Courses

ANTH/CHST 20015 Anthropology at Chicago: Tradition, Discipline, Department
Instructor: Sarah Newman, M/W/F 12:30-1:20pm
For nearly a century, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago has been home to ethnographers, linguists, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists who have shaped the field of anthropology. This course explores those intellectual traditions, with an emphasis on faculty members' current scholarship: archival and historical silences, notions of kinship, language-in-use, ideas of waste (ancient to nuclear), science and technology studies, and more. Class meetings will focus on discussions with current faculty around their research, while assignments will incorporate faculty and departmental archives held at the Regenstein Library, artifact collections at the Field Museum, and oral histories collected from members of the department. Intended for those interested in anthropology and/or the history of the social sciences, this course encourages students to get to know faculty members and scholarship that are part the Department, and provides an opportunity to learn more about the people and traditions that have shaped anthropological research at UChicago.

ANTH 21006 Media, Animation, and the Semiotic Construction of Social Life
Instructor: Kenzell Huggins, T/TH 12:30-1:50pm
Human beings have constituted other objects as possessing some kind of vitality, from the fetish objects that early colonial authorities found among African societies to fictional characters that seem to have lives of their own. This course investigates the construction of such figures in contemporary social worlds, understanding said worlds as composed not only of humans but also their creations. What do robots and AI chatbots have to tell us about people's desire for intimacy, and how do entities like corporations come to be seen as having forms of personhood in contemporary legal formations? The course draws on social theory and contemporary anthropology of media and religion to address these questions. Students will learn how to apply this literature to develop insights about the analysis of social worlds.

ANTH/CEGU/CHST/HLTH/RDIN 21014 Toxic Chicago
Instructor: Reed McConnell, M/W 3:00-4:20pm
In this field trip-rich course, students will learn about Chicago's many toxic environments, focusing in particular on fallout from the city's industrial past and on racialized, unequal distributions of harmful exposure. We will ask: What is unique (and not unique) about the way that Chicago's toxic geography has been shaped by environmental racism? What happens when we think about toxicity on different temporal and geographical scales, from molecule to neighborhood to international corporation, from a day in the life to deep time? How does this trouble everyday ideas about cause and effect, responsibility and liability? And finally, what unique challenges are presented by the difficulty of producing scientific knowledge about toxic environments, especially when it comes to environmental justice activism or other attempts at change-making? We will visit former Superfund sites, city history museums, industrial processing facilities, and environmental justice non-profits, among other sites. Readings will be drawn from environmental anthropology, STS, Black studies, Native studies, and the history of science, and will forefront scholarship about Chicago. Excerpts from final projects will be collected together into a (physical) zine that will be distributed guerilla-style around the city.

ANTH/EALC 21270 Material Worlds Across Premodern East Asia
Instructor: Alice Yao, W 10:30am-1:20pm
China, Korea, and Japan are recognized as key players in the globalized world. Together they figure East Asia as a region of dynamic growth where consumers and producers create new goods and tastes at an unprecedented pace. East Asia however perplexes in that liberal ideology and politic does not appear to be a condition of liberal economy. This course examines the topic of materialism in East Asia in its pre-capitalist formations (1000 BC-1500 AD) through the lens of consumption and production in China, Korea, and Japan. In particular we explore how things become goods within the framework of autocratic states, how rituals create consumers and temptations, as well as the conditions which entertain popular panregional forms such as manga, martial arts, and mafia. The course draws on anthropology, archaeology, mixed media materials, and museum visits.

ANTH 24001 Colonizations I 
Instructor: Stephan Palmie,  T/TH   11:00 am – 12:20 pm
This quarter examines the making of the Atlantic world in the aftermath of European colonial expansion. Focusing on the Caribbean, North and South America, and western Africa, we cover the dynamics of invasion, representation of otherness, enslavement, colonial economies and societies, as well as resistance and revolution.

