Transfer Student Courses in Cultural Anthropology (Division 319)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in Cultural Anthropology this week go to What's New This Week.

Introductory Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Elisha Renne (erenne@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Primarily for first- and second-year students. (4). (SS). (R&E). Does not count toward anthropology concentration requirements.

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This introductory course explores the distinctive modes of anthropological inquiry and surveys the field's four subdisciplines (biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology). It provides a first glimpse of the field's overall context, history, present concerns, and importance. The principal aim of the course is to help students develop a coherent view of the essential concepts, structures, and intellectual methods that typify the discipline. It stresses unifying principles that link the subdisciplines and thereby create anthropology's comprehensive, holistic world view. It teaches students various ways of learning and thinking about the world's many cultures in time and space. It prepares them to integrate and interpret information, to evaluate conflicting claims about human nature and diversity, and to think critically.

Topics covered include: the nature of culture and ethnicity; human genetics, evolution, and the fossil record; the concept of race; primate (monkey and ape) behavior; language and culture; systems of marriage, kinship and family organization; gender roles and personality; economics, politics, religion, and the arts in global perspective; and the cultural dimension of economic development and contemporary social change. Required readings include an introductory text and two paperbacks. Lectures and section discussion. Two objective exams (multiple choice) cover the two halves of the course. The second exam is given on the last day of class. There is no final exam and no term paper. Section leaders require quizzes and perhaps a short paper.

Ethnology-Topical Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Webb Keane (wkeane@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

An introduction to basic problems faced by religions and by the study of religion. Drawing on case studies from around the world, with a particular emphasis on non-scriptural religions, the course examines different ways people have confronted questions such as how one deals with an invisible world, what happens after death, why do bad things happen to good people, what makes life worth living, how can one obtain wealth and power. The emphasis will be on comparison, showing how very different traditions have dealt with the same or similar problems. In the process of examining these issues, the course also raises questions about the difficulties involved in studying other people's most strongly held values and beliefs, and the relations between tolerance and faith.

Introductory Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): David Akin (dwakin@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course provides a wide-ranging introduction to the field of ecological anthropology, focusing on issues related to the management of common property. The main goal for the course is to help students acquire an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches to the question of the relationship of ecology to the social world. On the natural science side, the major approaches to be considered are behavioral and systems ecology. From the social sciences, we will investigate the basic techniques of social anthropology, as well as evolutionary game theory. Why combine the social and natural sciences in a single course? Traditionally, social scientists study social systems, and natural scientists study ecosystems. But many of the most important problems in environmental studies only come into focus when we are able to combine both perspectives. This is particularly true of one of the most pressing issues of our time – the management of common property (resources that are held in common and utilized by a social group). Today, the oceans are our common property, and the recent collapse of many fisheries illustrates the dangers posed by over-exploitation, the so-called "tragedy of the commons." To investigate systems of common property, we need to know something about how they function as ecosystems, as well as how societies relate to them. In this course, we will explore systems of common property utilized by a wide range of societies, including Native American salmon fishermen, African nomads, and Asian rice farmers.

Introductory Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): John O'Shea (joshea@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).

Credits: (4; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course combines an introduction to the techniques, methods, and theories of modern archaeology with a general survey of world prehistory. In the first half of the course we will consider how archaeologists learn about the past. In the second half of the term we will take a ‘greatest hits’ tour of world prehistory. In this tour we will focus on the culture of early humans, the peopling of the New World, and on the changing character of culture and society in Europe and North America from the earliest inhabitants through to the beginnings of recorded history. The course is designed to be accessible without prerequisites, but students will find previous coursework in Anthropology useful. There will be three one-hour lectures, plus one discussion section, per week. Requirements: two one-hour exams plus three take-home exercises.

Introductory Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Richard Ford (riford@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The course will examine foods from around the world from a cultural-historical perspective. The place of origin and the cultural significance of domesticated plants and animals will be highlighted. It will examine the history of domesticated plants and animals and their consequences in the diets of people around the world. The economic, social and political consequences of food problems will be discussed – ranging from maize in the New Word, the Irish potato blight, population increases in China and Africa, and health problems related to cultural definitions of food and life-style in various societies, including the United States. There are two textbooks and Web readings. In the lecture, there will be three examinations. In discussion, there will be problems and reports to prepare (2-4 pages in length) about different foods.

Ethnology-Topical Courses

Section 001 – Sense Perception and Society..

Instructor(s): Gillian Feeley-Harnik (gfharnik@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Anthro. 101. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is an exploration of the senses from the comparative and historical perspective of anthropology. People in different cultures have strikingly different ways of sensing and making sense of the social worlds in which they live. Our purpose in this course will be to explore such questions as:

• Is there a natural order of the senses?
  
• What would be the nature of a world organized around smell, touch, or sound, rather than sight, as a dominant mode of knowing?
  
