Classes

    ANTHRO 97Z - Sophomore Tutorial: Anthropology as Social Theory and the Social Theory of Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Gabriella Coleman
    M W 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM 

    Anthropology 97z is a course about what social theory is, how to read it and how it relates to the discipline of anthropology. The course encourages students to think expansively about the sources and boundaries of theory, guiding them through several approaches to theorizing social life.

    Required of all Social Anthropology concentrators. Weekly 2-hour sections to be arranged.

    ANTHRO 98B - Junior Tutorial for Thesis Writers in Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Damina Khaira
    By Arrangement

    This individual tutorial is for 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 tutorials final paper will be comprised of a research proposal representing...

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    ANTHRO 99B - Thesis Tutorial in Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Damina Khaira
    By Arrangement

    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...

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    ANTHRO 1435 - Challenging Collections: Critical Reflections on Collecting Through Harvard’s History

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Profs. Diana Loren
    Mon. 9:00 AM - 11:45 AM 
     

    Harvard’s museum collections have often been used to interrogate the world outside of “us”: peoples, events, places, and things. This course reverses that gaze and asks what the collections and the processes of collecting reveal about the history of Harvard and its institutional identity as “the” place of learning.... Read more about ANTHRO 1435 - Challenging Collections: Critical Reflections on Collecting Through Harvard’s History

    ANTHRO 1716 - Neoliberalism: Empire, Extraction, and the Making of the Global Social Order

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Profs. Salmaan Keshavjee, Jason Silverstein, and Lindsey Zeve
    Weds. 12:00 PM - 2:45 PM
    Apthorp House Library

    This course is designed primarily for advanced undergraduates and graduate students who are interested in the relationship between neoliberalism, the global social order, and inequities in health and wellbeing.

    ... Read more about ANTHRO 1716 - Neoliberalism: Empire, Extraction, and the Making of the Global Social Order

    ANTHRO 1836AR - Sensory Ethnography 1

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Profs. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
    T 12:00 PM - 4:15 PM

    An introduction to “sensory ethnography,” a media practice that seeks to rejuvenate and innovate in visual anthropology, cinema, and art.  Students will learn to record and edit video and audio to produce original media works about embodied experience, culture, ecology, political-economy, and history. This is a year-long course that supports students' independent projects through the summer and the following semester.

    This course is also offered as AFVS 158AR. Students are strongly...

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    ANTHRO 1826 - Medical Anthropology: Advanced Topics

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Prof. Arthur Kleinman
    Weds. 3:00 PM - 5:45 PM
     

     

    A review of the latest and most advanced contributions to theory, methods, especially ethnography, findings, as well as policy contributions in medical anthropology.

    Open to advanced undergraduates with some background in social sciences or humanities (regardless of concentration), and to graduate and professional students. Because of the extent of the readings and the intensity of the analysis, the course will be limited to 25 students.

    Spring 2023: Paul Farmer's...

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    ANTHRO 1883 - Where Science Meets Society: Introduction to STS

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Prof. Anna Jabloner
    Weds. 9:45 AM - 11:45 AM
     

    The German word for science literally means “knowledge made.” In line with this meaning, STS approaches science as practice. The interdisciplinary field asks empirically and methodologically how knowledge is made, how truths become truths, and how matters come to matter and to be matters of fact.

    This course serves as basic introduction to STS, highlighting key political interventions, theoretical contributions, and the field’s recent ascent into a burgeoning academic inter-discipline.

    ANTHRO 1617 - The Price of Solidarity: Value, Sacrifice, Capital

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Julia Fierman
    Weds. 3:00 PM - 5:45 PM
     

    This seminar in social anthropology presents value and the exchange of value as the foundations of economic, social, moral, and political life. The authors we read will argue that the exchange of value(s) between humans creates social solidarity. We are tied to our communities and friends through relationships of debt and expenditure; we give a gift with the expectation of receiving something in return, binding the gift giver and receiver in a social relationship that extends over space and time. For sociologist Marcel...

