Oct 31, 2024  
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2024-25 Catalog

Courses (A - Z)

 
  

  • AMER 470 - Thesis

    Unit(s): 2
    Instructional Method: Independent study
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Yearlong course, 1 unit per semester.
  

  • ANME 100 - The Topography and Archaeology of the Ancient Roman City

    The city of Rome was the capital and largest city of the ancient Mediterranean’s longest-lasting and most geographically expansive empire. During this study tour, we will visit the major monuments and museums of the city, considering Rome’s development from a small village (ca. 1000 BCE) to the Augustan age (first century BCE-first century CE) to the capital of a world empire (second-third centuries CE). Through site visits and lectures, students will examine the development of Rome’s urban and monumental landscape, including religious, mortuary, and public architecture; learn how to interpret archaeological/architectural evidence and confront its difficulties; and consider the (ab)uses of the Roman past in the present, especially during the Fascist era, and how that has shaped the modern city. We will also visit the exceptionally well-preserved city of Ostia to examine aspects of urbanism and domestic life. Prior to the study tour during spring semester, students will be required to attend several mandatory class meetings (with readings), conduct research on a chosen site/monument, and prepare an oral presentation to be given on site in Italy. 

    Unit(s): 0.25
    Prerequisite(s): Students must apply to participate; approval is required from the instructor and from the International Programs Office.
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Credit/no credit only (CR/NC)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Students must register for both the fall and spring sections of the course. 
  

  • ANME 251 - Ancient Greek Athletics

    For better or worse, the ancient Olympics (motto now “Faster, Higher, Strong-Together”) has proved itself one of the most influential of Greek institutions. This course will study the values and meanings given to the ancient Olympics by studying the representation of athletic victory in the poetry and dedications that celebrated victors. What ideas of athletic victory did these memorials produce? How did they link athletic success to moral excellence, natural talent, family history, masculinity, beauty, or divine favor, and build up these very notions so that they seemed real and significant? Who could claim the political capital of athletic excellence for their own-victors? Their cities? Second-place finishers? Non-Greeks? What events counted as events-women’s events, team events, running with a shield, dog racing? And what kind of work even qualified you as a victor? Throughout we will use comparisons to the meanings that other sporting movements have sought to claim, and so we will take time to study Roman sports and the modern Olympic movement, again focusing on how various artistic forms (poetry, film, mass choreographed performances) construct victory. Course conducted in English.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): LIT 251  
    Notes: No Greek required. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ANME 263 - Tragedy in the Polis

    This course offers an introduction to the tragic dramatic performances of fifth-century BCE Athens. Through a survey of textual evidence-the extant tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as other testimonia-and material remains, we will familiarize ourselves with the literary and dramatic form of Greek tragic poetry and the circumstances of its performance. Through close reading of individual tragedies, we will identify what elements characterize and unite tragedy as a genre; analyze how tragedy makes use of myth (and, less often, history) to explore urgent questions about identity, difference and belonging, gender, power and obligation, death and loss, and survival; and consider the relationship of these texts and the questions they are concerned with to the historical, social, and political conditions under which they were performed. We will survey and evaluate approaches taken by critics, ancient and modern, to interpreting tragedy as literary texts, as civic religious ritual, and as performance. Time and interest permitting, we will consider how fifth-century BCE Athenian tragedy relates - or does not relate - to other tragic dramatic traditions, and modern uses and receptions of fifth-century BCE Athenian tragedies. All readings in English; no Greek or familiarity with Greek history required. 

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): LIT 253  
    Notes: All readings in English; no Greek or familiarity with Greek history required.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ANME 371 - The Greek World from 776 to 404 BCE

    This course offers a chronological survey of archaic and classical Greek history and civilization from the traditional foundation of the Olympic games in 776 BCE to the fall of the Athenian Empire in 404 BCE. After beginning with a brief look at Bronze and Dark Age Greece, we will cover the following topics: the rise of the polis; Greek colonization; the “Age of Revolution”; hoplite warfare, aristocracy, and the spread of tyranny; the rise of Athens and Sparta; the Persian Wars; the development of Athens’s democracy and empire; the causes and course of the Peloponnesian War; the development of ethnography and historical inquiry; and the nature of Greek social relations, with an emphasis on slavery and gender dynamics in Athens and Sparta. Emphasis is placed on the interpretation of ancient evidence, including primary literary works, inscriptions, and relevant archaeological material. 

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): HIST 391  
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 372 - The Hellenistic World: Egypt, the Middle East, and Central Asia after Alexander the Great

    This course examines the political, cultural, and social landscape of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Egypt from the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) to the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE and the incorporation of the last Graeco-Macedonian successor state into the Roman Empire. Topics to be covered include the development and character of the great Hellenistic empires, with a focus on the Ptolemaic and Seleucid states; Hellenistic Central Asia and interactions with India, especially Ashoka and the Mauryan Empire; the nature of kingship; political and cultural continuities and disruptions; the Hellenistic city, especially Alexandria in Egypt; and scientific, literary, and religious developments. Throughout this course, we will emphasize and interrogate the nature of cross-cultural interaction in the Hellenistic period, considering its social, cultural, and material consequences. We will also consider the relevance of modern concepts such as colonization and globalization to our understanding of this period. Classes will focus on the examination and interpretation of ancient evidence (textual, documentary, and archaeological) as well as discussions of secondary scholarship.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): HIST 392  
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 373 - The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic

    This course offers a chronological survey of Republican Roman history from Rome’s consolidation of power on the Italian peninsula in 266 BCE to the death of the Emperor Augustus in 14 CE. We will begin with a consideration of Rome’s rapid growth from 264 to 146 BCE and the various theories concerning the factors behind Roman imperial expansion. We will then explore the political, social, economic, and cultural repercussions of Rome’s transformation into the leading power in the Mediterranean and the various factors that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire under Augustus. During the semester we will cover the following topics: the structure and evolution of the Roman constitution; the development of the “professional” Roman army and its political ramifications; changing gender relations in Roman society; imperial governance; the growth and practice of slavery; Rome’s cultural interaction with Greece and the East; the social and cultural function of gladiatorial combat; Rome’s relations with its allies; the politicization of the Roman people and the rise of “popular” politicians; and the Augustan settlement. Emphasis is placed on the interpretation of ancient evidence, including primary literary works, inscriptions, and relevant archaeological material.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): HIST 393  
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 374 - The Athenians and the “Other”

    This course examines the conception and construction of otherness from the vantage point of the male citizen in fifth- and fourth-century Athens, who framed himself as the ultimate insider. We will begin by briefly considering both the “other” as the object of historical analysis and the various lenses through which male Athenians constructed their identity during this period. We will then spend the rest of the semester examining the Athenians’ construction of self and other via a number of intertwined categories including ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, and disability. This examination will involve the close study of a number of different genres, such as historical accounts, tragedy, comedy, and oratory. In addition to reading authors such as Herodotus, Euripides, Aristophanes, and selections from the Hippocratic corpus, this course will also examine relevant archaeological evidence.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): HUM 110  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): HIST 394  
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 382 - Material Culture and Empire: The Archaeology of the Roman World

    This course considers the archaeology and material culture of the Roman Empire, including the city of Rome, Italy, and the provinces. This course is theoretically grounded in the archaeology of empire, but will also be content-based, covering major sites throughout the empire and classes of material culture. Topics to be covered may include the origin and development of the city of Rome; imperial display; daily life in the Roman Empire; the archaeology of the Roman economy; the archaeology of cult and religion; provincial archaeology and the relationship between center and periphery; the archaeology of border regions; and methodological and disciplinary issues in approaching a vast territorial empire. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on the archaeology of identity in an imperial context.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): HUM 110  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 383 - Contact and Exchange in the Mediterranean: The Archaeology of the Greek World

    This course considers the archaeology and material culture of the Greek world, centering on the Aegean and the wider eastern Mediterranean and Near East, as well as other areas of Greek settlement. The focus will be both theoretical and content-based, covering important sites, objects, and classes of material culture. Topics to be covered may include the development of urban and public space; monumental architecture; sculpture and other fine arts; houses, households, and the archaeology of daily life; Greek colonization and city foundations; ceramics and the use of pottery as archaeological evidence; and funerary practices. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on the interaction between Greeks and other groups in the Mediterranean, and the material effects of that interaction.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): HUM 110  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 384 - Empires of the Nile: The Archaeology of Egypt and Nubia

    This course examines the art and archaeology of ancient Egypt and Nubia from late prehistory (ca. 3000 BCE) through the Nubian Meroitic period (ends ca. 400 CE). These two regions of northeast Africa were economically, culturally, and politically intertwined throughout their history, and offer an exceptional case study for the examination of the material effects of imperialism and cross-cultural interaction over the long term. This course will survey major aspects of Egyptian and Nubian archaeology, including death, burial, and mummification; tombs and their development; ideologies and iconographies of kingship; material culture and religion; temples and other religious architecture; the emergence of the state; archaeologies of imperialism; and archaeologies of daily life. Specific attention will be paid to Nubian material culture, the reciprocal political and cultural interactions between Egypt and Nubia, and the unique material culture that resulted from these interactions, though the course is overall centered on Egyptian archaeology due to the quantity and quality of data. Emphasis will be placed on engaging with and critically analyzing archaeological and visual data, as well as some primary textual sources. We will also consider the modern reception and study of ancient Egypt in relation to Nubia and the broader archaeology of Africa.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 385 - Mummies, Urns, and Ancestors: The Archaeology of Death and Burial

    This course examines archaeological approaches to human death and burial, introducing how archaeologists use the material remains of mortuary practice to analyze ritual, social, economic, and ideological institutions, structures, and identities in past societies. Using case studies drawn from ancient Egypt and the wider ancient Mediterranean, this course will present a theoretical grounding for the archaeological investigation of human burial, including bioarchaeological and osteological approaches. From the perspective of funerary practice, we will examine social structure, class, and rank; religion and belief systems; ethnicity and cultural identity; age, sex, and gender; and memory and ancestor veneration. This course will also consider aspects of archaeological ethics as it relates to the study of human remains.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANME 481 - Independent Reading

    Unit(s): Variable: 0.5 - 1
    Prerequisite(s): Instructor and division approval
    Instructional Method: Independent study
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 4 times for credit.
  

