Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Special study of selected topics in Anthropology, given on an individual basis and directly supervised by a member of the Department. May be taken for a letter grade or Pass/Fail. To enroll, a student must submit to the Anthropology Undergraduate Office, Tozzer 103B, a course form signed by the adviser under whom s/he wishes to study and a proposed plan of study. Anthro 91zr form available from the Undergrad Office, or the department website.

Special (individual) study of Peabody Museum collections directly supervised by a faculty member and a member of the curatorial staff. Requires a project involving a Harvard Museum collection, developed in consultation with the supervisors.

The course is designed as a foundational course with the specific purpose of introducing the principal social theorists whose work has been crucial to the discipline of social anthropology, that is: Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Foucault. The first objective is to delineate the broad outlines of their thought and the central questions that informed their intellectual and political interventions. The second objective is to provide a solid grounding in the key concepts as well as the theoretical and methodological contributions of these social theorists. Finally, we will seek to demonstrate how contemporary anthropological theory continues to engage with their work.

This individual tutorial for archaeology students intending to write a senior thesis is normally undertaken with a member of the faculty during the second term of junior year. To enroll, a student must submit a petition form (available from the Head Tutor for Archaeology, or downloadable from the department's Anthropology [Archaeology] website) with a proposed course plan of study and the tutorial adviser's signature.

This individual tutorial is for social anthropology students intending to write a senior thesis, and is normally undertaken with an advanced graduate student during the second term of junior year. Students will have weekly meetings with the project advisor for the purposes of developing the appropriate background research on theoretical, thematic, regional, and methodological literature relevant to their thesis topic, and fully refining their summer research proposal. The tutorial's final paper will be comprised of a research proposal representing the research undertaken during the semester.

This is a full year research and writing seminar limited to senior honors candidates. The course is intended to provide students with practical guidance and advice during the thesis writing process through structured assignments and peer feedback on work-in-progress. It is intended to supplement not replace faculty thesis advising (with the requirement of consulting regularly with the advisor built into the assignments) and, most importantly, allow students to share their work and experiences with other thesis writers in a collegial and supportive environment. The seminar will be run jointly by the Department of Anthropology Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Writing Tutor.

By considering early Peabody Museum kayak collections from Alaska, students will explore the history of anthropology and museum collecting, representation of indigenous people in museum display, and modern stewardship of museum collections. Students will take part in a conservation and exhibition consultation project between the Peabody Museum and Alaska Native consultants. Students will utilize knowledge gained from the consultations, readings, and demonstrations to contribute to synthesize and further the modern conservation and exhibition of kayaks and co-development of knowledge related to Peabody Museum collections.

Approaches to spatial patterning in human societies, including the structure of settlements and the regional distribution of populations. The seminar will consider how variation in settlement and settlement systems can be related to factors such as environment, economy, and social and political organization. Case studies will be drawn from a range of New and Old World societies of varying scales of sociopolitical complexity.

This semester's course will focus on Mexico and the Mexican Americas from 1517-2017 while making comparisons with both Peru and religions of the Caribbean. While Mexican based religions will thread through the entire course, students can choose to also work on religious practices, sacred sites and migration stories from either Peru or El Caribe in comparative perspective. Examines symbols, root paradigms, saints, health practices, miracles and migration by integrating archaeological, artistic, documentary, novels and ethnographic source materials. Methods from anthropology, history of religions, religion and literature will be used to study race mixture, architecture, women's roles, transculturation, liberation theology, and plastic arts.

Archaeology of Native North America, from the first appearance of humans on the continent to the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s. Topics to be covered include: history of the discipline; megafaunal extinctions; Archaic deep-sea fishers in the Northeast; buffalo hunters on the Northern Plains; origins of agriculture; moundbuilding cultures of the Midwest; Pueblo peoples of the Southwest; complex foragers of the Northwest coast; dynamic contact period interactions; and current political debates and ethical issues relating to the archaeology of North America.

