Rural America is the site of much that defines American life and culture. Our national myths are rooted in rural experience from frontier settlement to rugged individualism to escape from the decadent city and back to the land. Our economy is built on exploitation of rural resources: soil, water, minerals, trees. Our cities continue to sprawl into the countryside, sparking dramatic change in rural populations, politics, economics, and landscapes.

This course investigates the idea of geographies of exclusion through a multi-disciplinary inquiry which locates space and spatial production at its center. The course cross-thinks issues of exclusion across cities in the Global South and the Global North. It asks the following questions: what are geographies of exclusion? Who gets excluded, why, by whom, and how? What are some of the legal, spatial, socio-economical, ethical, and political apparatuses that produce segregated spaces of poverty and lavishness, violence and fear, connectedness and confinement?

This is an anthropology course on intellectual property (IP) and heritage. While IP regimes claim to balance an incentive for creators with the needs of society at large, expanding realms of IP protection have some people decrying an endless process of commodification, a closing down of the creative commons, and a transnational arrangement that favors the global North and disadvantages the global South.

Professor and activist Angela Davis recently asked "Are prisons obsolete?" And Grier and Cobb once noted "No imagination is required to see this scene as a direct remnant of slavery." Since the 1980s state and federal authorities have increasingly relied on the costly and unsuccessful use of jails and prisons as deterrents of crime. This upper division course will grapple with ideas of incarceration and policing methods that contribute to the consolidation of state power and how it functions as a form of domestic warfare.

World War II, often referred to as the "Good War," was also a race war. For Americans, it was a race war against the Japanese. Outraged by the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American people, along with Congress, enthusiastically supported President Franklin Roosevelt in declaring war against Japan. This race war had a profound and disturbing impact on the homefront as well.

This course offers a critical introduction to ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing, and related methods. Special emphasis is given to the concept of reflexivity - the recognition that social scientists are participants in the worlds they study- and its epistemological and ethical implications for the practice of social research. We will balance learning about the methods of ethnographic inquiry with critical examination of the philosophical assumptions that inform them.

This course introduces the field of urban studies in a primarily U.S. context. It explores how markedly different urban visions and planning strategies both respond to, and promote, economic and social change. Critical urban theory and case studies examine how and why transformations in city space/life occur over time, and how social inequities are mapped onto the urban landscape, prompting struggles over the "right to the city". We consider the historical origins of urban social reform and the radical genesis, and then demise, of such policies as public housing.

This course is of interest to all Div II students who seek to incorporate a historical perspective to their work. It will cover a wide range of topics and recent methodologies such as transnational identities, immigration/migration, race and ethnicity, women's history, early modern science, visual culture, sex and the body, gender and the law. Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with archival material and critically analyze oral history methods.

According to a famous and revealing anecdote, antisemitism means hating the Jews more than necessary. Among the most perplexing things about antisemitism is its persistence. It has flourished for over two millennia in a wide variety of settings, and, despite the rise of modern multiculturalism, seems to be on the rise again. It is no wonder that it has been called the longest hatred. Among the questions we will ask: How does it relate to other forms of prejudice? What are its origins? What forms does it take, and how do they change over time?

Do you own your body and who has the right to profit from your genetic materials? Does testing for genetic diseases on embryos before implantation constitute eugenics? Should one company own a patent on a genetic test for breast cancer? These questions, among others, provide the basis for an exploration of the emergence and growth of bioethics in the context of genetic research.