  • ANTH 201 - Topics in Contemporary Anthropology

    Anthropology of Global Health
    This course is designed to be a gateway course in cultural and medical anthropology geared toward first- and second-year students. Global health presents itself as a timely intervention that redistributes the means of physical and mental well-being to those who lack it, typically in resource-poor or underserved settings. But in what sense is global health “global” if it is driven by the agendas of specific nations and institutions? How can it command such implicit recognition as a force for good and yet seem to recapitulate the imperial agendas and perspectives of the colonial era? Rather than considering global health as obvious, coherent, and necessary, we will examine its foundations: What assumptions does global health reflect about bodies, families, history, and biomedicine itself? In what ways do global health programs build upon or distinguish themselves from colonial-era medical campaigns that tied biomedical interventions to Christianity, modernization, and the demands of industrial labor? How does global health both reflect and perpetuate transnational political and economic shifts? What are the unexpected consequences of global health programs-for the individuals who compose target populations, but also for global health professionals themselves as well as local experts? In exploring answers to these questions, we will draw on recent ethnographic analyses from around the world as well as historical studies that illuminate global health’s antecedents.

    Bodies, Spaces, Subjectivities
    This course is designed to be a gateway course in cultural-phenomenological anthropology geared toward first- and second-year students. It introduces basic concepts and methods in anthropology through a sustained attention to human bodies as the preeminent space of subject making in different cultural contexts. Drawing on phenomenology, practice theory, urban studies, performance studies, and gender theory, the course approaches culture as a form of doing rather than of being, as first and foremost a set of embodied, material practices and cultivated dispositions. It explores both how corporeality connects people with others and their environments, and how, in the process, bodies become objects of individual attention and social action. Readings connect classics in social theory (Merleau-Ponty, Schutz, Bourdieu, Simmel, Goffman) with canonical anthropological texts (Boas, Sapir, Mauss, Gluckman, Sahlins), and ethnographies focusing on particular forms of embodiment and space making in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Topics include dwelling, working, playing, learning, making, modifying, exchanging, and contesting. Students will partner to conduct small fieldwork projects in the Portland area, learning basic qualitative methods in the process.

    Decolonizing Archaeology
    What do archaeologists do and what questions can archaeology answer? This introduction to archaeology course reviews the history, goals, theories, and methods of the discipline. Through a study of material culture and references to case studies from all over the world, we will review periods of human history and culture ranging from prehistory to the present using a decolonizing framework. We will unpack the colonial and imperialist histories of archaeology while highlighting the positive ways in which it has been practiced. We will also discuss how paleoarchaeologists investigate ancient human histories, zooarchaeologists study animal remains, archaeobotanists examine plant remains, and bioarchaeologists investigate ancestral remains. Students will be encouraged to draw on archaeological analyses from around the world to consider the ways in which identity, technology, diet, economy, trade, race, class, and gender are investigated archaeologically.

    Global Political Ecology
    This course is designed to be a gateway course in the anthropology of political ecology geared toward first- and second-year students. Despite enormous scientific and political efforts, scientists and activists have found themselves unable to bring about the political changes that might reverse climate change and environmental degradation. The degradation of earth’s environment has been caused by humans, but somehow humans have not been able to stop or reverse the social processes that cause this degradation. This course examines case studies of environmental degradation at multiple scales, from Superfund sites in Oregon to deforestation in the Amazon to global climate change, to three ends: to explore fundamental questions in social theory about the relationship between humans and the world, to understand why coordinated scientific and political efforts to prevent environmental degradation have tended to fail, and to think through new political and environmental interventions that might succeed. The course readings are drawn from both environmental science and anthropology, and one of the tasks of the course is to introduce students to anthropology through the multiple ways in which the discipline has dealt with knowledge produced in the natural sciences. By putting environmental science in conversation with anthropology, we will also think through ways to reconcile the disciplines in political practice.

    Language, Culture, Power
    This course is designed to be a gateway course in linguistic anthropology geared toward first- and second-year students. Language permeates our lives, identities, and relationships, yet most of us take it for granted. This course introduces students to some of the foundational concepts, methods, and issues addressed in linguistic anthropology. Starting with the basic premise that language, thought, and culture are inextricably intertwined in practice, we take a fundamentally comparative and global perspective on the study of language. We will consider language not as a simple means of communication, but as a medium through which values, subjectivities, and sociopolitical relationships are created and transformed. We ask: How do differences in language affect how we think and act? How do people do things with language, and how does this vary across cultures, times, and places? How does linguistic communication interact with nonverbal or embodied forms of communication? What ideologies of language shape our understandings of difference and hierarchy? In exploring answers to these questions, we will draw on media resources, natural language examples, and recent ethnographic analyses from around the world to consider the ways in which language is implicated in power struggles within specific domains of social relationships (race, class, gender, sexuality) and institutions (education, medicine, law, immigration, electoral politics).

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit if different topics.
    Notes: Not all topics offered every year. Review schedule of classes for availability.

    Anthropology of Global Health, Decolonizing Archaeology, and Global Political Ecology: These courses apply to the department’s SETS concentration.

    Language, Culture, Power: This course applies to the department’s linguistic anthropology concentration.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 211 - Introduction to Anthropology: History, Theory, Method

    An introduction to the history, theory, methods, and subject matter of the field of social and cultural anthropology. Students become familiar with the conceptual framework of the discipline and with some of its techniques of research and interpretation. Anthropology is considered in its role as a social science and as a discipline with ties to the humanities and natural sciences. Emphasis is on close integration of analytic abstractions with empirical particulars.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Not open to first-year students.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 305 - Musical Ethnography

    See MUS 305  for description.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): MUS 305  
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 306 - #CentralAmericanTwitter: Continuity and Rupture in Central American Indigenous Histories

    Of the 250,000 Guatemalan migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border between 2018 and 2019, many Americans may be surprised to learn that at least half are Indigenous, often with little fluency in Spanish and with a distinct cultural background. Understanding the forces driving this modern-day migration, and its effects on these Indigenous migrants, requires a historically situated understanding of Central American Indigeneity itself and its unique legacy within countries like Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. This course provides that historical background, beginning with the archaeology and ancient history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and continuing through the conquest of the Americas to the present day. By focusing on topics such as Indigenous culture, social inequality, and religion, we will track historical currents through time and discuss what effect they continue to have today. From this framing, we will use a multimedia approach that includes films, excerpts of novels, ethnographies, photographs, and social media to access firsthand accounts of the topics discussed in class.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): CRES 396  
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 320 - Social Movements, Protests, and Historical Change in South Asia

    The Arab uprisings, the Black Lives Matter movement, the ongoing student movement in India, and the rise of far-right movements in the United States and elsewhere have given a new urgency to an examination of the tactics and possibilities of mass movements and protests: How and why do large groups of people come together to protest? When and how do some people and issues become political, and when and how do they not? How and when are these movements successful in achieving their aims? What social, cultural, and political effects do they have beyond their explicit aims? How, finally, do these movements interact with existing state and legal structures, whether antagonistically or through participation and engagement? By examining South Asian social movements with a focus on India, this conference analyzes current and historical attempts to reconfigure the relationships between people, laws, and states. In the process, the conference engages with challenges facing anthropology in theorizing historical change and in finding methodologies suited to large- and multi-scaled social processes. South Asia, with its vast scale and its complex and constantly shifting political landscape, is both an ideal and an important site for these inquiries. This conference also serves as an introduction to the anthropology of South Asia. It begins with a historical and theoretical consideration of the play of domination and hegemony in the colonial period, moves to a study of nationalist movements in India and Bangladesh, and then draws on the theoretical frameworks studied in the beginning of the semester to consider a range of contemporary social movements, including the Indian Maoist uprising, Dalit and anticaste movements, and the Sri Lankan Civil War. This course asks what an anthropological approach to the specific and local can bring to the study of politics, and what a study of large-scale movements can bring to anthropological understandings of historical change.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 324 - Sport and Society

    Sports are deeply entangled with and imbricated in social processes, cultural institutions, and everyday life across much of the globe. The course approaches sports play as a set of embodied practices and performances, as a primary site for the reproduction and innovation of fundamental categories of gender/sex/sexuality, class, race/ethnicity, and nationality. Through case studies of situated sporting practices (notably football/soccer, cricket/baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, capoeira, skateboarding, and parkour), we will examine how colonial legacies are literally embodied in contemporary forms of urban space, nationalism, and globalization.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 330 - Decolonizing Material Culture and Museums

    What is material culture? How do people relate to the world through tangible and intangible heritage? How do museums navigate meaning making in their exhibits? This course explores the various active and recursive roles of “things” in shaping social worlds and sharing public stories. The goal of the course is to attain familiarity with museology and the theoretical perspectives therein. We will discuss the various critical perspectives on materiality and its role in museum interpretation. This course also explores historic and recent developments in museum practice, including the impacts of salvage ethnography, the rise of digitization, and the recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples in museums.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 331 - Archaeology of Reed