Examines the development and structure of the earliest state-level societies in the ancient world. Archaeological approaches are used to analyze the major factors behind the processes of urbanization and state formation in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Central Asia, the Indus Valley, and Mesoamerica. The environmental background as well as the social, political, and economic characteristics of each civilization are compared to understand the varied forces that were involved in the transitions from village to urbanized life. Discussion sections utilize archaeological materials from the Peabody Museum and Semitic Museum collections to study the archaeological methods used in the class.

Open to students who participated in the fall term investigations in Harvard Yard, this course focuses on the detailed analysis of the materials recovered in the excavations, within the context of archival and comparative archaeological and historical research. The analysis will also include an evaluation of the results of the ground-penetrating radar surveys conducted prior to the excavations, as part of the research design for the next season of investigations of the Indian College site.

The world's first cities emerged in Mesopotamia and were the defining characteristic of ancient civilizations in what is today Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They were inhabited by large populations, powerful kings, and the gods themselves. The course will consider the origins, ecology, spatial arrangement, socioeconomic religious organization, religious institutions, and collapse of cities from Gilgamesh to Saddam. Through archaeology and ancient texts, students will become familiar with cities such as Uruk, Babylon, Nineveh, and Baghdad. The course will include visits to collections of the Peabody Museum and the Harvard Semitic Museum.

This course focuses on the method and theory of decipherment, but also considers epistemology and the significance and enduring relevance of ancient writing systems in the modern era. It begins with the distinction between notational, iconographic and phonetic communication-only the latter can truly be considered `writing' (a linear, graphic record of speech)-and then discusses the various different types of writing systems (including logographic, logosyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic scripts). This is followed by several case studies: the great decipherments (Egyptian, the Cuneiform scripts, Linear B and Mayan); scripts whose languages have become extinct (Etruscan and Meroitic); scripts that remain entirely mysterious (the scripts of Phaistos, the Indus Valley and Easter Island); the major scripts of the Pre-Columbian New World (Zapotec, Isthmian and Aztec writing); and invented scripts from popular literature. Each provides its own unique insights into the enduring and engaging mystery of writing.

This course centers on three Cho'lan languages and associated body of literary works that may be of interest to students in anthropology, linguistics, comparative literatures, and history. Even though Ch'olan languages, particularly Ch'olti' and Ch'orti', have been crucial for the continuing decipherment of ancient Maya writing, they remain understudied and underpublished. The course will be based on a series of recent publications on Ch'olti', an extinct Ch'olan language, and modern Ch'orti', its closest surviving relative. While some classes will be devoted to the grammar, vocabulary, and literary tradition of Ch'orti' as spoken today, other sections of the course will introduce the fundamentals of Colonial Ch'olti' and Chontal grammars (which are broadly similar to Ch'orti' but diverge on several important issues) and then proceed to explore Moran's manuscript, the only surviving Ch'olti' text, and the Maldonado-Paxbolon Papers, a highly important source on Chontal Maya history and literature and one of the few surviving Maya documents detailing events immediately before and after the Spanish conquest.

This course explores the role of writing broadly defined in the social, political, and religious fabric of ancient civilizations of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This region known as Mesoamerica is characterized by an amazing variety of indigenous writing systems, from phonetic ones like Maya hieroglyphs, to largely pictographic notations such as Mixtec records. The course offers a survey of Mesoamerican writing systems that centers on the basic properties of the scripts and their uses. It highlights how specific features of Mesoamerican writing systems reflect broader regional traditions with respect to the role of writing in social, political, and religious life.

Ethnic identity and conflict are among the most powerful processes and relations shaping the world we live in today. Questions addressed include: What can we understand about ethnic identity and relations in the prehistoric world on the basis of the archaeological record? For example, how might differences in material culture represent and reflect markers of ethnic identity? The Peabody Museum collections will provide materials for study and analysis.

This course examines the effects of the Spanish Conquest on indigenous peoples of the Americas between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, providing an introduction to the archaeology of first encounters in the Caribbean, Southeast and Southwest US, Central Mexico, highland and lowland Mesoamerica, the Amazon basin, and in the Andes. Topics addressed include the roles of disease, indigenous politics, native rebellions, and ecological change in the colonization of the `New' World.

