(Offered as ANTH 206 and FAMS 357.)  This course will examine ethnographic film beginning in the early twentieth century. Through a combination of critical readings and film viewings we will address issues of representation, vision, gender, film techniques, knowledge production, and our relationships with difference vis-à-vis ethnographic film. While not specifically a production course, the making of student videos is encouraged, and student-made videos will be screened in class at the end of the semester.

The topic changes from year to year. For fall 2014, the topic is "Computational Biology." This course examines the central computational challenges that have emerged since the publication of the human genome sequence in 2001. The enormous volume of genetic and genomic data collected by biologists has required the development of sophisticated computational techniques to analyze it. This course presents the formulation of these biological data analysis challenges as computational problems.

This course will explore the imagined and conflicted experience of urban life in the United States through study of the country’s first metropolis: New York. Drawing on primary materials—maps, memoirs, film, poetry, fiction, census data, the natural and the built environment—and a selection of secondary sources, we will encounter moments in the life of the city from the 17th into the 21th century.

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester.  Professor Clark.