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ANT 450/55: BORDERS OF SELF, LIFE, AND CULTURE
(3 semester hours)
This course is about our segmented world: cultural, physical, public, private, personal, and
imaginary borders and the people who cross them. Such divisions represent “beaches” in
every sense of the term, meaningful in their middles and marked at minimum by differences
from opposite directions. Among many other considerations, they are margins drawn on
maps; land claimed and defended by tired migrants; territory posted by personal and national
interests, sometimes on islands of the imagination. Some have fuzzy boundaries, others clear;
some are familiar, others strange; some flag areas that are populated, noisy, and engaged in
the traffic of whole countries; others point to landscapes naked in their silence and inspiring
in their beauty. They all merge, cover, or divide into differential and often contested areas of
privilege. What determines who or what is to be included or excluded in this territory? What
happens when humans cross over into the Other of the human and non-human animal world?
Why are such boundaries always marked as significant places, sometimes as “sacred” or
“dangerous” or perhaps “neither here nor there”? Why do we enter into these experiences in
the first place? Escape? Travel? Business? Warfare? Accident? Who thrives or collapses on
such margins? How have we represented these experiences in the long run of being human?
Myth, legends, narratives of some other kind? How do we represent them in thought, media,
and behavior today? This course seeks answers to these questions primarily by drawing on
literature and cinema from the social sciences, history, and the humanities, and on first-hand
accounts from participants in the class. Expected outcomes include increased self-awareness
and a refined sense of social responsibility shared with the human community and other lifeforms
on the planet. Students from across the disciplines are encouraged to attend.
PREREQUISITES
A450: 9 social and behavioral science hours; junior standing or higher. A550: Graduate students must
have graduate standing and permission of the instructor.
REQUIRED TEXTS
(1) Brady, Ivan. (2003). The Time at Darwin’s Reef: Poetic Explorations in Anthropology and
History. Thousand Oaks, CA: AltaMira.
(2) Jackson, Michael. (1995). At Home in the World. Durham: Duke University Press.
(3) Lopez, Barry. (1990). The Rediscovery of North America. New York: Vintage.
(4) Novinger, Tracy. (2001). Intercultural Communication: A Practical Guide. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
(5) Tedlock. Barbara. (1992). The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Dialogues with the Zuni Indians.
New York: Penguin.
Remedial reference work:
Ferraro, Gary. (2006). Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 6th ed. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
COURSE OUTLINE
(1) ICEBREAKER: Sample boundary exercises, with pictures and texts (graded).
(2) BEING HUMAN: (a) Biocultural Organisms, Sensuous-Intellectual Beings, Semiosis as Cognitive
and Cultural Process, Conjectural Mentality and the Cognitive Imperative; (b) The Nature of Culture,
Language and Culture, Social Construction of Reality, Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism, Personal
and Social Space.
(3) HOME AND NEIGHBORHOOD: Hearth and Soul, Cultural Ground Zero for Identity, Relativity
of Place, Natal and Fatal Places, Own-Other Boundaries, Metaphor and Worldview.
(4) CROSS-CULTURAL FRONTIERS: The U.S.-Mexican Border, Ship Jumpers, Migrants,
Beachcombers, Explorers, Diplomats, Soldiers, Tourists, Ethnographers.
(5) WILDERNESS: Rural landscapes, Outer Space, Undersea Worlds, Animals as Others, The
Abstract Wild.
(6) DEATH: The Fantastic and the Real, Going Where Everyone Before Us Has Gone, Werewolf and
Vampire Lore, Near Death Experiences, Religion as a Death Management System, Shamanism and
Realities Beyond Appearance.
(7) MODES OF REPRESENTATION: Who should tell the story? Science, Art, and Myth, Conflict of
Interpretations, Poetics as a Bridge to Sensuous-Intellectual Experience, History of Bourgeois
Perception, Writer Consciousness, Speaking Thinking vs. Reading Writing, Storyteller Modes and
Responsibilities in the short and the long run of human history, Cinema or Print?
(8) FINAL REMARKS: An Overview
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