A survey of the archaeology of China from the origins of humans during the Palaeolithic into the Bronze Age (ca. 220 BCE), with an emphasis on the origins of agriculture and the emergence of complex society during the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. We survey important archaeological finds from these periods and examine relevant issues in anthropological archaeology. Sections will involve the discussion and use of materials from the Peabody and Sackler Museums.

This course focuses on ancient human populations in Africa from the earliest Stone Age foragers more than 2.5 million years ago to more recent periods characterized by food production, urbanism, and inter-continental networks of trade and exchange, situating the African evidence into a broader understanding of the evolution of human diversity. The course use lectures, in-class discussions, museum collections, and student projects, and in addition to archaeology, draws on a number of allied disciplines including history, ethnography, linguistics, art history, geography, geology, paleontology, and biology.

New interdisciplinary curriculum centered on 5 kinds of quests for wisdom that involve moral, religious and aesthetic pursuits and that focus on practices of mentoring and caregiving. Students will engage in short lectures, interactive discussions, student led seminars, and music and film. Students' required projects include a personal story that narrates an experience in the art of living and writing assignments that focus on assisting and accompanying experiences of others.

This course tackles the broad, unwieldy category "Asian American" as a historically contingent, politically derived conglomeration of ethno-racial groups. Examining "Asian American" as a racialized umbrella that encompasses groups differing by national origin, culture, social class, and immigrant history, this course asks: - what kinds of stereotypes does Asian American encompass?- how do immigrant histories shape contemporary experiences?- how does the category "Asian American" shape lives? Embracing both critical and celebratory aspects of Asian American experiences, the course addresses relevant issues of race/ethnicity (including mixed-race), diaspora, cosmopolitanism, citizenship, class, gender, body, sexuality, and affect.

Students produce audio-visual works that explore the body, desire, and sexuality, and their significance in human existence.

This is a course in linguistic anthropology. We explore key theoretical issues in the semiotic anthropology of language use, focusing on communication, social (inter)action, representation, cultural conceptualization, and language ideology. By presenting many of the most influential and innovative contributions to the study of language in culture and society-both recent and classic-the course aims to guide students in asking fundamental questions about language and communication more broadly as facts of everyday sociocultural experience.

Anthropologists have to varying degrees been interested in the social nature of works of art and other material objects since the founding of the discipline, but especially in objects created outside of western societies, the traditional domain of art historians. In art history, recent years have witnessed a shift toward a more global scope of research and away from Eurocentric definitions of what constitutes art, even as anthropological interest in all forms of art and art making continues to expand. This seminar will examine broad issues in material anthropology using objects from across multiple Harvard collections, including the Harvard Art Museums, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Houghton Library, the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and other collecting entities. Ample consideration will be given to the making of objects, in a variety of artistic, cultural, and historical contexts. Theoretically and historically informed object-based investigations will enable seminar participants to discover new ways of using Harvard collections as an intellectual resource, critically examine exhibitionary strategies, and gain an understanding of complex collecting practices and politics, all within a comparative, cross-institution framework. Students will produce original work based on primary research conducting in Harvard collections.

From Afghanistan, through the Middle-East and to the United States, the Shari'a has become a site of intense conflict and controversy. Regarded as backward and barbaric by some and a source of ethical and religious life by others it marks deep divides and seemingly incommensurable world views. This course examines the Shari'a, primarily understood as law through an anthropological lens in recent and contemporary life. It will attend to the conjunctures, imaginaries and practices between ' law', culture and morality initially in the Muslim world before shifting to debates on incorporating Sharia law in the West.

This course explores how different cultures imagine death and the afterlife, drawing on insights from the anthropology of religion, politics, and medical anthropology. Based on readings that range from classical ethnographies of death and dying to contemporary debates on the politics of death, we will discuss cultural theories on what constitutes the moment of death and what happens after, as well as investigate the political lives of dead bodies. The topics covered include conceptualizations of the body and mind, ideas of the spirit world, witchcraft, mortuary rituals, relic veneration, royal and communist corpses, organ donation, end-of-life care, and concepts of biopolitics and bare life.

