From: web-form@oswego.edu Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 3:11 PM To: ucc@oswego.edu Subject: Web Form: Course_Submission Department_Chair: Paul Voninski Department_Chair_Email: voninski@oswego.edu Additional_Contact: Beth Messana (Dept. Secretary) Additional_Contact_Email: messana@oswego.edu Course_Number: ANT 312 Course_Type: New Course Course_Title: Explorations in Cultural Anthropology Catalog_Description: Seeking answers to questions about what constitutes shared humanity, this course applies the basic concepts and premises of cultural anthropology to the problems and prospects of ethnographic representation--how we "see" and represent others and how they "see" and represent us in the discourses of daily life, especially in writing. Prerequisites: Junior standing or higher with nine hours of social and behavioral science Fl_irregular basis: Yes Semester_Hours: 3 Justification: This course (1) will serve as an elective in the anthropology major and minor; (2) will be taught at minimum every other semester, both as an online course and in the conventional "bricks and mortar" format; (3) will follow a seminar format with a capacity of no more than 20 students; and, (4) is extensively interdisciplinary, thereby supporting one of the major educational goals of the college. Course_Objectives: Upon completion of this course, including tests, class discussions, and special projects, students will be able to: (1) identify the basic concepts and premises of contemporary cultural anthropology and related disciplinary interests (semiotics, literary criticism, textualism, reader reception theory, etc.); (2) apply them to the problems of ethnographic representation in popular culture and scientific writing; (3) understand why interpretation is as necessary to life as breathing and what constitutes the grounds of interpretation for all of us; (4) apply this experience to their own lives with increased sensitivity to the nature of culture, stereotypes, ethnocentrism, and the values of systematic thinking. Course_Description: The basic idea of this course is to show us what we are as human beings by exploring what we are not, or think we are not, relative to who or what we want to be, and to map out the various ways that knowledge is produced. COURSE OUTLINE (1) Icebreaker (2) Anthropology: An Overview (3) The Nature of Culture (4) Language and Culture (5) The Social Construction of Reality (6) Problems of Interpretation (7) Problems of Representation (8) Final Remarks and Course Review Resources: The Department of Anthropology has the faculty resources and expertise to offer this course. We have verified with computing services and the library that they have sufficient resources available to enable us to offer it. No additional equipment or facilities are required. Bibliography: Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage. Barthes, Roland. 1982. Empire of Signs. Richard Howard (trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. Banks, Anna and Stephen Banks (eds.). 1998. Fiction and Social Research: By Ice or Fire. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon. Benson, Paul (ed.). 1993. Anthropology and Literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books. Boon, James A. 1999. Verging on Extra-Vagance: Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts…Showbiz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brady, Ivan (ed.). 1991. Anthropological Poetics. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Brady, Ivan. 2003. The Time at Darwin’s Reef: Poetic Explorations in Anthropology and History. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Brady, Ivan. 2005a. “Poetics for a Planet: Discourse on Some Problems of Being-in-Place.” IN Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 979-1027. Danesi, Marcel and Paul Perron. 1999. Analyzing Cultures: An Introduction and Handbook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brady, Ivan. 2005b. “One in the Many, Many in the One: Notes on Being Different.” IN Student Guide, SUNY Oswego Reading Initiative, Summer 2005 Reading Selection, The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. SUNY Oswego. Davies, Charlotte Aull. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. New York: Routledge. DeVita, Philip and James D. Armstrong (eds.). 2002. America as a Foreign Culture. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Ferraro, Gary. 2008. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hymes, Dell. 2004. “In Vain I Tried to Tell you”: Essays on Native American Ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kottak, Conrad Phillip. 2003. Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lavenda, Robert H. and Emily A. Schultz. 2006. Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Levitin, Daniel J. 2006. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York: Penguin. Lopez, Barry. 1994. Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren. New York: Knopf. Lutz, Catherine A. and Jane L. Collins. 1993. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ottenheimer, Harriet Joseph. 2006. The Anthropology of Language. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper. Prattis, Iain (ed.). 1986. Reflections: The Anthropological Muse. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reed-Danahay, Deborah (ed.). 1997. Auto-Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, Laurel. 2000. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” IN Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, pp. 923-48. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Novinger, Tracy. 2001. Intercultural Communication: A Practical Guide. Austin: University of Texas Press. Richardson, Miles. 1990. Cry Lonesome and Other Accounts of the Anthropologist's Project. Albany: SUNY Press. Rothenberg, Jerome and Diane Rothenberg (eds.). 1983. Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Snyder, Gary. 2007. Back on the Fire: Essays. Berkeley: Counterpoint. Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Wolf, Margery. 1992. A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Other_Comments: IP_Adress: 129.3.50.166