Information found in this online edition of the 2008-09 catalog is unofficial and for informational purposes only. By authority of the dean of the College, some factual corrections to the printed version may appear here. The official document of record is the printed edition of the 2008-09 Catalog. For more information, please contact the Office of the Registrar.
Sociology and Anthropology
Chair: Bruce Podobnik
The disciplines of sociology and anthropology share common philosophical roots and concern for the social and cultural conditions of human life, although the two fields have developed independently over the last century. Historically, sociology dwelt more on the modernizing world, while anthropology focused on nonindustrial societies. Such distinctions of subject matter no longer prevail, and the line between sociology and sociocultural anthropology today is neither firm nor fixed.
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology builds on the overlapping concerns and distinctive strengths of sociology and anthropology. Instead of maintaining separate curricula in the two fields, the department has developed a single curriculum dedicated to providing solid preparation in social theories and qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The department is strongly committed to teaching a variety of methodological perspectives including ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing; survey research techniques; texts, discourse, and the practices of representation; computer-mediated modes of inquiry; and historical methods. This methodological pluralism is in keeping with recent trends in both disciplines.
The department's curriculum stresses the relationship between cultural formations and social structures set in sociohistorical context. Among the areas of emphasis in the department are the study of inequality and difference by race, gender, class, and region. Sociology and anthropology courses in the department draw heavily on cross-cultural examples. Majors must take at least one departmental course of intensive study of a cultural region outside the United States. Students are encouraged, though not required, to participate in an overseas program. In addition to providing classroom study, the department provides majors and nonmajors opportunities to conduct field research in the Portland area, elsewhere in the United States, and abroad. All majors complete senior theses, many based on overseas work or local field research.
The Major Program
The department curriculum leads to a joint major in sociology and anthropology. Students with particular interests in either anthropology or sociology may weight their electives toward the field of their choice.
Major Requirements
A minimum of 40 semester credits (10 courses), distributed as follows:
- An introductory course: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110.
- Two methodology courses: Sociology/Anthropology 200 and 201. Students may substitute Communication 260, Economics 103, Psychology 200, Political Science 210, or Mathematics 105 for Sociology/Anthropology 201.
- A social theory course: Sociology/Anthropology 300 (offered fall semester each year).
- One 200-level course on a culture area, selected from Sociology/Anthropology 261, 266, 272, 273, 275, 280, 281, 285, and 291.
- Four topics courses, including at least two at the 300 level. For one--and only one--200-level topics course, students may substitute a 4-semester-credit course from the following list: Sociology/Anthropology 244, 299, 444, or 499.
- Senior thesis: Sociology/Anthropology 400.
Practicum Program
The practicum in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, formerly referred to as community internship, is open to nonmajors and majors. Students enrolled in this program select placement from a variety of community organizations and social agencies. This experience allows students to test their sociological and anthropological understanding by applying it to the world around them.
While the program is not designed to find employment for students after graduation, many students do find opportunities to continue with the internship or with similar agencies. For many students, the practicum also becomes a testing ground for their suitability for a particular profession. A wide variety of student placements are available. Recent placements include city government, district attorney's office, prisons, hospitals, community centers, schools, counseling centers, and social welfare agencies. For a full description of the program, consult the department.
Honors
The sociology/anthropology honors program encourages outstanding students to pursue in-depth independent study in an area of their interest. Students with a 3.500 GPA both in the department and overall may be considered for honors at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Final determination rests on department faculty members' evaluation of the completed thesis. Theses considered for honors must be reviewed by at least two faculty from the department. Students whose projects are deemed worthy by all reviewing faculty members are granted honors on graduation.
Resources For Nonmajors
The sociology/anthropology faculty see their charge as being broader than training professional sociologists and anthropologists. The department is committed to the idea that sociological and anthropological perspectives on the world are a vital part of a liberal education. Students majoring in disciplines ranging from the arts and humanities to the natural sciences find sociology and anthropology to be an illuminating complement to their major fields of study. The sociology/anthropology curriculum accommodates the varied interests of all Lewis & Clark students.
Faculty
Linda Isako Angst, assistant professor of anthropology. Japan; Okinawa and the Pacific War; gender, ethnicity, and national identity; memory and politics of representation; anthropology of violence; the politics of fieldwork.
Modhurima DasGupta, assistant professor of sociology. Social inequality; development; race and ethnicity; sociology of law; gender; South Asia.
