few books that have survived from the period before the European invasion. Examines the structure of writing and systems of notation, especially calendars, and considers their potential for illuminating Mesoamerican world views and approaches to history. Primary focus is detailed analysis of five precolumbian books: Codex Borgia, a central Mexican manual of divinatory ritual; Codex Boturini, a history of migration in central Mexico; Codex Nuttall, a Mixtec dynastic history; and two Maya books of astrology and divination, Codex Dresden and Codex Madrid. (ARKEO-RLAC)

Full details for ANTHR 7250 - Time and History in Ancient Mexico

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology. This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates with some previous background in archaeology, material culture studies, or related fields. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 7257 - The Archaeology of Houses and Households

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. The course will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While students will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. Students will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 7264/ARKEO 7264) offered in the spring. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 7263 - Zooarchaeological Method

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ANTHR 7272 - Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement

What are the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing? How is this genre, what many would call the signature of cultural anthropology, distinct from other modes of scholarly writing? What are its possibilities, limits and effects? In this course we will read classic and experimental ethnographies and undertake exercises in ethnographic writing as a means to investigate ethnography as epistemology, genre and craft.

Full details for ANTHR 7418 - Writing Ethnography: Theory, Genre and Practice

This course explores the intersections of critical disability studies and ethnography, the latter understood both as method and as mode(s) of writing. We will consider ethnography’s potential to intervene in medicalized or pathologizing frameworks of disability. We will interrogate ethnography’s tacit ableism and question the possibilities and challenges of a disabled ethnographic method. Centering questions of embodiment, we will draw on queer studies, Black studies, and feminist theory to collectively imagine disability as an emancipatory project that refigures the professional outputs and daily experience of academia.

Full details for ANTHR 7434 - Ethnography and Disability

This course is a site of exploration and praxis in creative/critical knowledge production. Drawing from anthropology, feminist studies, and Black studies, we will examine scholarship that advances creative epistemologies and reimagines the relationship between creativity, critique, and theory building. Course materials will include ethnographic, autoethnographic, autotheoretical, experimental, and public-facing texts, along with graphic ethnographies and multimodal visual and audio projects. What does creative/critical knowledge production allow us to understand that conventional scholarly modes are not designed to illuminate? How do creative/critical practices enable us to tell new stories, reach different audiences, and build new communities? Students will examine these questions theoretically and practice producing knowledge through creative/critical modalities.

Full details for ANTHR 7438 - Creative Epistemologies: Experiments in Knowledge Production

This seminar explores the educational lives and schooling experiences of girls and women, broadly inclusive, through ethnographic studies conducted in the U.S. and various regions of the world. Drawing on the anthropology of education and decolonial feminist theories, we ask: How do girls, women, and gender non-conforming people construct ways of knowing through prisms of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, class, nation, and citizenship? In what ways do gendered narratives of development and risk, and forms of structural violence, shape their educational experiences and futures? Importantly, we consider girls and women as active learners and educators who craft their own lives and literacies across home, school, and community. We will identify diverse modes of feminist praxis and the possibilities for liberatory education.

Full details for ANTHR 7458 - Girls, Women, and Education

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

The materiality of art as willful agents will be considered from ontology to an Indigenous expression of more than human relations. Located at the intersection of multiple modernities, art and science; the shift from art historical framings of form over matter and connoisseurship to viewing materiality as an active process that continues to map larger social processes and transformation will be discussed. Archives will be sites of investigation across varied Indigenous geographies marking place, space, bodies and land. This class is designed to introduce the latest methodologies in the field of art history, material culture and Indigenous Studies. Students will consult the archive, do hands-on evaluation of art, material culture, and expand their historic and theoretical knowledge about materiality. Beyond the theoretically and historically grounded critique this class provides, it will also introduce students to working with original documents and / or conduct on-site research. Students will consult the Cornell University library holdings of the Huntington Free Library's Native American Collection and conduct original archival research with historic and contemporary art and material culture at Haudenosaunee cultural centers, museums and exhibitions spaces through a class trip or individual visits (TBD).

Full details for ANTHR 7774 - Indigenous Spaces and Materiality

A series of workshops and lectures on a range of themes in the discipline sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. Presentations include lectures by invited speakers, debates featuring prominent anthropologists from across the globe, and works in progress presented by anthropology faculty and graduate students.

Full details for ANTHR 7900 - Department of Anthropology Colloquium

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

This introductory course surveys the archaeology of the ancient Greek and Roman world. Each week, we will explore a different archaeological discovery that transformed scholars' understanding of the ancient world. From early excavations at sites such as Pompeii and Troy, to modern field projects across the Mediterranean, we will discover the rich cultures of ancient Greece and Rome while also exploring the history, methods, and major intellectual goals of archaeology. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ARKEO 1702 - Great Discoveries in Greek and Roman Archaeology

Mesopotamia is often defined by firsts: the first villages, cities, states, and empires. Archaeology has long looked to the region for explanations of the origins of civilization. The modern countries of the region, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, have also long been places where archaeology and politics are inextricably intertwined, from Europe's 19th century appropriation of the region's heritage, to the looting and destruction of antiquities in recent wars. This introductory course moves between past and present. It offers a survey of more than 10,000 years of human history, from the appearance of farming villages to the dawn of imperialism, while also engaging current debates on the contemporary stakes of archaeology in the southwest Asia. Our focus is on past material worlds and the modern politics in which they are entangled. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ARKEO 2010 - Archaeology and the Middle East

“Civilization” carries heavy baggage. To “be civilized” is to be part of an admirable version of human culture, to appreciate and foster its finest achievements, to behave with intelligence and grace. The appearance of civilizations is often represented as a watershed in human history. We will examine the earliest societies in several regions – including Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes – that have been considered civilizations. We will compare their organization, expansion, and dissolution. Rather than search for a definition that separates civilizations from other kinds of societies, we will emphasize their diversity and their development from simpler predecessors.

