|
Anthropology
500 Fall term 2002
|
|
Seminar in Socio-Cultural
Anthropology Historicizing the Discipline and Theorizing its History |
|
Seminar
objective and organization Syllabus of the seminar sessions Useful links and webliographies office:
Rm 8, 158 Whitney Ave telephone: 432-3688 office
hours: Wednesdays, 1-4 & by appointment email: william.kelly@yale.edu instructor info:
Appadurai telephone: 432-3684 office hours: TBA email: |
|
primary
instructor: William Kelly Thursdays,
9:00-12:00 Room
1, 51 Hillhouse Ave.
This seminar is designed primarily for those beginning their professional training as anthropologists, and it aims to begin to historicize the discipline that you are now joining. You will quickly appreciate that this "historicizing" is not a straightforward or simple ambition. There are even some who would argue that it is impossible or misguided to even attempt, these days, to "master" that history. I do not share such dire pessimism, but I do believe it is important to appreciate both the difficulties as well as desirability of thinking about one’s profession historically. Thus, I intend that the seminar challenges you with the possibility, the process, and the problems of a historical conception of anthropology as a discipline. This seminar is corrdinated with Professor Scheffler's proseminar on key perspectives and paradigms in social and cultural theory within anthropology. here are several special features for 2002-2003. First, Professor Scheffler normally offers his seminar as 500a and my seminar follows in the spring term as 500b. For 2002-2003, however, Professor Scheffler will be on leave in the fall so we are reversing the order. My seminar is labelled 500a for this academic year, and Professor Scheffler will offer his seminar as 500b.
Also, because I was on leave in the spring of 2002, I did not offer my seminar to last year's entering Ph. D. students. Thus this term's seminar will include both first- and second-year doctoral students. For that reason, I am unfortunately not able to accept admission of graduate students from other departments and programs or undergraduates.
Finally,
I am pleased and appreciative that Professor Arjun Appadurai will
be joining me as a co-instructor for this fall's seminar. Professor
Appadurai is joining the Department from this year and will be teaching
two other courses in the fall. He will have only limited, secondary
responsibilities in the 500a seminar. However, he wanted to begin
interacting with the graduate students immediately, and we agreed
that some participation in the 500a seminar will be a good way of
doing that. My
seminar revisits some of the same theoretical terrain as Professor
Scheffler's, but I emphasize the historical contexts of the development
of anthropology as a discipline.
I am using "context" in a double sense to mean both
the social-political circumstances of anthropological work and the
intellectual exchanges with other disciplines that have influenced
the directions of anthropological theory for a century and a half.
Our intention is that the two seminars together will offer
a broad orientation to the discipline as a loosely-bounded field of
intellectual struggles. We hope, too, that the 500 a/b seminars will sustain a shared
intellectual experience over your first year in the Ph.D. program.
It
is also helpful to take or to have taken Professor Graeber’s seminar
on anthropology and social theory because its focus on classics of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social theory is critical background
to anthropology’s early professionalization, with which we will begin.
Kwakiutl transformation
mask source: Jonaitis 1991:42, 43 |
|
|
|
|
