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Catalogue 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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American Studies: Core Courses |
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AMST 338 - German-American Encounters since WW I
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 338 ) This seminar explores the many ways in which Germans envisioned, feared, and embraced America in the course of the twentieth century. We start our readings with WWI and its aftermath, when German society was confronted and, as some feared, overwhelmed, by an influx of American soldiers, expatriates, industry, and popular culture. The Nazi Regime promised to overcome Weimar modernity and the alleged Americanization of German society, but embraced nonetheless aspects of American modernity in its quest to dominate Europe militarily and economically. For the period after WWII, we study in depth the U.S. military occupation (1945-1955), the almost seventy-year lasting military presence in West Germany, and the political, social and cultural implications of this transatlantic relationship. Maria Höhn.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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AMST 365 - Racial Borderlands
1 unit(s)
Borders have been made to demarcate geographic and social spaces. As such, they often divide and separate national states, populations, and their political and cultural practices. However, borders also serve as spaces of convergence and transgression. Employing a comparative and relational approach to the study of American cultures, this seminar examines concepts, theories and methodologies about race and ethnicity that emerged along the U.S. racial borderlands between the 18th and 20th centuries. We also consider the historical and contemporary ways in which discourses about race have been used to define, organize, and separate different social groups within the U.S. racial empire state. Throughout the semester we ask the following questions: How does race emerge as an idea in the U.S. political and social landscape? What is the relationship between race, gender and empire? What are the relational and historical ways in which ideas about race have been used to arrange and rank distinct social groups in the U.S. imperial body? How have these hierarchies shifted across space and time and how have different groups responded to these racial formations? Lastly, this seminar considers the future potential and limits of solidarity as a practice organized around ideas about race and exclusion for different marginalized populations within the U.S. empire state. Carlos Alamo.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the United States Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 366 , ART 366 , and WMST 366 )
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 381 - Ideas, Sound, and Story: Podcast Production Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 381 ) This is a course on narrative audio production that focuses on the study and production of various nonfictional genres in the American podcasting landscape, including audio documentaries, investigative reporting, confessionals, art pieces, storytelling for academic purposes, and others. Students learn the craft of audio production from getting tape, tape-logging, writing for audio, story and tape-editing, and sound-tracking. Students complete various technical assignments, and submit a final 10-minute piece, with regular progress graded throughout. In order to model the highly competitive nature of the podcasting production space today, students must be highly-motivated, highly-organized, and grading is very rigorous, with the highest of standards and strict deadlines. Barry Lam.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 382 - Documenting America
1 unit(s)
The demand for documentation, the hunger for authenticity, the urge to share in the experiences of others were widespread in the first half of the twentieth century. A huge world of documentary expression included movies, novels, photographs, art and non-fiction accounts. This course explores the various ways in which some of these artists, photographers, writers and government agencies attempted to create documents of American life between 1900 and 1945. The course examines how such documents fluctuate between utility and aesthetics, between the social document and the artistic image. Among the questions we consider are: in what ways do these works document issues of race and gender that complicate our understanding of American life? How are our understandings of industrialization and consumerism, the Great Depression and World War II, shaped and altered by such works as the photographs of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange,the paintings of Jacob Lawrence, the films of Charlie Chaplin, the novels and stories of Chester Himes, William Carlos Williams and Zora Neale Hurston, the non-fictional collaboration of James Agee and Walker Evans. Miriam Cohen and Patricia Wallace.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 383 - Indigenous New York
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 383 ) Over half of all Native American people living in the United States now live in an urban area. The United States federal policies of the 1950’s brought thousands of Indigenous peoples to cities with the promise of jobs and a better life. Like so many compacts made between the United States and Native tribes, these agreements were rarely realized. Despite the cultural, political, and spiritual losses due to Termination and Relocation policies, Native American people have continued to survive and thrive in complex ways. This seminar examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples living in urban areas since the 1950’s, but also takes into consideration the elaborate urban centers that existed in the Americas before European contact. Using the New York region as our geographical center, we examine the pan-tribal movement, AIM, Red Power, education, powwowing, social and cultural centers, two-spiritedness, religious movements, and the arts. We study the manner in which different Native urban communities have both adopted western ways and recuperated specific cultural and spiritual traditions in order to build and nurture Indigenous continuance. Finally, in this course, we understand and define “urban” in very broad contexts, using the term to examine social, spiritual, geographical, material, and imagined spaces in which Indigenous people of North America locate themselves and their communities at different times and in different ways. Molly McGlennen.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 384 - Native Religions/Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 384 and LALS 384 ) The conquest of the Americas was accompanied by various intellectual and sociopolitical projects devised to translate, implant, or impose Christian beliefs in Amerindian societies. This course examines modes of resistance and accommodation, among other indigenous responses, to the introduction of Christianity as part of larger colonial projects. Through a succession of case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, and Paraguay, we analyze the impact of Christian colonial and postcolonial evangelization projects on indigenous languages, religious practices, literary genres, social organization and gender roles, and examine contemporary indigenous religious practices. David Tavárez.
Prerequisite(s): prior coursework in Anthropology, American Studies or Latin American Latino/a Studies or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 386 - Baseball and American Society
1 unit(s)
Baseball has been more than merely a game in American life and history. It has permeated American culture, and reflected U.S. society. The more one peels away the layers of baseball’s history, the more one finds that baseball emerges as a barometer of American culture. From challenges to racial segregation to campaigns for labor rights, baseball has mirrored and engendered social, economic, and political change in America. This course grapples with the multifaceted meanings and experiences of baseball in American society, with a particular focus on how baseball reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges social inequalities. We work with diverse texts to explore baseball in relation to enduring questions about race, class, and gender as well as emergent debates about globalization, new statistical measures, performance enhancing drugs, and the growing sport-media complex. Exploring broad questions about sports, culture, and society, this course is not just for baseball fans. William Hoynes.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 387 - On Campus
1 unit(s)
This course is designed as a literary and cultural investigation of academic life in the US. Taking a long historical view we will read some examples of what is called “the campus novel”: Mary McCarthy’s The Group, John Williams’s Stoner, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, and Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs. We will also discuss a wide range of essays, extending from memoir to cultural critique, addressing the language of campus life and its politics. Here are a few examples: Laurel Johnson Black on a working-class student at an elite institution; Louis Menand on the humanities revolution; Elizabeth Armstrong on parties on campuses; Lisa Wade on gender and hookup culture; the public letter addressed to Brock Turner by the woman he raped on Stanford campus; Laura Kipnis on Title IX cases; Ta-Nehisi Coates on “the Mecca” that was Howard University; Claudia Rankine on daily conversations mined with hidden violence; Hua Hsu on “civility wars”; and, of course, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast on the food in Vassar dining. This is an exploratory course and my hopes are that each one of you will bring more to it than is already there, and take the conversation in new directions. Amitava Kumar.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 389 - From the Natural History Museum to Ecotourism:The Collection of Nature
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 389 ) From the rise of the Natural History Museum, the Bureau of Ethnology, and early endeavors to create a national literature, the appropriation of American Indian lands and Amerian Indians (as natural objects) offered Euro-Americans a means to realize their new national identity. Today, the American consumer-collector goes beyond the boundaries of the museum, national park, and zoo and into ecotourism, which claims to make a low impact on the environment and local culture, while helping to generate money, jobs, and the conservation of wildlife and vegetation. This course investigates historical and current trends in the way North Americans recover, appropriate, and represent non-western cultures, ‘exotic’ animals, and natural environments from theoretical and ideological perspectives. Course readings draw from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, museology, literature, and environmental studies.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
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American Studies: Electives |
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AMST 214 - History of American Jazz
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Brian Mann.
