By exploring critical issues of globalizing culture, we examine how ideas, attitudes, and values are exchanged or transmitted across conventional borders. How has the production, articulation, and dissemination of cultural forms (images, languages, practices, beliefs) been shaped by global capitalism, media industries, communication technologies, migration, and tourist travels? How are cultural imaginaries forged, exchanged, and circulated among a global consumer public? How has the internationalizing of news, computer technologies, video-sharing websites, blogging sites, and other permutations of instant messaging served to accelerate cultural globalization? Students will be introduced to anthropological perspectives on cultural globalization, the transmission of culture globally, and the subsequent effects on social worlds, peoples, communities, and nations.

The world’s cultural diversity is most vividly and dynamically displayed through ritual and festival. Ritual is anything but superfluous; rather, some of the most important work of culture is accomplished through the performance of ritual. Through cross-cultural comparison, by way of readings and films, we explore the following dimensions of ritual: symbols, embodiment, emotion, discipline, contestation of tradition and authenticity, and the orchestration of birth, childhood socialization, gender, maturation, marriage, community, hierarchy, world renewal, and death. Written expression is enhanced through drafting, revision, and peer review.

Learning about social and cultural groups is a complex and ethically sensitive process. We explore common qualitative research methods for social and cultural research. We evaluate the utility of such methods for different purposes and contexts, including cross-cultural contexts. We consider common ethical dilemmas in research with human subjects, the ethical responsibilities of researchers, and common techniques for minimizing risks to subjects.

“The past is a foreign country,” wrote L. P. Hartley. Anthropologists and historians alike aim to understand the experiences of others, the past, and its relationship to the present. Sometimes anthropologists and historians work in radically different ways and sometimes their work is indistinguishable. What is the difference between historical anthropology and history—and does it matter? In a core line of inquiry, historical anthropologists have traced the expansion of empires and cultural transformations under colonial pressures. Such investigations yield theoretical insights into the dynamics of systems and agency; the interpretation of signs; power, hegemony, acquiescence, and resistance; racialization and the colonial construction of difference; capital accumulation; representations of time; and ontology, epistemology, and authority. In this course, students have hands-on opportunities to access and analyze digitized and published primary documents using anthropological perspectives.

Students will apply the accumulated knowledge, theory, and methods of the discipline to problem solving outside of the classroom. The Practicum may consist of internship, study abroad, or archaeological or ethnographic field school (consisting of at least 160 hours, completed over at least 4 weeks).

Learning about social and cultural groups is a complex and ethically sensitive process. We explore common qualitative research methods for social and cultural research. We evaluate the utility of such methods for different purposes and contexts, including cross-cultural contexts. We consider common ethical dilemmas in research with human subjects, the ethical responsibilities of researchers, and common techniques for minimizing risks to subjects.