Final Year Anthropology Options (Part I)

So the time has come for me to pick my options for my final year studying anthropology. Well, it's not exactly time. I have until we start the year pretty much, and that isn't until October. However, I see no reason not to go through the available courses now and make a preliminary list, especially since the timetable is also available so I can see what clashes with what and won't need to go over everything again in a few weeks because suddenly they're all on the same day.

Let's start with the classes I definitely want to do.

ANTH3001 - Advanced topics in Digital Culture

In this course we will survey the terrain of ‘digital culture’ synthesizing technological, conceptual, historical and ethnographic frames. We will ground the emergence of ‘new’ digital technologies in older communicative, reproductive, replicative and mechanical forms; evaluate the resonance of the digital within cultural production; and investigate the digital as both site and subject of anthropological engagement and enquiry. Key questions asked are: what is new and different about our engagement with digital technologies? Do digital technologies and practices alter or perpetuate continuities in social relationships, hierarchies and political structures? What does it mean to be off line in a digital age? What kinds of new subjectivities and publics do digital practices bring into being?

Throughout the class we will present some ethnographies of emerging digital practices and discuss the social contexts in which they are developing. Some of the areas we will cover are the use of digital channels in the home , in the workplace, in public spaces, in civil society and in migration. We will also address some of the issues surrounding new digital property forms and economies, and new processes of digitization, by tracing the trajectory of diverse digital forms (museum catalogues, medical imaging technologies, digital photography).

Assessment - One essay.

When? - Term 2. Lecture on Tuesday 2pm.

ANTH3017 - Anthropology and Psychiatry

The course examines: a) popular understandings of psychology, self-hood and abnormal experience in different societies, and how they may be organised into a body of knowledge; b) the relationship between popular and professional notions of 'mental illness' and their roots in the wider social, economic and ideological aspects of different societies, with particular respect to women and minority groups; c) the contribution of academic psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to social anthropology; d )running through the course is the question of whether we can reconcile naturalistic and personalistic modes of thought and, if so, how.

Assessment - 25% essay, 75% exam.

When? - Term 2. Lecture on Tuesday 11am. Seminar on Wednesday 10am(?)

ANTH7020 - Anthropologies of Science, Society and Biomedicine

This course will critically engage with recent anthropological research and theory addressing the social and cultural context of novel developments in the field of genetics, biotechnology and the life/medical sciences. These shape shifting arenas of science and technology and their actual or predicted implications for questions of disease risk, collective/individual identity and the politics and ethics of health care has been the focus of much recent research within medical anthropology, STS (Science and Technology Studies) and the anthropology of science. The course incorporates emerging research in different national contexts that include the ‘global south’ drawing on ethnographic work in Asia and South America to provide a critical comparative perspective on these transnational developments.

Assessment - 40% essay, 60% exam.

When? - Term 2. Lecture on Thursday 2pm.

And then I need to decide between the following (and pick two of them).

ANTH3030 - Nationalism, Ethnicity and Race

This course focuses on theories and practices of ethnicity, race and nationalism. The reading material is divided between theoretical work on these issues and ethnographic examples. The readings primarily are from what sometimes are called the '1st and 2nd worlds'. Though most of the readings are contemporary, historical sources will be used as well.

Assessment - 2 essays.

When? - Term 1. Lecture on Thursday 11am.

ANTH3049 - Reproduction, Fertility and Sex

In this course students learn to apply different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the study of contemporary issues in reproduction and fertility. Each week a different topic is examined from a multi-disciplinary perspective including social anthropology, biological anthropology, demography, biology and other disciplines. The course is a seminar based discussion with considerable student participation: students have to identify an article each week on the topic and be prepared to present their reading to the group. Topics covered are likely to include love, hormones and bonding; adolescent reproduction; reproductive loss (abortion, miscarriage and still birth); breastfeeding; infertility; contraception and contraceptive methods; different roles and priorities of men and women in reproduction; reproduction and migration.

Assessment - 40% essay, 60% exam.

When? - Term 1. Lecture on Monday, 2pm.

ANTH3053 - Temporality, Consciousness and Everyday Life

This course examines the different social modes and states of consciousness through which knowledge of the past may be gained in world societies, while recognizing that views of the past are necessarily conditioned by present experiences and intimations of the future. In the West, rational research into documents and artifacts is generally accepted as the authoritative means of knowing the past. Yet even within Western societies people may contest official history with alternative accounts of the past deriving from personal revelations sometimes received in altered states of consciousness. In various societies from the Pacific to the Arctic the elders possess exclusive authority to pronounce upon what happened in the past. Amongst the First Nations of Canada, in the absence of written sources documenting the ownership of land, a shaman may be called upon to dream the truth of the past.

Assessment - 2 essays.

When? - Term 2. Lecture on Friday, 9am.

ANTH3020 - Social Construction of Landscape

Landscapes are never inert: people engage with them, re-work them, appropriate them and contest them. They are part of the way in which identities are created and disputed. Criss-crossing between history and politics, social relations and cultural perceptions, landscape is a ‘concept of high tension’. It is also an area of study that blows apart from conventional boundaries between disciplines. This course looks at the number of theoretical approaches to the Western Gaze; colonial, indigenous and prehistoric landscapes; contested landscapes; and questions of heritage and ‘wilderness’.

Assessment - 1 essay.

When? - Term 2. Lecture on Tuesday, 9am.

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I'll discuss some of the pros and cons and my thoughts on what to do in the next post, but I'm too distracted by Downton Abbey at the moment to do it now. I was only intending on watching one episode today, but H (my house mate) wisely pointed out that it's far too late for me to expect to get anything else done today, so we should attempt to watch the entire series tonight. 

After carefully considering her suggestion...

I decided there was only one way I could answer.

So until next time!