This is the syllabus for my Introduction to (Cultural) Anthropology course at Davidson College. I’ve now taught this seven times, each semester a bit, or a lot, different. The current version is a rapid progression through key debates about culture, sexuality and gender, race and racialization, poverty, class and economy, and the environment. Click here to view or download the PDF.
The study of commodities is the study of social relations. This course takes students on a journey through the commodity form. We look at how it differs from gifts, what the commodity chain can tell us, and the hidden capitalist relations embedded in the commodity. How are labor, nature, social life, money, and debt commodified? What worlds do commodities create as they circulate? How does technology play into all of this? What horizons exist beyond the commodity relation? I developed this syllabus for the Spring of 2021. Download or view the PDF here.
This course is just like it sounds. It trains students to think anthropologically by immersing them in contemporary theoretical debates and their genealogies. Then, students produce an original theoretical take on a topic or object of their choice. The course grounds students in the historical dynamics of anthropological knowledge production, the fate of “culture” as an object of study, Marxist political economy, Foucauldian and poststructural analyses, critical takes on representation and knowledge production, the “ontological turn,” and current analyses of anthropology and where it’s going. You can view or download the syllabus here.
This course takes students through the pervasive ways that crime and criminalization shape our world. We look at the production of crime via moral panics, the relation of policing to crime, and crime’s articulation with state formation and capitalist markets. We also trace how “criminals” are represented, how they make sense of the world, and how they—and criminalizing processes—produce space. You can view or download the syllabus here.
This course introduces students to the anthropology of sex, gender, and sexuality. We explore issues from reproductive labor and intersectionality to critical approaches to nature, sex, desire, and identity. Check out the syllabus here.
What does it mean to conduct anthropology for the public? How does one do it? What does it mean for research, writing, and dissemination? This course guides (Masters and PhD) students through key debates in public anthropology, grounds them in a political economy of Washington, DC (where I taught this course), and supports students to establish collaborative “public anthropology” projects with local activist organizations. See the syllabus here.
This course guides students through several book-length ethnographies, attending to key issues in their production: representation, argumentation, methods, style, as well as the schools of thought and context of knowledge production from which they emerge. The course ended with each student becoming a noted ethnographer and participating on topical mock panels. I taught this course in 2010 at Brooklyn College. See the syllabus here.