• What are the social processes by which the senses are combined in everyday communication?
  
• Is there a hierarchy of the senses?
  
• How does the sensory order of a culture relate to its social order?
  
• Why should "taste," for example, mark social class differences?
  
• Is there a politics of the senses? What should sweetness have to do with the exercise of power?

Readings: Reading will include such books as the following: Classen's Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures; Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses; Synnott's The Body Social; Symbolism, Self, and Society; Feld's Sound and Sentiment; Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression; and Mintz's Sweetness and Power; the Place of Sugar in Modern History, as well as selected articles put together in a course pack. The required books will be available at the Shaman Drum Bookstore (313 State Street) and on reserve in the Undergraduate Library. The course pack of articles will be available from Accu-Copy (402 Maynard Street).

Archaeology

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Henry Wright (hwright@umich.edu) , John Speth (jdspeth@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Anthro. 101, 282, or junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course explores the development of cultures in Subsaharan Africa from the first emergence of human-like bipeds more than five million years ago to the rise of states and urban centers during the Iron Age. The requirements of the course include a midterm examination (take-home) and either an in-class final exam or a research paper.

Archaeology

Section 001 – Intellectual History of American Archaeology.

Instructor(s): Richard Ford (riford@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Anthro. 282 and concentration in anthropology. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The Undergraduate Seminar in Archaeology is designed to familiarize students with the intellectual history of American archaeology. The students will read primary source material, learn about leading pioneers of modern archaeology, and discuss issues that have shaped the direction of contemporary archaeology. Students will prepare several short papers and a term paper. Grades will be determined by seminar discussion and the papers.

Ethnology-Regional Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Erik Mueggler (mueggler@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Anthro. 101 or 222, or any course on China. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Studying family structure is one of the most effective ways to investigate Chinese culture and society. This seminar uses the rich literature on Chinese families to explore social transformation in twentieth-century China. It examines the processes of political revolution, economic modernization, and cultural innovation that have revolutionized family structure and gender relations in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We will identify some of the historical processes in which gendered power relations within families have shaped the states and economies of these societies, and explore the history of Chinese feminisms and their articulation with international feminist movements. Assignments include active class participation, a class presentation, a short topical paper, and a final research paper.

Ethnology-Regional Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Maxwell Owusu (omk@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course provides an introduction to the peoples and cultures of the Caribbean. Topics covered include: the historical origins of the social structure and social organization of contemporary Caribbean states; family and kinship; religion, race, class, ethnicity, and national identity; Caribbean immigration; politics and policies of socioeconomic change. The course is open to both anthropology concentrators and non-concentrators. Films and videos on the Caribbean will be shown when available. Requirements: four 3-5 page typewritten papers, which ask students to synthesize reading and lecture materials; participation in class discussions; regular class attendance.

Ethnology-Regional Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): David Frye (dfrye@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dfrye/

This course will examine the colonial period in Latin American history from the initial Spanish and Portuguese contact and conquest to the nineteenth-century wars of independence. It will focus on the process of interaction between Indians and Europeans, tracing the evolution of a range of colonial societies in the New World. Thus we will examine the indigenous background to conquest as well as the nature of the settler community. We will also look at the shifting uses of land and labor, and at the importance of class, race, gender, and ethnicity. The method of instruction is lecture and discussion. Each student will write a short critical review and a final paper of approximately 10 to 12 pages. There will be a midterm and a final.

Ethnology-Topical Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Raymond Kelly (rck@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: One course in anthropology. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course explores the origins of war and the early evolutionary development of war alliance and peace-making. It examines the conditions under which warfare is initiated in sociocultural contexts where it did not previously exist and elucidates the origin of war in that sense. The course begins with a delineation of the distinctive characteristics of peaceful (or warless) societies that represent both a prior sociocultural disposition and the context in which primal warfare arises and takes shape. Consideration of peaceful societies illuminates certain key features of the transition from warlessness to warfare and provides a basis for identifying transitional cases. These sociocultural systems exemplify the causes, conduct, and consequences of nascent and early warfare. The subsequent co-evolution of war and pre-state societies is traced, including the development of alliance and peacemaking. Format: lecture and discussion. Requirements: substantial term paper and presentation.

Ethnology-Topical Courses

Section 001 – Ethnography, Everyday Life, & Working Families.

Instructor(s): Thomas Fricke (tomf@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course explores American kinship and family from a framework emphasizing changing cultural notions of personhood, the boundedness of family, work, and character, and the expression of these in everyday life. The course's starting point is that late 20th century changes in Middle Class American life and livelihood are leading to a reconfiguration of who we are as family members and workers. Explorations are concerned with ethnographic investigations into the changing meanings of work and family as cultural categories; with the processes of stress and reconfiguration of meanings created by increasing divergence between behavior and older cultural models; with new behaviors emerging in workplace and home in response to these changes; and with the cultural meanings of individual identity in the context of these changes. Course content emphasizes the examination of these themes in cultural and ethnographic terms but also incorporates findings from more social and behavioral research to identify trends in American life related to kinship and family. While the general perspective and emphasis on culture remains constant, specific topical foci may vary from term to term. Seminar format; one brief midterm paper and one final paper.

