Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Special study of selected topics in archaeology, 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 a petition form (available from the Head Tutor for Archaeology or downloadable from the department's Anthropology[Archaeology] website), signed by the adviser with whom he or she wishes to study, and a proposed plan of study.

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 (PM) collections approved by the PM Director and directly supervised by a member of the PM curatorial staff. Requires a project involving a museum collection developed in consultation with the supervisor.

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.

This course will focus on archaeological thinking, the cognitive skeleton of the discipline of archaeology, the principles and the logic that are the foundation of all archaeological conclusions and research. Central to this is an understanding of research design, archaeological theory and interpretation, culture and material culture; as well as an understanding of how to examine and construct an archaeological argument.

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.

The junior tutorial provides a background in archaeological method and theory through critical analysis of selected issues and debates particularly focusing on more complex societies. Specific topics include the origins of agriculture and the domestication of animals, the development of complexity and "civilization," post-colonial and historical archaeology, and related ethical and theoretical issues. Weekly readings (drawn from current journal literature), discussions, and several short writing assignments.

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.

Junior tutorials in Social Anthropology explore critical theoretical issues related to a single ethnographic region (eg. South Asia, Africa, Latin America). The issues and areas change from year to year, but the purpose remains the same: to give students a chance to grapple with advanced readings and to experience the ways that ideas and theories can be applied and critically analyzed in ethnographic studies.

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.

Research and writing of the Senior Thesis. Limited to honors candidates. Signature of the faculty adviser on a departmental form is required. This form is available from the Head Tutor for Archaeology or downloadable from the department's Anthropology (Archaeology) website.

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.

A comprehensive introduction to the practice of archaeology and major themes from our human past: how do archaeologists know where to dig? How do we analyze and understand what we find? What do we know about the origins of the human species, agriculture, cities, and civilization? The course integrates methods and theory, and utilizes Peabody Museum collections, to show how we reconstruct ancient diet, trade, and political systems. We also explore the role of archaeology in colonialism, modern politics, and film.

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.

Focuses on arguably the most significant lifestyle revolution in the human past, namely, the change from hunting and gathering to agriculture and pastoralism. Working from representative meal menus, covers the emergence of cultivation and domestication along with the adoption and spread of key plant foods and animals in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres and between the two. Discusses the contributions of archaeology, anthropology, climatology, botany, zoology, genetics, and linguistics to these topics.

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.

Focus on physical science and engineering methods and techniques used by archaeologists in the reconstruction of time, space, and human paleoecology, and analysis of archaeological materials. Topics include 14C dating, ice core and palynological analysis, stable isotope chemistry of paleodietary foodwebs, soil micromorphology and site formation, Pb isotope sourcing of metal artifacts, and microstructural and mechanical analyses of cementitious materials used in ancient monumental buildings.

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.

From the earliest urban and literate civilizations to the formation of empire we shall review the political, economic, and religious beliefs of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. These early civilizations will then be discussed in the context of the first internationalism that brought them into contact with their near and distant neighbors from eastern Europe to Central Asia, Africa, and South Asia. The political use of the past by modern nation states will be reviewed.

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.

Archaeologists often draw on ethnographic studies of Western and non-Western societies as sources of explanation for ancient cultural practices. But the questions remain: how valid is the use of ethnographic analogy in the study of the past? What assumptions do archaeologists make about past social processes in their uses of ethnographic studies? These are some of the questions addressed in this course.

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.

Archaeological data recovered from Harvard Yard provide a richer and more nuanced view of the 17th through 19th century lives of students and faculty in Harvard Yard, an area that includes the Old College and Harvard Indian College. Students will excavate in Harvard Yard, process and analyze artifacts, and report on the results. Additional topics to be covered include regional historical archaeology, research design, surveying, archival research, stratigraphy, and artifact analysis.

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.

Archaeological approaches to settlement and land use at the regional scale. Issues will include settlement systems, agricultural and pastoral systems, the role of humans environmental change, and also the methods used to investigate them.

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 explores the continuing investigation of Classic Maya texts and images, and how new decipherments have changed our understanding of the ancient Maya world. The Classic Maya are the only Pre-Columbian civilization with a substantial corpus of inscriptions produced well before any contact with the Old World. Maya written and visual narratives reveal details of history and myth, life at the courts of lords and nobles, and religion and worldview. Their testimonies are often striking, unique, and hard to understand, but they are not mediated by non-indigenous interpreters and open a window into a world long gone.

