Reading ethnographically, thinking anthropologically

Undergraduate / Graduate

How do anthropologists use ethnographic writing to puzzle over the human condition? What assumptions and choices do they make to turn diverse beliefs, practices, and struggles into shareable texts and other media? Why are perennial contrasts between self and other, here and there, author and audience integral to anthropology's vast intellectual appetites? This course explores the twin arts of ethnographic reading and anthropological thinking. It is structured along two axes: 1) an intellectual history of anthropological thought from its institutionalization at the turn of the twentieth century to the present; 2) an exploration of different dimensions of human experience that anthropologists turn to and return to (e.g., myth & ritual, meaning & language, time & space, belonging & relationality, magic & science, violence & authority). Students will learn to identify the conventions of ethnographic writing, to distinguish dominant anthropological "schools of thought," and to unpack taboos and controversies central to the discipline's development. This course involves staggered assessment that culminates in a final comparative project. It is open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students by consent and fulfills the MAPSS methods requirement.