Courses

FRSEMR 71E: Discovering Cultures and the Sea: Navigation, Exploration, Conquest, and Trade

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2017

Oceans separate distant places, but throughout history societies have looked across the seas for ways to make faraway connections. This seminar will examine many ways that cultures around the world have been shaped by maritime matters. Navigation, Vikings and Basques in North America, the spice trade, Spanish galleons, slavery, New England’s clipper trade with Asia, Maine lobstermen, naval warfare, and contemporary overfishing are all parts of the story. Two short essays and a term project (approximately 12 pages), as well as in-class individual and group...

Anthro 2628: Ethnographic Methods for Anthropological Research

Semester:

Spring

Offered:

2017

This course will review methods used by contemporary anthropologists conducting ethnographic research. Special focus of the course will be on ethnographic interviewing. Will also consider such topics as use of visual material, mixed methods linking qualitative, quantitative and ethnographic material, and approaches to data analysis. Course will include observational and interviewing exercises.

Anthro 1995: Food Culture and Society

Semester:

Spring

Offered:

2017

Food is an entirely mundane but simultaneously elaborate aspect of human life, both pragmatic necessity and symbolic statement. This course examines how cultural systems of meaning and belief interact with social institutions and material reality. Lectures, films, discussions, fieldtrips, and ethnographic research assignments focus on the myriad ways in which food shapes (and reflects) identity (national, ethnic, religious, gendered, class-based), and how in turn how social institutions (from domestic units to the global food system) shape and transform food and its...

Anthro/Hist 1923: Japan's 2011 Disasters and Their Aftermath: A Workshop on Digital Research

Semester:

Spring

Offered:

2017

The course explores the historical and ethnographic contexts of Japan's compound disasters of March 2011. As people sought to survive and make sense of the disasters, social media as well as photos, videos and websites played critical roles. We examine the role of these records, using a participatory digital archive developed at Harvard. Student teams will develop research questions, collect digital material, and create multimedia narratives. Students will complement their research with study of responses to similar global events as well as critical reflection on...

FRSEMR 71E: Discovering Cultures and the Sea: Navigation, Exploration, Conquest, and Trade

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2016

Anthropology 2682

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2015

This course examines patterns of Japanese urbanism -- social, cultural, historical, and built-environmental -- through interdisciplinary discussion. It is open to graduate students in any department or programs. Students are required to attend lectures of SW 33 Tokyo; students in Anthro 2682 will participate in specialized discussion sections and will frame term projects tailored to their future research plans in close consultation with the professor. The seminar is equally open to graduate students with strong interests in urban anthropology, in urban design and planning, and in Japanese/...

Anthropology 2712

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2015

We will discuss the "food turn" in anthropology through reading contemporary (and classic) ethnographies of food in contexts of production, distribution, social exchange, gender, and science. Note: Undergraduates encouraged to participate.

SOCWORLD 33 - Tokyo

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2015

Tokyo has been one of the world's great metropolitan centers since the 17th century, both the urban hub of Japanese society and culture, and the place where Japanese domestic society and global influences have intersected. This course examines trajectories of change in Tokyo's urban culture, lifestyles, social structure, and spatial environment across the city's history, using ethnography, history, literature, diaries, architecture, photography, art, cartography, animation, film and the Internet to explore Tokyo as an urban culture in comparative perspectives drawn from anthropology,...

Anthropology 1995: Food, Culture, and Society

Semester:

Spring

Offered:

2014

Course Website

Anthropology 2626: Research Design

Semester:

Spring

Offered:

2014

Course Website

Seminar focuses on weekly writing assignments leading to complete dissertation research proposals; defining theoretical and ethnographic contexts of research problem; reviewing literature; explaining site selection, methodology, timetable, human subjects protection; preparing budget; identifying grant sources.

Anthropology 1923: Japan's 2011 Disasters and Their Aftermath

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2013

Course Website

Catalog Number: 34485

Theodore C. Bestor and Andrew Gordon

For Undergraduates and Graduates

Half course

...

Anthropology 1600: The Ethnographic Encounter

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2013

Course Website

This course is a critical introduction to the premises, vocabulary, and methods of the anthropological dialogue with people of other cultures. Lectures and discussions revolve around several themes central to the discipline, such as "cultural relativism," "social structure," "interpretation," "gender," "the invention of tradition," and "reflexivity." At the same time, we will seek some fair-minded insights into the collective lives of people who work, play, fight, speak, eat and pray in ways different from our own. In the end, we will see ourselves more...