ANTH 24123 Digital Ethnographic Methods
Instructor: Kenzell Huggins, T/TH 9:30-10:50 AM
Social life occurs not only in face-to-face contexts but also through many digitally mediated environments. Yet ethnography is still traditionally conceived of as built on the primacy of "being-there," the seeming immediacy of co-presence between researcher and social interlocutors. This course is an introduction to conducting ethnographic research with digitally mediated environments. Students will engage with prior literature in anthropology on doing research in virtual gaming worlds, through social media websites and apps, and in face-to-face interaction with mobile digital devices. Students will also gain hands-on experience through conducting a designed research project of their own throughout the quarter.

ANTH 24304 Talking with Animals                                                 
Instructor: Summerson Carr.  F 9:30 am – 12:20 pm
All over the world, children have long learned the lessons of what it means to be human from what animals tell them. In addition to ventriloquizing non-human animals to socialize human ones, projects for facilitating cross-species communication abound. These projects reveal not only how people imagine their relations with other animals, but also how we conceive of the possibilities and limits of sign systems. And while many focus on talking with animals, others suggest that animals are effective communicators precisely because they lack language, raising fascinating questions about ideologies of (im)mediation. As we learn how Peruvian kids talk with llamas and American cowboys whisper to wild horses, and explore what spiders say and how apes read the human keepers who teach them to sign, this class explores how distinctions are drawn between human and non-human animals, as well as attempts to cross those divides through communicative forms and technologies.

ANTH 25305 Anthropology of Food and Cuisine
Instructor: Stephan Palmié, T/TH 12:00-1:50 PM
Contemporary human foodways are not only highly differentiated in cultural and social terms, but often have long and complicated histories. Anthropologists have long given attention to food. But, until quite recently, they did so in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion. This course explores several related themes with a view towards both the micro- and macro-politics of food by examining a range of ethnographic and historical case studies and theoretical texts. It takes the format of a seminar augmented by lectures (during the first few weeks), scheduled video screenings, and individual student presentations during the rest of the course.

ANTH 26335 Principles of Kinship
Instructors: Sarah Newman and Natacha Nsabimana, M/W 1:30-2:50pm
This introductory course is an attempt to think about the theoretical and historical debates around kinship and world-making practices in anthropology. People everywhere across time and space create meaning about the world they live in and their relations in that world. For this reason, anthropology, the study of human societies past and present, has been preoccupied with kinship relations since its inception as a discipline. Co-taught by an archeologist and a socio-cultural anthropologist, the course will explore different forms of making kin from the deep past to the present. We will ask how and why anthropologists have made kinship a central category in understanding ourselves and others, and review critiques of the concept. The ultimate goal of this course is to encourage students to recognize the ongoing importance of kinship in our own lives and in the contemporary world. By the end of the course we hope to have provided tools to think about kinship and its centrality in human societies from an informed, critical perspective.

ANTH 26701 Capitalism and the State
Instructor: John Kelly, T/TH 9:30-10:50am
What can historical ethnography teach us, about the origins of capitalism, sovereignty and corporations, and the past and future of planning? This course will examine transformative events: the advent and the abolition of British empire slavery. Whaling and its consequences. The "7 Years War" in India and America. The Mongol conquests. Also, twentieth century (c20) stock market crashes. The late c20 rise of global cities. China's c21 "Belt and Road Project." Cognizance of global warming. We will use transformative events to track the emergent assemblage of state and capitalist institutions, including money, markets and taxation, banks and stock markets, accounting and budgets. Like Weber, we will seek causal patterns in between determinism and serendipity. Following Veblen, we will focus on corporations and "New Deals."

ANTH 29910 BA Honors Seminar 1
Instructor: Kamala Russell, W 3:00-5:50 pm
This seminar is designed to prepare fourth-year Anthropology majors to write a compelling BA thesis. To that end, the course is structured as a writing workshop that addresses three key issues: First, we will focus on formulating a viable research question that can be interrogated in a 35-40 page paper; second, we will examine core anthropological research methods, paying particular attention to the relationship between questions and evidence; finally, we will consider the writing process (including aspects such as planning, outlining, and drafting) and modes of argumentation. In the first quarter, participants will work toward producing a 20-page first draft.

