Anthropology

The course works with texts on the category of the “person”, and it pursues ideas about the divide, or un-divide, between body and soul in different cultural contexts and historical periods. An ethnographic core of the course is the Brazilian religion Candomblé and its derivatives, and it relies on texts with topics ranging from African ideas about the person to the contemporary Candomblé and further on to the Christian tradition as for instance reflected in Pentecostalism. Texts on Western ideas about body and soul in a historical light with emphasis on European philosophical ideas and Christianity, including ideas about authenticity as elaborated in Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's work, are also included. The course thus provides an opportunity to discuss what Webb Keane has called a “depth ontology,” and in a broader sense how the interiority orientation that has been said to characterize post-Lutheran Christianity relates to ideas about the human body. The course should be of interest to students who intend to work with anthropological approaches to subjectivity with a phenomenological inspired focus on the body, but it also deals with sociality in a perspective that relies on a performance approach. And since religion and ritual are the ethnographic core of the course, it can also be regarded as an advanced course in the anthropology of religion.

This course covers the history of life on earth. The course covers from the very beginning of evolution that ends with beginning of the human race, starting from seven million years ago. From there, we review the path of human evolution and see how the first humans became who we are now.

This course focuses on the anthropological master trope of culture and on the political dimensions of representing culture or cultures. Students consider how anthropological understandings of culture, as well as anthropologists' modes of analyzing and representing it in anthropological work, developed over the 20th century, partially in conversation with other disciplines. The course also analyzes how culture operates as a key idea in the public domain, used by politicians, communities, human rights activists, artists, scientists, museum curators, and others in relation to a wide range of issues and debates when distinctions between "ourselves" and "others" are at stake. Finally, the course examines some activities within the cultural domain (such as music, dance, theater, and verbal artistry) which have a performative dimension, and consider how anthropologists have approached these activities to address questions about structure and agency, embodiment, experience, art and aesthetics, creativity, and power and protest.

In an era of massive influx of migrants and refugees, this course examines a series of key topics related to international immigration and refugee law, and the challenges posed from a legal perspective. The course explores the main legal instruments in place concerning asylum, migration, human smuggling and trafficking, such as the 1951 Refugee Convention (Geneva Convention) and 1967 Protocol or the 2000 Palermo Protocols attached to the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Regional sub-systems, such as the EU legal framework are explored by focusing on themes such as the legal migration, detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, and deportation and criminalization of migration. In order to provide a holistic approach to the examined topics, selected national legislation and case law are explored as well. The course includes field trips to institutions and NGOs (such as the AIRE Centre, Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, Amnesty International UK, the UNHCR, etc) in order to gain valuable insights into the practical dimension of migration and refugee law.

This course provides general knowledge of the fossil evidence for human evolution within a dynamic palaeobiological frame. Students learn about the different hominin taxa, through an analysis of the origin, evolution, and consequences of the major physical and behavioural adaptations of humans. Lectures introduce the different hominins by addressing the key evolutionary milestones associated with human origins such as changes in the type of locomotion, diet, precision grip, body size/proportions, life history pattern, brain size and shape, and the development of language and culture.

This course looks at the ways that people and cultures construct meaning for musics, and the ways they understand and transform those meanings. We look at how we make decisions about music and its production and the kinds of value that we all attach to different kinds of music; the personal, communal, religious, patriotic, emotional and economic roles that music may play in the lives of musicians, composers and listeners; and we consider examples and case studies are drawn from around the globe, encompassing contemporary urban and remote village settings.

This course introduces and discusses key theoretical and thematic developments in the subfield of political anthropology. The course begins by providing a genealogical history of classical political anthropological studies of stateless societies, while situating these foundational studies in relation to relevant themes in political philosophy. It then engages with themes such as state power, national identity, globalization, colonialism, post-colonialism, global capitalism, neo-liberalism, violence and conflict. A crosscutting subject throughout the course is the ways in which political forms and practices are situated in local as well as global contexts, as well as a focus on how anthropology legitimates its own role as a critical discipline in the world outside of academia.

The course examines the field of human mobility by following the trajectories of several interlinked journeys: from the forced movements of refugees into the world of labor migrants, political exiles, and immigrants. These diverse settings are explored through the lens of human mobility, thereby answering a number of key questions: Why do people move? What legal and political regimes govern, allow, and restrict these movements? How are mobility and inequality linked? How are refugees, migrants, immigrants, expats, nomads, and other "moving people" different from one another in practice, and in theory? Combining a close examination of concrete research with discussions of theoretical approaches, the course improves students' understanding of the subject while deepening their theoretical and methodological skills.