Robert Goldman, professor of sociology. Social theory, cultural studies (advertising, news, television), production and consumption, class relations, modernity, postmodernity.
Deborah Heath, associate professor of anthropology. Anthropology of science, technology, and medicine; anthropology of the body; cultural and critical theory; visual and narrative representation.
Jennifer Hubbert, assistant professor of anthropology. Public/popular culture and national identity, globalization, visual representation, political economy of culture and power, youth culture, China.
Oren Kosansky, assistant professor of anthropology. Political economy of religious experience, postcolonial nationalism and diaspora, textual culture, Morocco.
Timothy M. Mechlinski, assistant professor of sociology. Africa, development and social change, migration and border studies, research methods, gender in the Third World, transportation.
Bruce M. Podobnik, associate professor of sociology. Environmental sociology, quantitative methods, comparative revolutions, labor sociology.
SOAN 100 Introduction To Sociology
DasGupta, Goldman, Podobnik
Content: Sociological ways of looking at the world: how society is organized and operates; the relationship between social institutions and the individual; sources of conformity and conflict; the nature of social change.
Prerequisite: None.
Taught: Each semester, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 110 Introduction To Cultural Anthropology
Angst, Heath, Hubbert, Kosansky
Content: The concept of culture and its use in exploring systems of meanings and values through which people orient and interpret their experience. The nature of ethnographic writing and interpretation.
Prerequisite: None.
Taught: Each semester, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 200 Qualitative Research Methods
Angst, Heath, Hubbert, Kosansky, Mechlinski
Content: The philosophical roots of social science research, nature of research materials in the social sciences, issues involved in their collection and interpretation. Ethical dimensions of research. Ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviewing, careful attention to language. Application of these methods in research projects in the local community.
Prerequisites: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, or an introductory-level course in communication. Sophomore standing. Enrollment preference given to departmental majors fulfilling degree requirements.
Taught: Annually (in alternate years, once each semester), 4 semester credits.
SOAN 201 Quantitative Research Methods
Mechlinski, Podobnik
Content: The survey research process, including hypothesis formation and testing, research design, construction and application of random sampling procedures, measurement validity and reliability, data analysis and interpretation. Philosophical roots and ethical considerations of survey research methods.
Prerequisites: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110. Sophomore standing. Enrollment preference given to departmental majors fulfilling degree requirements.
Taught: Annually (in alternate years, once each semester), 4 semester credits.
SOAN 221 Sociology Of Work, Leisure, And Consumption
Goldman
Content: Historical, cultural, and organizational overview of work relations in the context of political economic systems. How technological change is related to the social organization of production relations. How work life influences relationships of authority and freedom in society. Changes in production relations related to daily life, consumption relations, and the meanings and experiences of leisure.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 222 City And Society
Goldman, Podobnik
Content: The nature of urban social life. Studies ranging from the United States and Europe to the Third World. The complementarity of ethnographic studies and of larger-scale perspectives that situate cities in relation to one another, to rural peripheries, and to global political-economic processes.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 225 Race And Ethnicity In Global Perspective
DasGupta
Content: Sociological and anthropological analysis of how the notions of racial and ethnic groups, nations and nationalities, indigenous and nonindigenous groups, and states and citizenships have evolved cross-culturally. How they might be reconfiguring in the present context of economic globalization, mass migrations, and diasporic formations. Causes and consequences of the recent resurgence of ethnicity and the content, scope, and proposals of ethnic movements.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 226 Law And Society
DasGupta
Content: A comparative introduction to the relationship between law and society, as well as to several different sociological approaches to the law. Addresses both classical (Weber, Marx) and contemporary (e.g., Dworkin, MacKinnon) theoretical approaches, including critical legal studies. Case studies of landmark rulings, with particular attention to the Civil Rights movement, women's rights, and so on. Key questions include the following: How do individuals experience law? What is the relationship between social activism and rights protection? Can courts bring about social change?
