Courses

A one-semester introduction to the principles of sociological analysis. Through a critical examination of selected topics and themes, this course develops a sociological perspective for the interpretation and understanding of cultural differences, age and sex roles, discrimination, the family and the workplace, bureaucracies, stratification, and the problems of poverty.

An examination of 1) the emergence of race in modern societies, with special emphasis on the North American context; 2) the role of race in shaping power dynamics in the US historically; 3) contemporary consequences of racial power dynamics in the US today.

Examines American class structures,processes and the unequal distribution of resources, as well as aspects of institutionalization that contribute to such inequality. Course focuses on the various social, economic, and political indicators of an individual's position in society, including occupation, income, wealth, prestige, and power, as well as characteristics of life at different levels of the class hierarchy.

This course asks what it means to be a good citizen, good consumer, and good corporation in light of contemporary social and environmental problems by focusing on the relationship between democracy and capitalism. It investigates the complexities of understanding and implementing social responsibility on the local, national, and global level.

This course examines how laws embedded in the US criminal justice system exclude vast segments of the population from full citizenship rights by criminalizing the actions (and very existence) of people of color. Tracing the historical development of criminal policies targeting people of color while largely ignoring white collar criminals, students will encounter a wide range of topics related to policing, criminalization, and mass incarceration, their consequences for individuals, communities and racial inequality, and contemporary social movements seeking racial justice in these areas.

An introduction to the sociological study of deviance, this course explores 1) key theoretical perspectives to deviance and social control, 2) how people come to view certain attitudes, conditions, and behaviors as odd, morally reprehensible, or illegal and 3) the identities and life chances of people who are labeled as "deviant." Pays close attention to the relationship between deviance, power and social inequality. One unit.

As global responses to Black Lives Matter make clear, the struggle to end racism is not unique to the United States. This course will examine movements to end racism, racial violence, discrimination and structural disparity around the world. Issues of concern include memory, identity, justice, rights, social repair and politics, among others. Movements for justice include the Roma in Europe, indigenous and Afro-descent peoples in Latin America, the Dalits in India and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa.

An introduction "doing sociology," this class covers the logic and techniques of social scientific research. Readings, lectures, and exercises are designed to help students experience the field and develop methodological skills first-hand. Students will learn how to conceptualize, operationalize and conduct sociological research projects, including constructing research questions, understanding the intersection between theory and data, composing questions and guides for both qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as collecting, entering, and analyzing data and reporting empirical findings.

Students are introduced to both descriptive and inferential statistics (including confidence intervals, chi square, multivariate analysis of variance, and multiple regression). The (mis)use and interpretation of statistics is heavily stressed.

The course is divided into three major parts. In the first, we explore the historical context that informs modern inequities. In the second, we explore different mechanisms of violence. In the final component, we explore forms of protest, resistance and strategies for change. This course also invites you to explore social issues you are deeply passionate about. We will use this course to reflect on personal activism and the ability to impact change.

This course examines the interaction between human society and the natural environment, more specifically, the relationships between various environmental and social problems, as well as emphasizes current theory and research in environmental sociology aimed at understanding and addressing those problems. By discussing issues of science and technology, popular culture, disasters, urbanization, racial and gender relations, domination and violence, as well as social movements, and by engaging in issues from a diversity of disciplines including anthropology, biology, economics, geography, psychology, and history, this course will reach a broad understanding of environmental issues. One unit.

This course will explore the processes, policies, and programs that have shaped and affected the relationship between cities and the environment in the United States. Students will be exposed to a number of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to the study of urban areas and the environment.

Environmental Racism was coined by environmental justice activists to describe situations where communities of color face disproportionate environmental ills and lack environmental privilege. In this course we look at the history of environmental racism, its relationship with capitalism, and several areas where environmental racism is most obvious, including, but not limited to: food, disasters, and the environmental movement itself.

A descriptive and critical study of the 19th- and early 20th-century social thought which informs contemporary sociological theory. Some attention is given to historical influences on emerging sociological theory. Emphasis is placed on four major theorists: Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Simmel and on the 20th-century developments in functionalism, symbolic interactionism and the sociology of knowledge.

