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.
Course # (Section)
Title
Day/Times
Instructor
Room
PosTag(s)
Info
AS.001.183 (01)
FYS: What Does It Mean to Be Religious? Creativity, Experience, and the Individual
T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Haeri, Niloofar, Ziad, Homayra
Gilman 413
FYS: What Does It Mean to Be Religious? Creativity, Experience, and the Individual AS.001.183 (01)
What do we mean when we say that something or someone is “religious?” Our First-Year Seminar unpacks this question through a comparative approach, and pays special attention to the ways in which this term has been applied to the study of Islamic cultures and Muslim experience. Through an exploration of the categories of experience, creativity and the individual, we offer a less presumptuous and more open-ended way of imagining the many things it may mean to be religious.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Haeri, Niloofar, Ziad, Homayra
Room: Gilman 413
Status: Open
Seats Available: 12/12
PosTag(s): n/a
AS.010.339 (01)
Sex, Death, and Gender: The Body in Premodern Art, Medicine, and Culture, c. 1300-1600
TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Allsopp, Ben William
Gilman 119
HART-RENBAR, MSCH-HUM
Sex, Death, and Gender: The Body in Premodern Art, Medicine, and Culture, c. 1300-1600 AS.010.339 (01)
To what extent was the body and its depiction a site of contestation, identification, or desire in the Middle Ages and Renaissance? If the body in the West since the 1800s is seen to have been shaped by the rise of photography and film, the institutionalization of biomedicine, and the establishment of techniques of surveyance and mechanization, then how was the body represented, disciplined, and experienced in the preceding centuries? In an age of unprecedented encounter with non-European bodies, what did it mean to describe and categorize bodies by race, region, or religion? These are some of the major questions this class seeks to answer, which is fundamentally interdisciplinary as it draws upon insights and methods from anthropology and the history of medicine and history of science to investigate how the body has been represented and imagined in the visual arts. The bodies of the suffering Christ, the female mystic, the dissected cadaver, the punished criminal, and the non-European ‘Other’ will loom large as we work to problematize notions of a normative body, whether in the premodern world or in the contemporary one. While most readings and lectures will concern the body and its representation in the Christian West during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, students are encouraged to work on a topic of their choosing from any geographical area 1000-1800 CE for their research papers.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Instructor: Allsopp, Ben William
Room: Gilman 119
Status: Open
Seats Available: 2/18
PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR, MSCH-HUM
AS.070.132 (01)
Invitation to Anthropology
T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Procupez, Valeria
Shaffer 304 Ames 218
ARCH-RELATE
Invitation to Anthropology AS.070.132 (01)
This course invites students to explore the intellectual tools anthropology offers for understanding humanity in its multiple manifestations. We will examine anthropological concepts and methods, and engage in critical analysis of a range of topics including language, exchange, class, kinship, race, community, gender and sexuality, magic and religion, and capitalism.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Instructor: Procupez, Valeria
Room: Shaffer 304 Ames 218
Status: Reserved Open
Seats Available: 5/20
PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE
AS.070.132 (02)
Invitation to Anthropology
T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Procupez, Valeria
Shaffer 304 Smokler Center 213
ARCH-RELATE
Invitation to Anthropology AS.070.132 (02)
This course invites students to explore the intellectual tools anthropology offers for understanding humanity in its multiple manifestations. We will examine anthropological concepts and methods, and engage in critical analysis of a range of topics including language, exchange, class, kinship, race, community, gender and sexuality, magic and religion, and capitalism.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Instructor: Procupez, Valeria
Room: Shaffer 304 Smokler Center 213
Status: Reserved Open
Seats Available: 5/20
PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE
AS.070.132 (03)
Invitation to Anthropology
T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Procupez, Valeria
Shaffer 304 Shaffer 202
ARCH-RELATE
Invitation to Anthropology AS.070.132 (03)
This course invites students to explore the intellectual tools anthropology offers for understanding humanity in its multiple manifestations. We will examine anthropological concepts and methods, and engage in critical analysis of a range of topics including language, exchange, class, kinship, race, community, gender and sexuality, magic and religion, and capitalism.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 10:30AM - 11:45AM, Th 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Instructor: Procupez, Valeria
Room: Shaffer 304 Shaffer 202
Status: Reserved Open
Seats Available: 5/20
PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE
AS.070.267 (01)
Culture, Religion and Politics in Iran
W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Haeri, Niloofar
Mergenthaler 426
INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, INST-CP, ISLM-ISLMST
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.
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
Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Staff
Room: Mergenthaler 426
Status: Open
Seats Available: 9/20
PosTag(s): n/a
AS.070.334 (01)
Contemporary Anthropology
T 4:00PM - 6:00PM
Pandian, anand
Ames 218
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. Prerequisite: Students must have completed one Anthropology course previously This course does not apply to Anthropology major or minors towards their minimum department requirement. It counts towards your total credit requirement to degree..