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 227 Radical Social Movements
Podobnik
Content: Investigation of radical social movements that have struggled to change modern society, including anarchists, revolutionaries, terrorists, rightwing groups, and others. Introduction to the structuralist approach, resource mobilization theory, the social-network approach, and analyses that emphasize processes of framing and identity formation.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 228 Class, Power, And Society
Goldman, Podobnik
Content: The development of class structures and contemporary structures of classes and class relations. Classical and contemporary theories of class and inequality. Interrelationships of class, status, power, gender. Formerly Sociology/Anthropology 320.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 240 The Family In Cross-Cultural Perspective
Staff
Content: Kinship and descent: critical assessment of these organizing principles for the self and social relations in society. The family's theoretical "core"; conjugal, extended, and recombinant families. Recent feminist scholarship on the relationship between gender and kinship studies. Cross-cultural perspective on changing patterns in the family structure. The relationship between labor and changing family roles for men, women, and children.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 244 Practicum
Staff
Content: Community-based experience combined with bibliographic exploration of relevant literatures. With the help of a faculty advisor, students select placement from a variety of community organizations, shelters, and social agencies. Writing reflects field experiences in the context of literature reviews.
Prerequisites: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110. Consent of instructor.
Taught: Each semester, 1-4 semester credits.
SOAN 245 Visual Anthropology
Hubbert
Content: Representation in the study of culture. Explore and evaluate different genres of visual representation, including museums, theme parks, films, television, and photographic exhibitions as modes of anthropological analysis. Topics include the ethics of observation, the politics of artifact collection and display, the dilemmas of tourism, the role of consumption in constructing visual meaning, and the challenge of interpreting indigenously produced visual depictions of self and other.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 249 The Political Economy Of Food
Goldman
Content: Situating food at the intersection of political economy, society, and culture, an exploration of how food is produced and consumed. Topics include the relationships between society and agricultural forms; technologies of food production and ecological impacts; commodity chains and the industrialization of foods; food inequality and hunger; food and the body (e.g., diets, health, obesity, anorexia, fast food vs. slow food, farmer's markets vs. supermarkets); and cultures of food--from personal identity to ethnic identity to cuisine tourism to utopian visions
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 251 Myth, Ritual, And Symbol
Angst, Kosansky
Content: Anthropological approaches to the study of myth, ritual, and symbol. The nature of myth and ritual in a variety of cultures, including the United States. Introduction to analytical approaches to myth, ritual, and symbolic forms including functionalism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, interpretive and performative approaches.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 254 The Social Life Of Money And Exchange
Kosansky
Content: An introduction to classical and contemporary perspectives about the relationship between the economy and society. How people act within the social and cultural context around them when negotiating their way through labor markets, exchanging goods, buying and selling, and calculating selfinterest. Key topics include rationality, embeddedness, networks, markets and exchange systems, institutions, and social capital.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 255 Medicine, Healing, And Culture
Heath
Content: Culturally patterned ways of dealing with misfortune, sickness, and death. Ideas of health and personhood, systems of diagnosis and explanation, techniques of healing ranging from treatment of physical symptoms to metaphysical approaches such as shamanism and faith healing. Non-Western and Western traditions.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 261 Gender And Sexuality In Latin America
Staff
Content: Exploration of gender and sexuality in Latin America through an anthropological lens. Ethnographic and theoretical texts--including testimonial and film material--dealing with the different gender experiences of indigenous and nonindigenous peoples, lowland jungle hunter-gatherers, highland peasants, urban dwellers, and transnational migrants.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 266 Latin America In Cultural Perspective
Podobnik
Content: Introduction to the cultures of Latin America, including highland and rain forest indigenous peoples, the African diaspora, and border studies. The role of hybridity in religion and ritual, political expression, class consciousness, cultural identities. Emphasis on gender issues. Use of ethnographic and historical readings, film, music, literature.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 270 Cultural Politics In East Asia
Hubbert
Content: Ethnographic analysis of the role of the state and the political economy in cultural and social change in East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea). Comparative examination of shared cultural and historical legacies as well as diverse contemporary experiences. Draws upon classic ethnographic texts, Internet sites, personal memoirs, documentaries. Topics may include nationalism, family, class, religion, globalization.