This course investigates the evolving role of television in shaping our understanding of the world as it relates to democracy, consumerism, human relationships, and how we make sense of our own lives. More specifically, the course examines the nature of entertainment, advertising, news, and the institutions that create television programming.

Taking the lead from Angela Y. Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?, this class questions the utility of prisons from their inception to now, focusing on the concept of violence. Interpersonal, structural, and symbolic violence surrounds us. This course will allow us to collectively question what we consider violent and the origins of how these ideas first manifested. Using sociology, interdisciplinary carceral studies, and Black feminist literature allows us to explore how prisons affect every single one of us as individuals, knowingly or not. Please note that the course does include jails and immigrant detention centers but that the assigned texts primarily address prisons.

Examines the social science literature pertaining to girls both as victims and as perpetrators, as well as structures influencing personal experiences and interpersonal dynamics. In addition to theory related both to gender and violence, topics covered include bullying and relational aggression, sexual harassment, gangs, child sexual abuse, trafficking, and living in a war-torn society.

This course examines how individual bodies, hearts and minds are social phenomena. Topics include language, self, and what it means to be human; the sociology of emotion; the presentation of self in everyday life; micro-social order, disruption, and ontological security; and the micro-politics of interaction. Draws strongly from the symbolic interactionist, dramaturgical, and interpretive traditions.

A thorough introduction to the sociological study of people's experience of late life. Strives to increase awareness of the social, cultural, and historical affects on aging by examining people's accounts of late life and aging, their social and psychological compensations, and the bearing of late life experiences on end-of-life decisions.

This course is organized around three general themes: (1) an introductory overview of the topic of violence, including theoretical background and structural factors; (2) an analysis of violence-related issues, including family, street, and school-based causes and consequences; and (3) consideration of prevention and intervention strategies and relevant policy implications.

An analysis of religion as a socio-cultural product. Emphasis on the interrelationship between religion and society in a cross-cultural perspective. Major topics include the social functions of religion, the organization of religious practice, and the impact of social change on religion.

A critical study of the institution of modern medicine. Special attention is paid to socio-cultural and political factors influencing susceptibility, diagnosis and treatment. Topics include the social meaning of disease, patienthood, the medical profession, and the organization of medical care.

A critical examination of education in the U.S., with a special emphasis on public schooling. This course considers how the functions and goals of education have changed over time, factors leading to the current crisis in education, and controversial programs for fixing the problems such as vouchers, charter schools, and multicultural education.

Examination of patterns in American family behavior. Strives to increase awareness of the social, cultural, and psychological facets of family life by examining kinship relations, child socialization, dating behavior, patterns of sexual activity, parental decisions, family development, divorce, violence in the family.

On women's and men's gendered experiences at the individual, interactional, and institutional levels; how gendered experiences vary by race/ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and other ways.

This course will examine the way social identities and everyday cultural practices are linked to global circulations of capital, taste, fashion, and power. Through a comparative analysis of representations of globalization, cultural products such as McDonald's and Sesame Street, mega-events such as the Olympics, virtual cultures and technologies, and leisure and consumption practices such as shopping, eating, and international tourism, students will gain a critical understanding of the debates surrounding cultural imperialism, cultural homogenization, and the hybridization of culture.

This course focuses on the relationship between tourism and social life by considering how tourist practices are socially shaped and made meaningful within social contexts. This course explores tourism as a lens through which we can understand many of the features of contemporary social life, including modernity, late capitalism, and postcolonial legacies, consumption and cultural commodification, gender and sexual politics, and life in a risk society, especially in the wake of a global pandemic.

In this course, we will conduct an intensive analysis of the lower levels of the socioeconomic status hierarchy in the U.S. Overall, we seek to understand the ways in which a person's place in the social system is related to personal growth and development, especially for those who are less fortunate. Our study is rooted in Mills' notion of the "sociological imagination," in that we will analyze the structures influencing personal experiences and interpersonal dynamics. In other words, we go beyond individual-level explanations in order to identify and analyze systemic issues.

