ANTH 170 - Topics in Anthropology

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Introduction to anthropology through a focus on a particular issue or aspect of human experience. Topics vary, but may include Anthropology through Film, American Popular Culture, Extinctions, Peoples of the World.

Topic for 2023/24a: The Time(s) of Our Lives: Temporality as an Element of Experience and Community Accomplishment. What is time? What roles does it play in our lives? Can we shape it? What is the relationship between time and the making of our “selves” within the communities to which we belong? What might we learn from engaging empathetically with other’s times and other times? In this course, we consider the variety of ways that time is analyzed, experienced, and crafted in and for different contexts and purposes. Drawing on multiple media, archived materials, material culture, community works, scholarly productions (e.g., symbolic anthropology), and our own experience, we consider contrasts in temporal formations from a variety of sociological worlds, and include an exploration of rituals, historical narratives, dreamtime, and clocks and calendars, and how they can influence our social lives and experience. As students amble through their personal journeys at Vassar, we also explore how practices of time intersect with, and shape our experience of this liberal arts learning community. The course supports well-being through embodied and relational practices, including meditation, story-telling, circle practice, and by encouraging a more informed and intentional relationship with time. Assignments include short essays, journaling, and the design of a timeline of students’ personal and collective encounters with time in their liberal arts community. Carollynn Costella and Candice Lowe Swift.

Topic for 2023/24b: Water and Culture. Water is necessary for human life. But cultural anthropologists have shown that it is always, also, meaningful in a remarkable range of ways. In our daily water choices, and in our water goals as citizens, we can make better choices when we know more about different water systems in the world and how other people value water. The course introduces classic anthropological approaches such as “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange” and considering the “social life of things.” Focusing on the relation between drinking water and wider cultural systems, water localities studied through texts and films may include Bali, Singapore, the US, former Soviet Georgia, urban Egypt, and Fiji. Students experiment with different genres for written assignments. The course also provides an introduction to the Poughkeepsie area through group projects at local water-related sites. Martha Kaplan.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS