Cultural Anthropology (CULANTH)

Associate Professor Baker, Chair; Professor Ewing, Director of Graduate Studies; Professors Allison, Ewing, O'Barr, Silverblatt, Starn; Associate Professors Baker, Litzinger, Meintjes, Nelson, Piot; Assistant Professors Davis, Makhulu, Stein; Professors Emeriti Apte, Friedl, Quinn; Secondary Appointments: Professor Andrews (Slavic languages), Butters (English), Mignolo (Romance studies), Reddy (history); Associate Professor Tetel (English); Assistant Professors Holsey (African and African American Studies), Wilson (Women's Studies)

The department offers graduate work leading to the PhD degree in cultural anthropology. It also participates in a program with the law school leading to a joint JD/MA degree. Students are expected to take an active role in development of their own research goals and design of their own plan of study, as well as in the pursuit of relevant cross-disciplinary background, within and outside the department. Requirements include courses in anthropological theory, as well as spoken and/or written competence in at least one foreign language, at the level appropriate to the planned research program. The core courses include a year-long sequence: Theories in Cultural Anthropology (330S, 331S), required of first-year graduate students, a history of anthropology course in the fourth semester, and Research Seminar in Cultural Anthropology (333S), required in the fifth semester. Preliminary field research is required in the summer following the second year of classes. The Guidelines for Graduate Students in the Doctoral Program in Cultural Anthropology and the Guidelines for Graduate Students in the JD/MA Program fully describe these and additional requirements and the detailed steps in the student's graduate career.

Applications for admission to both the PhD and JD/MA programs are accepted every year. Please contact the departmental Web site at http://culturalanthropology.duke.edu or send e-mail to duca_grad@duke.edu for further information.

207S. Anthropology and History. Recent scholarship that combines anthropology and history, including culture history, ethnohistory, the study of mentalité, structural history, and cultural biography. The value of the concept of culture to history and the concepts of duration and event for anthropology. Prerequisite: major in history, one of the social sciences, or comparative area studies; or graduate standing. Instructor: Reddy. 3 units. C-L: History 210S

249S. Anthropology and Psychology (C, P). Cross-cultural approaches to the psyche, including applications of social psychology, psychoanalysis, and trans-cultural psychiatry to anthropological questions such as culturally expressed psychic conflicts and pathologies, gender and sexuality, communication, rationality, affect, and motivations. Instructor: Staff. 3 units. C-L: Psychology 249S

262S. Culture, Power, History. Debates in cultural theory and anthropology: identity and nationalism, memory and tradition, globalization, and poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial theory. Some previous coursework in anthropology and or cultural theory recommended. Instructor: Starn. 3 units.

264S. Millennial Capitalisms: Global Perspectives. Critical examination of the problematic of capital from the late nineteenth century until the present moment. Anthropological frameworks and related disciplinary approaches to the multiple cultural productions and lived experiences under divergent forms of capitalism in the new millennium. Focus on East Asia. Theories of capitalism, globalization and anti-globalization movements, "imaginaries" and fantasies, nature and the virtual, consumption, and disciplinary practices of the body. Instructors: Allison and Litzinger. 3 units. C-L: International Comparative Studies 221BS

281S. Masculinities. How masculinities are constructed, performed and inhabited. Theorization of the masculine subject in sociocultural, political and psychodynamic terms within colonial and modernizing contexts. Issues of gendered citizenship. Role of scholarship and the media in constituting hegemonic, subaltern, ethnic, female, and stigmatized masculinities. Instructor: Ewing. 3 units. C-L: Women's Studies 281S

284S. Transnationalism and Public Culture. Critical examination of issues in transnational studies in anthropology and beyond. Tracking the theories of contemporary scholars of the global, and examining new multisited strategies of method, we explore the emerging ethnographic landscape of the global and the role transnational studies is playing in a revitalized anthropology of the twenty-first century. Instructor: Piot. 3 units.