In this course, students will study the dynamics of social change by investigating a series of historical manifestos highlighting the active role that marginal but ascendant social groups have played in shaping society. At once analytic and prescriptive, manifestos both describe and have also sometimes helped to initiate periods of significant social change, from the fall of monarchies and the rise of democracies to the growth of new movements against inequality. Following the conventions of the manifesto, this course will focus on: i) how opportunities for social change are identified, ii) how collective actors are constituted, and iii) how the tasks assigned to these actors are conceived in relation both to objective conditions and to other players within the social field. By the end of the course, students will have composed a manifesto of their own to address a contemporary social problem.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to feminist theories produced by womxn of color (broadly understood). In this course, we will decenter white Eurocentric feminisms and pay particular attention to the complex narratives, issues, oppressions, resilience, and movements for liberation undertaken by Black and African womxn, Chicana and Latina womxn, Indigenous womxn, East Asian and South Asian womxn, and Arab and Muslim womxn. We will be critically interrogating the diverse and interconnected struggles and identities of these populations across the social categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration, religion, culture, and national origin. We will explore womxn of color feminisms through empirical studies, fiction and non-fiction texts, imagery, poetry, music, and film, gaining an appreciation for the multiple ways in which womxn have produced feminist thought.

Modern Cities, Modern Selves. In this sociology course, we will explore the relationship between space, structure, and self. Taking Georg Simmels elaboration on the simultaneity of modern urbanization and modern expressions of individuality as our starting point, we spend the semester thinking about the subjectivities cities make possible and how cities, and the people residing within them, change over time.

The Anthropocene marks the current geological epoch in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change. While the proposed term is contentious and still being debated, this course will focus on theorizations and critiques of the Anthropocene and its implications for social justice. Debates on nomenclature raise important questions regarding which geopolitical groups bear disproportionate responsibility for environmental crises, and which groups bear the brunt of their consequences. Scholars have proposed alternative terms such as the Capitalocene, Plantationocene, and Chthulucene to highlight the class, race, and gender injustices that are obscured by the term. Drawing on decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist scholarship, course readings encompass intersectional theorizing, political manifestos, and creative visual work from the Global South and Global North alongside case studies on the effects of climate change, social justice movements and activism in this geohistorical era, and the forging of transnational solidarities around alternative visions to the Anthropocene. Through in-class discussions, collaborative group activities, and creative activist projects, students will apply this knowledge towards a critical intersectional praxis that is relevant for our times.

Course Description: In this course, we will be drawing from classic and current sociological texts to critically examine the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of contemporary cities and urban life. We will begin by learning about the processes of urbanization that shape how and where modern cities emerge. We will then look at the transformation of cities that occur through and alongside deindustrialization. The focus of this course is cities and urban life from the mid-1960s through today. Throughout the semester, we will be exploring the changing nature of community in relation to the unfolding processes of urbanization, the ways in which social inequalities are experienced and reproduced in urban contexts, and the rights and regulations of people in urban spaces.

Our current food system is predicated on food insecurity, rooted in racial capitalism. The most precarious populations have always been the primary producers of Americas food. Our course begins with the agrarian origins of American capitalism which has its origins in slavery and the dispossession of composite farmers in Appalachia. Here we look at how profit seeking behavior and market practices created a dependence on cash and credit and fractured the ecological balance that existed between land, food, and a peasant way of life. We move on to looking at the history of agricultural labor and migrants--including todays processing facilities and slaughter houses. We will also look at the environmental effects of our neoliberal food system, namely how we have created an ecologically and economically unsustainable system; and also, how we relate to nonhumans. Finally, from a community-based perspective we trace the development of food apartheid in the US and its outcomes--racialized health and economic precarity. Using critical race studies, indigenous studies, urban studies, environmental studies, gender studies, community-based studies, and social justice as lenses students will leave the course with a broad understanding of the failure of the American food system. As an activist oriented course, students will work with local organizations on food justice efforts. Food justice is racial justice!

