This year-long course continues the study of Modern Standard Arabic.  The course concentrates on all four skills:  reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  Students will read and discuss authentic texts by writers throughout the Arab world.  Topics address a variety of political, social, religious, and literary themes and represent a range of genres, styles, and periods.

Requisite:  ARAB 202 or equivalent. Limited to 18 students.  Fall semester.  Five College Lecturer Oulbeid.

This course expands the scope of the communicative approach, as new grammatical points are introduced (irregular verbs), and develops a greater vocabulary for lengthier conversations. Emphasis is placed on reading and writing short passages and personal notes. This second-year of Arabic completes the introductory grammatical foundation necessary for understanding standard forms of Arabic prose (classical and modern literature, newspapers, film, etc.) and making substantial use of the language.

This year-long course introduces the basics of Modern Standard Arabic, also known as Classical Arabic. It begins with a coverage of the alphabet, vocabulary for everyday use, and essential communicative skills relating to real-life and task-oriented situations (queries about personal well-being, family, work, and telling the time). Students will concentrate on speaking and listening skills, as well as on learning the various forms of regular verbs, and on how to use an Arabic dictionary. 

Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Five College Senior Lecturer Hassan.

Independent Reading Courses. A full course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

This course will look at the relationship between economy and society through a critical examination of Marx with particular emphasis on pre-capitalist economies. The more recent work of French structural Marxists and neo-Marxists, and the substantivist-formalist debate in economic anthropology will also be discussed. The course will develop an anthropological perspective by looking at such “economic facts” as production, exchange systems, land tenure, marriage transactions, big men and chiefs, state formation, peasant economy, and social change in the modern world.

(Offered as ANTH 331 and ASLC 341 [WA].)  In an era where “terrorism” has eclipsed the nuclear fears of the Cold War and become associated with a radicalism that is portrayed as at once militant, anti-Western, and bound to a particular region (the Middle East) and religion (Islam), the task of this seminar--to examine the everyday realities of people living throughout the Middle East--has become all the more critical.  Beginning with an historical eye toward the ways that the “West” has discovered, translated, and written about the “Orient,” thi

This course explores money as an ethnographic object.  It focuses on anthropological writing about the everyday uses of money from “exotic” fields to places much closer to “home,"  from colonial encounters to household budgeting and the world of finance, for example. Anthropology has long been interested in the diverse ways in which people attach meanings, desires, and value to the idea that is money.

A general survey of writings that have played a leading role in shaping the modern fields of cultural and social anthropology. Beginning with a discussion of the impact of Darwin and the discoveries at Brixham Cave on mid-nineteenth century anthropology, the course surveys the theories of the late-nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists. It then turns to the role played by Franz Boas and his students and others in the advent and later development of cultural anthropology in the U.S.

This class will examine how and why education differs in different countries and communities. Students will learn how to compare how and why various kinds of people experience and make decisions about education. We will look at various levels of education, including preschool, kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, and college. 

Limited to 19 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Fall semester.  Professor Fong.

From diamonds and bananas to coca and coal, natural wealth as commodities have shaped the way we think of global connections from early colonial encounters to the present. They are signs of the legacies of colonial exploitation as well as the seemingly infinite reach of global capital.