ANTH 290 - Special Topics in Anthropology

Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

A discussion of a series of topics of anthropological concern. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2013 topics:

ANTH 290-01: Desire (4). Why do we desire what we desire? In this seminar, we explore the basis, meanings, and consequences of human desire. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we bring anthropological and sociological analyses into conversation with approaches from biology, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. This seminar is discussion- and project-based. Students present readings in class and research the genealogy of a particular desire of their choice, which results in a final paper and presentation. (SS4) Goluboff.

ANTH 290-02: Archaeology of Virginia’s Presidents (4). This course explores the history of archaeological investigations at the homes of four American presidents who hailed from Virginia: George Washington’s Mount Vernon, James Madison’s Montpelier, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Poplar Forest, and James Monroe’s Highland. Archaeologists have conducted excavations at these plantations for many decades, and students learn how archaeological questions and methods have evolved over the years. We read about and visit each of the presidential home places, touring artifact laboratories and holding conversations with research archaeologists. A central question in the course is under what circumstances, as archaeologist James Deetz famously said, historical archaeology can be an expensive way to learn what we already know. Why pursue archaeology at Monticello, for example, when countless primary sources and published studies focus on Thomas Jefferson? What information about these great men, their communities, and their times does archaeology contribute? This course facilitates students’ understanding of the many ways in which archaeology constitutes a unique source of insight into the historic past, including the lives of those best-documented Americans, Virginia’s presidents. (SS4) Gaylord.

Winter 2013 topics:

ANTH 290-01: Medical Anthropology (3). No prerequisites. Despite radical differences in theory and procedure, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases are human cultural universals. This seminar first examines the beliefs and practices that comprise the medical systems found among a wide variety of non-western peoples, then investigates the responses of a number of non-western communities to the introduction of western, biomedical practices. It finally considers such ethical issues as whether or not non-western peoples who supply western doctors and pharmacologists with knowledge of curing agents should be accorded intellectual property rights over this information; in what situations, if any, should western medical personnel impose biomedical treatments on populations; and the surrounding Napoleon Chagnon use of Yanomami Indians as medical trial subjects. Markowitz.

ANTH 290-02: Psychological Anthropology (3). This seminar introduces students to psychological anthropology, the subfield of cultural anthropology that examines the relationship between culture and the individual. The first part of the seminar presents a general overview of psycho-anthropological history, theories, and methodologies. The second half then focuses on one of the most recent orientations of the subfield – ethnopsychology – which studies how non-western peoples categorize, describe, and explain human psychological states and processes, including cognition, emotions, dreams, and mental illness. Markowitz.