    This course is an introduction to the practice and process of archaeological fieldwork. Students will learn the foundational methods of archaeological recovery: survey, mapping, documentation, excavation, artifact identification, and artifact interpretation. The fieldwork will also extend beyond the excavation, as students will become familiar with political and ethical challenges and combine historical and archaeological sources in their research. Excavations will be done on the grounds of Reed College.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 432  or ANME 385  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-laboratory
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Students who have completed ANTH 201  as Decolonizing Archaeology, may register with instructor approval.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 332 - Mesoamerican Archaeology

    This course serves as an introduction to the field of Mesoamerican studies, focusing on the peoples and cultures of this region that includes modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. We will explore the development of the great Olmec civilization of the Gulf Coast, the city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico, the Maya civilization in Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Aztec Empire of central Mexico. Through studying these sites and cultures, we will investigate the political organization, economy, and belief systems of these ancient people through their material culture, architecture, and texts. We will also explore the ways in which archaeology is practiced in this region, focusing in particular on the questions and techniques that have shaped our knowledge of these ancient civilizations, while also being mindful and critical of the colonial and imperialist histories of archaeology. Though this course will primarily focus on Mesoamerica’s pre-Columbian history, this course will also include frequent readings from colonial documents and modern-day ethnographies to explore how this ancient past remains relevant and impactful in the present.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 333 - Local and Global Indigenous Archaeologies

    Colonial perspectives about hierarchies of human worth and worldviews shaped the creation of archaeology, and modern archaeologists are grappling with this legacy. This unit encourages students to explore the impacts of colonialism on the discipline and consider how archaeologists are taking steps to decolonize their methods and theories locally and globally. In focusing on both the global legacies of colonialism and the continued sociopolitical movements of Indigenous people, this class will encourage a broad perspective on Indigenous archaeologies through the use of place-based and theoretical discussions. This course expands on foundational archaeological concepts and key theoretical approaches of Indigenous scholars from across the globe. As part of this course, students will be asked to recognize the impacts of colonialism and imperialism and how Indigenous peoples enact sovereignty and self-determination. Students will lead class activities based on relevant case studies and archaeological sites in addition to creating written or podcast-style reflections based on weekly readings.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 334 - Queer Politics and Pleasures

    Queerness speaks to bodily pleasures, longing, intimacies, affects, and desires that present an outside to cis-heteronormativity. Focusing on ethnography and history, this course examines how such sensations occur towards such lofty ambitions as sexual fulfillment, self-making, political uprisings, and world making. Exploring works in anthropology, art, film, television, music, and literature, this course tackles the intersections of queer theory, activism, and practices of everyday life as shaped across a range of cultures, places, and times. Central attention to race, gender, class, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism frame the course.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 335 - Digitizing the Past: Applied Archaeological Digital Heritage

    Archaeological methodologies are ever-changing in today’s world. Old ways of recording and interpreting archaeological data are being replaced by digital and computational methods. This course draws on visual approaches in anthropology and media studies to understand digital heritage practices in archaeology. We will survey digital tools and methods in analyzing the past, acquire a practical skill set, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of digital heritage applications in archaeology. We will cover issues of subjectivity, marginalization, sustainability, situated knowledge, ethnographic authority, and meaning making embodied in visual forms of communication and dataset management. In this course you will learn how to use a DSLR camera to compose photographs and create 3D models.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
  

  • ANTH 337 - Black Ecologies in the Americas

    Since the era of the Middle Passage, the survival, fates, and fortunes of Black communities throughout the Americas have turned on contested relations to landscapes-both rural and urban. Historical and ongoing legacies of coerced forms of racialized and gendered labor, as well as extractive (e.g., plantations, mines) capitalist political-economic structures too often overshadow co-occurring material and spiritual practices of care that constitute countermanding critical ecologies. This course explores myriad Afro-diasporic cultural forms of land use, land ownership, land occupation, and the significances of the environment in their diverse manifestations across South America and North America, including the Caribbean. Particularly, we will study such elements as contemporary environmentalist social movements, small-scale rural and urban farming, conservation, gastronomy and foodways, and notions of a Black commons, as well as Afro-spiritual conceptions of nature. Primary attention to the interstices of race, gender, sexuality, class, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism frames the course.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 341 - Medical Anthropology

    This course will consider the ways in which medical anthropology has historically been influenced by debates within the discipline of anthropology as well as by broader social and political movements. Particular emphasis will be placed on the importance of viewing biomedicine as one among many cultural systems of healing. Some key issues we will explore include concepts of health, healing, and illness; the political economy of disease; the role of medicine in the state and citizenship; medicine’s role in the assignment and mediation of deviance; applied medical anthropology; medical anthropology as ambassador and translator for biomedicine; and contemporary global health crises, including the HIV and TB pandemics.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  or ANTH 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 343 - African Pasts, African Futures

    This course examines the ways Africans engage the past and imagine the future. How do the slave trade, colonial rule, anticolonial resistance, the development initiatives of the Cold War era, and lingering promises of modernity figure in Africans’ perceptions, experiences, and visions of the world? The first goal of the course is to attend to the conditions of possibility that make African pasts and futures thinkable and inhabitable. We will examine the conceptions of time that have shaped Africans’ lived experiences of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, giving close attention to the material and symbolic structures these conceptions have reflected and reinforced. Our second goal is to interrogate Africa as a site of knowledge production. What would it mean to decolonize African studies, or to center Africa in planetary accounts? Drawn from across sub-Saharan Africa, our readings foreground the work of African scholars and engage themes such as the significance of “custom” and “tradition,” transformations in intergenerational relations, the ethics and politics of remembering and forgetting, the built environment as a site of memory and resistance, and the place of Africa in the world. Topics may include the politics of race and ethnicity, the appropriation of African knowledge in the colonial encounter, the consequences of colonial and postcolonial development projects, and efforts to decolonize higher education. The syllabus pairs works of empirical research with suggested contemporary African novels.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): CRES 392  
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 345 - Black Queer Diaspora

    This course examines ethnographies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people across the Black diaspora. The history of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and their ongoing aftermaths have created both interlinked and locally variant lifeways across the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Black queer studies queries the creativity and variation with which Black people have been shaped by and continuously reshape these histories, undermining presupposed norms of race, gender, and sexuality. We will look at ethnographic explorations of these particulars, differences, and commonalities as documented in texts, images, and sounds across multiple disciplines. We interrogate how conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality shift across time and space and as lived by Black social actors who both participate in and defy colonial and nationalist projects.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): CRES 395  
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 347 - Outbreak, Emergency, Pandemic: Anthropology of Health Systems

    In the past few decades, infectious diseases such as HIV, Ebola, and COVID-19 have illuminated the urgency of health systems research. These mass infections have also highlighted the strengths and weakness of different health systems, while also illustrating just how complex and unwieldy public health interventions can be. Even in supposedly “developed” or “wealthy” countries, public health interventions in mass infections can exacerbate existing inequalities along lines of race, class, and gender, sharpen political antagonisms, prop up cronyism, erode existing health services by redirecting resources in ways that negatively impact public health in the process, and radically transform how individuals and groups regard themselves and others. Ethnographic research provides a critical vantage point for thinking about what health policy and health systems do and what they mean beyond their stated intentions and actions. Focusing on epidemics past, present, and future, this class will pose the following questions: What can ethnographic research illuminate about health systems, particularly health systems under immense strain? What do strategies implemented to respond to mass infections tell us about how public health policymakers view the world, and the historical and political contexts that give rise to these visions? In what ways must ethnographers modify their research methodologies to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease? We will also explore different ways anthropologists engage with health policy making and health systems reform, and critically examine the ramifications of these engagements.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 349 - Time and Space

    Introduction to classic and contemporary anthropological literatures on the sociocultural production and experience of time and space, supported also by readings from several allied disciplines. Emphasis is on forming propositions specific enough to be relevant to interpretation of concrete ethnographic materials. Topics of major concern include memory, ritual, narrative, deixis, chronology and time reckoning, embodiment, landscape, the turn (or return) to history in anthropology, and the spatiotemporal organization of contemporary industrial societies. Narrower subproblems receiving deepest consideration will vary in different years of offering.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 357 - Comparative Fascisms

    This course attempts to provincialize the category of fascism, using it to analyze moments both historically and geographically distant from mid-twentieth-century Europe. We will begin with a set of historical apologetics and critiques from European fascists, American white supremacists, intellectuals associated with European imperialism, and right-wing nationalist intellectuals from across the globe, alongside their contemporary critics. Drawing upon the analyses we build of ideologies, tactics, and historical conditions of the various political projects, we spend the second unit of the course reading ethnographic accounts of contemporary fascist and right-wing movements from India, Europe, and the United States. We end the semester with readings from contemporary antifascist movements, comparing their analyses with those that have emerged from our readings.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 361 - The Middle East: Culture and Politics

    The Middle East has been the focus of increased scrutiny over the past few decades in light of U.S. economic and political interests, and yet the region’s internal cultural complexity is poorly understood and often overlooked. This course provides both an anthropological overview of the region’s political culture and cultural politics, as well as a critical inquiry into the very anthropo-geographic categories that have historically sustained a sense of unity in the region, including tribalism, honor and shame, religious piety, and poetic practices. In the process, the course explores larger comparative issues of colonialism, nationalism, state formation, sectarianism, urbanism, and globalization.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 363 - Race and Transnational China

