Newly Added for Spring 2014
ANTH-A 200 Bike Racing, Doping and International Sport
Meets IUB GenEd S&H and COLL (CASE) S&H
In recent years the international sport of bike racing
has come under scrutiny for the ubiquity of performance enhancing drugs. However, doping is only one aspect of a 130
year cultural history of bike racing which has been used to further political
agendas, challenge racism and as a tool of colonialism. This course will examine the cultures and
institutions of professional bike racing from its early beginnings through its
attempt to recover from the Lance Armstrong scandal in 2013. The course will primarily focus on Western
Europe, but will also include significant material on the United States and
Latin America.
Students will be able to see the ways cyclesport is a
culture unto itself but also reflects specific national cultures and embodies
historic moments.
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Seats Added -- This course was closed. We've been able to add enough seats to
accommodate all those who were on the waitlist and have provided room for
additonal students who would like to enroll.
ANTH-A 208 Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll
Meets IUB GenEd A&H and COLL (CASE) A&H
Do you feel like a punk?
Do you wonder what an "ethical slut" is? Are hallucinogens illegal because they open
the mind and somebody prefers to leave it closed? In short:
Are you interested in the subversive culture that surrounds Sex, Drugs,
and Rock-n-Roll? If so, you should take
this course. In it we try to answer
these and other provocative questions by taking proposing to take them on as
legitimate academic inquiry. First, we
introduce ourselves to various theoretical perspectives that shed light on the
reasons for and inherent contradictions within forms of cultural expression and
social practice that claim to be subversive.
Second, we divide the remainder of the course into three broad sections
- (1) Sex (2) Drugs and (3) Rock-n-Roll - in order to examine in detail
particular kinds of subversive subcultures in their cultural and historical
context. This includes not only various
edgy rock subcultures like punk, extreme metal, rave, and goth. It also includes subcultures that grow up
around illicit substances (i.e. street dealer/addict subcultures/club
cultures/hallucinogenic subcultures) and anti-normative sexual practices like
modern polygamy/polyamory, alternatives to mainstream pornography, and BDSM. Finally, we undertake this study of
subversive subcultures from an inherently anthropological point of view: meaning we visit subcultures in various
global contexts (US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, etc.) and learn how to
think about them in a broad global context.
