AMSTUD 226X: Curating Experience: Representation in and beyond Museums (CSRE 226X, EDUC 226)
In an age when some 50% of museum visitors only "visit" museums online and when digital technologies have broken open archival access, anyone can be a curator, a critic, an historian, an archivist. In this context, how do museums create experiences that teach visitors about who they are and about the world around them? What are the politics of representation that shape learning in these environments? Using an experimental instructional approach, students will reconsider and redefine what it means to curate experience. (This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)
Terms: not given this year, last offered Winter 2017 | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ED | Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
AMSTUD 281: Asian Religions in America; Asian American Religions (ASNAMST 281, RELIGST 281, RELIGST 381)
This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions.
Terms: not given this year, last offered Winter 2014 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-ED | Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
ANTHRO 28N: Secularism and its Critics
Secularism is often taken to be a necessary prerequisite for democracy in the modern world. The separation of religion and politics is often written into constitutions as a fundamental priority. Yet around the world, growing numbers of religious movements have sought to dispute the legitimacy of secularism. Social scientists, including anthropologists, are beginning to research the forms of domination and political violence that have been justified in the name of secularism. This course seeks to make sense of this global debate about secularism. It does so by taking up an anthropological perspective: much as anthropologists might study culture, religion, or kinship, we will interrogate secularism as a comparative social artifact, constituted by historically specific repertoires of signs, identities, everyday practices, and institutional powers. The course focuses on case studies in the United States, Western Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.
ANTHRO 41: Genes and Identity (AFRICAAM 41, CSRE 41A)
In recent decades genes have increasingly become endowed with the cultural power to explain many aspects of human life: physical traits, diseases, behaviors, ancestral histories, and identity. In this course we will explore a deepening societal intrigue with genetic accounts of personal identity and political meaning. Students will engage with varied interdisciplinary sources that range from legal cases to scientific articles, medical ethics guidelines, films, and anthropological works (ethnographies). We will explore several case studies where the use of DNA markers (as proof of heritage, disease risk, or legal standing) has spawned cultural movements that are biosocial in nature. Throughout we will look at how new social movements are organized around gene-based definitions of personhood, health, and legal truth. Several examples include political analyses of citizenship and belonging. On this count we will discuss issues of African ancestry testing as evidence in slavery reparations cases, revisit debates on whether Black Freedman should be allowed into the Cherokee and Seminole Nations, and hear arguments on whether people with genetic links to Jewish groups should have a right of return to Israel. We will also examine the ways genetic knowledge may shape different health politics at the individual and societal level. On this count we will do close readings of how personal genomics testing companies operate, we will investigate how health disparities funding as well as orphan disease research take on new valences when re-framed in genetic terms, and we will see how new articulations of global health priorities are emerging through genetic research in places like Africa. Finally we will explore social implications of forensic uses of DNA. Here we will examine civil liberties concerns about genetic familial searching in forensic databases that disproportionately target specific minority groups as criminal suspects, and inquire into the use of DNA to generate digital mugshots of suspects that re-introduce genetic concepts of race.
ANTHRO 49: Violence and Belonging in the Middle East
This course examines politics in the Middle East from an anthropological perspective. We will explore the symbolic expression of political identities, the effects of religious revival on political institutions, and the tumultuous culture of protest in the region. Readings discuss the historical development of rights and citizenship, Islamic politics, sectarian tensions, and imaginings of revolution. Course materials are drawn from ethnographic studies and films, which provide a rich contextualization of social life and cultural politics in the region.
Terms: not given this year, last offered Autumn 2014 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-ED, WAY-SI | Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
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