285S. Space, Place, and Power. Examines relationship between space and power by studying how communities make and negotiate spaces, how identities are forged out of space, and the relationship between cultural and spatial practices. Spatial components of globalization, sexuality and sexual identity, race and gender, and the geographic and cartographic histories of imperialism. Interdisciplinary readings from disciplines of geography, anthropology, cultural studies, women's studies, urban studies and others. Readings in the work of Lefebvre, Foucault, Harvey, Stoler, Pratt, and others. Aims to develop a critical, theoretical approach to space and spatiality. Instructor: Stein. 3 units. C-L: Asian and African Languages and Literature 230S, Women's Studies 225S, Literature 287S

286S. Development. Modernity, and Social Movements. Modernization and ideologies of progress and nationalism; social movements, revolution, and political protest in the United States and around the world. Some prior background in cultural anthropology or social theory preferred. Consent of instructor required for undergraduate students. Instructor: Starn. 3 units.

287S. Ethnohistory of Latin America. Analysis of what can be known about nonwestern cultures described in texts written by European colonizers. Focus on native peoples whose lives were transformed by Spanish colonialism, with particular attention to post-Inca Andean Societies. Instructor: Silverblatt. 3 units. C-L: History 287BS, Literature 287BS

300S. Popular Culture, Theories and Practices. Theories and writings about popular culture questioning what it is, its relation to mass and dominant culture(s), what politics and pleasures it carries, and how it varies over time and across space. Project-based with emphasis on conducting studies of popular culture. Focus on methodology analyzing specific forms of popular culture. Issues include transnationalism, capitalism, postmodernism, production, consumption, ethnography, fantasy, and identity. Instructor: Allison. 3 units.

301S. Foucault and Anthropology. A close examination of the work of Foucault and the impact of his work on cultural anthropology. Traces shifts in Foucault's thinking over the course of his career, examines his work in the context of other major French thinkers, and considers selected works in anthropology that have been particularly influenced by his theories. Instructor: Ewing. 3 units.

302S. Nationalism. Focuses on anthropological approaches to the nation-state, nationalist movements, and state formation. Examines the dynamic relationships between nations and states, colonial and post-colonial policies, and anti-colonial strategies within a changing global context. Addresses the ways belonging and participation are defined within particular states, as well as how these definitions are socialized through a variety of institutional contexts. Finally, explores the relationships between popular culture and state formation, examining these as dialectical struggles for hegemony. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

303S. Postcolonialism and Its Cultures. An introduction to colonial and postcolonial cultures, forms of knowledge, and theoretical traditions. Explore the foundational scholarship on colonialism within the Indian, European, and U.S. academies; investigate the central debates and arguments in the field of postcolonial theory; and consider postcolonial theory's relationship to the theoretical traditions of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Examine historical and the tropological relationship between colonialism and globalization. Develop a set of critical theoretical tools with which to approach the study of colonial and postcolonial cultures, institutions, discourses, and communities. This course pays particular attention to questions of subjectivity and subject formation, notions of resistance and struggle, and the ways in which colonial power has articulated with race, gender, and sexuality at particular historical moments. Readings in the works of Asad, Fanon, Derrida, Said, Spivak, Stoller and others. Instructor: Stein. 3 units.

304S. Anthropology and the Religious Imagination. An examination of religious movements through the political, racial, gendered, and globalized contours of the contemporary moment. Among other cases to be explored: Jerry Falwell and the religious right, neo-Pentecostalism in the global south, African derived religions in the Americas, Black Hebrew Israelites, transnational Islamic movements, the occult economies of the neoliberal moment, and popular imaginaries of conspiracy. Instructor: Piot. 3 units.

330S. Theories in Cultural Anthropology. A two-semester seminar in which the historical development of the field and its modern currents and debates are examined and discussed. Particular topics to be chosen by the instructors. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

331S. Theories in Cultural Anthropology. A two-semester seminar in which the historical development of the field and its modern currents and debates are examined and discussed. Particular topics to be chosen by the instructors. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

333S. Research Seminar in Cultural Anthropology. Yearlong individual projects, from research design and proposal writing through summer field research, to data analysis, theory development, and write-up as publishable papers. Approaches, methods, and lessons appropriate to these projects. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

334S. History of Anthropology. Required seminar for second-year students in the Cultural Anthropology doctoral program. This course will give students a deeper understanding of the history of the discipline up to and including the 1980s. Course includes exploration of anthropology's early decades, for example American Boasian anthropology and British structural-functionalism. Course will examine developments later in the twentieth century among them the rise of feminist anthropology, Marxist anthropology, debates about power and resistance, critical race studies, and the so-called postmodern turn to an interest in reflexivity and the politics of representation. Consent of instructor required. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

2008-09 Bulletin of the Duke University Graduate School

2008-09 Bulletin of the
Duke University Graduate School