ANTH 1210 Human Origins and Antiquity (original) (raw)

Syllabus for History of Anthropological Theory II (spring 2015)

This course will introduce and interrogate a variety of ideas that underlie and inform the work of anthropologists in recent decades. Contemporary anthropology draws both on its own disciplinary tradition and its voracious appetite for ideas from the fields of philosophy, history, sociology, and political science, and from the reflection that takes place in movements like feminism and anticolonialism, among other sources. Far more than in early periods, the shared reading list of anthropological scholars since the mid-twentieth century is interdisciplinary. We will use some of the course to address the late 20th century “crisis” in anthropology, when a combination of ethnographic subjects writing back to those who studied them, and postmodern critiques of scientific certainty threw the discipline into a self-questioning mood. This is an era of post-’s and of “turns,” moments in which critical masses (or critically located clusters) of anthropologists proposed (and continue to propose) new approaches to the work of describing human life. We will also devote a great deal of time to theories of power that emerged in the last fifty years, including feminist approaches, work by Foucault, retheorizations of Marx, and subaltern studies. We’ll take on theoretical approaches to the colonial order, performativity, materiality, practice, and the construction of knowledge. This course is intended to supply others’ ideas and trace their influence, but also to draw you and your mind into dialogue with these theorists and their claims. It’s a place for patient encounter with the complexity of what you read, and a place for urgent critique of what you find most troubling, and a place for patience again as you gestate your own perspective and assemble your ensemble of familiar theoretical tools. Being fully and thoughtfully present, intellectually and personally, in these discussions is vital to what we will all get out of the experience.