Ethnology-Theory/Method

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Melvin Williams (mddoublu@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Two courses in the social sciences. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course examines the possible origins of culture to understand the unique behavior and historical development of Homo sapiens and traces the salient features of human history and contemporary modernity to discuss and explain the nature of humans. The understanding of the nature of humans and their development will enable the students to comprehend, explain and resolve racism, part of a pan-human phenomenon. Is racism fundamental to the character of human culture? The course will suggest that many of our modern social problems have a common generation – the nature of human culture. That would suggest that the solutions will require a social transformation in the character of human culture. These examinations of human culture will require us to return to the discussions of Leslie White (culture is autonomous) and Alfred Kroeber (culture is superorganic) to determine the possibilities of social transformations that contemporary society may require.

Ethnology-Topical Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Melvin Williams (mddoublu@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: One introductory course in the social sciences. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will examine the nature of religion in the lives of humans, within the framework of culture, and as a pervasive social institution. It will focus on the special case of the intensive and involved character of religion in the history and the lives of African-Americans. These special uses of religion create special problems. We will analyze those problems. The course objectives are to:

• introduce the subject of religion as a social institution, as a pervasive component of culture, and as a contemporary adjustment and adaptation to peculiar social problems;
  
• demonstrate how an anthropological analysis can be used to understand religion in contemporary society;
  
• develop skills in critical thinking and analysis;
  
• present the relationship between culture, institutions, religion, subculture, and the nature of man (humans); and
  
• enable students to understand the religious institutions of humans generally and African-Americans specifically.

Archaeology

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Kent Flannery (kflanner@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Anthro. 101, 282, or junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course traces the evolution of culture and society in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, from the earliest evidence for humans in the region (over 1,000,000 years ago) until the rise of Mesopotamian civilization (around 2500 B.C.) Topics include the origins of agriculture and animal domestication, the establishment of village and town life, and the rise of cities in the Tigris-Euphrates lowlands.

Archaeology

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Joyce Marcus (joymar@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (SS).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course emphasizes the cultural evolution of the ancient Maya, whose civilization once extended from eastern Mexico through Guatemala and Belize into El Salvador and Honduras. Stages of development include hunters and gatherers, egalitarian villagers, emerging rank, and the state. Topics include religion, social organization, architecture, political hierarchies, subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, exchange systems, and hieroglyphic writing. The last part of the class covers other tribes and chiefdoms that occupied lower Central America. The grade is based on a paper (midterm) and on the in-class final exam.

Ethnology-Regional Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Katherine Verdery (verdery@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course introduces advanced students to the ethnography of Eastern Europe with close reading of a number of monographs written by anthropologists both before and after 1989. The course explores several things: the kinds of empirical issues treated in the socialist and post-socialist periods, the different conceptual/theoretical approaches to these issues, the formation of specifically anthropological problematics in dealing with the region (as opposed to problematics dictated by Cold War politics), and the development of theories of the transition from socialism. Most of the reading will concern the countries of Eastern Europe in the Cold War sense, plus a few texts dealing with Russia. (Central Asia will not be covered. Among the works to be read are Caroline Humphrey's Karl Marx Collective, Kligman's Politics of Complicity, Creed's Domesticating Revolution, Kideckel's Solitude of Collectivism, Lampland's The Object of Labor, Borneman's Belonging in the Two Berlins, Grant's Soviet House of Culture, Verdery's National Ideology Under Socialism, and Stewart's Time of the Gypsies. The reading will be fairly heavy; assignments will consist of some book reviews and a final synthetic essay (not a research paper).

Linguistic Anthropology

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Sarah Thomason (thomason@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Graduate standing, or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Linguistics 517.001.

Archaeology

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Leah Minc (leahminc@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Neutron activation analysis (NAA) is a highly sensitive and accurate technique for measuring the concentrations of major, minor, and trace elements in archaeological and historical materials. Researchers employ the technique to determine the provenience of raw materials and artifacts, to trace patterns of trade and exchange, to investigate palaeodiet and nutrition, and to authenticate antiquities and works of art. This course (conducted in cooperation with the University's research reactor) provides students with the fundamental principles and methods of NAA, along with hands-on experience in utilizing this technique to determine the elemental composition of archaeological materials. The course focuses on three areas: (1) the technical and practical aspects of NAA, including irradiation procedures, gamma-ray spectrometry, and the determination of trace-element concentrations; (2) the quantitative methods for analyzing and utilizing NAA data; and (3) the anthropological interpretation of NAA data, through an introduction to the natural and cultural factors affecting trace-element concentrations.