This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples--sound art, environmental recordings, music--will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This is a multi-format ethnographic field collection project, undertaken during the New Deal, that includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California.

Students examine the anthropological perspective of human culture, including such institutions as kinship, politics, and religion, and evaluate the interrelationship between culture, environment and biology. Students explore the effects of globalization on culture while developing critical thinking skills through the application of essential anthropological approaches, theories, and methods.

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How and why do people seek to capture everyday life on film? What can we learn from such films? This course challenges distinctions commonly made between documentary and ethnographic films to consider how human cultural life is portrayed in both. It considers the interests, which motivate such filmmakers ranging from curiosity about "exotic" people to a concern with capturing "real life" to a desire for advocacy. Students will view documentaries about people both in the U.S. and abroad and will consider such issues as the relationship between film images and "reality," the tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film.

This is one of the most significant and controversial representations of American Indian culture ever produced. Issued in a limited edition from 1907-1930, the publication continues to influence the image of Indians in popular culture. In over 2000 photos and narrative, Curtis portrayed the traditional customs and lifeways of 80 Indian tribes.

A practicum-style course in anthropological methods of ethnographic fieldwork and writing, intended especially for STS, CMS, HTC, and Sloan graduate students, but open to others with permission of instructor. Depending on student experience in ethnographic reading and practice, the subject is a mix of reading anthropological and science studies ethnographies; and formulating and pursuing ethnographic work in local labs, companies, or other sites.

This guide explains how to conduct and preserve oral histories in your community.

This is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. The collection consists of approximately 8 hours of audio recordings (146 titles on 36 recording discs), 1 graphic image, and 218 pages of print material including administrative correspondence, recording logs, song text transcriptions, and publications.

Global exploration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries radically changed Western science, orienting philosophies of natural history to more focused fields like comparative anatomy, botany, and geology. In the United States, European scientific advances and home-grown ventures like the Wilkes Exploring Expedition to Antarctica and the Pacific inspired new endeavors in cartography, ethnography, zoology, and evolutionary theory, replacing rigid models of thought and classification with more fluid and active systems. They inspired literary authors as well. This class will examine some of the most remarkable of these authors—Herman Melville (Moby-Dick and "The Encantadas"), Henry David Thoreau (Walden), Sarah Orne Jewett (Country of the Pointed Firs), Edith Wharton (House of Mirth), Toni Morrison (A Mercy), among others—in terms of the subjects and methods they adopted, imaginatively and often critically, from the natural sciences.

This module is a republication of the following essay: Frank G. Speck. 1911. Missions in the Creek Nation. Southern Workman 40, no. 4: 206-208. Based on ethnographic field research undertaken in the Creek Nation in 1904, 1905 and 1908, Speck's essay describes the history and consequences of Christian missionary activity among the peoples of the Creek Nation. The essay's wider focus is the nature of native cultural and social change under the uneven and often disruptive effects of contact with non-native people and American economic, political and social institutions. Under U.S. copyright law, this essay is now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

Focuses on musical traditions of West Africa. A variety of musical practices and their cultural contexts are explored through listening, reading and written assignments with an emphasis on class discussion. Subject includes in-class instruction in Senegalese drumming, song and dance, as well as live lecture-demonstrations by guest performers from throughout West Africa. This course is an introduction to selected musical traditions of West Africa. A variety of musical practices and their cultural contexts will be explored through listening, reading, and written assignments, with an emphasis on class discussion. The course includes in-class instruction in West African drumming, song and dance, as well as lecture-demonstrations by guest artists. After an introductory unit, the course will be organized around four main geographical areas: Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria. An in-depth study of music from these countries will be interspersed with brief overviews of Southern, Central, and East Africa.

The book collects together and republishes a set of essays by Frank G. Speck that were originally issued as separate articles in The Southern Workman. The papers, which were written early in Speck's career, during the period 1907-1911, draw upon his first-hand observations in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories on the eve of Oklahoma statehood. In contrast to his more dispassionate ethnographic writings, which were published in venues read primarily by professional anthropologists and folklorists, these essays were published for a popular audience in the journal of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, an important college serving African American and Native American students. Reflecting the sensibilities of Speck and his anthropological circle at the time, these brief essays are accessible, provocative and sometimes biting in tone and represent the work of a young scholar seeking to develop a public, progressive, critical and engaged stance relative to the social problems faced by the peoples--particularly Native American and African American peoples--of Oklahoma and of the United States more broadly. For modern readers, the essays are little utilized sources for the study of Oklahoma, Freedmen, and Muscogee (Creek) Indian cultural history. They also deepen historical understandings of Speck and his work and enrich scholarly knowledge of early efforts at developing anthropology as a means of cultural critique. Under U.S. copyright law, these essays are now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

This module is a republication of the following essay: Frank G. Speck. 1907. Negro and White Exclusion Towns in Indian Territory. Southern Workman 36, no. 8: 430-432. Based on ethnographic field research undertaken in Oklahoma and Indian Territories in 1904 and 1905, Speck's essay describes the racial polarization and violence that was unfolding in the territories at the time of Oklahoma statehood. Under U.S. copyright law, this essay is now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

This module is a republication of the following essay: Frank G. Speck. 1908. The Negroes and the Creek Nation. Southern Workman 37, no. 2: 106-110. Based on ethnographic field research undertaken in the Creek Nation, Indian Territory in 1904 and 1905, Speck's essay describes the history and present-day circumstances of the Creek Freedmen and other peoples of African American ancestry then living in the Creek Nation on the eve of Oklahoma Statehood. He generalizes about the status of African American peoples in the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole Nations on the basis of his observations among the Creeks and his travels throughout Indian Territory. Under U.S. copyright law, this essay is now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

This module is a republication of the following essay: Speck, Frank G. 1909. Notes on Creek Mythology. Southern Workman 38, no. 1: 9-11. Based on ethnographic field research undertaken in the Creek Nation in 1904, 1905, and 1908, Speck's essay describes the major tale types and motifs characterizing the folklore and sacred narratives of the Creek people. Under U.S. copyright law, this essay is now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

This module is a republication of the following essay: Frank G. Speck. 1907. Observations in Oklahoma and Indian Territory. Southern Workman 36, no. 1: 23-27. Based on ethnographic field research undertaken in the Oklahoma and Indian Territories in 1904 and 1905, Speck's essay describes a range of environmental and social problems faced by the diverse peoples residing in the territories on the eve of Oklahoma statehood. Under U.S. copyright law, this essay is now in the public domain and is being republished on this basis.

" Still photography, a practice and form of expression that has worked its way into every facet of social life and every culture in the world, is considered here from the perspectives of history and social science. We will discuss the uses and functions of pictures; how they are to be understood and interpreted; whether they have clear-cut content and meanings; how they shape and are shaped by politics, economics, and social life."

Besides being simple mementos family photographs can offer insights into the past. This unit looks at some of the ways photographs can reveal, and sometimes conceal, important information about the past. It teaches the skills and provides some of the knowledge needed to interpret such pictorial sources.

This advanced course in anthropology engages closely with discussions and debates about ethnographic research, ethics, and representation.