ANTH 20100  The Inka and Aztec States      
Instructor: Alan Kolata
T/TH   9:30 am – 10:50 am

This course is an intensive examination of the origins, structure, and meaning of two native states of the ancient Americas: the Inca and the Aztec. Lectures and discussions are framed around an examination of theories of state genesis, function, and transformation, with special reference to the economic, institutional, symbolic, and religious bases of indigenous state development. This course is broadly comparative in perspective and considers the structural significance of institutional features that are either common to or unique expressions of these two Native American states. Finally, we consider the causes and consequences of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and the continuing impact of the European colonial order that was imposed on and to which the Native populations adapted with different degrees of success over the course of the 16th century.

ANTH 20205  The Maya of Yucatán: From Colonial Encounters to Contemporary Transformations
Instructor: Chris Bloechl
M/W    /F: 10:30 am – 11:20 am

This course explores historical and ethnographic studies of the lowland Maya region in southeastern Mexico. Through classic and contemporary accounts, students examine how colonial encounters, political change, and global forces have shaped Maya culture, language, and social life. Topics include colonial legacies, rebellion and resistance, tourism, cultural preservation, and the politics of Indigenous identity. The course offers a nuanced understanding of continuity and transformation in Maya worlds, past and present.

ANTH 21011  The Poetics of Pop Culture     
Instructor: Wee Yang Soh
FRI:     1:30 pm – 4:20 pm

Pop culture is all around us, shaping conversations, informing collective consciousness, and influencing how social and political identities take form. From Taylor Swift and Donald Trump to viral memes about Squid Game and K-pop, pop culture feels pervasive, insistent, and self-evident. But what exactly is pop culture? Is it a core aspect of mainstream culture, a subculture, or something else entirely? How do media technologies drive its creation and circulation? What roles do commodification, fame, and identity play in its production? And who are its central figures—celebrities, influencers, politicians, idols, or even artificial intelligences? This course draws from cultural studies, science and technology studies (STS), and media studies to examine how pop culture takes shape at the intersection of media, language, and technology. Weekly sessions combine key theoretical frameworks with case studies spanning film, television, gaming, animation, literature, and more. By the end of the course, students will apply these tools to critically analyze a popular culture phenomenon of their choice.

ANTH 21013  From Lab to Museum: Thinking with Things
Instructor: Nikki Grigg
M/W/F: 9:30 am – 10:20 am

What happens to artifacts after they’re excavated? This class explores how archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum professionals make use of the rich data available in the archaeological record to answer questions about the past, reconsider the present, and imagine the future. Through readings, field trips and hands-on practice, students will gain a foundation in thinking through things from a wide range of times and places. We will consider the ethics of working with archaeological collections, from questions of access to efforts to repatriate stolen belongings and ancestors. As we follow archaeological materials from their arrival in the lab through their curation and eventual storage, we will examine how different forms of public engagement can help make the study of the past relevant and accessible to present-day communities.

ANTH 21107  Anthropological Theory         
Instructor: Stephan Palmie
M/W/F: 1:30 – 2:20 pm

Since its inception as an academically institutionalized discipline, anthropology has always addressed the relation between a self-consciously modernizing “West” and its various and changing “others.” Yet it has not always done so with sufficient critical attention to its own concepts and categories – a fact that has led, since at least the 1980s, to considerable debate about the nature of the anthropological enterprise and its epistemological foundations. This course provides a brief critical introduction to the history of anthropological thought over the course of the discipline’s “long” twentieth century, from the 1880s to the present. Although it centers on the North American and British traditions, we will review important strains of French and, to a lesser extent, German social theory in chronicling the emergence and transformation of “modern” anthropology as an empirically based, but theoretically informed practice of knowledge production about human sociality and culture.

