Class of 2017

Here are two new courses in ANTH this fall:

** ANTH297 Pure Filth: Anthropology in a World of Waste (Doherty, Jacob) This course examines what the world looks like from the vantage point of its diverse waste streams. Waste is all around us. A product of everyday life, of economic activity, of regimes of bodily care and hygiene, waste is an inescapable aspect of contemporary culture and a central element in the constitution of cultural difference. Taking up classic and contemporary anthropological approaches to waste, the course asks where is “away” when we throw things away? How does the production, disposal, and management of waste contribute to the construction of social differences of race, class, and gender? Waste has also captured the imagination of contemporary artists, film-makers, journalists, activists, and humanitarians, becoming the subject of Oscar-winning films and large scale urban reforms. The course explores case stories–from the waste pickers in Rio de Janeiro and Delhi, to Food Not Bombs activists in New York, from Environmental Justice in the US South, to the Pacific garbage patch, from the sewers of 19th-century London to wastelands at the edge of empires–to animate the core concepts of discard studies: disposability, pollution, body-burdens, and externalities. Through readings, films, and independent research, students will explore and learn to critically analyze the diverse and dramatic worlds of waste. **

ANTH316 Critical Global Health (Worthington, Nancy Hayden) What does it mean to approach global health as not an applied science but an ethnographic object? This course will explore this question by bringing critical, social science perspectives to bear on global health issues and interventions. It covers three areas of scholarship. First, we will examine the processes by which social inequalities produce patterns of health and disease in globalizing contexts. This will be followed by an interrogation of the term “global health,” in which we will trace its emergence as a discourse and enterprise and unpack its contested meanings. While some view global health as a clinical practice, others conceptualize it as a business, security concern, charitable duty, or human right; yet another camp probes the term’s ideological construction. We will consider how such vantage points are underpinned by cultural assumptions and ethical agendas that, in turn, can determine how, and to whom, care is delivered. As a third area of inquiry, we will investigate the implications and unintended effects of doing global health by probing such questions as, When are good intentions not good enough? How useful is biomedicine for alleviating locally-defined problems? Under what conditions does global health exacerbate the social inequalities it seeks to overcome?

Here are two new GOVT courses being offered this fall semester:

GOVT345    Citizenship and Immigration    Prof. Liza Williams  Tues & Thurs, 1:20 – 2:40 PM  Allbritton 103 This course examines the concept of citizenship and explores its connection to immigration, ideas of membership, political rights, and processes of incorporation as well as integration. Some of the core questions we will pursue include: What responsibilities do liberal democracies have to immigrants? How should we conceive of citizenship? Should we think of citizenship as a formal political and legal status? As an entitlement to a set of rights? As active participation in self-governance? As an identity? Or, something else entirely? How have racial, ethnic, gender, and class identities and hierarchies shaped the access people have to rights and formal membership? Finally, we will evaluate how political thinkers have argued for the inclusion and exclusion of immigrants into the political community. Most of our readings for the term will be drawn from legal theorists and political philosophers; we will also read some work by historians, political scientists, and sociologists for historical context and background.

GOVT383-01    Democracy and Development in India    Prof. Susan Ostermann   Tuesdays, 7:10 – 10:00 PM, PAC 422 Much has been written and said about the link between democracy and religious/ethnic fragmentation. When India gained independence from British Rule in 1947, many observed that the likelihood of the new country remaining democratic was limited. Yet, democracy has thrived in India for almost 70 years. Other South Asian countries have recently followed suit. How do countries with multiple social, economic, ethnic, and linguistic cleavages manage democracy and what is the connection between their successes (and failures) in this area and the persistence of widespread poverty? This course focuses on the “politics of accommodation” in South Asia, examining institutions, elite bargaining, the deployment of force, accommodation of regional leaders and their political aspirations, and the constant reconfiguration of caste, party, and religious alliances to explain why Indian politics in particular is often dominated by social accommodation rather than the amelioration of poverty. In addition to focusing on India, we will examine a number of comparative cases from elsewhere in South Asia.