Prerequisite: None.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 273 Japanese Culture: Gender And Identity
Angst
Content: Historical and ethnographic approaches to the study of Japanese culture and what it means to be Japanese, with a specific focus on gender roles. Various contexts for presentation and negotiation of maleness and femaleness within Japanese culture, and implications of gender definitions for larger social systems such as family, work, nation.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 274 Chinese Culture Through Film
Hubbert
Content: Chinese feature films as a contemporary ethnographic source of political and cultural expression and critique. Exploration of change in late 20th- and early 21st-century China. Particular attention paid to the effects of the political economy on changing family, gender, labor, class, ethnicity, and youth culture formations.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 275 Africa In Social And Cultural Perspective
Mechlinski
Content: The diverse peoples of Africa from precolonial times to the present day. Comparisons of religion and aesthetic expression based on political, economic, and social organization. Historical and ethnographic readings challenging the stereotypical view of a continent of isolated, unchanging tribes. Processes such as migration, trade, conquest, and state formation that have brought African societies into contact with one another and with other continents since prehistoric times.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 280 Gender In Asia
Angst, DasGupta, Hubbert
Content: Exploration of shifting meanings of masculinities and femininities in Asia. Texts incorporating personal memoir, classic ethnography, film, and contemporary media. Topics may include issues of gender and nationalism, body modification, widow sacrifice, foot-binding, sexual violence, hijras, and the politics of pleasure. Various regions of Asia will be discussed individually, comparatively, and within a broader global context.
Prerequisite: None.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 281 India In Sociological Perspective
DasGupta
Content: Nature of social life and sources of meaning for people in India as revealed through writings of social scientists and novelists. Caste and family, religion, language, region, community. Forces for change considered throughout.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 285 Culture And Power In The Middle East
Kosansky
Content: Introduction to the anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa, with an emphasis on the relationship between global and local forms of social hierarchy and cultural power. Topics include tribalism, ethnicity, colonialism, nationalism, gender, religious practices, migration, the politics of identity.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 291 Caribbean Cultures
Heath
Content: Political economy and social consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Social and cultural forms arising from the plantation economy and from contact between Africans and Native Americans within communities of maroons, escaped slaves. The reciprocal influence of African and American cultures in music, religion, and material culture. African American cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 299 Independent Study
Staff
Content: Independent reading and/or research in an area other than the normal course offerings of the department.
Prerequisite: Consent of department.
Taught: Each semester, 1-4 semester credits.
SOAN 300 Social Theory
Goldman
Content: Classical origins of general methods, theories, and critical issues in contemporary social science and social thought. Early market-based social theories of Hobbes and Locke, Enlightenment social theorists such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, Burke's critique of the Enlightenment, Hegel's dialectical critique. "Classical" social theories of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Twentieth-century paradigms such as symbolic interaction, structuralism, critical theory, contemporary feminist theories.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, one 200-level sociology/anthropology course, and sophomore standing; or consent of instructor. Enrollment preference given to departmental majors fulfilling degree requirements.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 305 Environmental Sociology
Podobnik
Content: Exploration of research traditions and debates in the field of environmental sociology. How contemporary patterns of industrial production, urbanization, and consumption intensify ecological problems; why harmful effects of pollution disproportionately impact disadvantaged groups; what kinds of social movements have mobilized to protect ecosystems and human communities from environmental degradation. Introduction to basic concepts from urban sociology, theories of social inequality, environmental justice topics, social movements research.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 310 Religion In Society
Kosansky
Content: Religion in its social, cultural, and historical dimensions explored in light of classical theories in the sociology and anthropology of religion. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, more recent phenomenologists. How religion defines personal and group identity. How religion contributes to social stability and serves as an agent of social change.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology or Religious Studies courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 314 Social Change
Goldman, Mechlinski, Podobnik
Content: Social change from the social movements perspective; contradictions and crises generated between prevailing institutional forces and cultural formations; world systems models. Diasporas and migration, market forces, environmental relations, science and technology, development issues in the southern hemisphere.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 324 Anthropology Of Violence
Angst
Content: An upper-level introduction to the anthropology of violence, including recent literature in the field as well as classical examples of the study of violence by anthropologists. Questions of control, responsibility/accountability, public-/private-sphere boundaries, ritual/symbolic meanings. Topics include possible biological bases of aggression; symbolic enactment of violence; nationalism and militarism; the politics of gender, race, class, and ethnic identity; state violence; human rights.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 340 Politics And Society
Podobnik
Content: The structures and interrelationships of power, the state, and their relationship to civil society. Studies of state-building, community and national power, elites, the public sphere, and social movements of the left and right examined in light of classical and contemporary theories of the state.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 342 Power And Resistance