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    ANTHRO 1709 - The Anthropology of Power: Sovereignty, Hegemony, and Resistance

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Julia Fierman
    T 12:00 PM - 2:45 PM
     

    What does it mean when we speak of “political power”? We know, from the work of many anthropologists, that power is not a question of the state. The political anthropologist Pierre Clastres wrote about non-state societies with a deep sense of law, tradition, and propriety that actively combat the emergence of a state system. In an age where we feel constantly surveilled, it is clear that power can be invisible, yet palpable; physical force is not necessary to encourage obedience among a population. In other words, power,...

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    ANTHRO 2695 - Landscape Fieldwork: People, Politics, Practices

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Gareth Doherty
    Fridays 3:00 PM - 5:45 PM
    Tozzer 203 

    Landscape fieldwork offers the means to understand the complexities of landscapes. Through a people-centered approach, this lecture course explores landscape architecture’s ethical and political power to shape the world. A central premise of the course is that experiential knowledge—gained from the embodied engagement of landscape fieldwork—can help to revise how we understand and use western canons of landscape knowledge and offer new possibilities for the design imagination.... Read more about ANTHRO 2695 - Landscape Fieldwork: People, Politics, Practices

    ANTHRO 1475 - Religious Dimensions in Human Experience: Apocalypse, Home, Medicine, Music, Sports, Sacrifice

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. David Carrasco
    Mon. and Weds. 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
     

    Check out the Course Introduction Video! 

    What is Religion? Why does it show up everywhere? Using archaeology, religious studies and social thought, this course will study the major themes in the history of religions including 'encountering the...

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    ANTHRO 1836BR - Sensory Ethnography 2

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Profs. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
    Th 12:00 PM - 4:15 PM

    Students are introduced to current issues in art, aesthetics, and anthropology, and produce collaborative experimental works of sensory ethnography.

    This is also offered as AFVS 158BR. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in ANTRO 1836AR, Sensory Ethnography 1. No previous studio experience necessary.

    To take this limited-enrollment course, you must first consult the Canvas course site for information about the enrollment process and procedures.

    There is a mandatory...

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    ANTHRO 1718 - Activist, Collaborative, and Engaged Interventions in Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Andrea Wright
    Thurs. 12:00 PM - 2:45 PM
    Tozzer 416

    What approaches and methodologies do anthropologists use to examine and strengthen theories and practices oriented towards community? What responsibilities do anthropologists have to the people and places with which they work? Can and should anthropologists engage in research that is community driven, politically conscious, and centrally concerned with the transformation of our social conditions?... Read more about ANTHRO 1718 - Activist, Collaborative, and Engaged Interventions in Anthropology

    ANTHRO 1898 - Digital Ethnographic Methods

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Prof. Joyhanna Garza
    M 9:00am - 11:45am

    The abrupt physical closures of 2020 continuing into the present moment have brought into sharp relief the urgency of taking the digital seriously as a mode by which sociality – however constrained – is created and maintained. Rather than posit a singular method of digital ethnography, this course is designed to expose students to different methods and theoretical entry points into ethnography in order to enable students to identify the methods which work best for their present and future research purposes.

    Hence, the...

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    ANTHRO 1991 - Anthropology of the Future

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Michelle Choi
    Thurs. 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM 
    Peabody 12

    Humans have long been fascinated with anticipating, speculating, preparing, and waiting for the unknown future. ‘The future’ has a pervasive presence in our lives, when we forecast the local weather, plan the national economy, promise in legal contracts, imagine in science fictions, aspire in political movements, trade in futures markets, and much more. More than ever, the future is both an excitement and anxiety-inducing topic of interest to scholars and experts in domains ranging from public health, national security, urban design, to environmental science.... Read more about ANTHRO 1991 - Anthropology of the Future

    AFRAMER 189X - Medicine, Science, and Empire

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Jean Comaroff
    Weds. 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
    TBD

    This class examines the changing place of medicine in the long history of modernity. Focusing on key moments   the birth of the clinic, the colonial encounter, the consolidation of medicine as profession, the age of genomics and biocapital, and the empire of global health it explores the distinctive role of medical knowledge and practice in the making of modernist persons, identities, economies, and political vocabularies. Readings are drawn from anthropology and the wider social sciences, with cases from Africa,...

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