History and criticism of American speeches and rhetorical texts. The course examines a broad range of historical and rhetorical factors that influenced the creation and reception of speeches from the colonial period through the end of the Civil War, focusing not only on the political, religious, legal, and social exigencies to which speeches responded but also on the place of those rhetorical texts in U.S. public controversies.
This course provides an introduction to contemporary analyses of women's economic, cultural, biological, environmental, and political conditions. We will explore commonalities and differences among women, both in the United States and in other nations. In so doing, we will engage the concept of gender as an historical and critical category relating to a woman's ethnicity, class, sexuality, and race. The course also will examine varieties of recent feminist thought, paying particular attention to the impact of this scholarship on traditional academic disciplines.
Anthropology
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
An introduction to the processes of human and cultural evolution. Physical anthropology will focus on human evolution and the human fossil record, genetic processes, primatology, and physiological characteristics of modern human populations. Archaeology will trace cultural evolution from the first hominins to the beginnings of complex societies The pertinent methods and theories are presented throughout.
This course introduces human prehistory. Referencing the influence of regional environments and technological innovations on early human societies’ attempts to resolve panhuman challenges, the class examines the earliest evidence for ritual, architecture and art in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Next, considering the irrevocable changes in human life caused by the development of agriculture, the course surveys early complex societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China. Course topics also explore transitions from tribal societies to chiefdoms and proto-states in Asia, pre-Roman Europe and Mesoamerica to identify patterns in human social organization and perceptions of the supernatural.
This course introduces human prehistory. Referencing the influence of regional environments and technological innovations on early human societies’ attempts to resolve panhuman challenges, the class examines the earliest evidence for ritual, architecture and art in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Next, considering the irrevocable changes in human life caused by the development of agriculture, the course surveys early complex societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China. Course topics also explore transitions from tribal societies to chiefdoms and proto-states in Asia, pre-Roman Europe and Mesoamerica to identify patterns in human social organization and perceptions of the supernatural.
This course reviews Pre-Columbian and Historic Era histories and social landscapes of North America. The course begins with a critical overview of anthropological archaeology as a lens through which to study the past. We focus on issues such as the timing and process of the initial peopling of the continent, then moving forward by region we address issues including cultural responses to climate change, foodways, regional systems of exchange, shifts in technology, and development of social hierarchies.
This course considers the ways in which ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class and culture shape differential access to natural resources and a healthy living environment. Drawing on anthropological studies of local ecological knowledge, political economies and city and regional planning, the class asks how disproportionate experiences of environmental benefits and burdens can be redressed in societies around the globe. Students consider culturally-informed routes to food and water security and socioecological resilience in the wake of climate change.
This course considers the role of water in shaping human societies. Beginning with an examination of how the search for fresh water resources influenced the global migration of Paleolithic humans, the seminar explores theories about the relationship between the control of water through irrigation, social complexity, the emergence of state level societies, and the place of water in world cosmologies and religious ritual. The course concludes by considering contemporary water insecurity and how understanding water cultures can foster policies for socioeconomic resilience.
This course explores various meanings and roles of the human body in the Middle East North Africa region, as well as the connections between individual experiences of the body and the collective political "body" of the nation, society, and state. Course themes include health and medicine, sports, environment, war, gender and sexuality, religion, and politics. Drawing upon contemporary ethnographies from the region, students will examine the body's embeddedness in structures of power, such as kinship networks, political and religious movements, and government and non-government organizations. Students will apply anthropological thinking to understand how embodied experiences in these structures shapes people's sense of who they are and how they are in the world.
Art
An introduction to processes dependent on the lens as an imaging device, including wet-lab photography, digital photography, video editing and installation-based sequencing. The course incorporates the fundamental theoretical, technical and aesthetic principles of working with photography as an expressive medium. Assignments include darkroom laboratory work, studio projects, discussions, written analyses, and class presentations.
An introduction to media involving spatial and temporal dimensions, including sculpture, video, sound, installation, computer-aided design, and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) fabrication. The course incorporates the fundamental theoretical, technical and aesthetic principles of composition in space and time. Assignments involve design of sound; video production; computer modeling; traditional and non-traditional sculpture techniques.
This course involves study of the theories and processes of video and audio production as well as other techniques for making moving images. It examines a variety of aesthetic, formal, thematic, and technical approaches to composition and artistic expression through moving images and sound. The evaluation and analysis of assignments involves group discussions and individual critiques. Examples from a spectrum of artists and filmmakers provide a context for understanding the potential of moving images in a variety forms.
Using found and self-generated imagery, this course explores collage and assemblage as means for developing artistic concepts. Through the understanding and juxtaposition of materials such as magazine clippings, wallpaper, texts, objects, photographs, and drawings, students establish a heightened sensitivity to the meaning of specific materials, explore various methods of combining them, and critically address how collage and assemblage have been used and created in both past and present. Through studio assignments, writing exercises, readings, discussions, and critiques, students explore forms of both historical and contemporary collage processes.