Course # and Title

Instructor Name

100 Special Topics in Anthropological Archeaology:Origins of Mesopotamian Civilizations

This course explores the natural and social environment of the “Greater Mesopotamia” in the fourth millennium BC, and focuses on the rise of cities and states in the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq during the so called Uruk period (ca. 3900/3800-3200/3100 BC.

144  Introduction to Pharahos, Mummies, and Pyramids

100 Special Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology: Global systemic anthropology: culture, class and crisis.

This course is designed for upper level undergraduate and graduates(formality here about graduates?). It consists of a survey and analysis of the emergence of global systemic and globalization approaches in the social sciences and especially anthropology. it offers critical discussions of the literature of the past two decades up to the most recent developments. Global systemic approaches have their origins in a number of economic historians and debates at the turn of the 20th century concerning the continuity of capitalism in world history. It was most systematically refined in the French Annales school associated with the work of Fernand Braudel but has a more recent history as well. Globalization as a self-designated approach appears in the 80’s and is based on a different set of assumptions which are somewhat at odds with the global systemic approach. The issues raised concern the following.
1. The historicity of global relations: is globalization “new”?
2. The relations between global and local and the place of ethnographic analysis
3. Social logics and the articulation among levels or domains
4. Culture, class and globalization: the rise of cultural movements, ethnic conflict and magical thinkinig
5. The anthropology of crisis

100 Special Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology: Imagining Plurinational Bolivia: The Decolonization Debates

In contemporary Bolivia, racism and colonial legacies are central political issues. We will interrogate current debates by analyzing the works of anthropologists, political philosophers, and activists. We ask what is decolonization and what role should the state have in cultural politics? (An ability to read Spanish will be helpful).