Anthropology

With contributions from fields like cultural history and theory, social and cultural anthropology, design, arts and media studies, the lecture series "Dis/Entangling material futures" renders visible the multiple entanglements and disentanglement associated with the making and unmaking of material futures. Contributions also highlight a variety of methodological approaches, knowledge constellations, and modes of critique emerging at the intersections of the humanities, social sciences, arts, design, and curatorial practices. They require addressing what is at stake when conducting material research, from inside as well as outside of established institutions (academic or otherwise).

The course provides an overview of Africa's historical, cultural, and societal development. Themes like precolonial societies and livelihoods, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, independence, and postcolonial transformations are described with the help of anthropological, archaeological, and historical approaches and insights. Teaching is composed of lectures, seminars, group exercises, film screenings, and study visits.

This course is an introduction to social anthropology - taking as its central theme and organizing structure the life course from birth to death, conceived in very broad terms. As well as encompassing life crisis moments and rituals of birth, marriage, and death, the course includes such themes as gender, personhood, work and making a living, the house, consumption and exchange, health, and the body. It begins with a brief consideration of what anthropologists do; thinking about participant observation and fieldwork; and it ends with a brief discussion of how anthropological subjects are placed - and place themselves - in history.

This is a special studies course with projects arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific topics of study vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. The number of units varies with the student's project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student's special study project form.

This course introduces students to quantitative text analysis, reviews selected methods falling within this category of approaches, and illustrates their implementation in the statistical programming language R. It covers the origins of quantitative approaches to studying text and how they complement traditional, qualitative methodologies. Using recent peer-reviewed publications, the course explores how these methodological approaches can be used to answer sociological questions and, in hands-on lab session, students implement selected techniques in R.