A survey of how archaeology is currently conducted in the Mediterranean world and the issues that archaeologists are faced with when studying ancient cultures. This course will explore how archaeology actually happens by looking at various types of projects and how each one approaches different geological or environmental concerns. We will also look at new technologies that are helping archaeologists and scholars expand their studies of both recent finds and the re-examination of previously excavated material. Finally, we survey recent ethnographic studies and experimental archaeologists trying to recreate the past.

An introduction to how the archaeology and management of ancient sites and artifacts from Greek and Roman civilizations is carried out in the field. Archaeologists play an important role in recovering these past civilizations, while museums help to spread the information gathered to the wider public. What happens to the thousands of objects uncovered during excavation? How do museums curate these artifacts and presented them to the public? What role do we all have in protecting and preserving these past cultures? These questions and more will be discussed through an in-depth look at archaeological projects, museum collections, and the ethical debates surrounding the study of the ancient civilizations.

Historical archaeology is the study of past peoples using artifacts, documents, and the built landscape. In this project-focused course you will learn some of the methods used to reveal aspects of the lives of people poorly represented in the documentary record of the past. Projects will include site documentation, artifact analysis, documentary record investigations, and/or dendroarchaeology to support existing or potential archaeological projects. Our focus is the historical archaeology of Colorado and the U.S. Southwest, ca. 1850 to 1950.

Religion has been central to the project of modern colonialism. Everywhere European conquerors went, they justified colonial rule in the name of Christianity, sponsored missionary projects of conversion, and regulated the traditions and practices of the colonized. Indeed, some scholars have argued that modern conceptions of religion (and its cognate, world religions) only emerged out of these colonial conquests. This course explores the constitutive relationship between colonialism and religion. Two broad questions will inform our inquiry: How did the colonial encounter shape modern knowledge of religion? How did colonial technologies of rule (law, education, the census, surveillance, welfare) effect transformations in the religious beliefs, traditions, and practices of both the colonizer and the colonized? Our readings will include materials from various modern empires in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We will explore how religion was constitutive of modern empires and how religion relates to other sites of social power including race, gender, and nation. Themes will include religious conversion and freedom of religion, religious institutions and reforms, textuality and interpretation, ritual and material cultures, and legal reforms and regulation.

An introduction to the anthropological study of the modern Middle East and its diasporas that foregrounds how gender and sexuality are inhabited, embodied and negotiated in everyday life by differently situated individuals and communities. Themes for the course include the modern refashioning of gender and sexuality; agency, power and subjectivity; law and citizenship; piety and secularity; feminism, multiculturalism and the politics of translation. These themes are explored through richly contextualized historical, ethnographic, autobiographical, and fictional accounts in places as diverse as Morocco, Yemen, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, as well as in various diasporic locations including France and Germany. Considers dominant representations of the region and the normative assumptions about tradition, modernity, religion, secularism, law, gender, family and sexuality underlying them. 0.5 unit or 1 unit. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.) 1 unit - Guessous.

This course examines the apparently universal human phenomenon of religion and its place in the modern world. Scholars have generally assumed that the spread of modernity would entail the gradual retreat of religion as an active political force in the world. However, today one hears of a global “resurgence of religion”—the Pentecostalization of sub-Saharan Africa, the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in South Asia, “politicized” Islam in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and the Christian right in the United States are but a few examples. This course asks: What is religion? What is the source of its apparent power? Are the various phenomena we group under the name/sign religion indeed of a piece? Is there some common essence, in other words, justifying the assumption that the diverse beliefs and practices termed “religious” are but different expressions of the same thing? And if not, why is such an assumption so widespread? The course begins by examining some of the most influential attempts to define and explain religion comparatively, both within the discipline of anthropology and in the works that have influenced it. Thus, we will engage the writings of Freud, Weber, Durkheim, as well as anthropologists such as E.B. Tylor, Bronislaw Malinowski, Mary Douglas, and Clifford Geertz. These texts are included not simply for historical value, but as lucid expressions of ideas that are sedimented as matters of common sense and as ideas that permeate academic as well as popular accounts. In the second part of the course, we will focus on ethnographic attempts to account for the power of religion in specific social and cultural contexts, including in the modern West. These ethnographic readings will enable us to explore the important issues, approaches and debates in the anthropology of religion and to address the question of religion in the modern world in relation to its constitutive other: secularism.

This course introduces students to Russia's astounding ethnic diversity. We will study the histories of the Sami, the Khanty, the Evenks, the Nenets, the Yakuts, the Chukchi, and others, from Ivan the Terrible's conquests in the 16th century to Vladimir Putin's policies today. The students will explore the impacts of colonialism and capitalism on the lives of the indigenous peoples; the issues of environment and sustainability; the struggle for preservation of the peoples' languages and traditions; the creative expression of culture through the traditional music, costumes, ceremonial dances, and literature. This course carries the following General Education designations: 1. Equity and Power-Global 2. Societies and Human Behavior.

This course provides an overview of the history of human rights. We examine different genealogies of human rights, chart the shifting meanings of “human” and “rights” over time, and explore debates in the application of rights. Key topics include the philosophical foundations of rights; capitalism, imperialism, and rights; universalism vs. cultural relativism; and the complementary discourse of humanitarianism. 1 unit - Mehta.

Bodies in Maya Art and Archaeology This course will rely on the human body as a point of departure for the study of ancient Maya art. We will examine representations of the body across media, including sculpture, painting, and pottery, by exploring such themes as: the body as a site of identity, the body as a political object, and the body as a means for understanding space and place. Art historical and archaeological methods of inquiry will be used to contextualize our discussions. A central aspect of this class will be to understand various knowledge systems, including indigenous knowledge, and reflect on how we make meaning out of the past. Although the focus will be the pre-Colonial period, we will cover material through the present day.

This study-abroad course will look at the history of colonialism, human rights abuses and environmental destruction in the Amazon, while highlighting the efforts of the indigenous movement and environmentalist allies to reverse exploitation and forge new futures with new and traditional technologies. The course starts with a look at the impact that economic imperialism—from the colonial era to the present—has had on indigenous communities in Ecuador, particularly the Ecuadorian Amazon.

This course centers on student participation in archaeological excavations at Shikhin, an ancient Jewish village in the Galilee region of Israel. Through this field experience, students will gain training in essential methods and theories of archaeology as well as insights into the history, culture, politics and economics of the region during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. With an understanding of these contexts, students will examine the related histories of early Judaism, the ministry of Jesus, and Christian origins. In addition to their experience in the field, students will learn through assigned readings, regular evening lectures, excursions to other significant historical sites in the region, and a final weekend exploring Jerusalem. The course will be especially attentive to the benefits and challenges of correlating ancient literary sources, including biblical narratives, with the archaeological record.