This senior-level course centers the actions, worldviews, and experiences of colonized peoples as they negotiated freedoms and unfreedoms during the pre-colonial and colonial eras and wrestle with these legacies for today and into the future as we consider abolition, decolonization, and appropriate reparations for this history. Throughout the semester, we will address the histories of colonialism, capitalism, enslaving, and their relationship to contemporary racisms and decolonial movements in the US and abroad. A course project will enable to students to develop concrete understandings of decolonial praxes rooted in indigenous worldviews, knowledges, and actions and the ways in which colonized peoples seek, demand, and maintain their freedom in the face of multiply manifest unfreedoms. This course will change topically each semester depending on current events and student interests, to focus on national and international coloniality and decoloniality.

This course examines first-person accounts of living with various illnesses, including the subjective experiences of illnesses that are mental/physical, acute/chronic, curable/fatal and age-related. Comparisons will be made across both historical and cultural contexts to highlight the socially constructed nature of health and aging. The class will engage the role of labeling theory, postmodern conceptions of health, and differences according to race, class, gender, sexual orientation and age.

This course examines how people experience and cope with negative events such as illness, death, separation or divorce, unemployment, natural disaster and war. Delving into topics that are usually the purview of psychology, our investigations highlight the social nature of self, cognition, emotion and identity. Readings will focus on particular cases of trouble, the roles of religion, psychology and medicine in helping people to cope with tragedy, and cultural and historical variability in how humans make sense of suffering.

This is a student-led seminar in the sociology of death and dying. During,the first few weeks of the term, readings will offer a broad overview of what it is like to die and care for people who are dying in the contemporary United States. After a brief introduction to how sociologists approach and understand this landscape, students will participate in theselection of topics and readings. For the remainder of the term, students will learn and educate one another about the lines of inquiry in this subfield that interest them the most.

This seminar examines some of the most pressing social issues of our present by deconstructing fictional accounts of our imagined futures. Through a selection of science fiction (literature, television, and film), students analyze how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age are resolved, exacerbated, or ignored in each narrative.

This advanced seminar aimed at returning study abroad students explores the related concepts of home, belonging and citizenship in light of globalization and mobility. In addition to reflecting on personal experiences of home and mobility, we study narrative accounts by refugees, migrants, tourists and expatriates to think in new ways about global citizenship.

In this course, we will apply sociological frameworks and techniques to understanding climate politics. This will include a critical survey of both humanist and more-than-humanist approaches in environmental movements and policy debates. Readings will survey diverse perspectives and discussions in deep ecology, degrowth and decolonialism, ecofeminism, ecomodernism, ecorealism, planetary overshoot, and techno-optimism. We will consider the extractive politics of energy and resources from around the world, how extraction relates to the global economy, human rights violations and violence, and the international peacebuilding mechanisms designed to address extractive conflicts. Guest lectures will include global experts in climate science and environmental advocacy. This is a reading intensive and discussion based course. Students will write weekly short reading response papers and develop a research project.

This course involves a tripartite analysis of the role of documentary film in addressing socio-environmental issues. In one part of the course, we will consider how documentaries bring the socio-ecological imagination to life by watching environmental documentaries. Here we will examine how well the format of documentary film links socio-environmental issues with personal biography, advocacy, and historical context. A second part involves the workshop-nature of the course in which, with a partner, students submit a proposal for a short documentary film. Subsequent to approval of the proposal students will produce the documentary over the course of the semester. Students must be willing to offer assistance and feedback on each others developing projects in class. The course will culminate in a public presentation of the finished projects (likely to correspond with the Academic Annual Conference) (additionally, no prior experience or coursework in video or audio production is required). The final part of the course will be attendance (and perhaps some assistance) at the first Environmental Studies Film Series at the College. For approximately nine weeks we will host the rest of the campus, colleagues, filmmakers, and (permitting) visitors for ten different socio-environmental documentaries (these will be the films that we discuss in class). Class sessions will combine lecture and discussion of relevant concepts, viewing and analysis of documentaries, technical instruction on equipment, and critique of projects and at each stage of completion,

Embracing the maxim advanced by the journal Race Traitor (19922005) that Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity, this course offers students an opportunity to pursue a critical study of whiteness from an anti-racist perspective. By engaging and assessing key contributions to the field of critical whiteness studies, students will familiarize themselves with the historical origins, epistemological characteristics, and practical effects­­­­­­ of whiteness as a sociological phenomenon. By considering themes including racial formation, culture, privilege, and the role of allies in anti-racist struggle, students will work to denaturalize whiteness and reflect upon what its abolition might mean both for white people and for communities impacted by white supremacy. Combining lectures, case analyses, and interactive dialogue, this course requires careful reading, active participation, and ongoing reflection.

