Undergraduate Courses

The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at sis.jhu.edu/classes.

Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Race and Violence
AS.070.234 (11)

Decades of scholarship has shown race to be a social construct with histories of interactions across racial groups, making boundaries between groups porous, tenuous, and dubious. What then is productive of preoccupations with racial classifications? In this course, we will study how racial categorizations enable violence in imperial, colonial, and democratic projects. How have various discursive, medical, and scientific regimes buttressed such projects? We will engage with the work of anthropologists, philosophers, and legal scholars to investigate these questions in a range of contexts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 30/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Mini-Term: Anthropology of the City
AS.070.240 (71)

How might we better understand the cities we live in? In this course, we will study urbanization, poverty, environmental challenges, and race through academic scholarship, museum visits, and media. Not only will we try to parse out what is distinctive of Baltimore, we will also engage with contemporary issues facing cities with an eye towards the future.

  • Credits: 1.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 30/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.070.234 (11)Race and ViolenceMWF 9:00AM - 12:15PMBanahi, MariamMergenthaler 439
AS.070.240 (71)Mini-Term: Anthropology of the CityMTWThF 1:00PM - 2:45PMBanahi, MariamMergenthaler 439

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Freshman Seminar Religion and Media
AS.070.124 (02)

This course examines the ways in which conventional and non-conventional media recreate or transform religious experience in modern life. Increasingly, religion is experienced not only in sacred spaces and as ritual prescriptions, but also through the information that is disseminated through radio, TV, and the Internet, as well as in consumer culture and political speeches. Beginning with this proposition that our ideas about religion are shaped not only by historical and scriptural legacies, but as well as by material practices and other sundry conditions of mediation, of which our present times supply many, we will reexamines how questions of revelation, belief, spirituality, ethereality, and ritual practice are constituted by these irreducible ways, thus complicating the neat separation of religion and secularism, or, for that matter, religion and culture.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 18/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-IR

Invitation to Anthropology
AS.070.132 (02)

That the world is rapidly changing is so evident as to seem cliché to recognize it. But the question what it then means to be human requires continual investigation. This course introduces students to anthropology as a field of research and reflection. Anthropology offers conceptual tools and an ethical groundwork for understanding the world as it is and as it is becoming.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/20
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI

Maps and Mapping
AS.070.154 (01)

This course explores maps as cultural documents and ethnographic sites. Students will learn how cultural understandings of space, time, and the visible world shape cartographic conventions. Through mapping exercises we will explore how ethnographer can use maps to theorize the nature of political, cultural, and economic life.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Invitation to Anthropology
AS.070.132 (01)

That the world is rapidly changing is so evident as to seem cliché to recognize it. But the question what it then means to be human requires continual investigation. This course introduces students to anthropology as a field of research and reflection. Anthropology offers conceptual tools and an ethical groundwork for understanding the world as it is and as it is becoming.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/20
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI

Cityness: Anthropology of the Urban Experience
AS.070.221 (01)

This course is an introduction to urban anthropology through the study of diverse "urban experiences," to explore how they are shaped by power relations as well as resistance. We will read about crowds and anonymity, finance and poverty, media and public space to understand how they change through the evolution of technology, shifts in capital investment and flows of migration. We will examine the scope and limitations of classical (Western) notions of foundational studies city life. We will also explore how the new notion of "cityness" captures better the variety of affects and dynamics of contemporary urban everyday life.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/25
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Making of Minority in South Asia
AS.070.212 (01)

This area studies course on modern South Asia will interrogate conceptions of nation, community, tradition and belonging across the region from the lens of minority groups, in order to equip students with the analytical tools with which to interrogate the politics of inclusion and exclusion.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-CP

Freshman Seminar: Climate Change - Treaties and Politics
AS.070.124 (01)

With a focus on the United Nations organized Conference of Parties that negotiates global climate change policy, this course will ask, how are international environmental agreements made? To what extent are they responsive to scientific knowledge and empirical realities? What possibilities and exclusions are produced by this process for politics and activism? An important task will be to de-center the U.S. from these discussions to consider the issue from the perspective of the Global South, even as we interrogate what such a perspective means. We will draw on scientific reports, policy documents, recordings of negotiations and activist protests, media and expert commentaries and literary works to navigate this bed of thorns.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-IR

Anthropology of Food
AS.070.140 (01)

This introductory course investigates what we eat and, as a consequence, who we are. By taking a cross-cultural perspective, students will examine the politics of food production, the values associated with food preparation, and the material and social dynamics of food consumption. Through readings, films, field trips, demonstrations, and tastings, the course offers an interdisciplinary and dynamic pedagogical approach to analyzing cooking and eating—activities central to daily life and social forms more broadly. Local- and global-level issues will be addressed as students explore histories, economics, social issues, and identity formation related to food.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Invitation to Anthropology
AS.070.132 (04)