Hubbert, Podobnik
Content: Examination of contestations between social movements, corporations, and political institutions. Case studies drawn from diverse periods of history and regions of the world. Approaches include comparative-historical methods, social movements research, social network theory.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 350 Global Inequality
DasGupta, Podobnik
Content: Issues in the relationships between First World and Third World societies, including colonialism and transnational corporations, food and hunger, women's roles in development. Approaches to overcoming problems of global inequality.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 352 Women In Developing Countries
DasGupta
Content: The roles of women in developing societies. Issues of power, politics, economics, family, and health. The unequal burden borne by women and the impact of gender equality in the developing world. Countries examined from Asia, Latin America, Africa.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 353 Popular Culture/Public Protest: China
Hubbert
Content: Popular and mass culture and public protest in Maoist and contemporary China explored through lens of classic and contemporary anthropological and cultural studies theory. Particular attention paid to changing relations between state and society. Topics may include Cultural Revolution and 1989 democracy youth movements, popular music, material culture, changing media forms, environmental protests.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 356 Nationalism And Identity: Japan
Angst
Content: Examination of the classic literature on the rise of nationalism and study of modern Japan as the non-Western example par excellence of modern nation-building at the end of the 19th century. Questions about how Japan fits and departs from the Western model of nation-state formation. Examination of the historical production of official narratives of national identity through violent and nonviolent "assimilation" processes of culturally distinct minority groups, as well as forms of resistance by those groups. Issues of center and periphery, and "civilization" and frontier in the processes of making modern state and citizen, and their implications for contemporary Japanese identity.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 370 American Advertising And The Science Of Signs
Goldman
Content: Advertising as a core institution in producing commodity culture in the United States. Meaning and language of photographic images. History and theory of U.S. commodity culture. Methods of encoding and decoding in print and television ads. How mass-mediated images condition the ideological construction of gender relations in society.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 375 From Modernity To Postmodernity
Goldman
Content: Mapping the world-historical changes in social, economic, and cultural organization that theorists call postmodernity. The transition from modernity to postmodernity; transformations in the political economy of technoscience and the information society; development of a society of the spectacle; shifting conceptions of identity and agency; relations of time, space, and commodification in the era of global capitalism. May include Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Stuart Hall, Michael Foucault, Manuel Castells, Zygmunt Bauman, Judith Butler, Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Donna Haraway, David Harvey, Paul Virilio, Celeste Olaquiaga.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 300; and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 377 Postcolonial Identity In Latin America
Staff
Content: The politically and historically vital issues of identity in Latin America, including ethnicity, nationalism, and gender. Theoretical tools for understanding these issues in other contexts. Through theoretical essays, ethnography, primary documents, and films and novels by Latin Americans exploring identity issues, the critical skills to analyze postcoloniality, subject formation, and processes of political organizing around "strategic essentialisms." The multiple forms of resistance, accommodation, and hybridization that accompany the meetings of many worlds on the terrain of the Americas.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Annually, 4 semester hours.
SOAN 390 Cyborg Anthropology
Heath
Content: Cultural practices surrounding the production and consumption of technoscientific and biomedical knowledge. Articulation between different constituencies, both inside and outside the scientific community, and the asymmetries that shape their relations. Heterogeneity of science, including contrasts between disciplinary subcultures and different national traditions of inquiry. Political economy of science, including the allocation of material and symbolic resources. Networks of associations that link human and nonhuman allies, such as medical prosthesis, robotics, information. Representation of science and technology in popular culture.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 395 Anthropology Of The Body
Heath
Content: Examination of the body in society. How bodies are the loci of race, class, and gender. The body as a way of examining health and healing, symbols and politics, discipline and resistance. Social and ritual functions of reproduction (including new technologies) and of adornment, scarification, other forms of bodily decoration in classic and contemporary literature, film, dance. Formerly Sociology/Anthropology 295.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 100 or 110, and two 200-level sociology/anthropology courses; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Alternate years, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 400 Senior Seminar And Thesis
Staff
Content: Advanced readings and major works in sociology and anthropology. In consultation with faculty, selection of a thesis topic; further reading in the disciplines and/or field research in the local area. Substantial written document demonstrating mastery of theory and methodology and the ability to integrate these into the thesis topic.
Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 200, 201, 300, and senior standing; or consent of instructor.
Taught: Each semester, 4 semester credits.
SOAN 444 Practicum
Staff
Content: Same as Sociology/Anthropology 244 but requiring more advanced work.
Prerequisites: Junior standing. Consent of instructor.
Taught: Each semester, 1-4 semester credits.
SOAN 499 Independent Study
Staff
Content: Advanced-level independent reading and/or research in an area other than the normal course offerings of the department.
Prerequisites: Junior standing. Consent of department.
Taught: Each semester, 1-4 semester credits.