    Debates about forms of perceived or imagined social difference have a long history among people who identify as Chinese, including negotiations of diasporic relations with a Chinese homeland, now claimed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Those debates took on new urgency in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for Chinese intellectuals faced with the threat of Western colonialism, the imperative to establish a sovereign nation-state, and the concomitant rise of Western modernity discourses that were grounded in notions of essential biological differences hierarchizing human “races.” Yet since the emergence of the PRC as global power in the 2010s and President Xi Jinping’s effort to extend Chinese infrastructure development and investment programs to over 70 countries worldwide, transnational China has seen reintensified debates about social difference and the meaning of Chineseness, as well as the rise of new mass-mediated Han Chinese nationalisms. In this course we engage multimedia sources (texts, videos, images) to explore these most recent debates in historical context. We do this as a way to dialogue with critical race theory, and to delve into the high-stakes interpretive politics of “race” and “racism” transnationally. As many Chinese scholars and netizens ask: are these English language terms even applicable in the very different cultural, historical, and political economic contexts of transnational China? We start with comparative theoretical debates about the nature of “race” as historically situated perceptions and claims about biological/embodied difference. We then turn to debates in recent Chinese contexts to consider for example the relationship between discourses of “race” and “nation,” the nature of “Han-ness,” the status of “ethnic minorities,” and the status of “Blackness” amidst increased Sino-African engagement. Our goal will be to expand our understandings of the stakes and contexts of cosmologies and ontologies of social difference and inequality transnationally.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Cross-listing(s): CRES 393  
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 364 - Global Tibet through Film

    Since the Dalai Lama fled to exile in India in 1959, Tibet and Tibetans have garnered emblematic status in global debates on Indigenous cultures and human rights. The widespread Tibetan unrest and subsequent military crackdown during China’s “Olympic year” (2007-08) focused renewed international attention on the issue of Tibet in the face of China’s rise as an important political and economic power. Meanwhile, tightening political constraints and rapid development under President Xi Jinping (2013-) have ushered in a new and complicated era for the transnational Tibetan community. Yet Tibet has long been both a cosmopolitan place and an object of translocal interest and desire. This course draws on visual and multimedia approaches in anthropology and media studies to understand the global roles of Tibet and Tibetans in specific historical and ethnographic contexts. We center the analysis and production of film and video as mediums for exploring ongoing, transnational debates about Tibetanness amidst rapid sociopolitical and economic change. The course pairs film screenings with relevant ethnographic and historical readings, as well as a variety of other media such as literature, popular songs, websites, and blogs from inside and outside of China. We focus on films, especially by Tibetan filmmakers, that address the historical and contemporary diversity among Tibetans across the Himalayan region and into the diaspora, as well as the changing political economic conditions of interethnic and Chinese-Tibetan relations. Students will propose, receive training in, and workshop a semester-long short film/video project about a film on Tibetans of their choice.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 365 - The Anthropology of Development in Post-Mao China

    Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, state leaders have struggled to chart a course to a Chinese modernity that would break with the perceived humiliations of European domination in the nineteenth century and bring China commensurate status in a newly configured world stage of nations. Since Deng Xiaoping’s post-Mao reforms in the early 1980s, the PRC has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world. As such, it is poised to have major impacts globally, and especially since the PRC’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in 2001, these meteoric socioeconomic changes have complex implications for its diverse 1.4 billion people, as well as for many communities abroad now impacted by the expanding reach of Chinese investment and development efforts. This course draws on anthropological theories of modernity, capitalism, globalization, and development to turn a critical eye on discourses and practices of “development” in the PRC. Drawing on theoretical, historical, and ethnographic writings, as well as on other media such as government policy papers, advertising, and documentary and feature films, we consider the contexts and contradictions of various development efforts just before, during, and after the Maoist period, focusing especially on the post-Mao era of economic reforms. The PRC thus will serve as a case study for our broader examination of theories conceptualizing the relationships among transregional capitalisms, changing forms of governance, and local communities’ experiences.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course meets the department’s area requirement.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 374 - Urban Anthropology

    The course provides an introduction to urban anthropology, with a particular focus on the colonial and postcolonial metropole as an exemplary site for the reciprocal influences of global and local processes. It explores how the city functions simultaneously as a locus for the negotiation of cultural diversity and for utopian ideals of rational communication. Drawing from cases throughout the “developed” and “developing” worlds, the course examines how urban culture is produced and reproduced under regimes of industrialization, colonialism, modernism, and globalization.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 375 - Anthropology of Science

    This course examines scientific practices and knowledge as cultural, social, and political phenomena. Scientific knowledge often appears to be none of these things, and so central questions of the course are how such knowledge is produced and how it is able to transcend its context. The course begins with a set of orienting texts from Kuhn, Foucault, and Latour before turning to ethnographic and historical work on science and expertise, with an emphasis on feminist and postcolonial approaches. Along the way, we ask how the questions and methods drawn from the study of science can reshape larger anthropological understandings of the political and the social.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 376 - Situating Climate Change

    The latest manifestation of humanity’s self-induced existential threats emerges in the form of climate change: a planetary-scale phenomenon that profoundly impacts both humans and nonhumans across the board in fundamental ways. Yet climate change, its effects, and the consequences of its mitigation strategies are experienced differently in different places and communities. As such, climate change evokes a curious moment, simultaneously reviving old inequalities, binaries, debates, tensions, divisions, and reflexes while presenting opportunities to transcend them and forge new collaborations and alliances. This course seeks to sociopolitically and spatiotemporally situate this moment by approaching climate change not as a singularity, but as a multiplicity: a complex, multifaceted, and heterogeneously distributed crisis with diverse voices and perspectives. By exploring a range of political, ecological, scientific, humanistic, and more-than-humanistic themes-such as the dichotomies of nature versus culture, facts versus fictions, science versus art, and “hard” versus “soft” sciences, as well as the concepts of post-truth, technofix, and climate change mitigation as a neocolonial practice-this course aims to develop a transdisciplinary approach to better understand the climate crisis.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 378 - Nature, Culture, and Environmentalism

    Western epistemology is considered to be based on a strict separation and opposition between nature and culture. While this divide is under increasing scrutiny in the face of the climate crisis in the Anthropocene, anthropology has long been a pioneer in challenging and dismantling this binary. This course examines canonical and contemporary anthropological approaches to the concept of nature and human relations with the natural environment. We will discuss how conceptions of nature are always shaped, transformed, and produced by historically situated social relations and how such conceptions, in turn, shape environmental struggles across the globe. Course materials focus primarily on ethnographies from the global South oriented towards the intersections of political ecology and environmental justice, science and technology studies, postcolonial theory, and more-than-human perspectives. Course topics include the history of the Western nature-culture binary and its critiques and recent environmental scholarship on issues such as agro-food systems, extractive conflicts, toxicity, genetic engineering, climate change, disasters, microbial lives, and multispecies entanglements.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 379 - Resource-Making through the Mediterranean

    Through the ages, the Mediterranean Sea has been a conduit of interaction rather than an obstacle, connecting continents, peoples, ecologies, resources, and politics. This course examines the interplay between power relations and natural resources in the Mediterranean region by surveying works in anthropology, history, human geography, and political ecology. Scholars have examined natural resource management from international relations, geopolitical, or political economy perspectives for decades. Recent scholarship brings other critical approaches to bear on the discussions of environment and politics in the Mediterranean region. Focusing on this rising critical scholarship, we will elaborate on how water, oil, coal, land, forests, fisheries, agriculture, and solar energy - among others - are made into sources of political power at scales ranging from everyday life to national and transnational politics. By challenging the “naturalness” of resources, we will reflect on what a natural resource is and how it connects with sociocultural practices, power relations, and historical processes. In this course, we will focus on the Mediterranean to explore themes and concepts such as colonialism, nationalism, power, resistance, access, scarcity, abundance, pollution, and temporality through the lenses of critical social studies on natural resources.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201   or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the anthropology department’s SETS concentration, and to the department’s area requirement.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 391 - Legal Anthropology

    The course examines the concept of legality as a social institution and a prominent feature of popular culture. Beginning with the emergence of legal anthropology and its history within the larger discipline, the course will focus on the relationships human actors have with the law as both an embedded social institution, and a disembodied set of authoritative doctrines. The course will orient students to productive ways of studying law and legality anthropologically. Topical areas will include Rule of Law, crime and punishment, sovereignty, alternative legal institutions, colonial and postcoloniality, environmental law, and transnationality.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 395 - Globalization

    This course is an introduction from an anthropological perspective to recent theories and debates about the nature of “globalization.” What is “globalization?” Why has this term become so prevalent in social theory and popular discourse in the past 20 years? What competing worldviews and political economic visions does it encompass? Beginning with influential debates outside of anthropology, we move quickly to consider the criticisms and alternatives offered by anthropologists and their interlocutors, especially since the late 1980s. Drawing on the recent spate of theoretical literature, ethnographies, and award-winning films on globalization and capitalism at a variety of scales, discussions and written assignments will address some of the most pressing and conflictual issues facing humankind today. How new are the translocal processes now labeled “globalization?” What is the nature of capitalism in a so-called “postcolonial” or “neoliberal” age? How are new forms of infrastructure, networks, economic development, and exploitation connecting different regions of the world? What forms of social and spatial mobility are emerging? What are the roles of both national states and transnational organizations and associations in these changes? How are forms of racial, ethnic, and gender difference constructed through these processes? What alternatives and resistances have been constructed? While course readings will touch on perspectives from a variety of disciplines, the course is designed to provide a specifically anthropological lens on these issues.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 397 - Media Persons Publics

    The meteoric rise of new forms of digital data and social media in the past 20 years has generated, on the one hand, fantasies of utopic intimacy (the immediacy promised in a new “global village”), and on the other, moral panics about unprecedented estrangement (the hypermediation of virtual worlds and corporate or government “big data”). In this course, we challenge this dichotomy of intimacy/immediacy versus estrangement/mediation by taking an anthropological approach to the question of human communication. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates in philosophy, linguistic anthropology, and media studies, we develop tools for understanding all communication as both mediated and material, grounded in embodied practices and technological infrastructures and situated in historical events. This in turn will allow us to grasp how circulations of media forms and commodities participate in the creation of types of persons and publics across multiple scales of time and space. Bringing those theoretical and methodological debates into dialogue with ethnographic studies and other forms of media, we ask: How do people sense and interpret themselves, others, and their worlds? What is the boundary between the human and nonhuman in a digital age? What roles do states or transregional capitalisms play in the mediation of valued and devalued persons and publics? What are the possibilities for communication amidst great gaps in access to valued forms of media?