Prerequisite(s): one unit in one of the following: music, studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor.
Alternate years. Not offered in 2017/18.
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AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 217 and MUSI 217 )
Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 218 - Spiritual Seekers in American History & Culture 1880-2008 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 218 ) This course examines the last 120 years of spiritual seeking in America. It looks in particular at the rise of unchurched believers, how these believers have relocated “the religious” in different parts of culture, what it means to be “spiritual but not religious” today, and the different ways that Americans borrow from or embrace religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. We focus in particular on unexpected places of religious enchantment or “wonder” in our culture, including how science and technology are providing new metaphors for God and spirit. Christopher White.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Lisa Collins.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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AMST 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 249 ) This course provides a survey of the visual arts made in the United States (or by American artists living abroad) until 1865, beginning with the first European representations of Native Americans in the 16th century and ending with Alexander Gardner’s images of death and destruction on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. It emphasizes the significance of cross-cultural encounter and international exchange to the creation and reception of artworks produced in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic, considering topics such as the role of art in the construction of national identity; the origins of the U.S. art market; and the tensions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in early American art.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 251 ) This course examines American visual culture as it developed in the years between the Civil War and World War II. Special attention is paid to the intersections among diverse media and to such issues as the emergence of new forms of mass imagery, consumerism, cosmopolitanism, regionalism, abstraction, gender, primitivism, mechanized reproduction, and the rise of modern art institutions. Artists studied include Winslow Homer, Timothy O’Sullivan, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Aaron Douglas, and Edward Hopper, among others.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 257 and SOCI 257 ) Based on sociological theory of class, gender, race/ethnicity, this course examines complexities of historical, economic, political, and cultural positions of Asian Americans beyond the popular image of “model minorities.” Topics include the global economy and Asian immigration, politics of ethnicity and pan-ethnicity, educational achievement and social mobility, affirmative action, and representation in mass media. Seungsook Moon.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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AMST 275 - Race and Ethnicity in America
1 unit(s)
This course examines “white” American identity as a cultural location and a discourse with a history—in Mark Twain’s terms, “a fiction of law and custom.” What are the origins of “Anglo-Saxon” American identity? What are the borders, visible and invisible, against which this identity has leveraged position and power? How have these borders shifted over time, and in social and cultural space? How has whiteness located itself at the center of political, historical, social, and literary discourse, and how has it been displaced? How does whiteness mark itself, or mask itself? What does whiteness look like, sound like, and feel like from the perspective of the racial “other”? What happens when we consider whiteness as a racial or ethnic category? And in what ways do considerations of gender and class complicate these other questions? We read works by artists, journalists, and critics, among them Bill Finnegan, Benjamin DeMott, Lisa Lowe, David Roediger, George Lipsitz, Roland Barthes, Chela Sandoval, Eric Lott, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Ruth Frankenberg, James Baldwin, Homi Bhabha, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, James Weldon Johnson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Alice Walker, and Don DeLillo. We also explore the way whiteness is deployed, consolidated and critiqued in popular media like film (Birth of a Nation, Pulp Fiction, Pleasantville) television (“reality” shows, The West Wing) and the American popular press.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 356 - Contemporary American Poets
1.0 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 356 ) Contemporary Native American Poets. In our course, we study contemporary North American Indigenous poets through various lenses, including American Indian Literary Nationalism, Indigenous Transnationalisms, and tribally-specific frames. Poets include Natalie Diaz, Adrian Louis, Sherman Alexie, Luci Tapahonso, Wendy Rose, and Orlando White among others.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period
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AMST 367 - Artists’ Books from the Women’s Studio Workshop
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 367 and WMST 367 ) In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore the limited edition artists’ books created through the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Founded in 1974, the Women’s Studio Workshop encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, and women artists associated with the workshop have, since 1979, created over 180 hand-printed books using a variety of media, including hand-made paper, letterpress, silkscreen, photography, intaglio, and ceramics. Vassar College recently became an official repository for this vibrant collection which, in the words of the workshop’s co-founder, documents “the artistic activities of the longest continually operating women’s workspace in the country.” Working directly with the artists’ books, this seminar will meet in Vassar Library’s Special Collections and closely investigate the range of media, subject matter, and aesthetic sensibilities of the rare books, as well as their contexts and meanings. We will also travel to the Women’s Studio Workshop to experience firsthand the artistic process in an alternative space. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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AMST 380 - Art, War, and Social Change Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 380 ) In recent years the “War on Terror” has expanded. Many politicians are eager to declare “World War III,” and the refugee crisis continues to challenge the world. Militarism is increasing, and the public may once again come to accept the idea of sending ground troops abroad. In a climate such as this, it is vital to consider how nations conceptualize war, and equally important how groups and individuals might argue against it. To address these issues, this course looks at a body of work that challenges the precepts of war, or mourns its losses. Works include novels, films, music, art, memorials, poetry, and photography. Marque Miringoff.
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Anthropology: I. Introductory |
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ANTH 100 - Archaeology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Archaeologists use the material remains of past peoples and places to tell new stories of the past, present, and future. This course covers the basic methods and theories of American archaeology to show how that work is done. Then we survey the contributions that archaeologists are making to the social issues of our time such as sustainable cities, poverty and homelessness, and warfare and identity. Every social issue of today has historical roots, and earlier cases that can be examined through material remains. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 120 - Human Origins Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course introduces current and historical debates in the study of human evolution. Primate studies, genetics, the fossil record and paleoecology are drawn upon to address such issues as the origins and nature of human cognition, sexuality, and population variation. Zachary Cofran.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 140 - Cultural Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
An introduction to central concepts, methods, and findings in cultural anthropology, including culture, cultural difference, the interpretation of culture, and participant-observation. The course uses cross-cultural comparison to question scholarly and commonsense understandings of human nature. Topics may include sexuality, kinship, political and economic systems, myth, ritual and cosmology, and culturally varied ways of constructing race, gender, and ethnicity. Students undertake small research projects and explore different styles of ethnographic writing. Colleen Cohen, Candice Lowe Swift and Xiaobo Yuan.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 150 - Linguistics and Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This class introduces students to the multiple senses in which languages constitute “formal systems.” There is a focus on both theoretical discussions about, and practical exercises in, the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of human languages. We also consider the origins of natural languages in various ways: their ontogenesis, their relationship to non-human primate signaling systems, and their relationship to other, non-linguistic, human semiotic systems. Moreover, we examine the broader social and cultural contexts of natural languages, such as their consequences for socially patterned forms of thinking, and their relationship to ethnic, racial and regional variation. The course is intended both as the College’s general introduction to formal linguistics and as a foundation for advanced courses in related areas. Louis Römer and Thomas Porcello.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 170 - Topics in Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Introduction to anthropology through a focus on a particular issue or aspect of human experience. Topics vary, but may include Anthropology through Film, American Popular Culture, Extinctions, Peoples of the World. The department.