The Black Feminist Sociology seminar centers on recently released edited volume of the same name, asking students to explore what we consider Black feminist work and why. Per Routledge, "Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the books key themes.

This seminar introduces students to the mobilities turn in the social sciences through the lens of local and global food cultures. The course begins with sociological theories from mobilities studies, a paradigm that sees the movement of people, capital, images, ideas, and material objects, including food and foodways, as central to the patterning of social life and our individual and collective identities. We will then apply these theories to some of the junctures where food and mobility intersect: culinary tourism, fast food and the Slow Food movement, immigration and culinary practices, the globalization and decolonization of food systems, and the overlaps between food sovereignty and mobility justice. These topics will open onto critical questions about global and local power relations, the politics of belonging, and our obligations to one another and to the planet. Through examples drawn from Worcester and around the world, we will deepen our understanding of how food and mobility shape who we are and the future we hope to build together.

The Honors Colloquium will cover topics such as: strategies for thesis work, writing an intro to the thesis, IRB application and approval process, ways to write a review of the literature chapter, ethics in research, writing workshops for the students, practice sessions for the formal oral presentations for the April conferences, publication possibilities, etc. The colloquium will also feature guest speakers who will discuss aspects of graduate studies, professional issues, job market issues, and their own research. Department honors students will continue to be mentored by their individual honors thesis advisor.

The Honors Colloquium is required for students enrolled in the department Honors Program. The colloquium meets biweekly to cover various research topics related to research design, implementation, and dissemination and to help students prepare for their culminating presentations at the Academic Conference. The colloquium is offered on a pass/no pass basis.

Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.

Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.

Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology majors.

Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology majors.

An individualized reading program addressing a topic in sociology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of a sociology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to sociology majors.

An individualized reading program addressing a topic in sociology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of a sociology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to sociology majors.

Program for individual students who wish to pursue supervised independent study on a selected topic or an advanced research project. Ordinarily projects are approved for one semester. Open to selected third- and fourth-year students with preference to sociology majors. Each project must be supervised by a faculty member.

A one-semester introduction to the main modes of cultural anthropological analysis of non-Western cultures, such as those of Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Polynesia, sub-Saharan Africa and Native America. Topics include: ethnographic methods; concepts of culture; symbolic communication; ecological processes; introduction to anthropological approaches to kinship, religion, gender, hierarchy, economics, medicine, political life, transnational processes.

Taking the idea of worlding, or ways of collective living through the senses in relation to women's storytelling as a foundation, this course invites students to participate in a poetics of visceral encounter with Arab women's worlds. Through the lens of feminist ethnography, which questions the line between the fictional and the 'real', we will explore the intimate social, political and cultural geographies of Arab women in the MENA region and its diasporas. We will attend to the everyday and embodied realities of Arab women through themes of identity, power, violence, war, exile, memory, revolution, home, love, and belonging, from traditional ethnographic texts to literature, poetry and experimental art, film and life writing. In doing so, we summon the social worlds and gendered imaginaries that grow out of women's lives as ethnographic text.

The UN reports that 2/3 of the global workforce operates in the "informal economy." This course develops an anthropological approach to that fact. Our foundation is the literature on the informal economy in Africa and other parts of the global south, but we will also explore economic processes closer to home. Topics include: the origin, development, and use of the "informal economy" concept, precarious livelihoods, micro-credit and "bottom of the pyramid" ventures, informal networks, illicit trade, smuggling, black markets, and organized crime.