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

This course examines the production and exchange of wine, beer, coffee and tea, and the social and ideological dynamics involved in their consumption. We start in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and end with tea and coffee in the Arab and Ottoman worlds. Archaeological and textual evidence will be used throughout to show the centrality of drinking in daily, ritual and political life. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ARKEO 2522 - Drinking through the Ages: Intoxicating Beverages in Near Eastern and World History

Did ancient Egyptians believe in the existence of souls? Why did they mummify the dead? Was the body of a pharaoh different from that of an ordinary person? This course sets the famous mortuary practices of ancient Egypt alongside treatments of living bodies and their immaterial components. We will read translated excerpts from ancient Egyptian texts?from magical spells recited for ancestors, to poetry on sex and death?while learning about items taken to the grave and monuments set up for posterity. In the process, we will reflect on contemporary representations of the past and evaluate the assumptions behind modern treatments of ancient artifacts and human remains. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ARKEO 2772 - Body and Spirit in Ancient Egypt

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

Introduction and training in dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and its applications in archaeology, art history, climate and environment through lab work and participation in ongoing research projects using ancient to modern wood samples from around the world. Supervised reading and laboratory/project work. Possibilities exists for summer fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Mexico, and New York State. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 3090 - Introduction to Dendrochronology

The archaeology of European settler colonialism is a fast growing and increasingly important field of both world history and anthropological archaeology. Drawing upon insights provided by a relatively long period of Historical Archaeological research, scholars are increasingly attempting to understand the origins and effects of European colonialism on a global scale. In this course we will explore the dominant themes in global Historical Archaeology. We will explore how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of the origins and nature of European colonialism and capitalism, as well as the mutual interactions among Europeans, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and their descendants. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 3210 - Historical Archaeology: A Global Perspective

In this course, we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, and how this past is formulated as national heritage in present-day modern Asian states. We examine how Asian states and their royal traditions first came to be, including Hindu, Buddhist, and East Asian kings and emperors, and how the legacy of these glorious pasts is reinterpreted and staged as national heritage. Our examples will include Cambodia's Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions, as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, China, and more. We will use readings, films, lectures and in-class student presentations on many topics. The course also serves as a prerequisite to the separate in-country Winter semester course Heritage, History, and Identity in Cambodia (ANTHR 3590/6590). (ASIAN-SC)

Full details for ARKEO 3520 - Kingship, Nation, and Heritage in Asia

An introduction to belief systems in ancient Mexico and Central America, emphasizing the blending of religion, astrology, myth, history, and prophecy. Interpreting text and image in pre-Columbian books and inscriptions is a major focus. (ARKEO-RLAC)

Full details for ARKEO 4256 - Time and History in Ancient Mexico

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 4257 - The Archaeology of Houses and Households

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. We will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While we will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. You will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 4264/ARKEO 4264) offered in the spring. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 4263 - Zooarchaeological Method

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 4272 - Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement

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. (ARKEO-RMNE)

Full details for ARKEO 4550 - Archaeology of the Phoenicians

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 faculty member(s).

Full details for ARKEO 6000 - Graduate Independent Study in Archaeology

The archaeology of European settler colonialism is a fast growing and increasingly important field of both world history and anthropological archaeology. Drawing upon insights provided by a relatively long period of Historical Archaeological research, scholars are increasingly attempting to understand the origins and effects of European colonialism on a global scale. In this course we will explore the dominant themes in global Historical Archaeology. We will explore how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of the origins and nature of European colonialism and capitalism, as well as the mutual interactions among Europeans, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and their descendants. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 6210 - Historical Archaeology: A Global Perspective

In this course, we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, and how this past is formulated as national heritage in present-day modern Asian states. We examine how Asian states and their royal traditions first came to be, including Hindu, Buddhist, and East Asian kings and emperors, and how the legacy of these glorious pasts is reinterpreted and staged as national heritage. Our examples will include Cambodia's Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions, as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, China, and more. We will use readings, films, lectures and in-class student presentations on many topics. The course also serves as a prerequisite to the separate in-country Winter semester course Heritage, History, and Identity in Cambodia (ANTHR 3590/6590). (ASIAN-SC)

Full details for ARKEO 6530 - Kingship, Nation, and Heritage in Asia

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. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 6620 - Perspectives on Preservation

An introduction to the field of Dendrochronology and associated topics with an emphasis on their applications in the field of archaeology and related heritage-buildings fields. Course aimed at graduate level with a focus on critique of scholarship in the field and work on a project as part of the course. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 6755 - Archaeological Dendrochronology

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. (ARKEO-TM)

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

Explores the ways Mesoamericans understood the world and their place in it, and the ways they constructed history as these are reflected in the few books that have survived from the period before the European invasion. Examines the structure of writing and systems of notation, especially calendars, and considers their potential for illuminating Mesoamerican world views and approaches to history. Primary focus is detailed analysis of five precolumbian books: Codex Borgia, a central Mexican manual of divinatory ritual; Codex Boturini, a history of migration in central Mexico; Codex Nuttall, a Mixtec dynastic history; and two Maya books of astrology and divination, Codex Dresden and Codex Madrid. (ARKEO-RLAC)

Full details for ARKEO 7250 - Time and History in Ancient Mexico

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology. This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates with some previous background in archaeology, material culture studies, or related fields. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 7257 - The Archaeology of Houses and Households

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. The course will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While students will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. Students will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 7264/ARKEO 7264) offered in the spring. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 7263 - Zooarchaeological Method

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples. (ARKEO-TM)

Full details for ARKEO 7272 - Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement

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

Full details for ARKEO 8901 - Master's Thesis