Topic for 2017/18a: Anthropology of Water. Many anthropologists study water as a focus of political contention and environmental impetus to action. But cultural anthropology’s special contribution to water studies may be its insights into how water is valued, socially and affectively, in culturally and historically different ways. Water is necessary for human life. But it is always, also, meaningful in a remarkable range of ways that do not necessarily begin with scarcity, nor end with any one universal goal, even health or profit. Focusing on the relation between drinking water and wider cultural systems, the course introduces three approaches to drinking water: (1) Semiotics of Bottled Water includes readings from the anthropology of food and beverage, consumer culture, and meaning-making in everyday life. (2) Water as Global Commodity considers water in the context of the anthropology of gifts and commodities. (3) Water Projects considers state, corporate, and activist discourses about water with attention to anthropological studies of social and environmental impacts. The course includes (group) projects on water in local cultural contexts. Martha Kaplan.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
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Anthropology: II. Intermediate |
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ANTH 201 - Anthropological Theory Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
In this course we explore the history of intellectual innovations that make anthropology distinctive among the social sciences. We seek to achieve an analytic perspective on the history of the discipline and also to consider the social and political contexts, and consequences, of anthropology’s theory. While the course is historical and chronological in organization, we read major theoretical and ethnographic works that form the background to debates and issues in contemporary anthropology. Louis Römer.
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 140 . Corequisite: ANTH 140 .
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 225 - Anthropology of Islam Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 225 ) This course surveys contemporary global Islam through an anthropological lens. We read a selection of recent ethnographies of Muslim communities around the world, from countries including Indonesia, Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon, Senegal, Sudan, and India. As we move through these various worlds, we look for the shared questions and debates that connect Muslims around the globe. We investigate how anthropologists have tried to define Islam based on their observations of Muslim diversity. Through these sources, and through our own ethnographic exercises and visits to Muslim sites in the Hudson Valley, students also are introduced to the ethnography of religion as a practice, and its methodological, theoretical, and ethical challenges. Key themes include ritual and sacred text, politics and nation, gender & sexuality, legal pluralism, migration, postcolonialism, and violent conflict. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 231 - Topics in Archaeology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
An examination of topics of interest in current archaeological analysis. We examine the anthropological reasons for such analyses, how analysis proceeds, what has been discovered to date through such analyses, and what the future of the topic seems to be. Possible topics include tools and human behavior, lithic technology, the archaeology of death, prehistoric settlement systems, origins of material culture.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: Maps, Culture, and Archaeology. Maps are used to document relationships between peoples, places, and the spaces in between. This course examines both the practical and hegemonic uses of maps while providing students with hands-on experiences creating maps from archaeological and historical data. The central case study focuses on the megalithic monument of Stonehenge. This site seems quite mysterious when considered alone, but when it is placed within the landscapes of its past, the meaning(s) and purpose(s) become clearer. Stonehenge’s landscape is as important as the stone circle at its center. This has implications for the rights of local landowners, the obligations of heritage management and tourism, and the patrimony of cultures who consider Stonehenge as a sacred site. Additional case studies are explored. April Beisaw.
No prerequisites.
Topic for 2017/18b: Archaeological Lab Methods. Archaeological practice is about documenting material remains across space and time. Much of this work takes places in the laboratory, not in the field. Objects need to be counted, weighed, and described, then researched to understand when, where, and how they were manufactured, where else they have been used or found, and what they mean given the context of this site in particular and the other artifacts, ecofacts, and features they were found among. This project-based course provides students with hands-on experience analyzing artifacts, creating site distribution maps, and reaching data-driven conclusions. We analyze the data contained in other site reports and write our own site reports. April Beisaw.
Topic for 2017/18b: People in a New World. (Same as STS 231 ) Approximately 15,000 years ago, according to current scientific thought, humans expanded into the last large landmass left in the world without human inhabitants: The Americas. Who were these people? How did they get here and from where? What were the environmental and ecological conditions they faced, and how did they overcome them? What technologies did they bring with them, and what new technologies did they create in order to colonize these continents? This course examines the history of studies of the earliest Americans, what theories emerged about their origins over time, which have been discarded, and which still exist and compete with one another. Our current sources of information about the earliest immigrants – archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ecology, genetics, geology, geophysics, chemistry among them – are examined to consider what leads they can produce and how they must be evaluated in coming to conclusions about what happened in the Americas 20-10,000 years ago. Lucy Johnson.
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 100 or ANTH 235 .
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 232 - Topics in Biological Anthropology Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course covers topics within the broad field of biological (or physical) anthropology ranging from evolutionary theory to the human fossil record to the identification of human skeletal remains from crime scenes and accidents. Bioanthropology conceptualizes cultural behavior as an integral part of our behavior as a species. Topics covered in this course may include human evolution, primate behavior, population genetics, human demography and variation, or forensic anthropology.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18b: Primate Behavior & Ecology. This class examines the social systems and behavior of our closest living relatives, the primates. This diverse group provides evolutionary background for understanding human society and behaviors. The course begins by outlining questions about primate behavior. In this section, the Order Primates is introduced by examining the biology and behavior of each of the major groups (Strepsirrhines, New and Old World monkeys, and apes). Next, several aspects of primate social systems including spacing, mating and grouping patterns are discussed. The course concludes by reviewing selected topics of primate behavior, such as vocal communication, cognition and conservation. In addition to the broad overview of Primates, a term paper intimately acquaints each student with a single species. Zachary Cofran.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 235 - Area Studies in Archaeology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This course is a detailed, intensive investigation of archaeological remains from a particular geographic region of the world. The area investigated varies from year to year and includes such areas as Eurasia, North America, and the native civilizations of Central and South America.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: Central Asian Prehistory. Central Asia is at the crossroads of the East and West. Now comprised of the Former Soviet Union’s “-stans”, archaeology and ethnography reveal a deep antiquity with many unanswered questions. Who were the Andronovoans that buried horses and chariots here 2,000 years ago? How are they related to the Scythians, who are known for their elaborate tattoos? Who built the geometrically patterned earthworks and why? Starting with the earliest traces of human occupation in the region, possibly 1,000,000 years ago, this course assesses the evidence of early Central Asian populations. Linking past and present, the course also examines the role of prehistory in shaping identity of modern Central Asian states. Zachary Cofran.