Spicy stews and softer soju, warm hearts and clean voices, fire illness and refreshing prayer: these are various sites through which Korean social life materializes. This course introduces contemporary South (and North) Korea through the cultural semiotics of the senses. Lectures and discussion will explore social class and mobility through the tastes and smells of food and drink; gender and religion through bodily experiences of illness and healing; politics and kinship through mass spectacle and feelings of human contact; and urban modernity through sound. Course materials combine history and ethnography, social and semiotic theory, and multimedia documentation.

A small studio methodology course (capped at 7 students) to explore the use of small video cameras (camcorders) and other equipment in the course of field research. Explores relationship among visual imagery, sound recording, and the social dimensions necessary to achieving cultural intimacy, as well as the relationship between image and caption/subtitle in conveying ethnographic knowledge and historical depth. Assignments include production of a short ethnographic film and a final essay.

How is state authority and control achieved? What kinds of knowledge, objects, spaces, and practices do state bureaucracies mobilize? In this course we will read recent ethnographic and historical works on state planning, expertise, and bureaucracy. The course aims to build a nuanced account of the workings of state bureaucracies and the everyday processes through which they exercise power. We will examine the wide array of agents, artifacts, and practices that are at the core of state action. Topics include bureaucratic materiality, documentary practices, planning technologies, development, environmental policies, and architecture and design, among others.

This course interrogates the processes that underlie the act of eating and tasting food. We approach this question from the anthropology of science, the anthropology of the senses and political economy. We explore the ways we use our senses to taste food, and the intersection between sensual experiences and language. How do our senses interact with each other to constitute the taste experience and how do we verbalize it? How do individual sensorial experiences become part of broader social phenomena? A second strand of analysis will consider the relationship between food and systems of knowledge: how do we distinguish between safe and unsafe food and what is the difference between natural and industrial? The third strand of analysis will consider the question of how taste is formulated before it arrives to our plates. What are the conditions of production and circulation of food, and the connection between place and taste. We will read a variety of case studies with an emphasis on East Asia.

The U.S. is commonly described as a multicultural society and Asian Americans as "model minorities" with strong group identities. But when did multiculturalism become a defining characteristic of American society? What is its relationship to race and class? Why did migrants from Asia come here and how has their reception changed over time? When do they call themselves "Asians" and when do they privilege other self-representations? We will explore these questions through history, anthropology, literature, and film.

Third in a three-term sequence in which students apply media anthropological theory and conduct ethnography using film, video, sound, and/or still photography.

Second half of a year-long sequence (including 1836aar, spring 2013) in which students apply media anthropological theory and conduct ethnography using film, video, sound, still photography, and/or hypermedia. Emphasis is on pre-production and production in the spring, and on post-production in the fall.

This course explores the socio-cultural dynamics of modern Greece through ethnographies, films, and media representations. Special attention will be paid to Greek notions of tradition, history, and heritage; resistance, anarchy, and social banditry; the impact of urbanization; and the ongoing economic crisis in relation to concepts of interpersonal and international debt.

This course explores the historical and ethnographic contexts of Japan's compound disasters of March 2011. As people sought to survive and make sense of the disasters, social media as well as photos, videos and websites played critical roles. We examine the role of these records, using a participatory digital archive developed at Harvard. Student teams will develop research questions, collect digital material, and create multimedia narratives. Students will complement their research with study of responses to similar global events as well as critical reflection on digital scholarship and the emerging practice of "crisis archiving."

What happened to religion in the modern world? We start off by exploring traditional anthropological themes, such as animism, magic, and ritual, while paying particular attention to the classic secularization thesis advanced by social scientists. We will then focus on the crucial contemporary issues, such as debates on secularism, political theologies, globalization and commodification of religion, body and sexuality, and the emergence of "new age" spirituality. This course is not a survey of specific religions, but a theoretical introduction to the main themes in the anthropological study of religion.

