Anthropology

This course provides a study of cultural anthropology: the anthropological definition of culture, approaches to the study of society from a cultural perspective, and ethnographic methods for cultural studies. Other topics covered include: conventions of social order, rituals, and myths; schools of contemporary anthropology from a cultural perspective; relationship between ethnomethodology and cultural studies; anthropological analysis of micro-rituals as a cultural analysis of daily life; case studies as a method for cultural studies.

This course examines changing contours of human life including the experiences of health and illness and conceptions of life and death in relation to the development, production, and use of new or emerging technology. Moreover, looking into the entanglement of biomedical knowledge, policy, and technology in everyday life, it explores how life itself is made into an object of technological intervention. The course furthermore explores how this process, rather than simply offering solutions to given problems, also might reshape our bodily experiences of and relations with the world while engendering novel ethical and cultural problems for us to deal with. This course engages in extensive reading, contemplation, and discussion of literature in and around medical anthropology and science and technology. The format, with interactive class activities and oral and written assignments requires active participation.

This course examines key social challenges the world is grappling with such as power and inequality, human security, human mobility, human rights, and globalization. It explores the lived experience of people and cultures around the world and how they make meaning.

This course introduces students to the rich museum culture of London. Through lectures, seminars, and visits to museums such as the British Museum, National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Museum of London students explore how museums create histories of art, society, and national identity. The course draws on the approaches of several disciplines – art, social, and cultural history, anthropology, social geography, and critical theory – to interrogate the ways that museums reflect and shape what we know and how we see. Exploring a selection of sites dating from the eighteenth century to the present day, the course considers the historical context in which these museums came about, the nature of their collections, and debates on current presentation, considering issues of museology, curatorial practice, and the construction of knowledge.