The following pages describe anthropology's relationship with colonialism. The reading emphasizes why colonial history is relevant to students' lives and emphasizes practical ways to practice cultural relativism. 

The following pages describe anthropology's relationship with colonialism. The reading emphasizes why colonial history is relevant to students' lives and emphasizes practical ways to practice cultural relativism. 

This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology—ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic—are changing. It examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, and asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 question, “What Is Life?” today.

This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology — ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic — are changing. The course also examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, asks how we might answer Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 question, “What Is Life?”, today.

This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology—ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic—are changing. It examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, and asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 question, “What Is Life?” today.

This course explores a range of contemporary scholarship oriented to the study of ‘cybercultures,’ with a focus on research inspired by ethnographic and more broadly anthropological perspectives. Taking anthropology as a resource for cultural critique, the course will be organized through a set of readings chosen to illustrate central topics concerning the cultural and material practices that comprise digital technologies. We’ll examine social histories of automata and automation; the trope of the ‘cyber’ and its origins in the emergence of cybernetics during the last century; cybergeographies and politics; robots, agents and humanlike machines; bioinformatics and artificial life; online sociality and the cyborg imaginary; ubiquitous and mobile computing; ethnographies of research and development; and geeks, gamers and hacktivists. We’ll close by considering the implications for all of these topics of emerging reconceptualizations of sociomaterial relations, informed by feminist science and technology studies.

This course introduces the ethnographic study of politics, i.e., what anthropologists understand to be “political” in various social and economic systems, from small-scale societies to liberal democratic states. It examines politics across three contemporary contexts: electoral politics, public spheres, bureaucracies and humanitarian governance. Students consider and analyze how questions of authority, coercion, and violence have been theorized to relate to the political, and how some aspects of social life are regimented in explicitly non-political ways.

This course examines the birth and international expansion of an American industry of political marketing. It focuses attention on the cultural processes, sociopolitical contexts and moral utopias that shape the practice of political marketing in the U.S. and in different countries. By looking at the debates and expert practices at the core of the business of politics, the course explores how the “universal” concept of democracy is interpreted and reworked through space and time, while examining how different cultural groups experimenting with political marketing understand the role of citizens in a democracy.

This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples — sound art, environmental recordings, music — will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This course examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. It considers how the sound/noise/music boundaries have been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and historical contexts. Students will learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, multi-channel and spatial mix performance, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, remix, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed.

This class has been reorganized to focus primarily on the War in Iraq. As in previous years, the class still examines war in cross-cultural perspective, asking whether war is intrinsic to human nature, what causes war, how particular cultural experiences of war differ, and how war has affected American culture.

This course examines traditional performances of the Arabic-speaking populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Starting with the history of the ways in which the West has discovered, translated and written about the Orient, we will consider how power and politics play roles in the production of culture, narrative and performance. This approach assumes that performance, verbal art, and oral literature lend themselves to spontaneous adaptation and to oblique expression of ideas and opinions whose utterance would otherwise be censorable or disruptive. In particular we will be concerned with the way traditional performance practices are affected by and respond to the consequences of modernization.
Topics include oral epic performance, sacred narrative, Koranic chant performance, the folktale, solo performance, cultural production and resistance.

A cynical look at the opposition to American annexation of Texas during the 1844 campaign. At the head of a motley procession is Whig candidate and professed anti-annexationist Henry Clay, riding a raccoon (which looks more like a fox). He is followed by three groups of men. The first (right) are the "Hartford Convention Blue-Lights," who shout, "God save the King!" and "Millions for Tribute! not a cent for defence Go it Strong!" Next (center) is a line of "Sunday Mail Petitioners," led by Clay's strongly religious running-mate Theodore Frelinghuysen, riding a donkey and dressed in clerical robes. They represent the proponents of eliminating postal service on Sundays in the United States, whose campaign was criticized by many as a threat to the separation of church and state. One of them remarks, "I go for the Good old times! wholesome, Fine and Imprisonment!" Prominent antislavery advocate William Lloyd Garrison leads the third group. He displays the banner of "Non Resistance, No Government No Laws--Except the 15 Gallon Law!" His folllowers are the "Abolition Martyrs" (far left), who have been tarred-and-feathered for their activism.|Entered . . . 1844 by J. Baillie.|Lith. & pubd. by James Baillie 118 Nassau St. N.Y.|Signed: H. Bucholzer.|The Library's impression was deposited for copyright on August 26, 1844.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 77.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1844-43.