The domains of family life, kinship, and intimacy represent central sites for the construction and contestation of social and political belonging. This course introduces students to classic and contemporary theories of society, kinship, and citizenship by way of theorizing how economic production, sovereignty, and everyday life emerge through the regulation of relatedness. Anthropologists of the late nineteenth century and of the first half of the twentieth century turned kinship into a key domain for understanding social cohesion and political organization. In the past three decades -- following feminist, Marxist, and queer critiques -- anthropologists explored how discourses about kinship and the family anchored the ideologies and practices of modernity, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. In this course, we ask: What can various forms of kinship teach us about the politics of social reproduction and the making of citizenship -- its modes of belonging and exclusion -- in the contemporary world?

This ethnographic exploration of a huge Asian metropolis emphasizes the changing role of markets and temples; the impact of tourism and new transportation systems; religious doctrine and popular worship; and urban political dynamics.

This seminar-laboratory subject provides in-depth study of the technologies of ancient societies.

An introduction to the GIS and remote sensing methods used by archaeologists to document and analyze datasets at the regional scale. This class will involve the hands-on use of maps, aerial photography, satellite imagery, digital terrain models and GPS-based observations to frame and approach archaeological research questions. Labs will use sample datasets from a variety of regions but students will be responsible for assembling a GIS database for their own region of interest.

In the broadest of terms, bioarchaeology as used in the United State is the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. This includes a myriad of interconnected phenomena including mortuary contexts, paleodemography, paleopathology, and assessing human variation and adaptation. It also encompasses scientific approaches and applications of social theory, and carries weighted concerns for historical context and ethical issues. Since its inception in the 1970's bioarchaeology has evolved into a mature and diversified approach to understanding human biology and behavior in the past. This course will provide an overview of contemporary bioarchaeological research. Students will develop a historical perspective on bioarchaeology within the larger context of American anthropology. Emphases also are placed on recent discoveries, new interpretations and theoretical approaches.

Seminar for graduate students that will focus on grant and paper writing, and will also include selected case studies.

Considers current topics and debates in the archaeology of Mesoamerica, with special emphasis on ancient Maya civilizations. Readings and discussions focus on aspects of social process, political history, and their interplay with ritual and ideology.

The world's first cities emerged in Mesopotamia and were the defining characteristic of ancient civilizations in what is today Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They were inhabited by large populations, powerful kings, and the gods themselves. The course will consider the origins, ecology, spatial arrangement, socioeconomic religious organization, religious institutions, and collapse of cities from Gilgamesh to Saddam. Through archaeology and ancient texts, students will become familiar with cities such as Uruk, Babylon, Nineveh, and Baghdad. The course will include visits to collections of the Peabody Museum and the Harvard Semitic Museum.

Numerous theories are advanced for the structure of the ancient economy. Different perspectives on the nature of trade, the market, reciprocity-redistribution, etc. will be reviewed. An evolutionary and global perspective will be pursued from the Neolithic to the Iron Age.

An exploration of production in archaeological contexts. Topics include specialization, craft production, production and power, the practice/performance of production, production and gender, ritualized production, and the production of memory.

This graduate seminar reviews critical issues in archaeological approaches to the study of complex societies, including writing, trade, craft specialization, technology, landscape, urbanism, and political organization.

What is meaningful social behavior? This course explores theories of practice (and praxis) through the semiotic pragmatics of social action.

Seminar focuses on weekly writing assignments leading to complete dissertation research proposals; defining theoretical and ethnographic contexts of research problem; reviewing literature; explaining site selection, methodology, timetable, human subjects protection; preparing budget; identifying grant sources.

Explores the relations among technologies of image production and circulation, the nature and intensity of the circulating image, and the generation of publics and counter-publics. Questions of scale, mediation, publicity, and mobilization will be considered.

Continuation of Anthropology 2650a.

In the twenty-first century, consumer cultures tie local and global worlds together in complex, shifting, and interactive ways. This course explores issues of class, gender/sexuality, modernity, identity, nation, globalism, and desire, asking:- what are the mutual influences of culture and the marketplace?- what are the conditions and practices of consumption that shape meaning in contemporary life? - how has a marketplace template shaped mental mappings of our social worlds? In the contemporary world, to buy is to become, as well as to engage in practices and politics of modernity. This course explores the dynamics of consumption embedded within our lives.