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS and linguistic anthropology concentrations. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 411 - The Politics of World Making: Semiotics, Pragmatics, Performance

    Anthropologists have long been interested in humans’ dynamic efforts to create multidimensional social worlds amid ongoing contestation. Yet early attempts to account for this cultural politics of world making were obscured in favor of conveniently static representations of bounded “cultures” or/as “races,” and dualistic understandings of sociocultural structures versus individual actions or intentions. This course considers “semiotics,” “pragmatics,” and “performance” to be methodological rubrics that have grouped together a wide variety of social theorists who have focused instead on the emergent and contested nature of all meanings, persons, and places as they are interpreted in everyday and ritualized speech, practice, and performance. The course brings linguistic anthropological methodologies into dialogue with critical race theories since the early twentieth century to interrogate the possibilities and limits of anthropological world making in the face of Western theorists’ complicities with modernist white supremacy. Moving from key foundational texts in the science and philosophy of language, social action, and subjectivity to more recent theoretical and ethnographic work, we rethink language and semiotics as social action, the nature of context and interpretive politics, the relationships between formal events or performances and everyday life, and the precarious, often violent creation of selves and others. By directing analytic focus to the indeterminacy, ambiguity, and multiplicity inherent to social life and weaponized or erased in racialized political economic orders, the course challenges students to reconsider some of the central issues in anthropological theory, such as agency, identity, power, and resistance.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s linguistic anthropology concentration.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 415 - Risk and Uncertainty

    Risk has become a major theme shaping our contemporary life. The climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are two most recent contentious domains where the intimate and the personal are entangled with the global scale through risk. But what is risk? Is it an external reality that can be objectively calculated? Is it a subjective experience lived and assessed differently across the globe? Is it the primary qualifier of our late modernity? What are the interplays between the notions of risk, uncertainty, and danger? This course unpacks the sociopolitical worlds of risk. Through ethnographic and science and technology studies (STS)-informed accounts across the globe on various topics such as health, toxicity, disasters, economics, safety, security, and climate, we will scrutinize the multifaceted aspects of risk. By examining competing social theories of risk, ethnographic studies of culturally diverse ways of assessing and managing risks, historical analyses of how risk emerges as a techno-political domain of intervention, and STS accounts of how risk expertise is created and circulated, this course divulges the polysemous, productive, and ultimately contentious life of risk.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 425 - Marx from the South

    This course engages with a long history of Marx and political economic thought in relation to the global South. The course is organized around key concepts, such as labor, value, capital, property, and class. We examine these concepts through readings of foundational texts in political economy including Marx, Locke, and Smith and the historical context of empire in which these texts were written. Alongside this historical context, we examine these concepts as they have been drawn upon analytically by anthropologists working on and politically by social movements working in the global South.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 432 - Archaeological Method and Theory

    This course is a survey of the aims, methodology, theory, and practice of archaeology with a focus on the key questions of contemporary archaeological research. We will begin the semester by considering the broad goals of the discipline and review the diverse kinds of data that can help address questions about the past. We will then turn towards reviewing various archaeological approaches that investigate those data, focusing on methods for 1) understanding the sediment and stratigraphy of sites, 2) the materials and artifacts found therein, and 3) the contextualization of those remains within the broader landscape. In addressing these various methods, we will explore how theoretical approaches influence the kinds of questions that are asked in archaeology and the kinds of interpretations that are made. By doing so, we will emphasize throughout the semester the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology and the broad kinds of issues and topics to which it can be applied.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 442 - Ontological Politics

    This course offers a critical examination of anthropology’s recent “ontological turn,” notable for the influence of such scholars as Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Challenging universalist assumptions that posit an inert and inanimate world of objects as a backdrop to human action, the study of the cultural and historical specificity of ontologies presents alternative views about the nature of what exists. Observing the things that populate, and the processes that make, the lived and known experience of anthropology’s ethnographic subjects draws attention to contrasting knowledge regimes. Consideration of alternate ontologies allows Euro-modernity’s “others” articulation of their own bases of knowledge, logics of practice, and courses of action. However, how anthropologists approach such considerations entails its own sets of political terms and stakes in knowledge production. This seminar examines anthropological debates about how to analyze and address the political tensions that arise in settings where nonmodern beings and forces are recognized and addressed by “other” political actors.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201  or ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 461 - Theories of Practice

    Social theorists have long struggled with delineating the precise relationship between social structure and human agency in the explanation of extant cultural forms and their transformations over time. This course explores one set of proposed solutions generally classified under the rubric of “practice theory.” Building from the social philosophies of Elias, Bourdieu, Giddens, and de Certeau, the course examines how practice theory has informed anthropological inquiry and constituted a response to seemingly determinist theories of human behavior associated with structuralism and structural functionalism. Contemporary anthropological work by Marshall Sahlins, Sherry Ortner, and the Comaroffs, among others, will be read in light of earlier disciplinary engagement with the structure-agency question, including by Manchester School ethnographers.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 465 - Suffering, Narrative, and Subjectivity

    “The subject living in pain, in poverty, or under conditions of violence or oppression,” Joel Robbins contended a decade ago, “now very often stands at the center of anthropological work.” This course examines the emergence of what Robbins calls “the suffering slot,” that is, the displacement of difference in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century anthropology as the discipline’s organizing principle, and a reorientation toward universal human vulnerability. Our concern is with how this turn has shaped both the substantive and ethical contours of anthropological investigation and ethnographic writing: What can, and ought, anthropologists know and say about the world and those who inhabit it? What can, and ought to, be the relationship between anthropologists and their objects of study? We will give particular attention to philosophical arguments that emphasize the ineffability of suffering-that is, the ways that suffering defies narrative-and the implications of these arguments for theories of subjectivity. Of particular interest is how these ideas have shaped the generic conventions that have emerged in anthropological studies of suffering, and how these conventions in turn reflect a particular moment in anthropology’s self-understanding as a discipline.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
    Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS and linguistic anthropology concentrations. This course serves as the junior seminar for 2024-25.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate data and/or sources.
    • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
    • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.
  

  • ANTH 470 - Thesis

    Unit(s): 2
    Instructional Method: Independent study
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Yearlong course, 1 unit per semester.
  

  • ANTH 481 - Independent Reading

    Unit(s): Variable: 0.5 - 1
    Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing, instructor and division approval
    Instructional Method: Independent study
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 4 times for credit.
  

  • ANTH 548 - Sport and Social Life

    Sports are a central aspect of ritual form and everyday life in a large number of societies across the globe. The course approaches sports play as a fundamental practice of modern social formation and social reproduction. Through case studies of situated sports practices (notably football/soccer, cricket/baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, and skateboarding/parkour) in a variety of societies (U.S., Europe, Caribbean, South America, Africa, and South Asia), it examines key issues in the cultural study of modernity: gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, class/stratification, violence, (post-)colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. The course introduces students to phenomenological approaches to social life, approaching culture as an embodied mode of practice rather than only or primarily a cognitive field of knowledge.

    Unit(s): 0.5
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Graduate course. Offered spring 2025.
  

  • ARAB 111 - Introductory Arabic I

    Introductory Arabic will be offered online in fall and spring semesters. The course is taught by the faculty of the Center for Language and Culture (CLC), located in Marrakesh, Morocco. These virtual lessons will be supported by in-person meetings with our on-campus Arabic language scholar.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F). Grades from this program are not included in the Reed College GPA.
  

  • ARAB 112 - Introductory Arabic II

    Introductory Arabic will be offered online in fall and spring semesters. The course is taught by the faculty of the Center for Language and Culture (CLC), located in Marrakesh, Morocco. These virtual lessons will be supported by in-person meetings with our on-campus Arabic language scholar.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ARAB 111  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F). Grades from this program are not included in the Reed College GPA.
  

  • ARAB 211 - Intermediate Arabic I

    Intermediate Arabic will be offered online in fall and spring semesters. The course is taught by the faculty of the Center for Language and Culture (CLC), located in Marrakesh, Morocco. These virtual lessons will be supported by in-person meetings with our on-campus Arabic language scholar.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ARAB 112  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F). Grades from this program are not included in the Reed College GPA.
  

  • ARAB 212 - Intermediate Arabic II

    Intermediate Arabic will be offered online in fall and spring semesters. The course is taught by the faculty of the Center for Language and Culture (CLC), located in Marrakesh, Morocco. These virtual lessons will be supported by in-person meetings with our on-campus Arabic language scholar.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ARAB 211  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F). Grades from this program are not included in the Reed College GPA.
  

