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Semester 2

Ethnographies of the United States (SCAN10086)

Subject

Social Anthropology

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed at least 3 Social Anthropology courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses.

Course Summary

This course will provide students with an introduction to the anthropological study of the USA, incorporating perspectives on a variety of topics and regions, and referring to research carried out at a range of historical moments. It will provide a grounding in key debates. It will show how ethnographic work carried out in the US has influenced the discipline of anthropology. The course will take a (self)-critical look at what area-based foci of study do. Those teaching the course will draw from rich ethnographies and from their own fieldwork experiences in the US.

Course Description

This course will explore themes and provocations that emerge from a range of ethnographies written about the USA or about places within the USA. It looks at how historical regimes and critical events, from slavery and the Civil War, 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina have influenced US society. It unpacks ethnographies that both describe and problematize the idea of 'the everyday'. Selected ethnographies explore ideas of social change, such as those brought about by or following civil rights movements. Students might discuss and problematise concepts that have been central to constitutional, political, and quotidian discussions and conflicts about what the US is or about what various groups think it should be: justice, 'family', happiness, and democracy. They will critically engage with popular themes for discussing the US ethnographically such as individualism and capitalism. Emphasis will also be placed on looking at emergent lenses: dystopia, whiteness, captivity. It will explore a variety of key questions and topics, such as: - How have ethnographies explored and problematized the emergence of the USA? How do ethnographies represent slavery and its afterlives, and the displacement of indigenous peoples? - How do people experience legal and medical systems and how can this be explored ethnographically? - What is the role of organised religion in everyday life and in electoral politics in the US? - How do ethnographers of the US approach subcultures? - How does ethnography make apparent how 'race', gender, sexuality, class, and nationality are constructed? - How are ideas about public and private domains, rights, and activism salient in a US context? *Indicative topics*: 1) Anthropology from an American Vantage: De-centering the Canon. How can we reread classic anthropological debates through a perspective situated in the American experience? How would the discipline be different if our 'founding figure' was Zora Neale Hurston rather than Bronislaw Malinowski? 2) Freedom and Captivity 3) Care and Disregard 4) Dispossession and Ownership 5) Secularism and Faith 6) Rationality and Affect 7) Unity and Multiculturalism 8) Indigeneity and Nativism 9) Autonomy and Dependence 10) Equality and Difference. This course will be delivered by lecture (one hour per week) and seminar (two hours per week), with an emphasis on student participation and discussion during seminars. Seminar and lecture alike will centre on set readings. Films, visual art, and music will be used to complement and complicate the readings. Students will be asked to approach these latter materials with an 'ethnographic eye' to practice their ethnographic argumentation within the scope of the classroom.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

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