That the world is rapidly changing is so evident as to seem cliché to recognize it. But the question what it then means to be human requires continual investigation. This course introduces students to anthropology as a field of research and reflection. Anthropology offers conceptual tools and an ethical groundwork for understanding the world as it is and as it is becoming.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/20
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI

Invitation to Anthropology
AS.070.132 (03)

That the world is rapidly changing is so evident as to seem cliché to recognize it. But the question what it then means to be human requires continual investigation. This course introduces students to anthropology as a field of research and reflection. Anthropology offers conceptual tools and an ethical groundwork for understanding the world as it is and as it is becoming.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/20
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI

Culture, Religion and Politics in Iran
AS.070.267 (01)

This is an introductory course for those interseted in gaining basic knowledge about contemporary Iran. The focus will be on culture and religion and the ways they in which they become interwoven into different kinds of political stakes.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/19
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, INST-CP, ISLM-ISLMST

Ethnographies
AS.070.273 (01)

What does it mean to translate the field onto the page? This course explores the craft of ethnography and its relationship to anthropological knowledge. Reading a series of classic and contemporary works, and engaging in our own writing experiments, we attend to the knotty problem of rendering lived experience, attending to narrative, voice, structure, and the relationship between description and analysis.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 14/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Social Ecology
AS.070.376 (01)

This course will explore social and cultural dimensions of contemporary ecological problems, thinking between ecological anthropology, environmental philosophy, and activist literature and media. It will be taught as a community-based learning course in partnership with the Center for Social Concern and a Baltimore environmental organization. Coursework will be organized on a collaborative studio basis and a project-based approach. Recommended Course Background: One prior course in either Anthropology or Environmental Studies.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, CSC-CE

Conflict and Security in a Global World
AS.070.295 (01)

Students will be introduced to problems of global governance in the context of transnational conflicts, changing nature of war, new epidemics and pandemics, and the threats of planetary extinction. What are the ways security is imagined and what kinds of political passions are mobilized for security of people versus security of states.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/25
  • PosTag(s): INST-IR

Conflict and Security in a Global World
AS.070.295 (02)

Students will be introduced to problems of global governance in the context of transnational conflicts, changing nature of war, new epidemics and pandemics, and the threats of planetary extinction. What are the ways security is imagined and what kinds of political passions are mobilized for security of people versus security of states.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/25
  • PosTag(s): INST-IR

Enthnographic Perspectives on Brazil
AS.070.336 (01)

This seminar offers an examination of Brazilian culture and politics through close readings of classic and contemporary ethnography. The course will track how anthropologists have approached the complexities and contradictions of Brazilian society. And, conversely, we investigate how studies in Brazil have prompted challenges to and generated innovations in anthropological thought.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-CP

Home and Belonging
AS.070.281 (01)

In this course we will examine different conceptions and experiences of "home" through studies of domesticity, kinship and household in diverse cultural settings. Reading anthropological analysis of urban built environment and locality, we will explore the notions of home and homeland, as realms of care, intimacy and belonging yet also as sites of subjection, discrimination and gender/racial inequality.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 30/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Community and Political Mobilization in Latin America
AS.070.370 (01)

This class explores the politics of migration, territory, environment and labor. Readings and class discussions will draw on anthropological studies of peasant, indigenous, and popular mobilizations in contemporary Latin America.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 30/30
  • PosTag(s): INST-CP

Contemporary Anthropology
AS.070.334 (01)

Students are invited to attend, for credit, the departmental research colloquium in anthropology. The colloquium meets most (but not all) Tuesday afternoons during the semester. Students are expected to attend and listen, encouraged to ask questions when they wish, and to write one brief reflection on contemporary trends in the field, based on what they have observed during these sessions.

  • Credits: 1.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Korean War
AS.070.359 (01)

This course takes the Korean War as a site to both explore: 1) contemporary historical and political transformations in East Asia and globally and 2) the ways in which violence, catastrophic loss, and separation are woven into everyday life. It will explore the Korean War through film, fiction, historiography, and draw on comparative materials in anthropology

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/30
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST

Romanticism and Anthropology
AS.070.487 (01)

The word "romantic" has long carried negative connotations within anthropology meaning the tendency to idealize, exoticize, or seek out the irrational. Instead, through a focus on the themes of magic, art, myth, nature and creativity, we suggest that romantic philosophy has offered and continues to offer much of interest for contemporary anthropology. Drawing on select readings in philosophy and anthropology, we will explore the suppressed romantic legacy of anthropology. This is an undergraduate and graduate combined course. Recommended Course Background: Undergraduates have to have taken at least one anthropology course (any level) to register. Or else they need the permission of the instructor.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 6/7
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Normal and Pathological
AS.070.424 (01)

This seminar explores the shifting lines of the normal and the pathological and the constitution of disease in the complex of medicine, public health, and the social. Readings include the works of Canguilhem and Foucault, historical monographs and ethnographies. Students will have the opportunity to develop substantial research or review papers throughout the course of the seminar.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 4/7
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Populism
AS.215.412 (01)