Credits: 1.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: T 4:00PM - 6:00PM
Instructor: Pandian, anand
Room: Ames 218
Status: Open
Seats Available: 7/10
PosTag(s): n/a
AS.070.368 (01)
Law and Infrastructure
M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Das, Veena
Mergenthaler 426
Law and Infrastructure AS.070.368 (01)
Students will learn to read legal judgement and decipher how law is used to make and contest claims over infrastructure.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Das, Veena
Room: Mergenthaler 426
Status: Open
Seats Available: 2/12
PosTag(s): n/a
AS.070.380 (01)
Slumworld: Life in informal Settlements
Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Procupez, Valeria
Mergenthaler 426
INST-GLOBAL, INST-CP
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
Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Procupez, Valeria
Room: Mergenthaler 426
Status: Waitlist Only
Seats Available: 0/15
PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, INST-CP
AS.070.433 (01)
Development without Displacement: Sustainable Design Practicum
W 3:30PM - 7:00PM
Pandian, anand
Shaffer 3
ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR
Development without Displacement: Sustainable Design Practicum AS.070.433 (01)
This year-long course will create a space for students to join in the collective struggle to build equitable and sustainable urban futures in Baltimore. The course is co-taught by community organizer Shashawnda Campbell (South Baltimore Community Land Trust) and anthropologist Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins University). Students will gain first-hand exposure to environmental conditions, community needs, and organizing efforts in south Baltimore, working closely together with community members in developing collaborative and interdisciplinary projects in sustainable design. Team projects will continue in the spring. Class sessions will take place mainly in south Baltimore, and meeting times include transportation to/from the Homewood campus.
Admission by permission of instructor. Apply at this link: https://tinyurl.com/ykjauf84
Credits: 4.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: W 3:30PM - 7:00PM
Instructor: Pandian, anand
Room: Shaffer 3
Status: Approval Required
Seats Available: 6/6
PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR
AS.130.214 (01)
The Origins of Civilization: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Schwartz, Glenn M
Ames 218
The Origins of Civilization: A Cross-Cultural Perspective AS.130.214 (01)
One of the most significant transformations in human history was the “urban revolution” in which cities, writing, and social classes formed for the first time. In this course, we compare five areas where this development occurred: China, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Egypt, and Mesoamerica (Mexico/Guatemala/Honduras/Belize). In each region, we review the physical setting, the archaeological and textual evidence, and the theories advanced to explain the rise (and eventual collapse) of these complex societies.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Instructor: Schwartz, Glenn M
Room: Ames 218
Status: Open
Seats Available: 22/40
PosTag(s): n/a
AS.145.219 (01)
Science Studies and Medical Humanities: Theory and Methods
TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Bayoumi, Soha Hassan
Maryland 217
MSCH-HUM
Science Studies and Medical Humanities: Theory and Methods AS.145.219 (01)
The knowledge and practices of science and medicine are not as self-evident as they may appear. When we observe, what do we see? What counts as evidence? How does evidence become fact? How do facts circulate and what are their effects? Who is included in and excluded from our common-sense notions of science, medicine, and technology? This course will introduce students to central theoretical concerns in Science and Technology Studies and the Medical Humanities, focusing on enduring problematics that animate scholars. In conjunction with examinations of theoretical bases, students will learn to evaluate the methodological tools used in different fields in the humanities to study the production and circulation of scientific knowledge and the structures of medical care and public health. This problem-centered approach will help students understand and apply key concepts and approaches in critical studies of science, technology, and medicine.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Instructor: Bayoumi, Soha Hassan
Room: Maryland 217
Status: Reserved Open
Seats Available: 2/18
PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM
AS.145.360 (01)
Incarceration and Health: Critical Perspectives
Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Sufrin, Carolyn
Shaffer 2
MSCH-HUM
Incarceration and Health: Critical Perspectives AS.145.360 (01)
Can care exist in a space of punishment? Institutions of incarceration are inherently spaces of violence and social control and, in the U.S.’s current context of mass incarceration, racial oppression. Yet prisons, jails, and detention centers are required to provide individuals access to health care. How can we understand this convergence of care for the body and psyche with multiple forms of carceral violence? This course will examine modes of health and health care inside institutions of incarceration as they are situated within broader socio-political contexts that shape society’s over-reliance on incarceration as a means of social and racialized control. Drawing on history, anthropology, sociology, legal theory, critical race studies, and public health, the course will explore the everyday realities inside institutions of incarceration as they relate to suffering and care and how those are connected to policies and processes of subjugation outside the institutions’ walls. Case studies for examining these relationships include pregnancy, COVID-19, addiction, and mental illness behind bars. Students will engage with concepts such as disciplinary power, biopower, carceral and anti-carceral feminism, theories of care, medical abolition, and dual loyalty. While the course will primarily focus on the U.S. context, we will also draw comparisons to non-U.S. settings. Throughout the course we will seek to understand how institutions of incarceration are not, as popularly understood, isolated places “elsewhere,” but implicitly porous with so-called free society—and therefore as exemplars for understanding the connections among health, inequality, and state institutions.
Credits: 3.00
Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Sufrin, Carolyn
Room: Shaffer 2
Status: Waitlist Only
Seats Available: 0/15
PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM
AS.215.406 (01)
Novelist Intellectuals
TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
Seguin, Becquer D
Krieger Laverty
Novelist Intellectuals AS.215.406 (01)
What does a novelist’s op-ed about economics have to do with her literary writing? In what ways does a fiction writer’s essays on the environment inform how we read her novels? What happens when we find the political opinions of a writer objectionable? This undergraduate seminar will consider what the Spanish writer Francisco Ayala termed “novelist intellectuals,” that is, literary writers who actively participate in a society’s public sphere. Considering writers from Madrid to New York, from London to Buenos Aires, we will ask how one should hold a novelist’s fictional and non-fictional writings in the balance and explore ways of reading that allow us to consider the public intellectual side and the aesthetic side of a novelist together.
