Anthropology 217 - Sensory Anthropology

This course examines sensory perception as a mode of carrying out ethnographic research and a focus of inquiry. Through course readings, students engage with how anthropologists have understood the senses—sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing—as an area of shared, cultural knowledge. Bridging anthropology with sensory related works, students tackle ongoing scholarly concerns and move beyond the legacy of a hierarchical model of the five senses to consider how the senses work together and intertwine with other domains of experience. By analyzing the role of the senses in cultural formations—that is, everyday practices, relations of power, meaning creation and social processes, students ask how are the senses mobilized in collective life? What can the interplay of the senses offer us as a way of understanding social experience? Enrollment limited to 30. (E)