In the broadest terms, cultural anthropologists study “culture”—defined as the process of ordering social life and making it meaningful in a range of settings. We are interested in all types of societies, from rural indigenous communities to life in urban industrial settings. Cultural anthropologists document and comparatively analyze the full range of human social forms and adaptations, discern themes and patterns in the human experience, and examine processes of and resistance to change in a range of socioeconomic, geographic, and political contexts. Culture is not something we can simply “preserve” or secure for posterity in a museum. There is never one authentic way to be cultural or to represent a group of people, even though it is sometimes tempting to imagine such possibilities. In this class, you will learn about cultural anthropology as a scholarly practice and profession, including research methods and ethics, and the ways anthropologists represent their research to varied audiences.

Is the United States a melting pot or a salad? Is it an assimilation machine or a gestalt hodgepodge of culture that is, in other words, more than the sum of its distinct parts? Whether a melting pot, a salad, both or neither, most agree that the United States is a complex geopolitical space that brings together diverse cultural threads, each of which has a particular history. But how are we to understand these differentiated threads and the historical processes that gave rise to the vast diversity of the United States today? How have the experiences of settler colonialism, slavery, and immigration, and the political, economic and social experiences of democracy, industrialization, and urbanization shaped America as a nation? And how can anthropology, a discipline charged with unraveling both the generalities and particularities of what it means to be human, contribute to analyses of freedom, inequality, and social justice? This course provides a critical introduction to American society in all of its diversity. We will explore historical and ethnographic materials revealing broad trends in the cultural and social trajectory of the United States. Through a comparative and critical review of a wide range of cases –from the settling of European colonies in North America, to slavery and its abolition, to the institution of quotas on legal immigration – we will learn how the United States has been forged through histories of settlement and migration, displacement and slavery, and industrialization, inequality, and protest.

This class is a selective, historical survey of anthropological theory. We will examine theoretical and descriptive accounts of human culture and society from the early 20th century to the present, and explore the shifting historical conditions that have impacted the production of anthropological knowledge. We will also look at diverse fieldwork experiences alongside varied philosophical trends, both of which have shaped the European and American trajectories of anthropology. We will also seek to define the role that theories of culture, religion, power, gender, and history can and should play in our broader understandings of humans as both complex social and biological creatures. Ultimately, we aim to improve our grasp on the varied intellectual theories that have shaped academic anthropology to the present, and grapple with what each of these lessons may teach us about the anthropology of the future.

This class explores the ethnographic – in other words, the research into and telling of human stories – through visual media. Drawing on anthropology, aesthetic theory, media studies, art history, philosophical explorations of language and color, and semiotics, we will focus primarily on life in the African Diaspora of the Western Hemisphere. At base, this class is about the intersection of aesthetics and power, and we use a variety of intellectual approaches and media forms to understand that convergence. We begin by examining the ways in which culture and history shape how we see and experience our visual world, and problematize the centrality of visual sensation to human experience. Why is the visual so important? What is it like to see? Acknowledging the privileged position of vision within the human sensorium, we then move to the political significance of visual representation – that is, how people are seen and what factors, and fields of power, shape how one is envisioned. Turning to images and then still photography, we will examine the importance of framing, the “rhetoric” of images, and the way that images circulate, take on new meanings, and form ephemeral spaces of possibility. The class then contemplates visual media from a slightly different vantage, or rather, considers visual media not only for what it means or says, but rather, for what it does. This module will make specific use of Peircean semiotics to gain an understanding of visual culture as “more-than-representational-in-nature” and explore the material qualities of visual signs. Next, we will look at color. Color shapes our engagements with the world, brings allegedly inanimate objects to life, and defines, for better or worse, how we understand ourselves and see one another as humans. Color is abstract and mysterious, yet anchored in the most basic foundations of our common sense. Students will take on varied scientific understandings of color apperception and color as light, and discuss color as it relates to politics, as a passive layer on reality that provides us with political definition, and as an active force that shapes our world. The next two modules focus explicitly on visual culture, and color, of the African Diaspora in Brazil and Jamaica, examining local aesthetic practices while always grounding such practices in transnational aesthetics and global fields of power. Finally, we will discuss vision as it relates to truth – circling back to assumptions about vision discussed in the opening weeks – and ask what happens when our eyes deceive us, when we are presented with images that challenge our understandings of authenticity. We will look at new technologies used to create “deep fakes,” exploring the artistic and political potential (for good, or bad) of such technologies.

