Anthropology

This course covers the theoretical approaches and methodological components within cultural memory studies concerned with minoritarian groups and affect/emotion: e.g. Nora, Stoler, Rigney, Trouillot, Said, Azoulay, Sharpe, Hartman, Muñoz, Mbembe, Campt, Arondekar. It provides an introduction into archives (theory) and memory, especially in relation to power by introducing the political and academic assessment of the post-colonial dimension of cultural memory, and the queer dimension of historical scholarship.

This course explores public health and social perspectives on health, illness, and medicine in another cultural context. It discusses global health topics in relation to issues of health and human rights, migration, and global health equity. This course examines the concept of the social determinant of health and how these impact the health of individuals and populations.

This course provides an anthropological perspective on the cultural variation among human societies by examining the history, foundations, and some key cases of the discipline. The course consists of two parts. Part I introduces the history and development of some of the basic concepts, approaches, and research methods of social and cultural anthropology. It does this using a critical reading of Evans-Pritchard's classic Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande which is used as an instrument to understand the discipline’s historical development and its relevance today. Selected readings from Nanda and Warms’ textbook, Cultural Anthropology, establish the principal areas of anthropological inquiry. Students gain insight into ethnographic methodology through a field visit involving preparation, and observation description. Part II develops the conceptual and ethnographic insights acquired in Part I through the study of globalization and Brazilian urban culture. Donna Goldstein’s ethnography of a Rio de Janeiro shantytown demonstrates the continuing relevance of cultural anthropology for the study of contemporary post-industrial society. Goldstein portrays the lives of the poor in a Brazilian favela, conveying the most intimate and hidden details of their lives: from crime and sexuality to responsibilities of kinship and friendship, to childhood dreams of riches and the search for dignity. This focus on problems of the inner city shows the consequences of polarized race, class, and gender relations, the relationship between culture and the economy, and between individual responsibilities, and agency structural constraints. Relevant chapters of Nanda and Warms’ textbook and several articles provide a conceptual framework for Goldstein's ethnography. Students gain further insight into ethnographic methodology and questions of representation through a field visit to an ethnographic museum.

This course examines the history and development of cultural studies in different social contexts. Cultural studies examine how we have become who we are; how the rules governing our cultures are constructed; and how we, as social beings, live in society. This course outlines the historical formation of cultural studies and introduces key concerns and theoretical perspectives in the field. Specifically, the course focuses on the way in which popular culture and media are associated with these issues. 

This course introduces basic references and debates of cultural studies and helps students to consider how the social world and our everyday lives are associated with key concerns of cultural studies. The main (but not exclusive) topics include: 

- What Culture and cultural studies are about
- The emergence of cultural studies as a discipline (in the UK, the US and Japan)

- Mass culture vs. popular culture

- The Frankfurt School and the culture industry

- The politics of popular culture

- Why class, race, and gender matter

- Celebrity culture in the mediated world

- Fandom and identity

This course introduces and challenges the ways in which contemporary gender, sexuality, and heteronormativity are interpreted through ethnographic case studies. While many modern Western societies debate openly the concepts of gender, sexuality, and LGBTQIA, a range of non-Western anthropological studies from around the world demonstrate the knowledge and concepts that reshape the notion of queerness and gender fluidity in global societies. With a comparative outlook towards Western societies, the course explores and discusses the change of gender roles in the 21st century, transgenderism and vulnerabilities, post-colonial queer cultures and discrimination, masculinity and femininity, power of beauty and aesthetics, and other critical topics such as LGBTQ sex work, non-conformity, and transgender inmates in prisons, as well as their connection to gender identity formation in contemporary society.

Music is a fascinating medium through which to study many aspects of Israeli life and politics. This course explores many genres of music, including art, folk, pop/rock, religious genres, as well as genres canonized by the mainstream and others on the peripheries. Among the social and political issues that emerge from music in Israel, students discuss music's role in the development of “Hebrew culture;” the invention of tradition; the politics of race, ethnicity, and nationality; spirituality and engagement with religion; peace and conflict; the problematics of coexistence; and the musical expression of place. No musical training is necessary to be successful in this course, though students with musical skills and training are welcome to contribute their expertise and may choose to augment their projects with performance or theoretical analysis.