ANTH 8810 is also offered in Spring 2025
ANTH 8810 is also offered in Fall 2024
ANTH 8810 is also offered in Spring 2024
ANTH 8810 is also offered in Spring 2023
ANTH 8810 is also offered in Fall 2022
ANTH 8810 is also offered in Spring 2022
Spring 2025 | ANTH 8810 Section 001: Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology (64828)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 9 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Times and Locations:
- Enrollment Status:
Open (0 of 1 seat filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Seminar examines particular aspects of method and/or theory. Topics vary according to student and faculty interests.
- Class Description:
- What do the voice of a spirit, the symptom of a disease, dioramas in a museum, omens of misfortune, architectural ruins, elements of a ritual, economic currency, and wolf tracks in the sand have in common? In this seminar we consider one answer to this question: signification. We begin from the premise that the relationships between sign and referent, symbol and meaning, and representation and reality, have been crucial to social worlds and social theory. We explore the ways that these relationships, far from being relevant only within linguistics or philosophy, are deeply implicated in everyday concepts like architectural façade, gender identity, cultural tradition, and biological function. Through this course we think about how ideas of signification can be used to understand medicine, colonial politics, commodification, violence, interspecies encounters, and other social processes. And we ask: Are modes of signification simply techniques of knowing, or do they implicate particular ontologies and particular politics? The seminar will tack back and forth between key theoretical texts (e.g. by Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Charles Peirce, Jesper Hoffmeyer), and ethnographies, histories, and cultural critiques in which signification comes alive in social analysis (e.g. by Claude Levi-Strauss, Marilyn Ivy, John Pemberton, Timothy Mitchell, Homi Bhabha, Allan Feldman, Michael Taussig, Eduardo Kohn).
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/64828/1253
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 7 August 2015
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2025 Anthropology Classes