This course explores cross-cultural variation within and among legal institutions. Through the medium of ethnography, as well as original primary-source research into court proceedings and legal disputes, we consider how law becomes a mechanism for the maintenance of social order at the same time that it can contribute to social inequity. We will address central questions in the anthropology of law: How does our cultural background influence how we conceptualize justice? What are the consequences of finding oneself between competing legal systems? Why are questions of legality so often tied up with our conceptions of human nature? Our focus will be to examine critically the social and cultural dynamics behind dispute resolution, corporate law, crime, torts, religious law, and international courts, as well as dilemmas around policing and other ways people encounter the law in everyday life. Case studies from diverse legal environments in both industrialized and small-scale societies will help place Western law traditions in a comparative, global perspective.

Is there any validity to the claim that women in the Global South have largely been "left out", "marginalized" and even "harmed" by development programs and ideologies? And is development a new form of imperialism? The course begins with discussion of anthropological and feminist critiques of "development" and then examines successes and shortfalls of different strategies used to "bring women back" into development. We then evaluate the gendered impacts of development policies, programs promoted by international development agencies.

This course examines the concept of Reproductive Justice, understood as the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social and economic well-being of women and girls, based on the full achievement and protection of womens human rights. More than focusing solely on the pro-choice issue, the Reproductive Justice framework addresses the social reality of the inequality of opportunities available to women to control their reproductive destinies. In that sense, this framework attempts to analyze how the ability of any woman to determine her own reproductive destiny is linked directly to the conditions of her community. The course draws on various theoretical and analytic tools to explore the social, legal, and economic barriers for accessing reproductive health care domestically and internationally, specifically in Latin America. Three areas of focus are included in this framework: (1) the right not to have a child; (2) the right to have a child; (3) the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments.

Over the past few years the very limit of what is "male" and what is "female" seems to have become more unstable and fluid in our society and around the world. Similarly, recent scholarship on "gender" has disputed conventional academic wisdom of how gender and sexuality are produced, embodied and performed by individuals. Anthropology and feminist theory have furthered these debates by offering a significant reappraisal of "gender" - as a concept, social relationship and category of analysis. In this course, we will develop a critical stance toward the study of gender and sexuality by taking anthropology's and feminism's insights into account as we explore the power dynamics that play into the social construction of the body. We will pay attention to how various peoples (including ourselves), living at different times, have fashioned social distinctions based on gender and sexuality, and how these distinctions have played a role in the organization of political, religious, economic and ideological practices. Among the topics we will cover are: the nature/nurture debate, kinship, psychoanalysis, transgender identity, race, gender under colonialism, and performativity.

In this course, we will explore anthropological work on debt, then use it to think through contemporary issues, both here in the US and elsewhere in the world. We will start by discussing the focal role of debt in a variety of religious traditions and revisiting the classical anthropology of exchange. Then we'll explore connections between debt, money, and finance, as they have appeared in different times and places. Along the way, we will consider everything from feuds and blood money, to debt peonage and slavery, to the origins of central banking and state finance, to structural adjustment programs and anti-debt activism. As we wrap up, we'll look at a number of recent trends in our own milieu, including the bail/bond system, subprime loans, and student debt, as well as matters from further afield, like microcredit schemes and the role of debt in migration.

The course provides an overview of the ways that anthropologists have approached issues of sickness, disease, and healing, particularly in the study of the cultural construction of health and illness, the therapeutic process, social stratification, and health inequalities. Through case studies and synthesizing readings, the course will review key theoretical, conceptual, methodological and practical approaches to the study of health and illness, using a cross-cultural, global, and comparative perspective. As such, the course is designed to promote an appreciation for the variety of human suffering and responses to illness and healing, as well as to developing a crucial understanding of our own system of medicine as a cultural product. Key course objectives include: 1) to examine the historical trends of Medical Anthropology theory and practice; 2) to compare and contrast current issues and methodological approaches in the field; and 3) to examine ways that anthropological concepts and methods are used in research on national and international health issues

A social scientific, cross-cultural consideration of religious worlds created in such locales as village and urban Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea, and Africa, especially in terms of their power dynamics vis-a-vis social hierarchies. Covers classic topics such as the study of ritual and ecology, village myth, trancing, shamanism, witchcraft, and sorcery accusations, but also deals at length with such matters as the connections between Christian missions and empire. Also turns an anthropological gaze on contemporary U.S. religions.

