Professor Anya Bernstein

What happened to religion in the modern world? We start off by exploring traditional anthropological themes, such as animism, magic, and ritual, while paying particular attention to the classic secularization thesis advanced by social scientists. We will then focus on the crucial contemporary issues, such as debates on secularism and blasphemy, religion and sexuality, globalization and commodification of religion, links between religion, science and technology, millennial movements, “new age" spirituality, and the role religious practices...

Professor: Mary Steedly

The Proseminar in Social Anthropology is a two-semester course required for all first-year Social Anthropology graduate students.  It provides an introductory overview of some of the major concepts and methods of modern social theory as these have been reflected in the field of social/cultural anthropology.  While emphasis will be placed on contemporary developments in the discipline, we will also trace the intellectual genealogies of key concepts and epistemological principles.  For the fall 2015 semester, the course will...

Professor: Michael Herzfeld

Theories of nationalism usually address the phenomenon from the perspectives of the elites that create its ideology and specific form.  Anthropologists, long suspicion of such “top-down” approaches, prefer to tackle nationalism as it plays out in social life, albeit at multiple levels.  We will examine some of the most popular approaches and explore ways of filling the gaps from the perspective of anthropological field research, examining the play of official ideology and familiar practices (“what everyone knows”) in a wide...