Syllabus
* Course Calendar:
Week1
Introduction to course syllabus and Applied Anthropology
Lecture 1. Political Violence, Social Suffering and World Migration
Lecture 2. Fieldwork Methods: Life History Narratives - Recording Interview
Film:1. Benjamin and his Brothers
Film: 2. Fighter
Readings: Selected chapters from Jaguar: A Story of Africans in America (online)
Week 2
Lecture 1. Socio-ecological Anthropology, Local Knowledge and Climate Change
Lecture 2. Linguistic Analysis of Text - Analysis of Life History
Film:1. Family Frames
Film: 2. The Land of Women
Readings: Selected chapters from Fierce Climate: Sacred Ground (online) and Coasts for People (on line)
Week 3
Medicine, Global Health and Social Justice
Lecture 1. Paul Farmer - anthropologist and doctor,
Lecture 2. Writing in Anthropology: Coding, Writing ‘memos’ and first draft - narratives
Film:1. Anthropology of Healing Traditional Medicine
Film: 2. Coming Home
Readings: Selected chapters from: Infections and Inequalities (online)
Week 4
Writing in Anthropology - individual consultations and independent writing period.
* Feel free to email your working draft no latter then May 23th 2019 if you like to get comments for your final paper. Term Paper is due May 30. 2019.
Please email your term papers to Dr. J. Kopelentova Rehak : jrehak@umbc.edu
Annotation
Cultural Anthropology is both a theoretical and applied field involving the study of humanity in its socio-cultural dimensions. This is an upper level course with a focus on international and intercultural experience. The course introduces students to the concepts, approaches, and skills of a particular discipline - Cultural Anthropology. The course explores issues of global significance from a cross-cultural perspective by focusing on the tensions between the increasing diversity of perspectives in an increasingly interdependent world. From the viewpoints of an emergent anthropology in action, the class will examine various anthropological approaches and methods to understanding human behavior, and highlights insights to other cultures as well to our own culture. Class structure is organized around major themes we will address in Environmentalism and Ecology, Politics and Violence, and
World Migration. We will study anthropological texts that broaden the cultural analysis of the global change process and its effects on institutions and communities. Students will learn how anthropological theories and methods shape anthropological perspectives on local and global current problems. Students will have the opportunity to focus on readings and films of contemporary ethnographic works written/directed by the current generation of cultural and visual anthropologists, practice ethnographic interview, learn the methods of linguistic analysis of text and develop a short term paper.