Anthropology

The delicate art of eating has many implications for sustainability. Food production and consumption affect the climate, the natural environment, and the landscape. Food also affects the sustainability of societies and individuals. Both bodily functions and length of life are partly determined by how, what, where, and when we eat. The course gives a broad introduction to the study of food and eating concerning sustainability. The course has an interdisciplinary approach, combining cultural, nutritional, and geographical perspectives. Local field studies are combined with a global outlook, based on literature studies.

This course explores the cultural relationship between museums and identity in London. Long recognized as important sites for reinforcing social, political, and national identities, museums have undergone significant changes since the first public museum opened two hundred years ago. The course draws on the rich resources of London such as the British Museum, National Gallery, Imperial War Museum, Tate Britain, and the Museum of London to consider the role of these institutions both in the past and in the present. Far more than storehouses preserving Britain's cultural heritage, museums can now also be agents of social change, providing a place where identities can be explored, challenged, and reconsidered. How are museums meeting the challenges of a more dynamic global city? This course takes a multidisciplinary approach, engaging with current debates within art, politics, and social sciences.

This course analyzes anthropological contributions to the interpretation of cultural diversity in Spain. It offers a study of fundamental issues of Spanish culture and society in a historical and comparative context and critically evaluates the ethnological and socio-anthropological literature written about Spain and the Spanish. 

This course explores the origin, importance, and expansion of the concept of leisure in capitalist western society and its connection to tourism. Topics include: origins and evolution of the tourism system; tourism in the context of anthropological research; symbolic and experiential aspects of tourist practice; attraction of the destination; contemporary tourism.

Despite being subjected to intense assimilation policies and persecution, European Roma and Gypsy regularly re-emerge with a remarkable revitalizing power. Who are then the Roma and Gypsies, what does it mean from their point of view? Students learn the historical social adaptations of Roma and Gypsy groups in Europe, the United states, and Central European Roma. The course draws on the latest research topics such as Romani European migration, memory building, political mobilization, survival strategies, segregation, and racism. The course newly adopts a field-trip component that complements the lecture and seminar sessions. Students visit a contested memory site of Nazi persecution and participate at a commemoration ritual; travel to a Roma ghetto and study the contours of spatial segregation and its politics; attend a performance of the “theater of the oppressed” and discuss with Roma actors how theatric language helps them express their aspirations. This course challenges mono-causal explanations of Romani society and culture and stimulates students to think about Roma in a critical holistic way that brings into consideration the societies they live in.