This course will critically examine the social construction of race and racism in different cultural contexts. The course will question the biological basis of racial difference, and take anthropology to task for participating in a long history of scientific racism. After this quick historical background, we will tackle contemporary forms of racism across the world, and read about the struggles against racism and white supremacy, from the fight against settler colonialism and segregation, to Black Lives Matter and immigration rights. Racist ideologies are deeply entrenched in institutions and have ongoing effects on the health, wellbeing and livelihood of millions of people, so it is crucial we become aware of the way racism operates to begin the work of undoing it.

The main focus of this course will be the perennial question of inequality in Latin America a region of the world beleaguered by a long history of immense differences between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the ruling elites and the people. We will pay close attention to the ways in which gender, race and sexuality inform those economic and political inequalities, and how they are being challenged by the region's important transformations over the last couple of decades. Throughout the course, we will keep in mind that Latin America cannot be examined in isolation, but in relation to foreign powers (including the United States) that have had vested interests in the region. We will tackle controversial topics such as the School of the Americas, the Rigoberta Menchú testimonial and affirmative action policies in Brazil. By the end of the course, students will be expected to have a good grasp of the amazing cultural diversity in Latin America, and its unique quandaries, social movements and hopes for the future.

This course takes a broadly comparative and historical perspective, using cross-cultural analysis to understand the workings of politics and power, in Western and non-Western contexts. Topics include: colonialism and its impact on colonized populations; the formation of post-colonial national states; leadership, authority, and the construction of political subjects; and the links between local processes and global political systems.

An introduction to the issues, methods, and concepts of economic anthropology. This course places economic features such as markets, commodities, and money into a larger cross-cultural context by exploring relations of power, kinship, gender, exchange, and social transformation.

A comparative, cultural anthropological exploration of fashion and consumption as tools for the creation, expression, and contestation of social, cultural, economic, political and individual identities. Topics include: anthropological and semiotic theories of materialism and consumption, subcultural styles, colonialism, race, gender, religious dress, globalization and ethnic chic.

This course provides an introductory anthropological account of 20th- and 21st-century Africa. The central theme is the "representation" of Africa and Africans, including the manner in which outsiders have portrayed the continent and its peoples in the past, African responses and rejoinders, and current scholarship and forms of self-representation. We will cover a number of broader themes, including music, race, art, ethnicity, youth, economic activity, "tradition" and "modernity," and the politics of cultural translation.

Nearly a century ago, anthropologist Margaret Meads "Coming of Age in Samoa" introduced a broad public to the issues facing youth in modern society and proposed various approaches to understanding these problems. Paying homage to Meads seminal work, this course examines the subjectivities and daily life experiences of youth navigating the conceptual, territorial and affective borders created by nationalism, war, displacement, occupation, colonialism and other social and political contexts in a variety of global situations. At a time when we are bearing (painful) witness to the suffering of those forced to navigate the unwieldy terrains of a reinstating and strengthening of borders and border walls, we will examine how youth in Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, the U.S./Mexico border, and our nation's own internal "others" 'come of age' by negotiating the construction of identities, movement across (often militarized) spaces, and political violence as they push up against carceral and colonial state formations. At the same time, we will attend to the politics of such witnessing, and the potentials (and impossibilities) of ethnographic engagement with youth struggling to define themselves, their communities and their futures at the border.

This course provides an introduction to the methods and tools of linguistic anthropology, one of the disciplines four principal subfields in the American tradition. With contemporary and historical primary sources along with theoretical texts, we will consider how spoken language and its representation in other modalities become mechanisms through which differences of class, region, race, ethnicity, and sexuality are produced and contested. A basic premise of the course is that language functions as far more than a mere neutral medium to denote ideas but actively shapes our identities and the material conditions of our lives. The techniques of semiotic analysis, which we will develop through ethnographic case studies drawn from diverse cultural settings, will allow for nuanced insights into how modes of communication shape the complex lived experience of public discourse, media, performance, the political sphere, religious and magical language, temporality, personhood, stigmatized speech, and language ideology. The role of language in constructing epistemic authority and legitimizing the social order will be central themes. The semester will conclude with applied independent research into language use in specific cultural contexts through the presentation of original linguistic data.