Topic for 2017/18b: Historical Archaeology of North America. History tells us a version of the past that is knowable through written records. Historical archaeology provides alternative histories based on the things people left behind. This course begins with the archaeological record of colonial America and ends with the archaeology of today. Throughout, we focus on sites and artifacts of those who are often left out of American history books: the young, the poor, the working class, and a variety of marginalized groups. The remains of their lives help us to see how the past continues to function in the present. April Beisaw.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 240 - Cultural Localities Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
Detailed study of the cultures of people living in a particular area of the world, including their politics, economy, worldview, religion, expressive practices, and historical transformations. Included is a critical assessment of different approaches to the study of culture. Areas covered vary from year to year and may include Europe, Africa, North America, India and the Pacific.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: China, Now: Perspectives on Post-Socialist Life. (Same as ASIA 240 ) Since the end of the Maoist era and the beginning of “Reform and Opening Up” (beginning in 1978), China has experienced staggering social changes, from transitioning to a market economy to re-entering the global political theater as an increasingly influential superpower. This course surveys how anthropological and sociological scholarship has taken stock of this dynamic time. How has China’s rapid economic and political development been represented in contemporary scholarship? To what extent is the present-day People’s Republic seen as a “post-Socialist” state, and in what ways do socialist and revolutionary legacies of the Maoist era still resonate? Incorporating scholarly monographs and articles, films, and fiction, we examine topics including the history and politics of “Reform and Opening Up”; urbanization, migration, and the division of labor in cities and countryside; shifts in mass consumption and mediated desire; the social reproduction of traditional concepts like “guanxi” and “face”; religion and ethics; and media landscapes in 21st-century China. Students develop a final research paper on a topic of their own choice. Knowledge of Chinese not required. Xiaobo Yuan.
Topic for 2017/18b: Atlantic World(s). (Same as AFRS 240 ) To speak of the Atlantic World is to speak of the peoples who inhabit the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and its marginal seas, and who are interconnected by histories of imperial expansion, enslavement, commerce, and migration. Imperial conquest led to the displacement and decimation of indigenous peoples, while slavery, indenture, and trade led and the creation of African, European, and Asian Diasporas in the Americas. These processes gave rise to the very idea of globalization, as well as the ideals of freedom, decolonization, and universal rights. This course introduces the diasporas, networks, and economic flows that integrate the Caribbean, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Using ethnographies, histories, narratives, music, and film, we explore the processes of migration, imperial expansion, and economic integration that continue to shape the peoples, languages, and cultures of the Atlantic World. We also critically examine the strengths and limitations of concepts and theoretical frameworks used to produce knowledge about the peoples and histories of the Atlantic world. Topics include imperialism and its legacies, (de)colonization, capitalism, slavery, indenture, marronage, piracy, revolution, abolition, creolization, race, class, and gender. Louis Römer.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 241 - The Caribbean
1 unit(s)
An overview of the cultures of the Caribbean, tracing the impact of slavery and colonialism on contemporary experiences and expressions of Caribbean identity. Using ethnographies, historical accounts, literature, music, and film, the course explores the multiple meanings of ‘Caribbean,’ as described in historical travel accounts and contemporary tourist brochures, as experienced in daily social, political, and economic life, and as expressed through cultural events such as calypso contests and Festival, and cultural-political movements such as Rastafarianism. Although the course deals primarily with the English-speaking Caribbean, it also includes materials on the French and Spanish speaking Caribbean and on diasporic Caribbean communities in the U.S. and U.K. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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ANTH 243 - Mesoamerican Worlds
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 243 ) A survey of the ethnography, history, and politics of indigenous societies with deep historical roots in regions now located in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This course explores the emergence of Mesoamerican states with a vivid cosmology tied to warfare and human sacrifice, the reconfiguration of these societies under the twin burdens of Christianity and colonial rule, and the strategies that some of these communities adopted in order to preserve local notions of identity and to cope with (or resist) incorporation into nation-states. After a consideration of urbanization, socio-religious hierarchies, and writing and calendrical systems in pre-contact Mesoamerica, we will focus on the adaptations within Mesoamerican communities resulting from their interaction with an evolving colonial order. The course also investigates the relations between native communities and the Mexican and Guatemalan nation-states, and examines current issues—such as indigenous identities in the national and global spheres, the rapport among environmental policies, globalization, and local agricultural practices, and indigenous autonomy in the wake of the EZLN rebellion. Work on Vassar’s Mesoamerican collection, and a final research paper and presentation is required; the use of primary sources (in Spanish or in translation) is encouraged. David Tavárez.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 244 - Indian Ocean
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 244 ) This course re/introduces alternative modalities of belonging through a focus on multiple cultures and peoples interacting across the Indian Ocean. Using historical works, ethnographies, travel accounts, manuscript fragments, and film, we explore the complex networks and historical processes that have shaped the contemporary economies, cultures, and social problems of the region. We also critically examine how knowledge about the peoples and pasts of this region has been produced. Although the course concentrates on northern Africa, eastern Africa, southwest India, the Arabian Peninsula, and islands are included in our consideration of the region as a cultural, economic, and political sphere whose coastal societies were especially interconnected. Topics include: imperialism, globalization, temporality, cosmopolitanism, labor and trade migrations, religious identification, and gender. Candice Lowe Swift.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 245 - The Ethnographer’s Craft
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 245 ) This course introduces students to the methods employed in constructing and analyzing ethnographic materials through readings, classroom lectures, and discussions with regular field exercises. Students gain experience in participant-observation, fieldnote-taking, interviewing, survey sampling, symbolic analysis, the use of archival documents, and the use of contemporary media. Attention is also given to current concerns with interpretation and modes of representation. Throughout the semester, students practice skills they learn in the course as they design, carry out, and write up original ethnographic projects. Candice Lowe Swift.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods plus two 75-minute workshops outside of regular class hours.
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ANTH 247 - Modern Social Theory: Classical Traditions Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 247 ) This course examines underlying assumptions and central concepts and arguments of European and American thinkers who contributed to the making of distinctly sociological perspectives. Readings include selections from Karl Marx, Emile Durheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, W.E.B. Du Bois and Erving Goffman. Thematic topics will vary from year to year. Diane Harriford.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 250 - Language, Culture, and Society Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives in exploring a particular problem, emphasizing the contribution of linguistics and linguistic anthropology to issues that bear on research in a number of disciplines. At issue in each selected course topic are the complex ways in which cultures, societies, and individuals are interrelated in the act of using language within and across particular speech communities.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: The Anthropology of Human Rights. Part of the appeal of human rights as an idea is the attempt to set universal standards for justice. In practice, these universalist aspirations are often in tension with efforts to secure national sovereignty and protect local ways of life. This course offers a survey of an anthropological approach to human rights as a practice that straddles local demands and global imperatives. The course also focuses on the tension between the universalist claims and particular realities that shape human rights work. The first unit of the course provides an overview of the history of human rights and the emergence of human rights institutions after World War II. In the second unit, students examine theoretical debates on universalism versus relativism and its impact on anthropological theory and methodology. The third unit of the course focuses on how human rights institutions and human rights activism work in practice. In the final unit, the course examines current topics within human rights such as transitional justice, indigenous rights, gender violence, human trafficking, and human rights-based justifications for military intervention. Throughout we read ethnographic accounts of human rights institutions and workers, as well as historical and theoretical sources. Upon finishing this course, students come away with a more complex understanding of cultural difference, global interconnection, and the bases for transnational solidarity. Louis Römer.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 255 - Language, Gender, and Media Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course offers a systematic survey of anthropological and linguistic approaches to the ways in which gender identities are implicated in language use, ideas about language, and the dynamic relationship between language and various forms of power and dominance. It is organized as a cross-cultural and cross-ethnic exploration of approaches that range from ground-breaking feminist linguistic anthropology and the study of gender, hegemony, and class, to contemporary debates on gender as performance and on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender identities. An important topic is the representation of gender identities in various forms of media. However, we also investigate the multiple rapports among gender identities, socialization, language use in private and public spheres, forms of authority, and class and ethnic identities. Students learn about transcription and analysis methods used in linguistic anthropology, and complete two projects, one based on spontaneous conversations, and another that focuses on mass media. Thomas Porcello.
