Winter 2017 - ANTH 381 - Dr. G​ötz Hoeppe 

Course Description 

This course is an introduction to culture and society in South Asia, with a focus on the Indian subcontinent. Drawing on ethnographic and historical cases from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the course addresses colonial forms of knowledge-making and representation, social stratification and the work classifications do, popular Hinduism, kinship and marriage, cultural conceptions of the body and the environment, development and the nation-state, religious and ethnic conflict, the impact of economic liberalization and globalization, as well as life in the diaspora. 

Students will gain knowledge about contemporary debates in anthropology, including colonial history and its postcolonial implications, the politics of competing claims to represent peoples and and places, and the social power of analytical categories. 

The course consists of lectures, films, seminar discussions and student presentations. 

Course Goals and Learning Outcomes 

• Develop an informed critical perspective on how specific processes and events have become intertwined with South Asian culture and society. 

• Articulate how an anthropological perspective helps to make sense of contemporary cultural and social issues relating to South Asia, many of which are global in scope. 

• Gain an understanding of how the anthropology of a key world region has informed, and is informed by, anthropological thinking at large. 

• Get accustomed to the free-flowing seminar give-and-take as a way to generate ideas and insights for a term paper. 

• Strengthen your ability to research, write, and present a critical term paper.