Introduction to Historical Anthropology

3 credits · Undergraduate credit

This course is designed to examine the ways in which people in different societies and at different times have understood the past and have used history to assign meaning to past events. A variety of different systems, programs, and practices for maintaining and deploying knowledge of the past will be explored, including monuments, commemorations and memorials, oral materials and tradition, museums and exhibitions, personal memoirs, film, photography, and literature. Particular attention will be given to the latency of powerful formations seated in understandings of race, gender, ethnicity, and nation.