This seminar interrogates the numerous ways that Africa, as a concept, has been generative in history, as well as in political and social thought. Although in the long arc of history, the period of European colonialism on the continent was brief, it fundamentally reshaped how we think about Africa as a space and place. Africa has long existed as a crucial “other” in European culture. But how do we think of Africa outside of this limiting history? The idea of Africa has also existed as an important rubric for African scholars to counter such colonial inheritances and for diasporas to re-engage the black Atlantic. The emergence of Pan-Africanism as well as liberation movements across the continent have pushed back against a reading of Africa simply as a site of exploitation, but as home (“Africa for Africans”), space (Afrofuturism), and as a site of radical politics. In this course, we explore the different histories, futures, and potentialities of Africa as an idea, re-sorting its geographies and stories.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Mohamed, Sabine
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/7
• PosTag(s): n/a

The seminar will offer a forum for students to reflect on preliminary field research and think further about problems of ethnographic method. We will proceed in the manner of a workshop for ongoing projects. Open to anthropology graduate students only.

• Days/Times: T 2:00PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

How does language become a site of contestation? From the attention to speech on social media, discrimination and exclusion based on how people sound, the realism of ChatGPT, to debates regarding what constitutes proper and improper language in school textbooks, we seem to increasingly talk about how we talk. How do we study language in these spaces, and amidst contestation and social change? Moving between a number of different contexts, this course explores how language becomes a focal point of agreement and disagreement. Topics include the history of code-switching, language identities around the world, AI and chatbots, indigenous revitalization projects, and how language is thoroughly embedded in our understandings of gender, race, and the concept of the social “other.” Throughout the course, we will read some classic linguistic anthropology texts as well as a contemporary literature, that together provide a foundation for how to think about the role of language in our lives.

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: MacLochlainn, Scott
• Room: Mergenthaler 426
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/7
• PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate students are encouraged to register for the departmental research colloquium in anthropology. The colloquium meets most (but not all) Tuesday afternoons during the semester.

• Days/Times: T 4:00PM - 6:00PM
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room: Mergenthaler 426
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Pairing classics in the anthropology of religion (e.g. Durkheim, Weber, Turner, Asad) with contemporary writings (ethnography, literature), this course will explore the jagged edge of religious self-making, experience and expression and its intersections with the state, capital and nature.

• Days/Times: M 8:45AM - 10:45AM
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room: Mergenthaler 426
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

The seminar will offer a forum for students to discuss research projects, prepare grant proposals and think further about issues of ethnographic methodology and writing. Open to Anthropology graduate students only.

• Days/Times: T 10:30AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: MacLochlainn, Scott
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course we will engage classical texts from the anthropological archives and explore debates and contemporary salience.

• Days/Times: Th 10:30AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: Mohamed, Sabine
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Angelini, Alessandro
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Das, Veena
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Poole, Debbie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Haeri, Niloofar
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Pandian, anand
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Cervone, Emma
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Obarrio, Juan M
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room:  
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Degani, Michael
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Pandian, anand
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Das, Veena
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Governing health explores the vital relationship between governance and health. The class interrogates how the stratification and management of populations are linked with the diagnoses, categories, and inequities that make up our contemporary health landscape. We will explore how the concept of governance troubles our understandings of key concepts in medical anthropology like care, inequality, and the state. Moving from the level of the population to the individual body, from state institutions to the four walls of the clinic, this course traces governance as it generates and degenerates health.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Ziv, Tali R
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

The household appears as commonsensical to us. It is where people, most often those of a family, reside together, sharing its resources, labor and collective fate. However, anthropologists have been arguing against this commonsense since it emerged in the 1950s. Yet the household is back again in current policy discussions as being most vulnerable to the problems associated with temperature extremes, food insecurity, exacerbated disease, enhanced competition and political violence. How might anthropological debates and controversies relating to households and householding as an activity within the context of war, famine and migration, provide important insights into today’s urgencies?

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course will consist of close reading of anthropological and philosophical texts to trace some important aspects of the underlying presuppositions of social theory. We will try to see how regions generate both data and theory; and also see how some abiding concerns around the relation between structural formations and formations of subjects are expressed in classical and current anthropological thought.

• Days/Times: M 10:00AM - 12:00PM
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 13/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate students are encouraged to register for the departmental research colloquium in anthropology. The colloquium meets most (but not all) Tuesday afternoons during the semester.

• Days/Times: T 4:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room: Maryland 217
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

How does the idea of a form of life as the mutual absorption of the social and the natural inform anthropological conceptions of the human? Taking the status of the example in both Wittgenstein and Austin, and how it bears on conceptual innovation, this course offers a reading of primary texts from philosophy and anthropology on these issues. Open to advanced undergraduates with permission from the instructor.

• Days/Times: F 11:00AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Das, Veena
• Room: Mergenthaler 439
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is open to anthropology graduate students only and is to be run on a workshop model. It is to help those students writing their regional essay for the comprehensive exams to acquire expertise in regional debates and literature relevant to their field research. Our understanding of regions is one of cross-cutting concepts and questions rather than geographical framings alone. After identifying a concept or question, each student will create an annotated bibliography, trace the shape of arguments as they emerge within the readings, create an outline and work toward a draft of the final essay.

• Days/Times: W 1:00PM - 3:00PM
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda; Mohamed, Sabine
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/6
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Das, Veena
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Lans, Aja Marie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Poole, Debbie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Haeri, Niloofar
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Pandian, anand
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Pandian, anand
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Han, Clara
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Das, Veena
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Haeri, Niloofar
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Staff
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Lans, Aja Marie
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Khan, Naveeda
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

An intensive research seminar for graduate students currently conducting research on theories, methodologies, and histories of inter-Asian movements and networks. Instructor permission required.

• Days/Times: T 10:00AM - 12:00PM
• Instructor: Han, Clara; Kim, Yumi
• Room: Gilman 305
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Humanists possess a reservoir of scholarly abilities that prime them for contributing to debates well beyond the academy. This semester-long workshop will introduce graduate students to the basics of writing for such broad audience. Each session will be organized around particular topics in public humanities writing, including the pitching, writing, editing, and publishing processes of newspapers, magazines, and online outlets. We will also consider the forms of writing that most allow scholars to draw from their academic training and research: reviews, personal essays, op-eds, interviews, and profiles. Throughout the course we will see how the interdisciplinarity, comparativism, and multilingualism of fields from across the humanities can be helpful for reaching wide audiences. Beyond the nuts and bolts of getting started in so-called “public” writing, this course aspires to teach graduate students how to combine quality writing with academic knowledge, scholarly analysis with a general intellectual readership—and, ultimately, make academic knowledge a public good. Taught in English.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 3:30PM
• Instructor: Seguin, Becquer D
• Room: Gilman 479
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 14/15
• PosTag(s): n/a