Anthropology & History
Students who major in anthropology and history learn to use both disciplines in analyzing pattern and change in human societies. The major examines the ways in which anthropological theories and methods can enrich understanding of historical processes and events. The major also points to the ways historical method can strengthen the cross-cultural and ethnographic approaches central to anthropology. Throughout, the value of interdisciplinary work is emphasized.A sample of Anthropology and History courses follows. For a more complete listing, please see the undergraduate catalog.
In Introduction to Anthropology students are exposed to the classics in anthropological literature, to anthropological methods, and to important debates in anthropology.
Focusing on Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, Cultures of the Pacific addresses historic and contemporary issues such as peopling, colonization, and independence movements and major anthropological issues such as the ways in which Pacific people gain their livelihood, organize ideas about family and kinship, and construct their social and spiritual worlds.
The Anthropology of Europe provides a broad perspective on the common themes of European cultures in order to address some of the most important issues that arise in the study of complex modern societies. Among the topics considered are the shifting meanings of the concept of "Europe" and the role of local, ethnic, class, religious, and national notions of identity in shaping social life.
Picturing Others, a course on ethnographic film, uses photography and movies to picture these others, offering a direct account of ways of life, a "truth" that cannot be conveyed in words. Students make a film or video tape.
Chinese Culture and Society explores, in select historical periods, key trends in philosophy, religion, politics and economics and their interrelationships in Chinese society. It focuses on Chinese solutions to Chinese problems as reflected in the words of the literate (e.g., philosophers and soldiers, dramatists and novelists) or in the actions of the unlettered (e.g., peasants, women and religious cultists). In exploring their cultural values we make explicit our own, and in this way set up a kind of discourse across cultures.
The Politics and Culture of Memory focuses on how societies remember and explores the wide variety of media through which memories are produced such as oral performances, stories, monuments, museums, film, and written documents. The course considers how memory works in both Western and nonwestern societies, the role of memory in the making of families and nations, and memory as a means of responding to the violence of slavery, colonialism, and genocide. Attention is also given to the politics of memory in the writing of professional historians.
Theory and Practice in Anthropology examines the major trends and schools of thought in twentieth-century and contemporary anthropology by considering how theory influences the questions anthropologist investigate as well as their fieldwork methods. Students learn how to find "theory" in ethnographic writing and how to use theoretical perspectives to better understand the world around them.
Advanced Studies in Anthropology and History is the culminating seminar for the major. Students engage in a rigorous study of the best examples of interdisciplinary work by leading historians and anthropologists in order to appreciate the respective strengths of the two disciplines and the problems and rewards of such disciplinary exchange.