  • ART 151 - Introduction to Visual Narrative

    Introduces students to the use of images to tell stories. Explores different image-making strategies through print and drawing media as well as simple animation and performative images. Explores narrative structure, traditional storytelling, and presentation strategies. Stories bind us. Using a small set of folk tales and myths, this class will examine how storytelling can shape community and public dialogue and create agency. The class will work through oral storytelling and drawing. We learn how to shape existing stories, how to work with improvisation and apply old stories to current situations. We will discuss story structure, audience, and performance as well as visual storytelling. The course will explore myriad forms, including printmaking technologies, illustration, shadow puppets, stop-motion animation, and scrolls.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 18.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 171 - The Figure

    Making an image of the human body is one of the most basic artistic acts. It involves sympathy with another body, self-identification, and empirical observation. As practiced by Western artists it serves as both the basic roots of drawing and the height of artistic facility. In this class we explore all dimensions of the studio practice of rendering the figure. The course begins with observational drawing moves through figure sculpture and finally ends with portraiture. We will create a rigorous studio practice centered on the act of drawing. Readings, homework assignments, and discussions will unpack traditions based in gender and race. Through field trips to galleries and museums we will look at the uses of the figure in art history and contemporary art. The bulk of the studio work will be done in class. An average of one to three hours outside of class per week is expected. Aside from the work of observing and sussing out the details of the figure, classes will include discussions of assigned readings.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 18.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
  

  • ART 172 - Painting I - Imaginary Worlds

    This studio art class illuminates foundational painting techniques through the study of real and imagined lifeworlds. We will draw inspiration from our multispecies community to observe form and color and to create future ecological imaginaries. We will learn introductory painting strategies for creating 2D compositions and for integrating color theory. We will develop the skills needed to conjure illusions of movement and to communicate emotion through abstraction, composition, and mark making. This class will include field trips, microscopic work, and repeated observations of a location on the Reed campus. Through this work, we will consider how an art practice can help us to imagine new futures for ecological and equitable living. Students will create multimedia paintings in the studio and the field, and thoughtfully discuss their own and each other’s work.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 174 - Decolonial Natural History Illustration and Printmaking

    This introductory drawing and printmaking class takes a decolonial approach to natural history illustration and printmaking. We will consider how the visual histories of power and empire are embedded within natural history illustration and how we can attempt to repair those stories through a visual arts practice. Together, we will draw from our unique histories and relationships to the natural world in an attempt to rewild the archive through our art practices and illuminate new multispecies relationships. To do this work, we will consult the illuminated manuscripts and monoprints held in the Reed special collections. We will learn about the rich history of printmaking as a form of resistance to oppression. Students will use charcoal, colored pencils, and inks to make multimedia works on paper in the studio and in the field. Students will be able to articulate the relationship of these visual works to the conceptual foundations of the class.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 176 - Beginning Bookbinding

    This hands-on course offers an introduction to the techniques, tools, materials, and processes used in bookbinding. We begin with basic box construction in order to build eye/hand skills, then follow with a variety of sewn book structures that have evolved in different cultures around the world. We end with a multisection hardcover binding. Along the way are field trips, artist lectures, and two self-directed assignments that allow students to express their own ideas within the realm of book and box structure. Four hours of additional studio time is required to complete each week’s binding.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15. 
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 177 - Drawing in Many Forms

    Drawing is a basic building block for visual art and other creative practices. It is important in ways to develop the skill of producing an image on a page. However, it is just as important to think about how to apply the practice of drawing to other methods of making. In this class students will learn some basic methods of drafting an image and begin to apply those methods to other media, platforms, and social contexts. The class will explore traditional methods of mark making including pencil, pen, watercolor, and other media per student interest. We will also explore and or flirt with collage, digital mark making and production techniques, screen printing, and more.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 18.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 181 - Architectonic Structures

    This course introduces students to the structural principles and communicative possibilities of sculpture and architecture. Each project addresses one of the three scales: the architectural, into which the body fits; the human, to which the body relates or which the body physically inhabits; and the intimate, which relates to the hand or head. We will study the fundamentals of wood and aluminum fabrication, including handcrafted joinery, lamination, steam bending, wall construction laser cutting, and 3D printing. Readings will focus on the application of craft-based architectural construction and the direct impact this has on society through communal projects, new types of housing, and personal agency. Students will be exposed to diverse, international contemporary artists and architects. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
  

  • ART 182 - Material Objects

    A crafts-based course that focuses on the form, function, and concept of handmade objects in our society. The class will learn skills in hand-built and thrown clay forms, casting and fabricating with ceramics, wax, paper, cloth, and glass. The assignments will explore the poetic language of each material, fusing the analog and the digital, and will focus on cooperative and community-based works that can emerge from these mediums. Readings will focus on social practices and culturally significant, politically motivated works made for and with communities. Students will have technical workshops with studio assistant in glass and ceramics weekly. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 183 - Art and the Printed Word

    This course explores text and its relationship to image as the focus of a fine art practice. Technically, the course covers page design, typography, letterpress printing, simple bookbinding, and some low-tech image-making processes. Projects explore the space of the calling card, the poster, and the book through three main assignments. We will read Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks to connect language to the natural world, and other texts that explore the social and political significance that text-based works have in society. Requirements beyond assigned studio projects include written responses to writings and videos, one research presentation, and attendance at organized field trips. Students need four to six additional hours per week in the studio to complete assigned work.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 188 - Object and Social Context

    Objectness is the nature of a tangible material or thing. Every object has a number of social contexts surrounding it. It is important to consider the social relationships within the materials we use for artworks to truly express the intention of the maker. In this class we will explore the meanings behind the materials we work with in our practices, and how teasing out and understanding the underlying contexts within those media can be used to make more visually striking and conceptually compelling artwork. To do this we will take mini-field trips around campus to harvest objects, perform white elephant gift exchanges with material, and play with different sculptural techniques with an emphasis on conceptual underpinnings in the work. Technically we will cover the fundamentals of wood and aluminum fabrication, wall construction, and laser cutting. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 190 - Art and Photography I

    This course introduces students to the fundamentals of photography through both analog and digital photographic processes and investigates the use of photography in the context of contemporary art. The class will cover camera operation, principles of exposure, basic understanding of light, film development, and darkroom/digital manipulation of photographic images. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography are explored through assignments, readings, slide presentations, and critiques.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 16.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 196 - Digital Video and Coding Interactivity

    We will explore the use of the moving image, digital video, and interactivity as related to art. Students will be exposed to the concepts and visual strategies surrounding digital media, and techniques of nonlinear, nondestructive video editing and interactivity. We will look at the various ways in which artists employ these technologies and tools in their works through readings, class discussions, and slide presentations. First, students will deal with moving image as a medium as practiced in art and will be exposed to media software such as Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. Then, we will take apart and reexamine the moving image and the tools artist use to edit the moving image in an attempt to expand our understanding of the medium through a graphical programming environment for video, music, and data called Max/MSP/Jitter. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 12.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 201 - Introduction to the History of Art

    Basic art-historical methods and examples of recent scholarship are examined in relationship to a chronologically, geographically, or thematically defined body of art.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 251 - Making Graphic Novels

    This course will examine the history of comics as well as contemporary trends. Students will study the mechanics and structure of the medium. We will also refer to other forms of visual storytelling, such as serial television, film, and art-historical references. Students will apply these directly to their own work. Each student will create a self-published comic. Discussions and lectures will cover topics such as character studies, format, size, material choice, etc. Occasional field trips to printers, comic shops, and comic companies will give students a sense of professional resources. The class will produce an anthology based on a selection of work produced in class.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 270 - Experiments in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking

    We will develop and articulate individual research approaches to an art-making practice. By working with traditional art mediums while also creating our own experimental inks, paints, and stains, we will consider how to give form to narrative through composition, color, and materiality. The first part of the course will involve exploratory mark making and technical skill development towards a research-based project to be proposed and executed over the rest of the semester. The project might involve continued work in drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, or experimental mixed media. In a weekly studio section that will include lectures, videos, discussions, and field trips, we will encounter and learn terms and concepts common to contemporary visual culture, ecology, design, and activism. Students will create multimedia works in the studio and the field, and thoughtfully discuss their own and each other’s work.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 171 , ART 172 , or ART 174  (ART 170, ART 173, or ART 175 may also be used to meet prerequisite).
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 274 - Painting II - Naturecultures

    In this painting class, we will create work that is in conversation with the broader questions: Can we identify and follow specific naturecultures near and on the Reed campus? How might we paint, map, and story such specificities as we engage with our local environments as sites of knowledge? In this class we will use a contemporary painting approach to create alternative mapping narratives, trace our diasporic human and ecological relationships, and question what a decolonial painting approach could look like. This class will include lectures, videos, discussions, field trips, microscopic work, and developing a relationship with a tree of your choosing on the Reed campus. Students will create multimedia paintings in the studio and the field, and thoughtfully discuss their own and each other’s work.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 170 , ART 173 , or ART 175  
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 18.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 276 - The Artist Book