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ANTH 259 - Soundscapes: Anthropology of Music Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 259 ) This course investigates a series of questions about the relationship between music and the individuals and societies that perform and listen to it. In other words, music is examined and appreciated as a form of human expression existing within and across specific cultural contexts. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the social life of music, addressing historical themes and debates within multiple academic fields via readings, recordings, and films. Justin Patch.
Recommended: but not required that students have one unit of the following: Music, Anthropology, Sociology, or Media Studies.
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ANTH 260 - Current Themes in Anthropological Theory and Method Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The focus is upon particular cultural sub-systems and their study in cross-cultural perspective. The sub-system selected varies from year to year. Examples include: kinship systems, political organizations, religious beliefs and practices, verbal and nonverbal communication.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18b: Anthropological Approaches to Community Engaged Research. In this course, utilizing tools from community engaged and participatory action research methods, and using Vassar College as a case study, students learn to assess a social organization. The course is aimed at generating knowledge that leads to cultural and organizational change, as students learn more about where and how institutional efforts at creating the conditions for inclusion and belonging succeed, and how they might be improved. Students read about research ethics and methodologies, conduct archival research, and formulate research topics to pursue throughout the term. They are then guided through the processes of information gathering, social analysis, and textual and oral representations of their observations and findings. As students use applied social scientific research to understand and transform challenges faced by members of the Vassar community, they gain a critical perspective on how to conduct research on social organizations. Such knowledge can inform how scholars link research to action in institutional settings. Wendy Maragh Taylor, Candice Lowe Swift.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 262 - Anthropological Approaches to Myth, Ritual and Symbol Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
What is the place of myth, ritual and symbol in human social life? Do symbols reflect reality, or create it? This course considers answers to these questions in social theory (Marx, Freud and Durkheim) and in major anthropological approaches (functionalism, structuralism, and symbolic anthropology). It then reviews current debates in interpretive anthropology about order and change, power and resistance, the enchantments of capitalism, and the role of ritual in the making of history. Ethnographic and historical studies may include Fiji, Italy, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Seneca, and the U.S. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
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ANTH 263 - Anthropology Goes to the Movies: Film, Video, and Ethnography
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 263 ) This course examines how film and video are used in ethnography as tools for study and as means of ethnographic documentary and representation. Topics covered include history and theory of visual anthropology, issues of representation and audience, indigenous film, and contemporary ethnographic approaches to popular media. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or Film or Media Studies or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods, plus 3-hour preview laboratory.
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ANTH 266 - Indigenous and Oppositional Media
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 266 ) As audiovisual and digital media technologies proliferate and become more accessible globally, they become important tools for indigenous peoples and activist groups in struggles for recognition and self-determination, for articulating community concerns and for furthering social and political transformations. This course explores the media practices of indigenous peoples and activist groups, and through this exploration achieves a more nuanced and intricate understanding of the relation of the local to the global. In addition to looking at the films, videos, radio and television productions, and Internet interventions of indigenous media makers and activists around the world, the course looks at oppositional practices employed in the consumption and distribution of media. Course readings are augmented by weekly screenings and demonstrations of media studied, and students explore key theoretical concepts through their own interventions, making use of audiovisual and digital technologies. Colleen Cohen.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods, plus one 3-hour preview lab.
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ANTH 268 - Religion, Repression, and Resistance in Latin America
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 268 and LALS 268 ) What was it like to live in a society where crimes of thought and religious transgressions were prosecuted and punished? How did various populations confront and resist inquisitorial activities? What is the legacy of the Inquisition in the Americas? This course addresses these and other questions through a focus on the Latin American Inquisition and Extirpation (ecclesiastic attempts to reform or destroy Precolumbian indigenous religions). The course tracks the emergence of Inquisition tribunals in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena after 1571, and the Catholic Church’s prosecution of indigenous idolatry and sorcery. It focuses both on trends in prosecution, torture, and punishment, and on the dynamic responses of those who were either targets or collaborators: indigenous peoples, Jews, Africans, female healers, people of mixed descent, and Protestants. Towards the end of the course, based on students’ interests, we also review other select case studies of religious control and resistance in Latin America. Students proficient in Spanish or Portuguese are encouraged to work with primary sources. David Tavárez.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ANTH 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1.5 unit(s)
Individual or group field projects or internships. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. Open to all students. The department.
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ANTH 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project of reading or research. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. The department.
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Anthropology: III. Advanced |
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ANTH 300 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
The department.
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ANTH 301 - Senior Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A close examination of current theory in anthropology, oriented around a topic of general interest, such as history and anthropology, the writing of ethnography, or the theory of practice. Students write a substantial paper applying one or more of the theories discussed in class. Readings change from year to year. Colleen Cohen.
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ANTH 305 - Topics in Advanced Biological Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
An examination of such topics as primate structure and behavior, the Plio-Pleistocene hominids, the final evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens, forensic anthropology, and human biological diversity.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: Human Evolutionary Developmental Biology. What literally makes us human? This class examines how growth and development were modified over the course of human evolution, to create the animals that we are today. Human anatomy is placed in an evolutionary context by comparison with living primates and the human fossil record. The first half of the course focuses on theory, namely evolution, genetics and life history. The second half examines evidence for the development and evolution of specific parts of the body, from head to toe. Through lab activities and a term project, students draw on different types of data to test hypotheses about evolution and development. Zachary Cofran.
Topic for 2017/18b: Forensic Anthropology. Forensic anthropology is the application of physical anthropology to medical or legal issues, such as crimes. This course introduces students to the basic methods of forensic anthropology, including how age, sex, race, and height of an individual can be determined from their bones. Recognition of skeletal anomalies can also reveal past health conditions and the cause and manner of death. Students gain experience in applying these methods by working with real and synthetic human bones. Special attention is given to the accuracy of each method and how to develop a biological profile that would stand up in a court of law. April Beisaw.
One 3-hour period.
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ANTH 331 - Topics in Archaeological Theory and Method
1 unit(s)
The theoretical underpinnings of anthropological archaeology and the use of theory in studying particular bodies of data. The focus ranges from examination of published data covering topics such as architecture and society, the origin of complex society, the relationship between technology and ecology to more laboratory-oriented examination of such topics as archaeometry, archaeozoology, or lithic technology. April Beisaw.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Prerequisites: previous coursework in Anthropology or Environmental Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period plus one 4-hour lab.
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ANTH 351 - Language and Expressive Culture Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This seminar provides the advanced student with an intensive investigation of theoretical and practical problems in specific areas of research that relate language and linguistics to expressive activity. Although emphasizing linguistic modes of analysis and argumentation, the course is situated at the intersection of important intellectual crosscurrents in the arts, humanities, and social sciences that focus on how culture is produced and projected through not only verbal, but also musical, material, kinaesthetic, and dramatic arts. Each topic culminates in independent research projects.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18a: Sound. This seminar centers on the examination of acoustic, perceptual, and cultural dimensions of aural phenomena. Linguistics is one focal area of the course, in which we pursue both qualitative and quantitative analyses of paralinguistic and prosodic features (pitch, intonation, rhythm, timbre, formants), acoustic phonetics, and especially issues of sound symbolism (onomatopoeia, iconicity, metaphor, and synaesthesia). Additional topics of discussion include relationships between sound structure and social structure as investigated by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, the cultural history of sound (as encoded in regulatory practices such as public noise ordinances, as well as in architectural and technological designs). Thomas Porcello.
