ANTH 4101 is also offered in Spring 2024
ANTH 4101 is also offered in Fall 2021
Fall 2021 | ANTH 4101 Section 001: Decolonizing Archives (33557)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
ANTH 8510 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
Tue,
Thu 11:15AM - 12:30PM
UMTC, West Bank
Blegen Hall 260
- Enrollment Status:
Open (11 of 17 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Archives are not neutral. In order to decolonize them, scholars in anthropology and other disciplines must first understand the ways in which Western settler values have structured them. Who decides acquisition policy? How are items indexed, described, and related to one another? Who has access, and under what conditions? And who is structurally excluded? In this course we decolonize by recontextualizing both the archives as institutions and their contents. In other words, we use methods appropriate for contemporary anthropological archival research. We will consider preservation, curation, organizational bias in archives, analytic scale, voice, and how historical texts are material culture. Students engage in original archival research.
- Class Description:
- Spring 2014: This course offers students the opportunity to learn the methods of archival research, especially for addressing questions of anthropological significance: for example, how has cultural difference, especially ethnicity, been experienced, publicly perceived, or made the subject of legal and structural inequalities? How has gender ideology been impacted by changing roles in society for women? How is race conceptualized in historical discourses? In the spring of 2014, this course will focus on issues of immigration, ethnicity, religion, class, constructed space and domestic life through the intensive investigation of the Bohemian Flats and other contemporaneous river-front immigrant neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St Paul. From the urban and industrial development of the Twin Cities in the later 19th century through the mid-20th century, waves of immigrants have been housed in marginal neighborhoods adjacent to the Mississippi River. These areas were less than ideal places to live, lacking in adequate infrastructure and routinely flooded. What was life like in these neighborhoods? How were the immigrants there perceived, especially in terms of ethnicity? How did they create their own sense of community? Where did they work? Where did they or their descendants move on to? And how can learning about their experience change the way we think about immigrants today? Students in this class will learn to utilize local archival resources to investigate these questions, while also learning factors to consider in archives and particular types of documentary remains which impact interpretations. Your work will be developed into publicly accessible interpretations, like exhibit panels, web pages, interactive maps, or walking tours, to be presented in an open event at the end of the semester.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/33557/1219
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 3 December 2013
ClassInfo Links - Fall 2021 Anthropology Classes