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 surveys the indigenous literatures (both Pre-Columbian and Colonial) of several New World civilizations (the Aztecs, Inka and Maya) from a comparative anthropological perspective. Included are brief introductions to the languages of these early documents (Nahuatl, Quechua and Mayan), as well as a discussion of their literary conventions, contents, and significance for an understanding of the cultures that produced them. A particular focus will be on the diachronic changes in these literatures since Precolumbian times, indicative of the complex and contested landscape of Spanish Colonization.

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.

Learn to read and write in Maya glyphs to discover the most spectacular civilization in the Americas in its own words! This course covers the basics of Maya writing and art using the outstanding visual and material collections of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. It explores the indigenous Maya myths, histories, and stories of life at the ancient courts of lords and nobles.

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.

The Moche or Northern Peru were among the earliest state societies in the New World. Emerging from simpler levels of economic and political complexity, the Moche developed degrees of political and territorial organization never seen before in the region; developed into a peculiar form of multiple territorial states and, by the 9th century, collapsed and transformed themselves into rather different cultural manifestations. Thus they describe, full circle, the life and times of the first attempts to consolidate political structures of great complexity. In this course we will analyze several aspects of the processes in several regions, form the economic basis of the Moche states, the ideological basis for their legitimation systems, to their collapse and transformation to the even more complex Chimu and Lambayeque phenomena.

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.

The dead can tell us many secrets if we know how to "listen" to their stories. We will explore the social significance of death, burial and commemoration among diverse groups around the world. Using cutting edge archaeological methods and theories, we will unlock secrets of the dead and learn what they reveal about themselves and past societies. We will examine different cases to explore the creation and use of sacred landscapes, religion, ancestral veneration, funerary treatments (e.g., inhumation, cremation, and mummification), deviant burials (e.g., witches, vampires, and criminals), cannibalism, different identity intersections (e.g., gender, age and social status), memory and commemoration, and ethical and legal aspects of exhumation and reburial. We also will consider different stages of death, including the roles of different rituals, actors, and participants; the diverse purposes and places of participants within these rituals; and how these actions are likely to be materialized in the archaeological record.

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.

This course will explore the developing role of the archaeologist and anthropologist in forensic investigations (both ancient and modern). It will follow the process undertaken by forensic specialists during their investigation and look at their role in a number of contexts ranging from missing persons to crimes against humanity. It will consider the ethical responsibilities of the archaeologist/anthropologist and the presentation of their findings.

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.

One of the key areas of debate in paleoanthropology today is the emergence and dispersal of biologically and culturally modern humans. This seminar provides students with the scientific foundation to contribute to this debate and to understand its significance in a broader anthropological context. Using readings, discussion, hands on analysis of ancient artifacts and student-driven presentations, we will examine the history of investigation, relevant methodological, interpretive and epistemological issues, and a detailed survey of the empirical data from our African roots to the subsequent global dispersal and replacement of hominin populations that included the Neanderthals.

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.

Focuses on the Pyramids, Sphinx, and tombs at Giza (ca. 2500 BC), in the context of ancient Egyptian history, art, and archaeology. The HU-MFA Expedition excavated Giza, resulting in today's Giza Project at Harvard. Seminar takes place in Harvard's Visualization Center with 3D viewing of the Giza Necropolis on a 23-foot screen, and consists of introductory lectures, student presentations, and field trips. Topics range from challenges of archaeological information processing to Old Kingdom mortuary art and architecture, to issues of ownership and repatriation. Students will also contribute to the (real world) Giza Project at Harvard.

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.

What is the value of anthropology for understanding today's world? This course illustrates the importance of an anthropological perspective for engaging with a wide range of pressing global issues such as border regimes, climate change, human rights, and health epidemics. Over the semester, students will grapple with what it means to "ground the global" through an emphasis on everyday experience, cultural particularity, subject formation, and collective action.

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.

Introduction to methodology for contemporary ethnographic field research in anthropology. Students complete assigned and independent research projects relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, under supervision of department faculty.

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

This course examines urbanization and urban culture in Latin America. Drawing on an interdisciplinary set of works from anthropology, urban studies, and contemporary film, we will explore themes such as planning, space, violence, inequality, informality, citizenship, and consumption, among others. The course studies Latin American cities as developing at the intersection of projects that seek to impose order and everyday practices of contestation. In looking at the tensions between these visions of urban life, we will consider what Latin America reveals about the future of contemporary urbanism and its utopian and dystopian imaginaries.

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.

An introduction to the multiple ways the Latino diaspora is challenging and contributing to the revitalization of the cultural, religious and democratic processes in the United States. Special focus on migration histories to and from Latin America, cultural exchange and social practices in families, citizenship, the arts and religious traditions. Attention to the robust debates about immigration reform, ethnic identity, Dreamers, education, bilingualism, and American cultures as cores and borderlands.