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 150 or ANTH 250 or permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
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ANTH 352 - Indigenous Literatures of the Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 352 and LALS 352 ) This course addresses a selection of creation narratives, historical accounts, poems, and other genres produced by indigenous authors from Pre-Columbian times to the present, using historical, linguistic and ethnographic approaches. We examine the use of non-alphabetic and alphabetic writing systems, study poetic and rhetorical devices, and examine indigenous historical consciousness and sociopolitical and gender dynamics through the vantage point of these works. Other topics include language revitalization, translation issues, and the rapport between linguistic structure and literary form. The languages and specific works to be examined are selected in consultation with course participants. They may include English or Spanish translations of works in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Yucatec and K’iche’ Maya, Quechua, Tupi, Aymara, and other indigenous languages of Latin America. David Tavárez.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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ANTH 360 - Problems in Cultural Analysis
1 unit(s)
Covers a variety of current issues in modern anthropology in terms of ongoing discussion among scholars of diverse opinions rather than a rigid body of fact and theory. The department.
May be repeated for credit if topic has changed.
Topic for 2017/18b: The Passions and Interests, a Seminar in the Anthropology of Politics. This seminar critically interrogates the dichotomy between reason and emotion as it frames the study of political processes, through the engagement with foundational texts as well as recent research in political anthropology. The course begins with strategies for the pursuit of power and prestige, and then moves to social relations and the sentiments that construct politically efficacious affiliations, solidarities, alliances, and enmities. The final third of the course focuses on recent work on the role of emotion, rhetoric, and narrative in political processes. Through a succession of case studies from small-scale communities in the Caribbean, Africa, and South-East Asia, as well as planetary imperial formations, students gain an understanding of how anthropologists conceptualize the interaction of political processes at multiple scales. Upon completion of this seminar, students should have a command of the theories, ongoing debates, and open questions that emerge out of political anthropology, and gain an understanding of the interplay between language, emotion, and reason in the unfolding of political processes at interpersonal as well as broader, (trans)national scales. Louis Römer.
Topic for 2017/18b: The State as Anthropological Object. How is “the state” constituted as an object of study for anthropologists? Where is “the state” — with its institutional features, boundaries, functions, and affects — located in social life? If we do not take the state’s monolithic existence for granted, what sorts of knowledge about “the state” as an ensemble of institutions and practices might otherwise be produced? This course examines the development of methodologies for studying and thinking about the state anthropologically. The first part of the course examines how social theorists have conceptualized and problematized the state, including Weber, Gramsci, Foucault, Bourdieu, and others. Through a close engagement with theories of bureaucracy, hegemony, and governmentality, this part of the course considers how certain familiar categories — like civil society, nation-state, sovereignty, etc. – have been attached to understandings of the state. We consider how anthropologists have drawn on critical scholarship (Abrams, Trouillot, Mitchell, Rose) to develop methodologies for re-thinking the relationship between states, transnational institutions, global capitalism, and everyday life. In the second half of the course, we read recent monographs on aspects of the state. These readings touch on issues ranging from bureaucratic regimes of paperwork (Hull), policing (Dutton), conditions of “statelessness” (Conklin), indigenous sovereignty (Simpson), and the national security state (Masco). These readings are guided by the following questions: Where do scholars locate “the state” in their empirical work? What methods and types of inquiries do they employ, and how does “the state” become visible and legible (or not) in their work? Xiaobo Yuan.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or International Studies, or permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
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ANTH 363 - Nations, Globalization, and Post-Coloniality
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 363 ) How do conditions of globalization and dilemmas of post-coloniality challenge the nation-state? Do they also reinforce and reinvent it? This course engages three related topics and literatures; recent anthropology of the nation-state; the anthropology of colonial and post-colonial societies; and the anthropology of global institutions and global flows. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
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ANTH 364 - Travelers and Tourists
1 unit(s)
The seminar explores tourism in the context of a Western tradition of travel and as a complex cultural, economic and political phenomenon with profound impacts locally and globally. Using contemporary tourism theory, ethnographic studies of tourist locales, contemporary and historical travel narratives, travelogues, works of fiction, post cards and travel brochures, we consider tourism as a historically specific cultural practice whose meaning and relation to structures of power varies over time and context; as a performance; as one of many global mobilities; as embodied activity; as it is informed by mythic and iconic representations and embedded in Western notions of self and other. We also address issues pertaining to the culture of contemporary tourism, the commoditization of culture, the relation between tourism development and national identity and the prospects for an environmentally and culturally sustainable tourism. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 3-hour period.
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ANTH 365 - Imagining Asia and the Island Pacific Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 365 ) Does “the Orient” exist? Is the Pacific really a Paradise? On the other hand, does the “West” exist? If it does, is it the opposite of Paradise? Asia is often imagined as an ancient, complex challenger and the Pacific is often imagined as a simple, idyllic paradise. This course explores Western scholarly images of Asia (East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia) and of the island Pacific. It also traces the impact of Asian and Pacific ideas and institutions on the West. Each time offered, the seminar has at least three foci, on topics such as: Asia, the Pacific and capitalism; Asia, the Pacific and the concept of culture; Asia, the Pacific and the nation-state; Asia, the Pacific and feminism; Asia, the Pacific and knowledge. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Asian Studies/Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
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ANTH 382 - Methods in Participatory Action Research Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is aimed at generating knowledge in order to promote social and organizational change. This course engages students in PAR specifically around the topic of inclusion and thriving at Vassar College, in order to learn more about where and how institutional efforts at inclusion succeed, and how they might be improved. Students select from a range of research topics, and then are guided through the processes of information gathering, social analysis, and representation of their observations and findings. The overarching aim is for students to gain a critical perspective on how to conduct research on social organizations, the knowledge of which can inform how scholars link research to action. Candice Lowe Swift and Wendy Maragh Taylor.
One 2-hour period.
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ANTH 384 - Native Religions of the Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 384 and LALS 384 ) The conquest of the Americas was accompanied by various intellectual and sociopolitical projects devised to translate, implant, or impose Christian beliefs in Amerindian societies. This course examines modes of resistance and accommodation, among other indigenous responses, to the introduction of Christianity as part of larger colonial projects. Through a succession of case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, and Paraguay, we analyze the impact of Christian colonial and postcolonial evangelization projects on indigenous languages, religious practices, literary genres, social organization and gender roles, and examine contemporary indigenous religious practices. David Tavárez.
Prerequisite(s): prior coursework in Anthropology, American Studies or Latin American Latino/a Studies or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 2-hour period.