This course attempts to understand the recent successes of religio-political movements in South Asia. This involves both a theoretical interrogation and genealogy of religion, nationalism, and secularism as well as attention to their historical elaboration.

This course examines patterns of Japanese urbanism -- social, cultural, historical, and built-environmental -- through interdisciplinary discussion. It is open to graduate students in any department or programs. Students are required to attend lectures of SW 33 Tokyo; students in Anthro 2682 will participate in specialized discussion sections and will frame term projects tailored to their future research plans in close consultation with the professor. The seminar is equally open to graduate students with strong interests in urban anthropology, in urban design and planning, and in Japanese/Asian Studies in history, the social sciences, and the humanities.

This course will examine the intersections between design and anthropology. In recent years, there has been a movement in anthropology toward a focus on objects, while design, which has traditionally been concerned with objects, has been moving toward the understanding of objects as part of a greater milieu. This course explores the common ethnographic ground. No background in anthropology or design required.

This course will theorize the ways in which disability and disease become linked to inequality. We will explore the social factors that produce forms of suffering, as well as kinds of violence that people experience when social difference is mapped onto the materiality of their bodies.

This is a practice-based course in which students record, edit, and produce anthropologically informed audio works which interpret culture and lived experience. Listening sessions will provide a broad context of contemporary work using location recordings, and readings will situate the practice within the growing field of sound studies. In their projects, students will experiment with technical and conceptual strategies of recording and composition as they engage with questions of ethnographic representation through the sensory dimension of sound.

Briefly reviews the figure of mental illness in Western thought and the social sciences, then focuses on themes in cross-cultural studies of psychopathology: culture and diagnosis; cultural influences on depression, schizophrenia, and dissociation; madness in non-Euroamerican healing systems; and transnational aspects of psychiatry.

Reviews the variety of anthropological perspectives on the interactions between culture and biology. Topics include mind-brain-society interaction in pain; cross-cultural studies of menopause; sociosomatics of depression; the new genetics and eugenics; research on stress and trauma.

Provides a critical reading of the history of medical anthropology to the present. Focuses on theoretical perspectives and debates, as well as methodologies and positioning of actors in the field.

This course considers space as a structuring principle of social life and as a product of political activity. It treats space as a dynamic force animating human existence rather than as its static backdrop.

This course is intended for advanced graduate students in the Anthropology Department and in the Law School who will be doing fieldwork projects for their dissertations. The emphasis will be on a wide variety of field situations and their analysis. Legal matters are shown to be a useful entry point for the study of the larger society, and can often serve as a way of identifying the major social processes that are under way at the time of observation. The writings of various social theorists will also be touched on to ask how pertinent their concepts are to the analysis of actually observed events.

Intensive, critical review of major ethnographies, exploring the relationship between society and personhood, examining ethnographic writing and its relation to other genres (including biography); and tracing anthropological theory through changes in descriptive and analytic practice.

What do accounts of depression, suicide, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, SARS, HIV/AIDS, starvation and the personal and family trauma of political violence teach us about China and the Chinese over the last few decades?

Examines the culture, history, institutional arrangements, social relationships, technology, training, political economy and local worlds of contemporary biomedicine. Readings are from medical anthropology, anthropology of science, history of medicine, and sociology and political science.

Legal protections against executive power have been central to the theorization and practice of liberalism but developments in the extension, intensification and modalities of power have led to the erosion and limitation of rights. In particular, the emergence of diverse forms of securitization and emergency have led not just to conceding freedom for security but the deployment of law to further these aims. Beginning in Weimar Germany with the reflection of theorists as diverse as Weber, Schmitt, Kelsen and Benjamin we shift to contemporary legal and ethnographic accounts with a focus on the US, Latin America and the Muslim world.

Special reading in selected topics under the direction of members of the Department.

General instruction in field methods and practice in the various divisions of anthropology, including archaeology, ethnography, and physical anthropology. Instructional personnel and location of course vary with the research program of the staff. Lectures, conferences, field and laboratory work.