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.

Pakistan, it is argued, was created on the basis of religious nationalism and religion has been incorporated into governmental apparatuses and political life. This course will explore the relationship between religion and politics from the initial demands for a Muslim polity, through the post-independence debates on the role of Islam, its subsequent judicial and political incorporation and finally how these unresolved struggles continue to inform the present moment.

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.

The term "gang" has been used to describe all kinds of collectives, from well-dressed mobsters to petty criminals to juvenile delinquents. About the only thing that has remained consistent about gangs is their characterization as the internal Other. This class will investigate how the category of "the gang" serves to provoke discourses of "dangerous" subjects in urban enclaves. More broadly, we will examine the methods and means by which liberal democratic governments maintain their sovereign integrity through the containment of threatening populations.

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.

Focuses on feature-length commercial film (rather than ethnographic or documentary film) and some of the culture industries (Hollywood, Iran, and Egypt) that produce them, paying particular attention to the Middle East. What might an anthropology of film look like? Film theory and cultural studies will be examined for their contributions to the answer to that question. Topics include the culture industry, critical theory, the ethnographic gaze, orientalism, media studies, modernity, nationalism, and transnationalism.

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.

The rapid rise of China on the global stage is one of the most stunning developments of our time. Since the early 1980's, when China reopened its doors to research by foreign scholars, growing numbers of anthropologists have been conducting fieldwork in the People's Republic. What have anthropologists learned about the transformations underway there? What new constructs and field strategies does the anthropology of China have to contribute to anthropology generally? In this course we seek answers in film and ethnography. Following existing emphases in the literature, we will focus on issues of transformation in governance, subjectivity, and difference in a nation under an increasingly neoliberal regime.

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.

The celebration of national and local forms of heritage often rides roughshod over the interests of the local citizenry it is intended to serve. In this course we look at how such conflicts play out in several cities - notably Athens, Bangkok, Beijing, Istanbul, Jerusalem and Rome - and address the ethical, practical, and architectural conflicts that arise from an anthropological perspective.

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.

Introduces theory and research in linguistic anthropology in the context of ethnographic research, film and popular music, from cumbia to hip-hop in Latin America. Examines how the multiplicity and contention of language ideologies play out in the everyday practices. What are the social, linguistic and discursive means by which social identity is constructed? How do ways of speaking, such as border talk and code switching, link face to face communities to the national and transnational spheres? Texts include regional ethnographies, music and documentaries from the region as well as the literature in the burgeoning new field of linguistic anthropology.

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.

What do the sprawling cities of the global South tell us about the contemporary urban condition? How is urban space produced and experienced in an era of increased interconnectedness, but also of great inequality and instability? How does the view from the South change our understanding of urban forms and processes, especially when so much of the "South" seems to be located in the "North"? To address these questions we will explore urban lives and spaces across cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The course will include works in anthropology, geography, urban studies, and documentary film.

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.

We examine ethnographies of Japan from the 1930s to the present to illuminate how Japan, as a cultural and social "whole," has been ethnographically problematized and re-problematized in different eras, from different theoretical interests such as culture-and-personality, modernization, and tradition, structuralist, post-structuralist, and cultural studies.

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

First half of a year-long 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.

For sociocultural anthropologists, ethnography is both a way of studying human communities and a way of writing about them. Ethnographic fieldwork raises issues of participation, power, and perspective; cultural relativism; the nature of evidence; and the ethics of engagement. Writing ethnography highlights other issues, such as the politics of representing "others." This course explores these and related issues through close reading and intensive discussion of selected texts.

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 probes the culture and politics of the body in America today, stressing America's role as a center of bodily ideals that now dominate global imaginations. Emphasizing the intersections of gender with race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality, the course examines the diverse notions of beauty, bodily practices, and body politics embraced by American women (and, to a lesser extent, men) of different classes, ethnicities, and sexualities. It deals with critical issues facing our society in the early 21st century -- the growing prevalence of eating disorders, the normalization of cosmetic surgery, rising levels of childhood and adult obesity using contemporary theory to tease out their complex sources and effects. Lying at the intersection of the anthropology of the body, medical anthropology, and women's/gender studies, the course outlines an important new arena for critical inquiry.

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."

Secularism, once understood as a normative political arrangement that promoted social peace and multiple religiosities, has recently been critiqued for circumscribing or denying people's abilities to live according to their religious understandings. However, such arguments have also stimulated strident responses that re-instantiate secular values and the enlightenment critique of religion as divisive and irrational. This course will examine recent controversies in France, India, the US and Turkey that have put secularism into question.