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ANTH 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project of reading or research. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. The department
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Art: I. Introductory |
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ART 125 - The Sound of Space: Intersecting Acoustics, Architecture and Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 125 and PHYS 125 ) The disciplines of acoustics, architecture, and music are often treated in isolation, resulting in the loss of many synergistic connections. This course will bring these three different but intersecting disciplines together in an exciting new way through a collaborative team-teaching process. The course will explore the physical nature of music in the built environment, focusing on the generation, transmission, and reception of music in a variety of spaces across campus. An introduction will first be given for each discipline, then the intersections of these seemingly disparate, yet closely related fields will be studied through a combination of lecture, group discussion, and hands-on investigation. Student teams will adopt a key acoustical space on campus, which they will present during a processional performance by a Vassar choral group open to the public at the end of the semester. David Bradley, Christine Howlett, and Andrew Tallon.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 160 - Art and Social Change in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 160 ) In this first-year writing seminar, we explore relationships between art, visual culture, and social change in the United States. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century social movements, we study artists and communities who have sought to inspire social change–to cultivate awareness, nurture new ideas, offer fresh visions, promote dialogue, encourage understanding, build and strengthen community, and inspire civic engagement and direct action–through creative visual expression. Lisa Collins.
Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 170 - Introduction to Architectural History
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 170 ) An overview of the history of western architecture from the pyramids to the present. The course is organized in modules to highlight the methods by which architects have articulated the basic problem of covering space and adapting it to human needs. Nicholas Adams.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 190 - Considering the Sense of Sight Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In class discussions and short papers we explore the wonders of the sense of sight from multiple perspectives, past and present, focusing on how sight has inspired major creative achievements and discoveries in the history of both art and science. Examples from film and literature illustrate how the theme of sight can shape narratives in film and literature as well as art. Throughout the semester the collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Loeb Art Center provide access to original objects for individual and group presentations. Susan Kuretsky.
Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
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Art: II. Intermediate |
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ART 210 - Art, Myth, and Society in the Ancient Aegean
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 210 ) Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Greek & Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
NRO available to non-majors.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 211 - Rome: The Art of Empire
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 211 ) From humble beginnings to its conquest of most of the known world, Rome dominated the Mediterranean with the power of its empire. Art and architecture gave monumental expression to its political ideology, especially in the building of cities that spread Roman civilization across most of Europe and parts of the Middle East and Africa. Roman art also featured adornment, luxury, and collecting in both public and private spheres. Given the diversity of the people included in the Roman empire and its artistic forms, what is particularly Roman about Roman art? Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or one unit in Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 215 - The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 215 ) Ancient Egypt has long fascinated the public with its pyramids, mummies, and golden divine rulers. This course provides a survey of the archaeology, art, and architecture of ancient Egypt from the prehistoric cultures of the Nile Valley through the period of Cleopatra’s rule and Roman domination. Topics to be studied include the art of the funerary cult and the afterlife, technology and social organization, and court rituals of the pharaohs, along with aspects of everyday life. Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or one unit of Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 218 - The Museum in History, Theory, and Practice
1 unit(s)
This course surveys the long evolution of the art museum, beginning with private wonder rooms and cabinets of curiosity in the Renaissance and ending with the plethora of contemporary museums dedicated to broad public outreach. As we explore philosophies of both private and institutional collecting (including that of the college and university art museum) we use the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center as our first point of reference for considering a range of topics, such as the museum’s role in furthering art historical scholarship and public education, its acquisition procedures, and challenges to the security, quality or integrity of its collections posed by theft, by the traffic in fakes and forgeries, or the current movement to repatriate antiquities to their country of origin. Assignments include readings and group discussions, individual research projects, and at least three one-day field trips to museums in our area (including Manhattan) to allow us to examine the many different approaches to museum architecture and installation. Susan Kuretsky.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , and permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 219 - The First Cities: The Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 219 and URBS 219 ) The art, architecture, and artifacts of the region comprising ancient Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey from 3200 BCE to the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. Beginning with the rise of cities and cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, course topics include the role of the arts in the formation of states and complex societies, cult practices, trade and military action, as well as in everyday life. How do we make sense of the past through its ruins and artifacts, especially when they are under attack (the destruction wrought by ISIS)? Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or 106 or one unit in Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 220 - Cathedral, Castle, City, Cloister: the Architecture of the Middle Ages Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A survey of the greatest moments in Western, Byzantine and Islamic architecture from the reign of Constantine to the late middle ages and the visual, symbolic and structural language developed by the masters and patrons responsible for them. Particular attention is paid to issues of representation: the challenge of bringing a medieval building into the classroom, that of translating our impressions of these buildings into words and images, and the ways in which other students and scholars have done so. Andrew Tallon.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , coursework in Medieval Studies, or permission of instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 221 - The Art of Faith: Sacred Objects of the Middle Ages
1 unit(s)
We travel through the Middle Ages by examining sacred works of painting, sculpture, glass, and metal in the Christian West, from the British Isles to the great hub of Constantinople, and in the East, from the desert monasteries of Egypt to the trade routes of Asia Minor. As we move along we consider the rich artistic interchange among Christians, Muslims and Jews. Students work directly with medieval objects held in the Loeb Art Center and with manuscripts in the Special Collections of the Vassar Library. Andrew Tallon.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , coursework in Medieval Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 230 - Art in the Age of Van Eyck, Dürer and Bruegel
1 unit(s)
The Northern Renaissance. Early Netherlandish and German art from Campin, van Eyck and van der Weyden to Bosch, Bruegel, Dürer and Holbein. This transformative period, which saw the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the explosive turmoil of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, generated a profound reassessment of the role of images in the form of new responses toward human representation in devotional and narrative painting and printmaking as well as developments in secular subjects such as portraiture and landscape. Susan Kuretsky.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 231 - The Golden Age of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of painting and printmaking during the Golden Age of the Netherlands. Lectures focus on Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporary colleagues who specialized in landscape, still life, architectural and marine painting. While examining the effect of differing religions systems in Flanders and the Dutch Republic, we consider how economic triumph, scientific research and global trade stimulated the formation and flowering of Netherlandish art in the Age of Observation. Susan Kuretsky.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 235 - The Rise of the Artist, from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A survey of Italian art c. 1300 - c.1500, when major cultural shifts led to a redefinition of art, and the artist emerged as a new creative and intellectual power. The course considers painting, sculpture and decorative arts by artists including Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, and Leonardo. Our study of artworks and primary texts reveals how a predominantly Christian society embraced the revival of ancient pagan culture, elements of atheist philosophy, and Islamic science. We also discuss art in the context of nascent multiculturalism and consumerism in the new city-states; the importance of new communications systems, such as print; and artistic exchange with northern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean centers of Baghdad and Constantinople. Other topics include art theory and criticism; techniques and materials of painting and sculpture; experiments with multimedia and mass production; developments in perspective and illusionism; ritual and ceremonial; and art that called into question notions of sexuality and gender roles. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 236 - Art in the Age of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo
1 unit(s)
An exploration of the works of these three masters and their contemporaries in Renaissance Italy, c. 1485 - c. 1565. The primary focus is on painting and sculpture, but the course also considers drawings, prints, landscape, gardens, and decorative arts, emphasizing artists’ increasing tendency to work in multiple media. We trace changing ideas about the role of the artist and the nature of artistic creativity; and consider how these Renaissance masters laid foundations for art, and its history, theory and criticism for centuries to come. Other topics include artists’ workshops; interactions between artists and patrons; the role of the spectator; ritual and ceremonial; and Renaissance ideas about beauty, sexuality and gender. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 249 ) This course provides a survey of the visual arts made in the United States (or by American artists living abroad) until 1865, beginning with the first European representations of Native Americans in the 16th century and ending with Alexander Gardner’s images of death and destruction on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. It emphasizes the significance of cross-cultural encounter and international exchange to the creation and reception of artworks produced in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic, considering topics such as the role of art in the construction of national identity; the origins of the U.S. art market; and the tensions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in early American art.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 251 ) This course examines American visual culture as it developed in the years between the Civil War and World War II. Special attention is paid to the intersections among diverse media and to such issues as the emergence of new forms of mass imagery, consumerism, cosmopolitanism, regionalism, abstraction, gender, primitivism, mechanized reproduction, and the rise of modern art institutions. Artists studied include Winslow Homer, Timothy O’Sullivan, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Aaron Douglas, and Edward Hopper, among others.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 254 - The Arts of Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Africa
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 254 ) This course is organized thematically and examines the ways in which sculpture, painting, photography, textiles, and film and video function both historically and currently in relationship to broader cultural issues. Within this context, this course explores performance and masquerade in relationship to gender, social, and political power. We also consider the connections between the visual arts and cosmology, identity, ideas of diaspora, colonialism and post-colonialism, as well as the representation of the “Self,” and the “Other.”