What do Hugo Chávez, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump have in common? According to many from across the political spectrum, they are all populists. But what is populism, exactly, and how can it describe such disparate phenomena as left-wing social movements, xenophobic anti-immigrant policies, and economic redistribution? This advanced seminar will examine the history, culture, and political theory of populism. We will pay special attention to the resurgence of populism after the Great Recession and examine a number of cases from Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/16
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, INST-PT

Literature of the Great Recession
AS.215.417 (01)

The Great Recession—sometimes called the financial crisis or the economic crisis of 2008—brought financial markets to a halt and created significant political turmoil across the North Atlantic. But its impact on culture, and literature especially, has often been ignored. This seminar will travel across Europe, from Dublin to Madrid, from London to Reykjavík in order to examine how literature has registered this most recent economic crisis. We will focus on how crisis is narrated and the ways in which literary works have managed to provide a voice for marginalized social, economic, and political demands.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/16
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, INST-ECON

Slumworld: Life in informal Settlements
AS.070.380 (01)

One quarter of the planet's urban population lives today in slums, shantytowns, favelas, chawls, colonias and other forms of rudimentary settlements (according to UN Habitat). Despite their prevalence throughout the world, these places are still depicted as spaces of informality and abjection, rather than as sites of emergence of innovative -even if disadvantaged-, makeshift ways of producing the city. This course will combine ethnographic and geographical literature, as well as works of fiction and film to explore the lives of squatters and slum-dwellers in many regions of the world and examine in what way their practices, forms of dwelling, sociality, conflict and cooperation are constitutive of the urban experience.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, INST-CP

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.070.124 (02)Freshman Seminar Religion and MediaMW 4:30PM - 5:45PMBagaria, SwayamMergenthaler 426INST-IR
AS.070.132 (02)Invitation to AnthropologyW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, M 1:30PM - 2:45PMAngelini, AlessandroRemsen Hall 1ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI
AS.070.154 (01)Maps and MappingTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMProcupez, ValeriaBloomberg 178
AS.070.132 (01)Invitation to AnthropologyW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, M 1:30PM - 2:45PMAngelini, AlessandroRemsen Hall 1ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI
AS.070.221 (01)Cityness: Anthropology of the Urban ExperienceTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMProcupez, ValeriaMergenthaler 426
AS.070.212 (01)Making of Minority in South AsiaTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMAsif, Ghazal Ghazal AsifMergenthaler 426INST-CP
AS.070.124 (01)Freshman Seminar: Climate Change - Treaties and PoliticsT 1:30PM - 4:00PMKhan, NaveedaMergenthaler 439INST-IR
AS.070.140 (01)Anthropology of FoodTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMLabruto, NicoleGilman 17
AS.070.132 (04)Invitation to AnthropologyW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, M 1:30PM - 2:45PMAngelini, AlessandroRemsen Hall 1ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI
AS.070.132 (03)Invitation to AnthropologyW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, M 1:30PM - 2:45PMAngelini, AlessandroRemsen Hall 1ARCH-RELATE, GECS-SOCSCI
AS.070.267 (01)Culture, Religion and Politics in IranTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMHaeri, NiloofarMergenthaler 426INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, INST-CP, ISLM-ISLMST
AS.070.273 (01)EthnographiesM 1:30PM - 4:00PMOzden-schilling, ThomasMergenthaler 426
AS.070.376 (01)Social EcologyTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMPandian, AnandMergenthaler 439ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, CSC-CE
AS.070.295 (01)Conflict and Security in a Global WorldT 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AMDas, VeenaAmes 234INST-IR
AS.070.295 (02)Conflict and Security in a Global WorldT 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AMDas, VeenaAmes 234INST-IR
AS.070.336 (01)Enthnographic Perspectives on BrazilTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMAngelini, AlessandroMergenthaler 426INST-CP
AS.070.281 (01)Home and BelongingTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMProcupez, Valeria 
AS.070.370 (01)Community and Political Mobilization in Latin AmericaT 1:30PM - 4:00PMPoole, Deborah, Procupez, ValeriaMergenthaler 426INST-CP
AS.070.334 (01)Contemporary AnthropologyT 4:00PM - 6:00PMPandian, AnandMergenthaler 439
AS.070.359 (01)Korean WarW 1:30PM - 4:00PMHan, ClaraKrieger 180INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST
AS.070.487 (01)Romanticism and AnthropologyW 1:30PM - 4:00PMKhan, NaveedaMergenthaler 439
AS.070.424 (01)Normal and PathologicalT 1:30PM - 4:00PMGreene, Jeremy, Han, ClaraMergenthaler 431
AS.215.412 (01)PopulismT 3:00PM - 5:30PMSeguin, Becquer DGilman 186INST-GLOBAL, INST-PT
AS.215.417 (01)Literature of the Great RecessionM 3:00PM - 5:30PMSeguin, Becquer DBloomberg 176GRLL-ENGL, INST-ECON
AS.070.380 (01)Slumworld: Life in informal SettlementsTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMProcupez, Valeria INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, INST-CP