This collection was inspired by Ellen Wolpert's article about anti-bias work with younger students. Her article suggests that teachers should keep a collection of non-stereotypical photos of people doing regular things that can be referenced to stimulate class discussion or address biased language with young children.

The photos in this growing collection are organized into (Google Drive) folders inspired by categories mentioned by Ms. Wolpert: Race, Age, Physical Abilities, Gender Roles, Families/Sexual Orientation, Jobs, and Ethnicity. Each folder contains different photographs curated from various Creative Commons websites, including Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. Currently there are 80 photographs in the collection. They have been assembled here for your convenience and represent many hours of searching, downloading, and editing.

Reference: Wolpert, E. (2006). Photo picture cards: A key tool for the anti-bias classroom. In Lee, E., Menkart, D., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (Eds.) Beyond heroes and holidays: A practical guide to K-12 anti-racist, multicultural education and staff development (3rd ed., pp. 211-214).

Interpreting an excerpt of Brutus No. 1, the most well-known of what will be eventually called the "Anti-Federalist Papers," which argued against the ratification of the Constitution of 1787.

In this demonstration, amaze learners by performing simple tricks using mirrors. These tricks take advantage of how a mirror can reflect your right side so it appears to be your left side. To make the effect more dramatic, cover the mirror with a cloth, climb onto the table, straddle the mirror, and then drop the cloth as you appear to "take off." This resource contains information about how this trick was applied during the making of the movie "Star Wars."

This module offers a communication studies perspective on anti-racism.Students who complete this module will 1) Think about how we ought to talk about race. 2) Learn about the social construction of race. 3) Listen to conversations about race. 4) Take part in conversations about race.[Title page image description: White, stenciled letters against a black background that appears to be smeared with white paint read, "STOP RACISM."]

Before conducting this activity, educators may want to discuss historical information about racism and diversity issues. In the story The Sneetches, written by Dr. Seuss, yellow bird-like creatures take students on an adventure where green stars become the symbol of discrimination and privilege. After reading the story aloud, let students participate in the following activities that can be adapted with or without the story.

This curriculum unit seeks to broaden the repertoire and pedagogical techniques utilized in directing middle school orchestra. It aims to do this by rethinking dominant pedagogical approaches, and reexamining which narratives are presented in the classroom and for what purpose. If the curriculum is successful, it will firstly help the teacher include counter-narratives in instruction in a seamless manner and provide a framework for restructuring instruction moving forward. In that way, this is not really a curricular unit as much as a way to rethink what, how and why we teach a performance class like orchestra. By introducing counter-narratives, the teacher reaches and motivates a more diverse student body and opens doors to dialog with students about history in a way that would not be possible without the inclusion of counter-narratives. This curriculum also encourages a different approach for teaching basics like rhythm decoding using the South Indian syllabic system called solkattu. When we present culturally diverse solutions to teaching the basics of music performance, we expand our students’ awareness of the world and offer them different ways of solving a problem. The curriculum also presents ways to structure orchestral rehearsals in a more collaborative way which not only encourages trust and teamwork between students, but also gives them agency over the final performance of the material. As a culmination of the curriculum, the final unit includes five original arrangements for the middle school orchestra, including a score with all parts and files related to each arrangement. The five pieces include two Civil Rights era anthems, a spiritual from the Bahamas, a South African Zulu folksong, and a popular song of community/fellowship. The teaching of all these pieces will ultimately help to present counter-narratives, open dialog, and develop trust and a sense of personal investment while broadening the repertoire of the orchestra.

In this simple exploration, a coiled phone cord slows the motion of a wave so you can see how a single pulse travels and what happens when two traveling wave pulses meet in the middle.