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.

What is a social relation? This course addresses this question by combining foundational readings in social theory with contemporary ethnographies in socio-cultural anthropology. We explore the cultural dimensions of social relations through different themes, such as politics, economics, religion, ethnicity, kinship, and language.

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?

Food is an entirely mundane but simultaneously elaborate aspect of human life, both pragmatic necessity and symbolic statement. This course examines how cultural systems of meaning and belief interact with social institutions and material reality. Lectures, films, discussions, fieldtrips, and ethnographic research assignments focus on the myriad ways in which food shapes (and reflects) identity (national, ethnic, religious, gendered, class-based), and how in turn how social institutions (from domestic units to the global food system) shape and transform food and its meanings, drawing on examples from many parts of the globe, both historically and contemporaneously.

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.

Introduction to the osteoarchaeological analysis. Identification of animal bones and teeth from archaeological sites using comparative materials and their characterization employing visual, metric, and microscopic methods.

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

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.

Explores the history, development, and current methodology behind archaeological illustration based on two sample cultures, ancient Egyptian (Old World) and Mayan (New World). Students will focus on epigraphy -- the creation of facsimile line drawings of relief sculpture, inscriptions, and selected three-dimensional objects (via photography and 3D scanning) for publication. Labs will furnish access to today's computer and tablet devices, and students will gain practical experience working directly from objects in the various archaeological collections of Harvard University and beyond. No previous artistic training is assumed.

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.

The class covers archaeological method and theory emphasizing the 1950s onwards. Large-scale trends in social theory will be balanced with attention to the ideas and writings of significant anthropologists and archaeologists.

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

Graduate seminar exploring ritual and religious practices in archaeological contexts. Topics to be covered include anthropological perspectives on religion; origins of religion; religion and political economy; burial practices; materiality in/of ritual practice; and revitalization movements.

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.

How have humans shaped the environment and how has the environment shaped humans throughout their (pre)history? We will explore key theories and case studies and students will further explore these questions through independent research.

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.

Provides an overview of Pre-Columbian civilizations on the continent of South America from the earliest record of human habitation to the time of the European invasion, in the sixteenth century. Focuses on the archaeology of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, the Andes, and the Pacific coast of Peru and Chile. Extensive use will be made of the South American collections in the Peabody 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.

This seminar will review the contributions made by the major social and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment that structured the debates of the late 17th and 18th centuries involving the nature of State governance, the changing role of religion within the State, colonialist undertakings, emergent imperialism, and racism. All of the above will be examined in the context of the evolving nature of the emergent disciplines of anthropology and archaeology.

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 small-scale societies, including methods and interpretations relating to the study of mobility, sedentism, seasonality, plant and animal exploitation, and migration.

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.

This course provides students with a basic conceptual language for understanding the complex relations between sexuality, capitalism, power, and the cultural politics of globalization. Throughout the past four decades, sexuality became an important topic of interdisciplinary debate that resulted in a vast and complex array of studies and perspectives. After Michel Foucaul'ts The History of Sexuality, the role of modern forms of power that work to discipline subjects and regulate populations has become central to how scholars conceptualize sexuality. By comparison, however, the relation between sexuality and the capitalist economy remains relatively undertheorized. How do the processes by which subjects produce, commodify, and consume goods shape desires, affects, and sexual subjectivities? What are the relations between commodities, discourses of sexuality, and the erotic practices of concrete historical actors? And what do we learn about globalization when we think of sexuality as a central domain of economic production, social reproduction, and political belonging?

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

This course takes a critical, anthropological look at the nation's cultural and political obsession with the "obesity epidemic." Placing the growing girth of Americans in historical and global context, it asks how the weighty body replaced smoking as the focus of the latest national "crisis," how the problem of "obesity" has been framed, what solutions have been put in place to address it, and with what effects for individuals and society at large. The course draws on work in many fields - from public health and the anthropologies of science and medicine; to American and fat studies; to political ecology, food systems, and food justice studies - in an effort to stimulate interdisciplinary conversations about what today's intense focus on obese bodies means for us as human scientists and as citizens of the world.

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.

This course will review methods used by contemporary anthropologists conducting ethnographic research. Special focus of the course will be on ethnographic interviewing. Will also consider such topics as use of visual material, mixed methods linking qualitative, quantitative and ethnographic material, and approaches to data analysis. Course will include observational and interviewing exercises.

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.

A critical review of the major theoretical approaches in social anthropology.