ANTH 21721  Power in the Streets: The Political Thought of C.L.R James 
Instructor: Ryan Jobson
WED: 1:30 – 4:20 pm

Born in Trinidad in 1901, C.L.R. James was the preeminent radical intellectual of the 20th Century. This course will trace the political thought of C.L.R. James over more than a half-century, from the publication of his short story “La Divina Pastora” in 1927 to the speeches and writing of his final years before his death in 1989. Over his lifetime, James’s political thought developed in accordance with his application of Marxist theory to his engagement with working people in Trinidad, London, Detroit, and elsewhere.In 1982, an octogenarian James paused to reflect on “where [his] Marxism ha[d] arrived at after events in Poland and Ghana.” This course will accordingly survey his writings and speeches in his roles as novelist, sports journalist, historian, editor, organizer, and orator. Through texts such as Minty Alley, The Black Jacobins, A History of Pan-African Revolt, Facing Reality, Party Politics in the West Indies, and Beyond a Boundary, this course will engage the organic conditions of working-class revolt and spontaneous insurgency that surrounded his signature writings

ANTH 22826  Commodities and Consumption         
Instructor: Hanna Pickwell
T/TH:   11:00 am – 12:20 pm

In this discussion-based, reading- and writing-intensive seminar, we will explore “consumption” and “commodities” from an anthropological perspective. Drawing from a range of works from anthropology and other disciplines, and thinking with material from many different cultural contexts, we will reflect critically on everyday practices of consumption and relationships with things that are so often taken for granted. We will investigate the enchanting aspects of commodities; how things can materialize claims about identity or status and produce and reproduce social relationships; shopping and fashion and their relationships to capitalism, gender, and colonialism; ethical, political, and ecological aspects of various kinds of consumption; and more. Previous coursework in anthropology, while beneficial, is not required to do well in this class.

ANTH 23312  Datasets          
Instructor: Alice Yao
WED: 10:30 am – 1:20 pm

This course is a follow up to Datasets and offers hands-on opportunities to tackle various aspects of your work, ranging from structuring your methods chapter to refining and analyzing categories of archaeological materials, counts, and spatial , including GIS datasets. Some key areas to be addressed include: Identifying the most relevant evidence and appropriate levels of detail needed to answer your research questions. Visualizing your data effectively, whether through maps, tables, charts, or other means. Troubleshooting technical challenges with your analysis. Students are encouraged to use their own datasets for course material.

ANTH 24304   Talking with Animals            
Instructor: Summerson Carr
WED: 9:30 am – 11:50 am

All over the world, children have long learned the lessons of what it means to be human from what other animals tell them. In addition to ventriloquizing non-human animals to socialize human ones, projects for facilitating cross-species communication abound. These projects not only reveal how humans imagine their relations with other animals, but also how we conceive of the possibilities and limits of different sign systems. And while many focus on whether and to what degree non-human animals can apprehend linguistic signs, others suggest that animals are effective communicators precisely because they lack language, raising fascinating questions about ideologies of (im)mediation on the one hand, and multi-modality on the other. As we learn how Peruvian kids talk with llamas and American cowboys whisper to wild horses, and explore what spiders say and how apes read the human keepers who teach them to sign, this class explores how distinctions are drawn between human and non-human animals, as well as attempts to cross those divides through communicative forms and technologies.

ANTH 25310  Drinking Alcohol: Social Problem or Normal Cultural Practice       
Instructor: Dietler/Green
T/TH: 2:00 pm – 3:20 pm

Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world, and, as archaeologists have recently demonstrated, it has a very long history dating back at least 9,000 years. This course will explore the issue of alcohol and drinking from a trans-disciplinary perspective. It will be co-taught by an anthropologist/archaeologist with experience in alcohol research and a neurobiologist who has experience with addiction research. Students will be confronted with literature on alcohol research from anthropology, sociology, history, biology, medicine, psychology, and public health and asked to think through the conflicts and contradictions. Selected case studies will be used to focus the discussion of broader theoretical concepts and competing perspectives introduced in the first part of the course. Topics for lectures and discussion include: fermentation and the chemistry and pharmacology of alcohol; the early history of alcohol; histories of drinking in ancient, medieval, and modern times; alcohol and the political economy; alcohol as a cultural artifact; styles of drinking and intoxication; how is alcohol metabolized; addiction; how does alcohol affect sensations; social problems; alcohol and religion; alcohol and health benefits; comparative case studies of drinking.

