All Courses
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COMPLIT 222 001 WN 2018
How do different cultures and societies in the modern world understand youth? And why are tales of youth a persistent theme and genre in many traditions of modern literature? These are some of the questions that will guide our reading of a broad selection of novels, short stories, and some scholarly essays. We will discuss and reflect on how youth functions as a narrative theme across cultural locations. We will also explore why youth is a problematic experience in many social formations of the modern world.
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ANTHRCUL 329 001 WN 2018
This course examines cross-cultural encounters in the modern world. Cultural difference has not faded away or disappeared with globalization; rather, the accelerated mobility of people and circulation of commodities have created new forms of interaction and demands for making sense of difference. These encounters take many forms, both within and across national boundaries. Explanations of difference may invoke religious identity, history, politics, ideas about race, and culture itself. This course draws on concepts from political scientists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists who seek to explain these encounters and the persistence of difference, including nationalism, ethnicity, modernity, race, and culture. It then applies these concepts to a series of thickly-described cultural encounters: between people living in rural Papua New Guinea, the state, and a transnational mining company; Ladinos and Mayans in Guatemala; Muslims and Christians in contemporary Spain; how globalization includes people living in rural Togo; and how advertisers in Bombay market commodities by invoking culture. Above all, this course examines the continued significance of culture and difference in a globalizing world.