Austerity measures promoted as a response to the deep global economic recession beginning in 2007 have resulted in protests around the globe. However, these are only the most recent series of measures that fall under the aegis of neoliberal reform. With much of the world’s population under 30 years old, neoliberalism has been a constant fact of life for many. This course looks at the historic rise and consequences of the neoliberal economic model as well as alternatives implemented by breakaway governments in the global South.

As a basis for understanding current global ecological crises, this course marries natural and social history as well as ecological and social science of the human society/environment nexus. We will study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change in historical perspective. The new and greater scale of environmental degradation made possible by industrialization and the globalizing tendencies of the modern economic system will receive special attention as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change.

Because food is necessary to sustain biological life, its production and provision occupy humans everywhere. Due to this essential importance, food also operates to create and symbolize collective life. This seminar will examine the social and cultural significance of food.

An examination of theory and method in social anthropology as applied in the analysis of specific societies. The course will focus on case studies of societies from different ethnographic areas.

Fall semester. Professor Gewertz.

(Offered as AMST 215 and ANTH 111) "The Embodied Self" in American Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary, historically organized study of American perceptions of and attitudes towards the human body in a variety of media, ranging from medical and legal documents to poetry and novels, the visual arts , film, and dance.

(Offered as ENGL 485 and FAMS 485.)  How do words and images bring each other to life?  How have different graphic and material instantiations articulated their separation or union?  This seminar will explore the relationship between word and image across different media forms and historical periods, continually asking how they mutually animate, constrain, and give shape to one another.

(Offered as ENGL 483, FAMS 426, and WAGS 483.)  This seminar will be devoted to the study of feminism and film, considering the ways feminism has shaped both film theory and film practice.  Though focusing in large part on post-1968 writings, which largely ushered in semiotic, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory to film studies, we will also consider early writings by women from the 1910s-1950s in a range of venues–from fan magazines to film journals–that developed points of view regarding women’s practices as both artists and audience members.  We will also

(Offered as ENGL 483, FAMS 426, and WAGS 483.)  This seminar will be devoted to the study of feminism and film, considering the ways feminism has shaped both film theory and film practice.  Though focusing in large part on post-1968 writings, which largely ushered in semiotic, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory to film studies, we will also consider early writings by women from the 1910s-1950s in a range of venues–from fan magazines to film journals–that developed points of view regarding women’s practices as both artists and audience members.  We will also

The publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in 1981 produced a radical change in the way that gender and genre were tackled in the South Asian novel. Writers in the post-Rushdie era experimented with genres such as magical realism, the postcolonial science fiction thriller and the postmodern spy novel to re-imagine the nation’s construction of gendered subjects.