Anthropology

After introducing the region with special foci on Tibet and Nepal, this course takes a close look at key anthropological issues such as religion, climate change, and development. It uses the empirical data coming out of the Himalayas as a starting point for thinking about perennial issues in anthropology generally.

This course combines anthropological approaches with interdisciplinary theories to understand experiences of mobilities and immobilities shaped by race, gender, sexuality, citizenship and class.

This course explores the rich anthropological literature on the multifaceted dimensions of self- and personhood across the Asia-Pacific region to collectively reflect on what personhood entails from an array of non-western vantage points. The Asia-Pacific region is home to a range of distinct indigenous intellectual traditions that have developed and interacted for millennia, each with their own ideas of self and personhood. This diverse cultural context provides fertile ground for examining how spirituality, kinship, modernity and technology intersect with individual and collective identities. By engaging discussions and comparative readings across the region, the course navigates the complexities of identity construction in relation to themes like animism, multiple selves, religion, citizenship and colonialism and examine how variedly communities grant personhood to spirits and monsters, robots and artefacts, animals and nature. 

This course covers the history of Egypt from the Middle Kingdom to the end of Pharaonic history. The course focuses on the "official" history of Egypt rather than the cultural/social history that is covered in a separate course. The scope of "official" history includes: the different rulers of Egypt and their contributions to the state in terms of buildings, religious changes and foreign policy, the economy, social organization, and Egypt’s foreign relations. Literary sources are augmented by archaeological evidence. Field trips to archaeological sites are an important component of the course.