Confused about race, gender, culture?
And what these controversial terms have to do with you?
Come find out more about it!
Anthropology E210 “HUMAN DIVERSITY”
Instructor: Shane Greene
T/R 4-5:15pm
Detailed Course Description:
What are the grounds for talking about human difference? In what ways are humans universally alike and in what ways are they universally different? And how have debates about human difference and sameness developed over the last century or more. In this course we seek to address these broad questions and in doing so orient ourselves to the way in which the field of anthropology has played a crucial role in posing and attempting to answer such questions from multiple different perspectives including: on the basis of human biology, linguistic analysis, archaeological findings, and in-depth ethnographic study of human societies.
To focus our discussion we will concentrate on four primary categories of anthropological analysis: race, culture, gender, and language. Each one of these categories - at different historical moments and in varying geographic contexts - plays a key role in how we currently understand human differences and human sameness. Throughout the course we will attempt to gain insight into how such categories explain what it means to be human, how humans themselves have appropriated such categories to describe themselves, and how such categories have been misused to dominate, stereotype, exclude, and even exterminate others. We will do so with close attention to the way our understanding of these categories has changed over time and take on different meanings in different world contexts.
Requirements:
Students will be evaluated on the basis of a mid-term, a final exam, and a short observation oriented writing assignment.
