Classes

    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 2020 - GIS & Spatial Analysis In Archaeology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Prof. Jason Ur
    Tues. and Thurs. 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM

    An introduction to the GIS and remote sensing methods used by archaeologists to document and analyze datasets at the scale of the site and the region.

    This class will involve the hands-on use of printed maps, aerial photography, satellite imagery, digital terrain models, GPS-based observations, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry to approach archaeological research questions. Students will gain competence in creating spatial data for fieldwork, print publication, and online visualization (web maps and 3D modeling),...

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    ANTHRO 3628 - Anthropological Research Methods

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    TBA
     

    This course offers a conceptual overview of research methods used by anthropologists. We will hear from faculty members their experience of doing fieldwork—from formulating a research question, choosing a site, entering the field to ethical issues they face in the field. Students will not only learn about but also practice these various methods and reflect on their projects in lights of the discussion about methods. To that end, students will complete several exercises and craft a method paper for their own project.

    This course is...

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    ANTHRO 3636 - Pedagogy in Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024

    Department Chair
    TBA

    This course has two aims: 1) to provide graduate students with the necessary training to be effective Teaching Fellows at Harvard, and 2) to give you the tools to develop your own approach to critical pedagogy in the field of Anthropology. Required for graduate students in the Spring of their second year. Classes will also be advertised to all Anthropology graduate students as optional Pedagogy Workshops for professional development. While discussions will be tailored to the unique challenges of teaching in Anthropology (across Archaeology and Social...

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    GENED 1099 - Pyramid Schemes: What Can Ancient Egyptian Civilization Teach Us?

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Prof. Peter Der Manuelian
    Mon. and Wed. 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
     

    How does ancient Egypt enlighten our times about what defines a civilization, and were those ancient humans, with their pyramids, hieroglyphs, and pharaohs, exactly like or nothing like us?

    How much of your impression of the ancient world was put there by Hollywood, music videos, or orientalist musings out of the West? How accurate are these depictions? Does it matter? This course examines the quintessential example of the “exotic, mysterious ancient world” – Ancient Egypt – to...

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    GENED 1128 - The Conduct of Life in Western and Eastern Philosophy

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Michael Puett
    Thurs. 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM

    A study of approaches in the philosophical traditions of the West and the East to the conduct of life. Philosophical ethics has often been understood as meta-ethics: the development of a method of moral inquiry or justification. Here we focus instead on what philosophy has to tell us about the first-order question: How should we live our lives?

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    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 1707 - Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, and the Transpacific Ethnography of Asian America

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2021

    Prof. Joyhanna Garza
    Mon. and Weds. 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
    Tozzer 102

    Ethnic studies is the critical interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity as understood from the intellectual, political, and cultural histories and perspectives of minoritized groups in the United States. Ethnic studies scholars analyze the social dynamics of race, racism, and various forms of institutionalized violence including the historical and lasting legacies of colonialism, chattel slavery, US imperalism, white supremacy, and more.... Read more about ANTHRO 1707 - Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, and the Transpacific Ethnography of Asian America

    ANTHRO 1033 - Archaeology of Inequality

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2021

    Prof. Jess Beck
    Tues. and Thurs. 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
    Peabody 561 

    In 2018, Oxfam reported that the 26 richest people on the planet had the same net worth as half of the global population. The rampant wealth disparities in the modern world lead us to ask whether inequality is an inescapable component of all societies. Through its unique access to the deep time of human prehistory, archaeology allows us to question myths and just-so stories about the origins and inevitability of inequality.... Read more about ANTHRO 1033 - Archaeology of Inequality

    ANTHRO 2653 - Feminism and Anthropology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023

    Prof. Anna Jabloner
    Thurs. 12:45 PM - 2:45 PM
     

    This course considers the relationship between feminism (as activist realm, as theoretical field, in its institutionalized form as gender studies) and anthropology. We will begin with early ethnographic writing by women and about women, and analyze some of the interventions feminists hope to make in anthropology. We will then examine the relationship between feminism and anthropology through two topics: kinship and politics. Our course will consider how feminist anthropologists have connected the study of kinship,...

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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 1201 - Human Osteology & Bioarchaeology

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2022

    Prof. Jess Beck
    Tues. and Thurs. 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
    Zooarchaeology Lab, Peabody 35B

    Knowledge of human osteology is key for fields such as archaeology, biological anthropology, forensic anthropology, anatomy, and medicine. This course introduces students to human skeletal anatomy and the field of bioarchaeology, the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites.... Read more about ANTHRO 1201 - Human Osteology & Bioarchaeology

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