Continuation of Anthropology 2650a.

Comparative exploration of local epistemologies from craft apprentices and skilled manual workers to schoolchildren, journalists and scientists, emphasizing the embodiment, inculcation, and transmission of practical knowledge and the relationships among cosmology, social context, and pragmatic understanding.

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 is split into two parts. The first part introduces classic themes and texts in legal anthropology and the second part examines debates on the expansion of law as a means of modern governance.

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 is a survey course to the anthropology of Islam. We first critically examine seminal texts by Evans-Pritchard, Ernst Gellner and Clifford Geertz before turning to Talal Asad's analysis of anthropological categories, and attempt to situate the study of Islam as a discursive tradition. In the second half we focus on recent ethnographic materials that explore Muslim engagements with, and responses to, various features of modernity such as the state, democracy, gender equality as well as the management and securitization of Muslims in the West.

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.

Focus in the Frankfurt School and such concepts as the culture industry, critical theory and research, art and mass media reproduction, negative dialective, public sphere, and other of its contributions to social and aesthetic theory.

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.

Exploring classic theory and recent innovations in linguistic anthropology and the semiotic anthropology of communication, we connect the social life of language to its role in culture.

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.

We will discuss the "food turn" in anthropology through reading contemporary (and classic) ethnographies of food in contexts of production, distribution, social exchange, gender, and science. Note: Undergraduates encouraged to participate.

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.

Explores exchanges between the disciplines of History and Anthropology, emphasizing overlaps and distinctions in the treatment of mutual concerns such as the representation of time and space, the conceptualization of power, and the making of the subject.

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.

This course will trace the history of psychological theories in anthropological studies of subjectivity and their influence on ethnographic writing. Although more general topics in the history of psychological anthropology will be considered, the course will give particular focus to the relevance of diverse psychoanalytic theories and clinical writing for anthropology. The course will include recent writings on topics such as violence, post-colonialism, and affect, and the place of contemporary theorists within and influenced by psychoanalysis for an anthropology of the subject and subjectivity. Theoretical, methodological and interviewing issues, as well as approaches to writing, will be considered.

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.

Theoretical positions and anthropological debates concerning subjectivity. Freud, Lacan, Butler, Agamben, Zizek, Foucault, and Mbembe read alongside ethnographic texts on violence, suffering, governmentality, and the state.

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.

The modern era has seen the rise of a new field of knowledge and power that takes as its object human life itself, in the biological sense. This course traces the emergence of an anthropology of biopolitics, teasing out the concepts, problems, and ethnographic practices by which this domain is being studied. Through explorations of biological and therapeutic citizenship, new practices of biosociality and biosecurity, and the creation of world-quality populations and persons, the course identifies new assemblages of technologies, logics, and ethics that are emerging in different spaces in an increasingly globalized world.

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.

Theoretical and practical ideas, old and new, about law in society. Looking at the academic literature and at ethnographic description. The uses of the legal in fieldwork. Interpreting the place, shape, claims and efficacy of law in particular social and cultural contexts.

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.

A writing-intensive seminar in which students explore various genres and styles of ethnographic representation by sharing work in progress. A range of supplemental readings provide descriptive models and theoretical orientations.

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.

Readings in ethnographic and related theoretical works written in a selected foreign language; discussion, class presentations, and final papers will be in that language also.

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?

Compares deep ways of knowing the person in his/her cultural, political, economic and, most especially, moral context. Reads strong examples from each field to learn about individual and collective experience under uncertainty and danger.

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.

New ethnographies of social experience, moral life, and subjectivity are remaking theory and scholarship. Students in this course will critically examine studies of illness, violence, and cultural responses to other forms of human problems as well as to other human conditions. Our emphasis is on the methodology and style of writing experience-oriented ethnographies. We also examine studies of change in subjectivity and moral experience in times of social transformation, and the contribution they make to social theory, scholarship, and policy.

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.

This course examines the nature of governance in the contemporary era of corporate ascendance, widespread violence, shifting responsibilities for social welfare, and pervasive feelings of insecurity. It asks what configurations of actors - states, corporations, citizens, NGOs, transnational bodies, para-states - are trying to manage social life in different domains, devoting particular attention to the role of scientists and scientific logics in informng debate and practice. Drawing on recent ethnographies, we investigate key technologies of governance (statistics, audit, documents, policy) in the administration of such fields as health/disease, environment, urban planning, public health, and security. The course is designed to help students currently developing PhD projects incorporate an interest in governance through science into their dissertation projects.

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

Individual reading in preparation for the General Examination for the PhD degree.

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.