Matilda Stubbs

This writing intensive First Year Seminar introduces students to the anthropological study of the senses and how to communicate sensory experience through ethnographic writing. By close examination of ethnographic texts, films, podcasts, and other multimedia, students will explore how cultures 'make sense' of the everyday and increasingly globalized world. With emphasis on written assignments, we approach the notion of perception as more than a purely physical act, and through structured participation and deliberate observation, students will learn how sensory experiences are deeply related to our own histories and cultural identities. Course activities center around developing analytic skills in the genre of ethnographic writing, and critically engaging with cross-cultural examples of sensual mediations of reality. Topics range from how the senses shape the aesthetics of daily life through color, odor, and flavor, to the significance of communication and information of technologies in the era of virtual reality, slime videos, and the online autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) community.

This writing intensive seminar introduces the anthropological study of time and ethnographic writing about time. From Doctor Who and the Tardis, to keeping or losing track of time like Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole, notions of temporality vary across time zones, culture, and space. Using ethnographic writing, this course examines time as a social and historical phenomenon. From agricultural rhythms of rural life in Africa and the Pacific Islands, to astrological and archaeological accounts of time from Celtic and Greek mythology, students will explore the social lives of calendars new and old. This includes other timekeeping tools like clocks and chronological standards in modes of transportation for buses, trains, and planes, including communication and recordkeeping systems like banks, phone records, and emails. Specific emphasis will attend to the objective and subjective understandings of time and the various temporal forms of daily life, drawing from contributions of ethnographic research and social science writing to the study of time from a cross-cultural perspective. Course activities center around developing analytic skills in the genre of ethnographic writing through in-class free writing, generating observational field notes and journaling, two formal and revisable essays, and peer review.

This course provides an introduction to social theories of visual communication and to methods of critiquing, producing, and displaying visual representations of cultural phenomena. Drawing primarily from anthropology and ethnographic research, students will explore the significance of visual images to represent and document identity, behavior, and everyday life. This includes examining how even ways of viewing - sight - are shaped, and also vary by and within, culture. Influences from film, photography, and graphic design provide examples of how the social sciences may incorporate these technologies from other disciplines, into behavioral analysis and to understand culture. However, the consequences of visual content creation and circulation (unintended or otherwise), features heavily in the course topics such as: travel photography, photojournalism, social media, and digital activism.

Course readings and ethnographic films focus on documentary developments spanning the 20th century - from the silent picture era, scientific cinema, and cinema verite - to internet media like virtual reality, gifs, screenshots, and Tik Toks. In reviewing this learning content, students will conduct comparative analysis of still, moving, and digital images while also creating their own visual content in the process. Learning activities include in-class breakout groups and students presentations, as well as independent work involving ethnographic drawing, a photo essay, film critique paper, and meme ethnography research project.

This course provides an introduction to social theories of visual communication and to methods of critiquing, producing, and displaying visual representations of cultural phenomena. Drawing primarily from anthropology and ethnographic research, students will explore the significance of visual images to represent and document identity, behavior, and everyday life. This includes examining how even ways of viewing - sight - are shaped, and also vary by and within, culture. Influences from film, photography, and graphic design provide examples of how the social sciences may incorporate these technologies from other disciplines, into behavioral analysis and to understand culture. However, the consequences of visual content creation and circulation (unintended or otherwise), features heavily in the course topics such as: travel photography, photojournalism, social media, and digital activism. Course readings and ethnographic films focus on documentary developments spanning the 20th century - from the silent picture era, scientific cinema, and cinéma vérité - to internet media like virtual reality, gifs, screenshots, and Tik Toks. In reviewing this learning content, students will conduct comparative analysis of still, moving, and digital images while also creating their own visual content in the process. Learning activities include in-class breakout groups and students presentations, as well as independent work involving ethnographic drawing, a photo essay, film critique paper, and meme ethnography research project.

Next to breathing and eating, communication is arguably the most important activity of daily life. This course explores the world of communication and the study of culture through language. The material centers around the major theoretical and epistemological developments throughout the history of linguistic inquiry (Wittgenstein, Sapir, Pierce), specifically focusing on the contributions of linguistic anthropology (Boas and Hymes) and ethnographies of language (Basso, Carr, Fox, Mendoza-Denton). We will also explore semiotics (Agha)? the study of signs and the micro-level methods of basic social interaction and conduct independent language fieldwork projects to learn the basics of transcription and discourse analysis.

The scientific story of what a human is and how we ?became? human covers 6 million years of biological and cultural evolution. In this course, we look to the fossil record and living nonhuman primates to examine selective forces that influenced the human biological form as well as technology/culture as a factor that complicates the study of humans from a biological perspective. Topics include the origins of language, art, self expression, and spirituality.

In this course, we explore the phenomena of culture and society through a four-field anthropological lens. Topics include a brief history of anthropology as a social scientific discipline, an introduction to anthropological methods, the uniqueness of human culture from the perspective of arguments for nonhuman culture, the power and politics of language, and a comparative approach to universal cultural subsystems, explored through a wide variety of global case studies, as well as scholarship that turns the anthropological lens on the Western traditions in which the discipline originally developed.