Emily Ibrahim

This course introduces students to the discipline that studies and compares cultures. Students learn about the main concepts used in anthropology and how anthropologists conduct research, while also discovering how people live in other times and places. They also learn about theories that provide frameworks for understanding and comparing cultures. Ethnographic descriptions of life in particular places give students factual materials with which to apply and critique such theories. Through this introduction to the study of culture in general, and an exposure to specific cultures, students inevitably come to re-examine some of the premises of their own culture. This foundation course is required for upper-level work in cultural anthropology courses. No prerequisite. Offered every semester.

What role does language play in shaping and reflecting cultural norms and social interactions? This course delves deeply into the wide-ranging ways our lives are mediated by, and brought to life through, human communication. We begin by comparing and contrasting human language with animal signaling systems in monkeys and apes. In our exploration of language, we examine how the verbal medium communicates not only semantic content but also information about social personae and power. Next, we turn to the semiotics of non-verbal forms of communication, including self-adornment, clothing and other visual images. We draw on our semiotic toolkit to analyze how advertisements communicate about products, consumers and society alike, examining some historical shifts in advertising semiotics. We devote the remaining classes to a theoretical and empirical exploration of mass and social media, exploring how digital contexts and memeified content can distort faraway truths, enlist people in outrageous political movements, and furnish entirely new opportunities for the performance of identity and negotiation of relationships. A major goal is for students to refine their ability to interpret and critique signs and signaling in their own social and media worlds. This course counts toward an upper-level cultural requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ANTH 113.

The department reserves individual study for those students who are unusually motivated in an area of the field and who we believe are responsible enough to handle the challenge of working independently. Such courses might be research-oriented (e.g., students returning from off-campus study programs with data) but are more commonly reading-oriented courses allowing students to explore in greater depth topics that interest them or that overlap with their major course of study. To arrange for individual study, a student must consult with a faculty member during the semester before the independent work is to be undertaken. The individual-study course may be designed exclusively by the faculty member or it may be designed in consultation with the student. For reading courses, a bibliography is created and the student reads those works, meeting periodically (weekly or bi-weekly) with the faculty member to discuss them. Faculty directing the individual study will set the terms of course evaluation, which typically involve either a research paper or an extensive annotated bibliography with a short explanatory essay tying the entries together and situating the debates that they represent. Another option is for the student to write one- to two-page assessments of each book or reading at intervals throughout the semester. The faculty member comments on these assessments and may request periodic reassessments. The course culminates with a synthetic paper that pulls together all the readings. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the end of the seventh class day of each semester, they are expected to begin discussion of the proposed individual study preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek the departmental approval before the established deadline. This course counts toward the major or minor.