Duke University 2008-2009 - Office of the Registrar - Duke University

286S. Development. Modernity, and Social Movements. Modernization and ideologies of
progress and nationalism; social movements, revolution, and political protest in the United
States and around the world. Some prior background in cultural anthropology or social
theory preferred. Consent of instructor required for undergraduate students. Instructor:
Starn. 3 units.
287S. Ethnohistory of Latin America. Analysis of what can be known about nonwestern
cultures described in texts written by European colonizers. Focus on native peoples whose
lives were transformed by Spanish colonialism, with particular attention to post-Inca
Andean Societies. Instructor: Silverblatt. 3 units. C-L: History 287BS, Literature 287BS
For Graduate Students Only
300S. Popular Culture, Theories and Practices. Theories and writings about popular
culture questioning what it is, its relation to mass and dominant culture(s), what politics and
pleasures it carries, and how it varies over time and across space. Project-based with
emphasis on conducting studies of popular culture. Focus on methodology analyzing
specific forms of popular culture. Issues include transnationalism, capitalism, postmodernism,
production, consumption, ethnography, fantasy, and identity. Instructor: Allison. 3
units.
301S. Foucault and Anthropology. A close examination of the work of Foucault and the
impact of his work on cultural anthropology. Traces shifts in Foucault's thinking over the
course of his career, examines his work in the context of other major French thinkers, and
considers selected works in anthropology that have been particularly influenced by his
theories. Instructor: Ewing. 3 units.
302S. Nationalism. Focuses on anthropological approaches to the nation-state, nationalist
movements, and state formation. Examines the dynamic relationships between nations and
states, colonial and post-colonial policies, and anti-colonial strategies within a changing
global context. Addresses the ways belonging and participation are defined within particular
states, as well as how these definitions are socialized through a variety of institutional
contexts. Finally, explores the relationships between popular culture and state formation,
examining these as dialectical struggles for hegemony. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.
303S. Postcolonialism and Its Cultures. An introduction to colonial and postcolonial
cultures, forms of knowledge, and theoretical traditions. Explore the foundational
scholarship on colonialism within the Indian, European, and U.S. academies; investigate the
central debates and arguments in the field of postcolonial theory; and consider postcolonial
theory's relationship to the theoretical traditions of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis.
Examine historical and the tropological relationship between colonialism and globalization.
Develop a set of critical theoretical tools with which to approach the study of colonial and
postcolonial cultures, institutions, discourses, and communities. This course pays particular
attention to questions of subjectivity and subject formation, notions of resistance and
struggle, and the ways in which colonial power has articulated with race, gender, and
sexuality at particular historical moments. Readings in the works of Asad, Fanon, Derrida,
Said, Spivak, Stoller and others. Instructor: Stein. 3 units.
304S. Anthropology and the Religious Imagination. An examination of religious
movements through the political, racial, gendered, and globalized contours of the
contemporary moment. Among other cases to be explored: Jerry Falwell and the religious
right, neo-Pentecostalism in the global south, African derived religions in the Americas,
Black Hebrew Israelites, transnational Islamic movements, the occult economies of the
neoliberal moment, and popular imaginaries of conspiracy. Instructor: Piot. 3 units.
330S. Theories in Cultural Anthropology. A two-semester seminar in which the historical
development of the field and its modern currents and debates are examined and discussed.
Particular topics to be chosen by the instructors. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.
Courses of Instruction 113