    This studio course focuses on the book as a vehicle for artistic voice. We will explore the intrinsic nature of books: that they are physical objects operating in one moment as sculpture, in the next moment as a piece of interactive time art; that they are understood in the hands of a reader who performs the book’s content; and that they speak to us not only through words and images but through the weight, texture, and body language of the object itself. Students will learn techniques of ideation, model making, material manipulation, print/binding processes, and more as they create two artist book projects. The course will also delve into the history of artist books in their many iterations, from unique objects to hand-printed editions to zines and other forms of artist publications. Visits to Reed’s artist book collection as well as other field trips and artist talks supplement this course. Four to six hours of outside studio time is required for this course.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): Two semesters of studio art
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 282 - Sculpture in the Expanded Field

    A studio sculpture course exploring the human body as a site for transformation through clothing, performance, and architectural construction. We will explore wearable works as well as spatially dynamic and temporal art form, directly related to the human form and phenomenological experience. Readings and discussions will focus on feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race theory, and the representation of the body throughout art history, fashion, and performance art. Technically, we will focus on metal fabrication, welding, and sewing.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 181 , ART 182 , or any 100-level studio art course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 284 - Craft and Culture

    This is a studio art course covering the craft of ceramics and glass, their historical and cultural context, and contemporary culture’s engagement with these craft forms. The course will focus on how and why artists have explored materials, methods, and strategies of craft over the last seven decades. Many have chosen to expand on their own cultural histories of craft while others have been experimental. In all studio work, the labor and process will be focused on with an eye to training and practice as the core of the craft. Projects will be both utilitarian and conceptually based. Students will advance their skills in hand building, throwing, glazing, glass casting, and 3D ceramic printing. Discussion will cover crafts subversion of the so-called “fine art” and the political stance that the works take. New perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists, including popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships to place will be explored. All students will keep a research notebook/sketchbook in which they will respond to all readings, research artists, and design projects.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 181  or ART 182  
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit.
    Notes: Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 288 - Engaged Objects

    Much of the material culture in the arts is poised towards the creation and sale of objects. While this practice is valuable in and of itself, there are other ways to apply skilled craftwork. What if the objects one made were designed for application and use? Beyond a cup or a plate, artists have the ability to design unique creations that serve uncharted ends. In this course we will imagine new potentials for the work we make, merging studio practice with interactivity as an additional medium for consideration. We will consider particular audiences and design artistic objects for integration into their lives. To do this we will think about site, participant engagement, and material design solutions that tie these ideas together. Technically, we will focus on metal fabrication, welding, and sewing. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 181 , ART 182 , or any 100-level studio art course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15. 
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 291 - Art and Photography II

    The course will introduce advanced topics such as color, large-format, and medium-format photography. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography are explored through projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Class time will be spent in lecture, slide presentations, lab work, critique, and occasional field trips. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 190  
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 16.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 293 - Internet Literacy, Culture, and Practice

    Students will develop an understanding of the technology and the issues surrounding the internet and the web through studio activities, readings, and online and/or physical fieldwork. Students will gain literacy in web development languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). We will cover the history of the use of computers and networks as a tool for empowerment and for creating art. We will explore topics such as hypertextuality, nonlinearity, interactivity, authorship, web as archive, net neutrality, and the open-source movement. With the newly acquired literacy in hand we will investigate how the convergence of the web/social media with social practice/activism reconfigures the ways in which artists and citizens view, participate in, understand, and narrate real-world issues.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 12.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 301 - Ecocritical Art Histories

    While open to all students who meet the prerequisites, this course is required for all declared art history majors in their junior year. Juniors will have additional assignments that will serve as the junior qualifying exam in art history.

    Ecocritical Art Histories
    What perspectives and methodologies can art history contribute to ongoing debates and research on climate change, ecological crises, and the Anthropocene in the humanities and natural sciences? This course will introduce students to innovative examples of recent art historical scholarship that postulate ecologically conscious approaches to the study of visual and material cultures. As a discipline, art history takes objects produced by humans as its loci of analysis. By engaging with new theoretical frameworks such as postcolonial ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, and critical animal studies, we will confront established art historical paradigms that have privileged the human as the primary agent of history. Rather than focusing on specific geographical places or temporal periods, we will explore the interrelation of human cultural production and ecological systems through different thematic points of inquiry, ranging from water, air, and fire to animals and eco-activism. In doing so, we aim to challenge the binaries between human and nonhuman to advance nonhierarchical approaches to the study of art. While open to all students with the prerequisites, this is also a required course for all declared art history majors in their junior year. 

    Unit(s): 0.5
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  and one 300-level course in art history or studio art
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 305 - The Camera in South Asia

    The paradox of photography is such that photographs reveal and conceal, obscure and illuminate, mutate and remain static. How do we read a photograph? What does it transmit? This course will investigate the development and reception of photography in South Asia, from the introduction of the camera in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will explore photography’s diverse iterations, including its role as an apparatus of colonial surveillance, a transcript of historical knowledge, a material technology, and a performative practice, to investigate how photographic practices evolved in response to shifting social, political, and aesthetic concerns. We will examine a wide range of case studies, including the works of nineteenth-century British and Indian photographers; vernacular uses of photography in local studios; the translation of the aesthetics of photography into painting (and vice versa), panoramas, stereographic views, early seminal films such as Raja Harishchandra (1913), and the works of contemporary photographers such as Dayanita Singh, Raghubir Singh, and Pushpamala N. We will also delve into photographic theory by reading Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Christopher Pinney’s writings. The aim of the course would be to develop the analytical tools for the evaluation of photography that take seriously the protean nature of photographic technology.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
  

  • ART 325 - Appropriation and Transformation in Early Modern Art

    This course will explore the myriad ways in which early modern European artists took forms, media, materials, and subjects from other cultures and transformed them into something different. These acts of transformations could be violent, ignorant, admiring, relatively benign, or even unintentional. We will consider what was at stake in these transformations, what was changed, how and why they happened, and what role they played in the broader context of cultural contact in the early modern period. We will analyze the terminology of these “transformations,” and focus in particular on the term “appropriation” and its relationship to power. The latter part of the semester will be devoted to looking at how early modern European art has been commented upon, transformed, remade, and translated by curators and contemporary artists.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 327 - Colonial Pasts, Decolonial Futures: Museums and the Global South

    This course will trace the histories of displaying and interpreting the art of South Asia from the nineteenth century to the present and explore new possibilities for curating South Asian art in the future. While focusing on shifts in the display of South Asian art, we will also interrogate the political and theoretical stakes of curating non-Western art more broadly. A study of the history of the museum from its colonial inception to its postcolonial iterations will foreground the ways in which museums were mobilized for imperial and nationalist aspirations in and beyond South Asia. We will examine key exhibitions including the 1984-85 “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art show at the MOMA, the 1985-86 Festival of India, and the 2014 Yoga exhibition at the Freer Sackler Museum. A speaking Shiva sculpture will open for us the arguments for and against the repatriation of stolen antiquities. We will conclude with a reflection on museums’ varying roles in the present and an invitation to imagine new ways to transform museums into spaces of diversity, inclusion, social justice, and anti-racism.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 328 - Nonextant Art and the Early Modern World

    What do we learn from objects, images, texts, and performances that no longer exist? How do we write histories of things that have been violently destroyed, involuntarily lost, or deliberately left to decay over time? What is the role of the conservator in recreating lost works of art? What do nonextant things tell us about trauma and collective memory? In this course, we study works that can no longer be experienced firsthand to explore how nonextant art informs our understanding of the past. This course is a team-taught collaboration between the art departments at Reed College and Lewis & Clark College

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 332 - Art and Archaeology in Early China

    This course will explore artifacts excavated in China from the height of the Neolithic period (c. 4000-2000 BCE) to the end of the eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE). Excavated objects from these periods rarely have accompanying textual explanations. Instead, we rely primarily on archaeology, which provides the raw material for understanding the distant past and constructs temporal narratives that account for the categorical differences between artifacts. With the rise of material culture studies in the field of art history, enigmatic objects that fell within the domain of archaeology may now have art-historical explanations. The course is organized chronologically by archaeological site. Secondary textual sources and comparative studies with other sites will be used to refine our understanding of artisans and their craft and the social and cultural functions of objects. What types of training did artisans undergo? What sources (manuals, tacit knowledge, guild practices, etc.) provided the necessary skills for artisans to work? How was labor divided and what were the social structures in place that dictated artisans’ modes of production? How were these objects used and circulated by the living and the dead?