This course looks at cloth-making, cloth uses, and textile meanings both in broad, cross-cultural perspective and specifically in Southeast Asian cultures of Indonesia and Malaysia (well examine textiles from there in class from the Cantor Art Gallery study collection). Well ask: why does cloth mediate so many human social processes? Attention also to museum studies issues of representation and display.

This course aims to develop students ability to think ethnographically and comparatively about urban life in contemporary Africa, using the theme of infrastructure as a starting point. For purposes of the course, the term infrastructure points to both material connectionslike utilities, transport, and financial systemsand the diverse social connections that constitute everyday life. While engaging the literature about infrastructure in African cities, we will consider the way that specific local experiences fit into wider political, economic, and social trends on the continent. We will also discuss matters of culture, race, gender, generation, migration, and representation, and the ways that each is implicated in African cities and urban spatiality more generally. The joint result is a course that provides an introduction to both contemporary Africa and the literature on urban life in the global South.

An examination of cultural anthropology's main data-gathering strategy: long-term ethnographic fieldwork of small communities, often located in non-Western cultures. Topics include: review of the methodology literature, participant observation, in-depth interviews, designing field studies, oral histories, spanning deep cultural divides via fieldwork. Often involves hands-on fieldwork in Worcester.

A historical examination of the development of different theoretical perspectives in cultural anthropology. This course explores, compares, and critiques different schools of thought about human society and culture, from the 19th to the 21st centuries, looking at the ways in which anthropological scholars and those from related disciplines have attempted to understand and explain the human condition.

Since the latter half of the nineteenth century, voluntary and forced migration from across the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa to the Western Hemisphere has taken place for a number of economic, political, cultural, and other motivations. Individuals and their descendants from the region went on to create powerful diasporic communities in Latin America, making significant contributions to various social, political and cultural landscapes. While some readily assimilated into their new homes, others retained an indelible sense of dislocation from and belonging to their homeland.

This course will critically examine the wide variety of approaches, tactics, discourses and objectives adopted by activists from around the globe in the effort to further LGBTQ+ rights, and discuss the ways that this activism centered on sexuality and/or gender identity intersects with race, class, religion, nationality and cultural identity. Although many nations around the world have experienced important advances over the last few decades in the effort to include LGBTQ+ populations, we cannot assume that progress on these issues is uniform or that it will look the same in different contexts. The course will push students to consider the ways that Western LGBTQ+ identities cannot be imposed on other contexts uncritically, and to consider how global activism can complicate efforts in different localities, render certain identities vulnerable, or participate in neocolonialist forms of pinkwashing. Queer activism that is truly global and sensitive to cultural difference requires queering activist practices themselves, and creating equal partnerships rather than top-down approaches to spreading LGBTQ+ rights.

The Honors Colloquium will cover topics such as: strategies for thesis work, writing an intro to the thesis, IRB application and approval process, ways to write a review of the literature chapter, ethics in research, writing workshops for the students, practice sessions for the formal oral presentations for the April conferences, publication possibilities, etc. The colloquium will also feature guest speakers who will discuss aspects of graduate studies, professional issues, job market issues, and their own research. Department honors students will continue to be mentored by their individual honors thesis advisor.

The Honors Colloquium will cover topics such as: strategies for thesis work, writing an intro to the thesis, IRB application and approval process, ways to write a review of the literature chapter, ethics in research, writing workshops for the students, practice sessions for the formal oral presentations for the April conferences, publication possibilities, etc. The colloquium will also feature guest speakers who will discuss aspects of graduate studies, professional issues, job market issues, and their own research. Department honors students will continue to be mentored by their individual honors thesis advisor.

Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.

Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.

Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology/anthropology majors.

Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology/anthropology majors.

An individualized reading program usually addressing a topic in anthropology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of an anthropology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to anthropology majors.

An individualized reading program usually addressing a topic in anthropology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of an anthropology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to anthropology majors.

Program for individual students who wish to pursue supervised independent study on a selected topic or an advanced research project. Ordinarily projects are approved for one semester. Open to selected third- and fourth-year students with preference to sociology/anthropology majors. Each project must be supervised by a faculty member.