Anthropology

This course presents and explores the historical and theoretical foundations of cultural studies, from the inception of the movement in Britain at the turn of the 1960s (around the University of Birmingham) to their development and their dissemination in the whole English-speaking world in the following decades. The seminar starts with a presentation of the general theoretical and practical preoccupations of the main founders of cultural studies in the broader context of the contestation of the dominant paradigm of elitist and highbrow notions of literature and culture. Figures such as Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, E. P. Thompson and others are studied through their key texts and interventions. Then their legacy and influence in the United States and the Caribbean is examined as well as the concurrent redefinition and diversification of analytical paradigms (gender studies, postcolonial studies, queer studies, etc.).

This is a tutorial course that supports the lecture course HERITAGE AND MUSEOLOGY. It focuses on the process of museum exhibits and their contents.

This course seeks to place the study of HIV/AIDS in Africa in a medical anthropological perspective, enabling students to understand and analyze how the AIDS epidemic in Africa is part of broader societal developments, but also how the AIDS epidemic has affected broader societal development in Africa. By contextualizing AIDS in people's everyday lives, the course studies how people live and die with the disease and in doing so, it critically examines public health interventions. Students are encouraged to locate AIDS historically, locating interventions addressed to combat its spread within a specific political and ideological timeframe. While it still uses several readings from other disciplines than medical anthropology, students must take note that this is not an interdisciplinary course, its core approach forms medical anthropology. The course still includes reflection on the value of the various knowledge that different disciplines produce about AIDS in Africa. Students are expected to apply their acquired knowledge and insights from literature and class, to contemporary case-studies that highlight the complexity of AIDS, and to identify the ways anthropological research can contribute to public health interventions designed to combat the disease. Students also read one ethnography of choice on AIDS in Africa and write a review of this ethnography.

In this course we will first take stock of the current anthropological theories of value in contemporary anthropology. After a critical appraisal of such theories, we will explore what an anthropological theory of value might actually look like. After a brief exploration of Kluckhohn’s “values project”, the formalist-substantivist arguments, and debates about the nature of the social role of money, up to the recent neoliberal resurgence in anthropological theory, we’ll be looking at the contrasting legacies of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss. Looking at these as two very different approaches to many of the same problems will provide enormous opportunities for creative synthesis. The course will include some fairly extended case studies (of Tiv fetishism, wampum, and anthropological studies of consumption), to investigate how useful all this theory can actually be in throwing new light on familiar problems.

This course introduces aspects related to Scandinavian culture and society, with a particular focus on the emergence of modern society–not least the welfare state. This is done by reading novels, watching movies, listening to music and discussing architecture, politics, health issues and the impact of democracy on societal changes. Emphasis is placed on certain key periods in order to provide students with an understanding of the common features in the development of the cultural and social systems found in Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland). The course begins by examining Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. Influences from, in particular, France, Germany, England and the USA are discussed, as is the development of the national characteristics particular to the various countries of Scandinavia. There is a special focus on the development of democracy from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Examples are given of this historical process with literature, art, music, theatre, film, and the history of ideas. The course is of an interdisciplinary nature.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course is intended for students who have a strong background in the theory of anthropology. The course focuses on the history and the core themes of the scientific debate concerning historical anthropology and ethnohistory, underscoring the importance of a diachronic dimension in anthropological thinking. The course centers on basic knowledge of methods and theory of historical anthropology and prepares students for anthropological readings of various types of historical sources. The topic for the Spring 2018 semester is: writing, history, and memory in Mesoamerica The first part of the course is devoted to the discussion of the debates concerning the theoretical and methodological statutes of historical anthropology, especially those that have tackled the topic of non-Western historicity's and their relationships with various memory-recording modes. The lectures then focus on the pre-colonial Mesoamerican writing systems and the main indigenous historiographic genres, highlighting their forms as well as their political and ideological functions. Subsequently the course analyzes the main changes introduced by European colonization and its historiographic genres – Indigenous, Mestizos, and European – produced in early colonial times, with texts that have recorded the memory of the Conquest. In the final part of the course the topic of European perception of the indigenous past is analyzed and in particular with regard to its inclusion in the universal histories written during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lectures include discussion of new findings and publications aimed at keeping students up to date regarding ongoing field research. Required reading includes INTRODUZIONE ALL'ANTROPOLOGIA STORICA by Pier Paolo Viazzo. Assessment is based on a final oral exam aimed at verifying the student's knowledge of the materials presented and discussed in lecture as well as those treated in the assigned texts. Students who elect to write a term paper on a topic approved by the instructor are awarded one extra unit for the course. Maximum units for the course is 6.