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201 , or HUM 231  and HUM 232  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 334 - Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art

    This course focuses on twentieth- to twenty-first-century Chinese visual culture and will be organized loosely around four phases of art production during the past hundred or so years. It begins with the major transition from the imperial Qing dynasty to the tumultuous Republican period in 1911, paying close attention to discussions on Western and Chinese artistic practices that arose at this critical political junction. We then turn to art production under Mao Zedong beginning in 1942, with his famous Talks on Literature and Art presented in Yan’an, in which art became an integral part of his social and political platforms. From there, we examine the visual objects produced during and shortly after the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Finally, the rapid pace of China’s economic growth has also greatly affected its visual material. In the last half of the semester, we will seek to critically examine the process in which China has become one of the most exciting geographic regions for thinking about contemporary art, and the ways in which artists have chosen to depict and negotiate their changing realities.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  or both semesters of HUM 231  and HUM 232 .
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 335 - (Trans)Nationalism and Indian Cinema

    Described by author Salman Rushdie as “Epico-Mythico-Tragico-Comico-Super-Sexy-High-Masala-Art,” popular Hindi cinema-or “Bollywood”-brings to mind song and dance, epic melodrama, romance, violence, pastiche, or pandemonium at its chaotic best (Rushdie, 1995). Yet films have also served as significant cultural artifacts in the building and maintaining of a national consciousness in and beyond the nation-state of India. The question of an “Indian identity,” as we shall see, takes myriad forms in relation to shifting contexts of colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. In this course, we will consider how films like Lagaan (2001) both posit idealized visions of a collective national identity and, simultaneously, reinforce exclusionary attitudes toward minority religious, regional, and caste groups. Keeping in mind that the Hindi film industry remains one of the many constituents that make up Indian cinema, we will view Indian films that extend beyond the sphere of Bollywood, such as Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (1991) and Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992) to interrogate the version of the imagined nation as articulated through popular Hindi cinema. Taking into consideration the transnational histories of Indian cinema, we will also analyze representations of homeland, migration, and diasporic identity with films such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) and Bhaji on the Beach (2002). By combining the formal analysis of popular Hindi film-its narrative structures, cinematography, songs, dances, and other distinctive formal conventions-with critical insight from race, gender, sexuality, class, and caste studies, we will think, discuss, and write about the politics of Indian cinema.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 336 - Art and Cartography

    This course explores the intersections of art and cartography across a variety of time periods and geographic regions. Rather than being organized chronologically or geographically, the course will proceed in thematic units that transcend the disciplinary boundaries that often divide the study of art and maps, such as landscape, travel, urban planning, diagrams, and grids. While the course will not provide the technical skills of mapmaking with modern technologies such as GIS, it is nonetheless especially interested in how attention paid to the processes involved in mapmaking reveals different ways of visualizing data that are commensurate with the more common forms of artmaking in art history. The goal of the course is to use cartography as an entry point for further exploration into the relationships between art and science more broadly. 

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
  

  • ART 337 - Queer Arts After Stonewall

    What did queer art become when the closet was no longer the dominant structure of queer life? In this class, we will study how queer art practices reimagined artistic modernity as well as the social and political values that structured heteronormativity. In this framing, we will think together about technology and modes of production; race and racialization; public spheres, counterpublics and other models of collective life; sex and sexual practices; and other experiments with sex, gender, embodiment, and personhood. Some of the artists and writers we discuss include Douglas Crimp, John Paul Ricco, Andy Warhol, Isaac Julien, Glenn Ligon, Zach Blas, Susan Stryker, Jonathan Flatley, Homay King, Sadie Benning, Cheryl Dunye, David Wojnarowicz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Samuel Delaney, Sharon Hayes, Tavia Nyong’o, Vaginal Davis, Jacolby Satterwhite.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 350 - Oceans, Rains, Rivers, Pools: Histories of Water

    Why did artists from the regional courts of India paint poetic visions of rains, lakes, and rivers during periods of drought? How can the ocean serve as an archive, metaphor, and method for thinking about early modern and colonial material cultures, trade, and mobility? How do media images of environmental catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina make visible, and invisible, the ocular tactics of biopolitical racism? How do our current water crises demand a wholesale rethinking of how we write and think about art? This class will focus on water as a subject and a methodology for studying early modern, colonial, and contemporary visual cultures. We will study a range of case studies, including regional Indian paintings, early modern hydro-architecture in South Asia, material cultures shaped by the Manila galleon trade and Indian Ocean trade networks, media images of environmental catastrophes, recent museum exhibitions on climate change, and more. Our studies will be supplemented by writings in art history, environmental humanities, anthropology, and new materialism. We will also consider the emergence of an art historiography of water that has been shaped by the ecological turn in the humanities.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 351 - Making Space

    Space isn’t an empty, neutral vehicle in which artworks simply appear for public consumption. While an artwork makes the space for its own display, spaces do their own work to determine the range, impact, and execution of an artwork within them. But when all space is necessarily coded as real estate, all but the most famous and privileged artists will struggle to make space not just for their own work, but to support other artists and build various forms of community. In this, present-day Portland is both an exemplary and a distinctive case. This art history class will visit a number of art spaces that are commonly understood as small, alternative, or experimental, although this in no way predefines their relationship to institutionality. Each week we will spend time with and, most weeks, in a different space around Portland, talking to the people who established and run those spaces. In these conversations, we will ask about their engagement with their communities, why and how they established their space, the uses and valences of institutionality, and the relationship between art’s attempts to make space and the ongoing processes of gentrification in and around Portland. Participating spaces/collectives include home school, Physical Education, Pochas Radicales, Portland Museum of Modern Art, Sunday Painters Group, The Residency in the Garden, and more. We will meet once per week, in the evening, for 3 hours in order to facilitate travel.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 354 - Performing Mediation (Video Art, 1960-2000)

    Video art began with artists turning the camera on their own bodies and their own studios. But far from being a privatized art form, the video medium implicates various popular media, including home video, cinema, television, and, more recently, webcams and online video. We will study the aesthetic precursors of video art as well as the histories of the popular media with which video art is historically and technologically enmeshed. Central to our discussions will be questions of media as well as questionings of embodiment, focusing particularly on gender and race. We will look at a wide range of video practices (analog, digital, closed-channel, broadcast, networked). We will watch videos together in class, but students should also expect to spend time each week watching videos outside of class.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 201  
    Instructional Method: Conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 365 - Intersection: Architecture, Landscape Sculpture

    This advanced studio sculpture course explores architectural and landscape-based works. Reading and research will focus on artists and architects from the 1970s to the present who use public process and sustainable materials to design and build innovative forms within urban spaces. The class will create a set of potential design solutions for a site in Portland. Studio training will include drafting, drawing, and planning strategies and building scale models in wood and metal. Knowledge of Google SketchUp and or Photoshop desired. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course and ART 282  
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 368 - Image and Text: The Book as a Sculptural Object

    This course explores the significant role artists’ books have played among the avant-garde of eastern and western Europe and the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. The structural format book works take and their social and political functions will be viewed, discussed, and fabricated. The course will cover binding both codex and accordion books, reproducing images using palmer plates, and setting and printing type and images using a Reprex letterpress. Reed’s special collections will provide a spectrum of professional artists’ books, including magazine works, anthologies, diaries, manifestos, visual poetry, word works, documentation, albums, comic books, and mail art. We will read and discuss essays relating to each studio problem. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course and one 200-level studio course
    Instructional Method: Studio-conference
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 16.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 370 - Environmental Art

    This studio art class focuses on species entanglements under climate change. Working from a multimedia art practice, we will consider the ways that power structures shape the environment. How do the hauntings from ongoing species extinctions impact us and what can we do about it? To do this work, we will draw on BioArt, feminist science, community ecology, and environmental policy to develop our individual and collective artistic research practices. We will consider the material histories involved in our art making and how those materials and practices can interrogate changing ecologies. We will expand our understandings of animism and kinship with the more-than-human world and question if artistic collaboration is possible with nonhumans. We will research, germinate, and caretake plants and other beings, focusing on those that have histories resisting oppression or as biomedicines. By expanding our ecological research as artists, we can illuminate new and vibrant ways to work within the environment.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course, and one 200-level studio art course.
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 372 - Intermediate Experiments in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking

    We will develop and articulate individual research approaches to an art-making practice. By working with traditional art mediums while also creating our own experimental inks, paints, and stains, we will consider how to give form to narrative through composition, color, and materiality. The first part of the course will involve exploratory mark making towards a research-based project to be proposed and executed over the rest of the semester. The project might involve continued work in drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, or experimental mixed media. In a weekly studio section that will include lectures, videos, discussions, and field trips, we will encounter and learn terms and concepts common to contemporary visual culture, ecology, design, and activism. Students will create multimedia works in the studio and the field, and thoughtfully discuss their own and each other’s work.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 100-level studio art course and ART 282  
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 18. May be repeated for credit.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 374 - New Media/Old Media-Experiments in Optical Media and Computation

    The course will examine and experiment with various forms of old and analog media combined with new and speculative twenty-first-century media technology to see if they can be productively remade and integrated into contemporary art practices. Our goal is to defamiliarize photography and new/digital media by finding alternative uses, or by revisiting a time when they had not separated themselves into distinct and different discourses looking at historical devices, methods, and tools that shared common aspirations and limitations. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities are explored through studio workshops, projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Students must be highly self-motivated and will be expected to design independent projects.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): One 200-level studio art course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 16.
    Not offered: 2024-25
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 376 - Photography as Daily Practice

    Photography as Daily Practice builds upon the foundational engagements with photography, emphasizing independent work alongside structured exploration of photo books, narrative, and serial photography. Through independent projects, students will deepen their practice, exploring the daily act of photography as a medium for expression and social engagement. This course fosters a critical and creative environment, encouraging students to develop a significant body of work that showcases their individual perspective, supported by regular critiques, workshops, and discussions.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 190 , or one 200-level studio art courses.
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 16
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
  

  • ART 388 - Socially Engaged Art Forms

    Socially engaged art forms, also referred to as social practice, are rapidly developing areas of the contemporary art world. Much of this work is embedded within the contexts from which the works are derived-a distinctive component of how this work functions. This can also be described as the creation of space for conversation, sharing of experiences and information, or connections to people and places for specific and/or exploratory purposes. This is all conducted with consideration for each of the underlying elements as individual artistic and creative decisions. In this course we will explore projects that center specific people and communities as well as places, things, and events. Students who are excited to engage with other classmates and collaborate to do work in the Reed community and beyond using an equitable and social justice-informed lens make strong candidates for this class.

    Unit(s): 1
    Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
    Prerequisite(s): ART 181 , ART 182 , or any 100-level studio course
    Instructional Method: Studio
    Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
    Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
    Notes: Enrollment limited to 15. May be repeated for credit.
    Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):
    • Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
    • Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
    • Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
 

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