This course will introduce students to the various methods used by cultural anthropologists and those in related disciplines to understand and study human behaviors, social structure and organization, systems of knowledge, values and worldviews, and other socio-cultural phenomena. The premier method of empirical research in the field of cultural anthropology involves participant observation, conversation, and interviewing. This method, part of what is often called “ethnography,” has provided the discipline with most of its data and is the empirical basis for much cross-cultural study. In addition to participant observation, cultural anthropologists have made use of a variety of other research methods.

A primary goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of how to design and conduct research for a cultural anthropology project. The course uses an experiential learning approach and centers on students conducting mini-ethnographic projects. Projects may be conducted individually or in pairs (if appropriate in scope). As a part of these projects, students will become familiar with ethical issues in ethnographic research, the mechanics of writing of research proposals, identifying field sites, engaging participants, collecting and analyzing ethnographic data, and sharing research results. The course will present techniques for planning, formally proposing, and carrying out such research. Basic techniques for recording, storing, coding, analyzing, and writing up of ethnographic data will be discussed.

This course is highly participatory and requires deep engagement in readings, class discussion and workshops, and field research. Ethnographic research is an immersive form of inquiry and involves and intensive engagement with research participants. Conducting the mini- ethnographic project will require work throughout the term. Indeed, preparatory work in the early weeks of the term is essential to the success of these projects. Field exercises and ethnographic research are equivalent to a lab in a physical science course and require a similar time commitment. Should you have any questions or concerns regarding the time commitment necessary for this course, please meet with me during office hours in the first week of the course. Throughout the term, readings will be a mixture of ethnographies that raise particularly salient methodological issues and articles / books on the ethics and mechanics of study design, data collection, elements of crafting a strong research proposal, and ethnographic interpretation and writing. Readings will begin heavily and then get lighter once you are actively engaging in your research.

Because of concerns for the protection of research participants, nearly every institution has its own Institutional Review Board (IRB), whose job is to monitor all research involving human subjects. At Dartmouth, the official IRB is the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS). Because concerns about confidentiality, privacy, and informed consent are so central to all anthropological research, a discussion of these ethical issues will be addressed throughout the term. One of the requirements of this class is to complete training in the ethical conduct of research with human subjects.

Undergraduate students expecting to pursue the major in anthropology by means of socio- cultural research and thesis writing supported with departmental funding will find this course to be highly advantageous to their study plans. Pre-health students who plan for careers that involve clinical research will also find this introduction to qualitative, social scientific research methods invaluable.

This seminar is titled “Brazil: Race, Class, and Gender,” and while the objective of the course is to attend to and explore each of these facets of Brazilian life, the structure of the course in fact reveals the difficulty and indeed impracticality of isolating for study any of the above components – race, class, or gender. Although drawing primarily on the work of anthropologists, we will also read from an interdisciplinary sampling of sociology, social history, literature, and poetry produced by both Brazilian and foreign authors. The course begins with a brief, historical overview of contemporary Brazil, starting with the region’s indigenous populations, European contact, colonization, and early nation building. We will examine the significance of slavery in Brazil, explore the multiple meanings of “racial democracy” as the term relates to notions of Brazilian national identity, and unpack shifting racial ideologies of the 20th Century.  The course will be similarly concerned with shifting notions of masculinity and femininity, sexuality, and of course what all of this might mean in a country that is understood by much of the “outside world” as the epicenter of exotic sensuality. Finally, this course looks to the history of social thought concerning race, class, and gender in Brazil to make sense of current social and political unrest.