Mar 28, 2024  
Catalogue 2018-2019 
    
Catalogue 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ANTH 170 - Topics in Anthropology

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
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 2018/19a:  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 will include (group) projects on water in local cultural contexts.  Martha Kaplan.

Topic for 2018/19a:  Language Facts, Language Fictions. True or false: women talk too much and men refuse to listen; Italian sounds beautiful, while German sounds harsh; double negatives are illogical; television and texting are ruining the English language; there are primitive languages that have no grammar; southerners speak more slowly than northerners; everybody has an accent except where I grew up; language is used primarily to communicate factual information about the world; Eskimos have 17 words for ‘snow’; men interrupt more than women; girls imitate how their mothers talk, while boys imitate how their fathers talk; everyone in Boston says, ‘cah’ instead of ‘car’; if you grow up speaking two languages, you’ll never speak either one perfectly.  These statements represent the kinds of judgments many people make about languages and everyday speech.  Even as the course provides a solid grounding in linguistic analysis, it explores and explodes such judgments by asking students to assess critically their own ideas and ideologies about language. Thomas Porcello.

Topic for 2018/19b: Bones, Bodies, and Forensic Cases.  The accidental discovery of an isolated human bone or entire human body occurs more frequently than most people think. How these discoveries are dealt with is often a decision that involves local law enforcement, medical officials, archaeologists, and physical anthropologists. This course examines several such cases, following them from initial discovery to final conclusion. What clues do bones and bodies reveal? What evidence was found on or near these individuals? How do we piece together a narrative? Who decides what happens next? Contrary to what we see on television and in the movies, these cases require patience and cultural awareness and do not always lead to a clear happy ending. April Beisaw.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Would you like to see a more just and humane world? The SJQ courses engage you from the very start of your Vassar studies in thinking about the relationship between power and social change. A set of public lectures that address the nature of social justice accompany SJQ courses.

Two 75-minute periods.



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