ANTH 25810  Social Problems, Social Policy and Social Change   
Instructor: Summerson Carr
W/F:     1:30 pm – 2:50 pm

This course is designed to provide an analytic framework that enables students to understand how social problems are socially constructed, how social policies are created in response to those identified problems, and how social change efforts both shape and respond to the policy environment. During the quarter, we will examine how social problems, policies and programs are framed, re-framed, and addressed and how individuals, organizations, and relevant constituencies take part in social change. In addition to providing an overview of the relationship between social problems, social policy, and social change efforts, the course encourages critical thought about the role of and relationship between professional elites (philanthropists, advocates, researchers, etc.) and ground-level activists (affected populations, community leaders, etc.) in constructing and contesting social problems and promoting social change.

ANTH 26910  Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology       
Instructor: Chris Bloechl
M/W/F: 11:30 am – 12:20 pm

How do we use language when we interact with others (and ourselves)? What lies beyond semantic meaning, or the presupposed function of language to deliver “information”? In this introductory course to the field of linguistic anthropology, we explore how power, inequality, and difference are enacted through various communicative features of human interaction—features that include, but are not limited to, what we refer to as “language.” We ask how the things that we say (and how we say them) signal and shape our identities (such as race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, and class). Furthermore, we investigate how language enacts forms of human relationality—forms that, among others, encompass solidarity, conflict, and hierarchy in face-to-face interactions as well as in mass-mediated productions. Through this course, student will engage with and analyze linguistic features of human interaction in their cultural and political contexts.

ANTH 27809  Repeat, Remake, Refresh: Authenticity and Authorship in the 21st century 
Instructor: Shubham Shivang
M/T/TH: 3:30 – 6:20 / 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

What makes an artwork “original” today? How do we decide if a food dish is “authentic”? Who is the author of a digital meme? Is there a common metric which can rate the originality and authenticity of a film or a piece of music (Tomato-meter and IMDB ratings notwithstanding)? This course will investigate these and other questions to understand why and how authenticity and originality continue to matter in today’s world of global information and capital flows. Taking three case studies – cultural performance genres like traditional music/dance, cross-cultural film remakes, and digital publics – we will unpack how an ostensibly “foreign” cultural object becomes domiciled in a new cultural location. We will also discuss which practices and objects resist such adaptation.

We will read scholars and writers from a range of disciplines – anthropology, cinema and media studies, history – dealing with the construction of cultural authenticity and circulation. Our readings will be supplemented each week by a class screening where we will encounter materials which will serve as examples to analyze authenticity and authorship in today’s world. For instance, through the screening materials, students will be encouraged to examine if a film remake can ever be original, if the musical traditions of an itinerant community can be claimed as national, and how a globally circulating digital meme can come to acquire different meanings and significances in different places.

ANTH 28400  Bioarcheology and Forensic Anthropology   
Instructor: Nene Lozanda
TUE/TH: 2:00 – 3:20 pm
Lab 1: TH 9:30 – 10:50 am
Lab 2: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm
Lab 3: 3:30 – 4:50 pm

This course is intended to provide students with a thorough understanding of bioanthropological, osteological and forensic methods used in the interpretation of past and present behavior by introducing osteological methods and anthropological theory. In particular, lab Instructorction stresses hands-on experience in analyzing human remains, whereas seminar classes integrate bioanthropological theory and its application to specific archaeological and forensic cases throughout the world. At the end of this course, students will be able to identify, document, and interpret human remains from archaeological and forensic contexts. Lab and seminar-format classes each meet weekly.

ANTH 29920  BA Seminar II 
Instructor: Joseph Masco
WED: 3:00 – 5:50 pm

This course is intended to provide students with a thorough understanding of bioanthropological, osteological and forensic methods used in the interpretation of past and present behavior by introducing osteological methods and anthropological theory. In particular, lab Instructorction stresses hands-on experience in analyzing human remains, whereas seminar classes integrate bioanthropological theory and its application to specific archaeological and forensic cases throughout the world. At the end of this course, students will be able to identify, document, and interpret human remains from archaeological and forensic contexts. Lab and seminar-format classes each meet weekly.