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , one course in Africana Studies, or permission of the instructor.
The Non-Recorded Option is available to non-majors.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 256 - The Arts of China Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 256 ) This course offers a survey of art in China from prehistory to the present. The remarkable range of works to be studied includes archeological discoveries, imperial tombs, palace and temple architecture, Buddhist and Taoist sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy, painting, and experimental art in recent decades. We examine the visual and material features of objects for insight into how these works were crafted, and ask what made these works meaningful to artists and audiences. Readings in primary sources and secondary scholarship allow for deeper investigation of the diverse contexts in which the arts of China have evolved. Among the issues we confront are art’s relationship to politics, ethics, gender, religion, cultural interaction, and to social, technological, and environmental change. Jin Xu.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , one Asian Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 258 - The Art of Zen in Japan
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 258 ) This course surveys the arts of Japanese Buddhism, ranging from sculpture, painting, architecture, gardens, ceramics, and woodblock prints. We will consider various socioeconomic, political and religious circumstances that led monks, warriors, artists, and women of diverse social ranks to collectively foster an aesthetic that would, in turn, influence modern artists of Europe and North America.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level Asian Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 259 - Art, Politics and Cultural Identity in East Asia Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 259 ) This course surveys East Asian art in a broad range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, calligraphy, painting, architecture, and woodblock prints. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which China, Korea, and Japan have negotiated a shared “East Asian” cultural experience. The works to be examined invite discussions about appropriation, reception, and inflection of images and concepts as they traversed East Asia. Jin Xu.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or one 100-level Asian Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 262 - Art and Revolution in Europe, 1789-1848 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A survey of major movements and figures in European art, 1789-1848, focusing on such issues as the contemporaneity of antiquity in revolutionary history painting, the eclipse of mythological and religious art by an art of social observation and political commentary, the romantic cult of genius, imagination, and creative self-definition, and the emergence of landscape painting in an industrializing culture. Brian Lukacher.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 263 - Painters of Modern Life: Realism, Impressionism, Symbolism Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A survey of major movements and figures in European art, 1848-1900, examining the realist, impressionist, and symbolist challenges to the dominant art institutions, aesthetic assumptions, and social values of the period; also addressing how a critique of modernity and a sociology of aesthetics can be seen developing through these phases of artistic experimentation. Brian Lukacher.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Offered in 2017-2018
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 264 - The Metropolitan Avant-Gardes Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 264 and URBS 264 ) Radical prototypes of creativity and self-organization were forged by the new groups of artists, writers, filmmakers and architects that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century. They based themselves in the new metropolitan centers. The course studies the avant-gardes’ different and often competing efforts to meet the economic transformation that industrialization was bringing to city and country alike. Afterward, the role of art itself would be seen completely differently. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods and one weekly film screening.
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ART 265 - Modern Art and the Mass Media: the New Public Sphere
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 265 and URBS 265 ) When the public sphere was reset during the twentieth century by a new order of mass media, the place of art and artists in the new order needed to be claimed. The course studies the negotiations between modern art and the mass media (advertising, cinema, TV), in theory and in practice, during the years between the Great Depression and the liberation movements of the late 1960s–the foundation stones of our own contemporary culture. As a consequence, the physical spaces of culture would be reimagined and designed. Molly Newsbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 .
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods and one film screening.
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ART 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 266 and AMST 266 ) An interdisciplinary exploration of how a range of U.S. based creators–through their artistic practices, aesthetic choices, and expressive interventions–are grappling with urgent issues of our time. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 268 - After 1968: the Activation of Art Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 268 and URBS 268 ) This course studies the emancipation of the visual arts after 1968, here and abroad, together with the political and philosophical discussions that guided them. Theory and practice would form new combinations. The traditional fine arts as well as the new media, performance, film, architecture and installation art are treated as part of the wider global evolution creating new theaters of action, critique, community and hope. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 .
Two 75-minute periods and one film screening.
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ART 270 - Renaissance Architecture
1 unit(s)
European architecture and city building from 1300-1500; focus on Italian architecture and Italian architects; encounters between Italian and other cultures throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Nicholas Adams.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or ART 170 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 271 - Early Modern Architecture
1 unit(s)
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or ART 170 , or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 272 - Buildings and Cities after the Industrial Revolution
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 272 ) Architecture and urbanism were utterly changed by the forces of the industrial revolution. New materials (iron and steel), building type (train stations, skyscrapers), building practice (the rise of professional societies and large corporate firms), and newly remade cities (London, Paris, Vienna) provided a setting for modern life. The course begins with the liberation of the architectural imagination around 1750 and terminates with the rise of modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century (Gropius, Le Corbusier).
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 273 - Modern Architecture and Beyond
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 273 ) European and American architecture and city building (1920 to the present); examination of the diffusion of modernism and its reinterpretation by corporate America and Soviet Russia. Discussion of subsequent critiques of modernism (postmodernism, deconstruction, new urbanism) and their limitations. Issues in contemporary architecture.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or ART 170 , or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 275 - Rome: Architecture and Urbanism
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 275 ) The Eternal City has been transformed many times since its legendary founding by Romulus and Remus. This course presents an overview of the history of the city of Rome in antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque period, and modern times. The course examines the ways that site, architecture, urbanism, and politics have interacted to produce one of the world’s densest urban fabrics. The course focuses on Rome’s major architectural and urban monuments over time (e.g., Pantheon, St. Peters, the Capitoline hill) as well as discussions of the dynamic forms of Roman power and religion. Literature, music and film also will be included as appropriate. Nicholas Adams.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or ART 170 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ART 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Projects undertaken in cooperation with approved galleries, archives, collections, or other agencies concerned with the visual arts, including architecture. The department.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 -ART 106 and one 200-level course.
Open by permission of a supervising instructor. Not included in the minimum requirements for the major.
May be taken either semester or in the summer.
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ART 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Open by permission of the instructor with the concurrence of the adviser in the field of concentration. Not included in the minimum for the major.
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