Anthropology

This course explores modern Middle East and North Africa and the societies and cultures through regionally and historically focused investigations. It continues with an exploration of historical and contemporary European and Western interventions and perspectives on the Middle East, and how these have impacted the region.

This course examines musical phenomena from an anthropological perspective. From this perspective, music is approached as a social practice and symbolic production, as a performance that produces meanings and agency for musicians and listeners. Present in all societies, music tends to be a collective and ritualized activity through which its practitioners - including listeners - reaffirm shared values ​​and a sense of belonging to local, national, and transnational communities or social groups. At the end of the course, students are expected to 1: improve their ability to deal with the experience of musical otherness and, 2: understand the implications of the cultural, social, and political context in defining the different concepts of music and meanings that are collectively attributed to it.

This course examines the field of forensic anthropology – a scientific discipline that involves the application of methods from biological anthropology and archaeology to the identification, recovery, and analysis of skeletal remains from crime scenes, mass disasters, and unexplained death. Through lectures and in-class assignments, students will learn about the methods for recognizing and recovering evidence that allows for the determination of time since death, manner and cause of death, and the identification of individuals.

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

This course demonstrates how anthropologists have provided insights into the diverse ways in which violence and security are enacted, performed, experienced, and defined across historical trajectories and geographical localities. To unpack the anthropological approach, this course rests on three key pillars. The first is the variety of ways in which violence and security are analyzed and identified. Rather than presenting a singular approach to analyzing these themes, this course emphasizes multiplicity and diversity. To do so, the physical, structural, and symbolic forms of violence to show how divergent forms of violence and (in)security shape everyday social realities are examined. Various conceptual tools are used to analyze these diverse manifestations and the prominent ethical and methodological questions. The second pillar is the simultaneous distinction and interconnection between violence and security: although they are often mutually constitutive, they also operate as distinct subjects of analysis. The third is the politicization of both violence and security and the inherent processes of exclusion and boundary making. To define something as violence is a political act. Furthermore, security for one often entails insecurity for another and is thus always a political affair. How are notions of membership defined and enacted and what type of imaginaries of security are produced?  General themes include colonial and postcolonial violence and rupture; policing and security provision; urban violence and crime; war and militarization; surveillance, and the complex relations between perpetrators and victims of violence. Special attention is paid to the ethnographic study and representation of these issues. Entry requirements: All students must have completed at least 45 ECTS of their introductory bachelor year.

This course explores traditional crafts in Ireland from Aran knitting to weaving and lace-making and their associated processes, symbolism and significance. It examines the development of vernacular fashion, traditions associated with clothing, and the influence of traditional Irish craft and clothing internationally. Ideas of sustainability in terms of clothing and craft are also explored as well as their use in subsistence and within the vernacular economy.

This course provides knowledge of human growth and development as biological processes that result in the transformation of individuals over time, from gestation to death, accompanied by a permanent genetic-environmental interaction. All of this, integrating the relevance of nutrition in the understanding of these processes of change, fundamental for bio anthropological analysis, both of ancient remains and of current populations.

This course examines the processes through which meanings of life are formulated and maintained in day-to-day life in societies past and present; it also explores life meaning as a way of comprehending the evolution of human societies. The course uses the concept of "meanings of life" as a window into the anthropological understanding of cultural difference and cultural evolution. 

The contemporary world is facing many challenges in promoting peace, justice and reconciliation, ranging from armed conflicts to social inequality, from environmental degradation to interfaith tensions. These complex challenges continue to afflict many parts of the globe. In this context, some fundamental questions may be asked: how do we define life?; What does it mean to live a life of integrity?; How does my life relate to just, sustainable and inclusive peace?; How do the ideas for making the world more just and peaceful shape our own lives and careers of purpose and vice versa? Seeking to explore these questions deeply, this course presents foundational theories behind peace and social justice and applies these concepts to specific fields of inquiry and practice, including: colonization, violence, oppression, racism, sexism, human trafficking, poverty, climate change and complex issues of peacebuilding, humanitarian aid and development. Various strategies and attempts to create social change for the greater good through different individual and organizational platforms are analyzed and assessed too. Throughout the course, students gain an understanding of the strengths and constraints on theory and practice in the context of the creation of a culture of “human flourishing”, particularly in post-conflict societies, and engage in a variety of topics with self-reflective approach.

This course offers a broad introduction and critical review of recent trends in the field of digital humanities, with particular attention paid to applications relevant for the study of premodern societies (history, archaeology, anthropology, theology, museum studies). The course is divided into four broad themes – text, image, place, and object – highlighting an extensive interdisciplinary range of evidence that both sits within students' fields of study and encourages them to create connections with parallel avenues of scholarship. Following these themes, the course introduces cutting edge tools, successful research projects, and recent scholarship that have leveraged digital advances to fundamentally reshape our understanding of the past. Simultaneously, it engages with more complex topics concerning the ethical and methodological implications of the “Digital Turn” in humanistic studies and its implication for more traditional modes of enquiry. As a whole, this course prepares students to both more substantively engage with digital methodologies and their potential for novel research in religious studies, broadly defined. The course provides hands-on experience developing fundamental skills in digital humanistic scholarship, developing a “Digital Toolbox” that allows students to both undertake digital scholarship in their own studies and to critically engage with ongoing trends and projects relevant to their own research. These tools include, but are not limited to, introductions to GIS, database development, 3D modeling, text encoding, large language models, network modeling, and semantic modeling. Special attention is paid to ongoing research at the University of Copenhagen, highlighting the fundamental skills and research objectives of the diverse research programs taking place throughout the university. The Faculty of Theology, in particular, hosts several compelling case studies for the development and implementation of digital humanities and offers a behind-the-scenes look at these methods in action.