ANTH 5331a / CLSS 7000a / EALL 7730a / HIST 6000a / HSAR 6564a / JDST 6553a / NELC 5330a / RLST 8030a, Archaia Seminar: Art, Architecture, and Climate Change in the Premodern World  Avary Taylor

This seminar explores artistic, architectural, and material responses to environmental transformations, such as floods, droughts, volcanic events, and periods of exceptional abundance, across the premodern world. Foregrounding the indivisibility of natural worlds and human creativity, we examine how ancient peoples conceived of, and responded to, the disruptions and affordances of their environment. Through a comparative framework that puts cultures across the ancient world into conversation—from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica and beyond—we trace the entanglements of art, politics, and climate, asking: how, if at all, did environmental change materialize in the things people made? This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
M 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5332b / CLSS 7001b / EALL 7731b / HIST 6010b / HSAR 6574b / JDST 6554b / NELC 5331b / RLST 8031b, Archaia Seminar: Literacy, Books, and the Materiality of Writing in the Premodern World  Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Joe Glynias

What is literacy? What is reading? This course takes a longue durée approach to how premodern individuals produced and engaged with texts. From hieroglyphs to alphabets (and everything in between), this course considers ways of writing and the intersection between orality, aurality, and textuality in the premodern world, focusing on (but not limited to) the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Due to its focus on the physical media of writing and the preservation and study of premodern writing materials by modern scholars, roughly half of the meetings of this course take place in Yale Collections. Topics covered by the course include pseudoscripts and pseudepigrapha, scribes and scholars, and the ideological and ritual uses of writing across premodern cultures. This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5710a or b, Ethnography and Social Theory  Staff

This seminar for first- and second-year Ph.D. students in Anthropology runs in tandem with the department’s reinvigorated EST Colloquium. The colloquium consists of public presentations by cutting-edge speakers—four or five each term—selected and invited by students enrolled in the seminar. In the seminar, students and the instructor discuss selected works (generally no longer than article-length) related to the topics presented by the colloquium speakers and engage in planning activities associated with organizing the EST Colloquium, including but not limited to developing readings lists, creating a viable calendar, curating the list of speakers, securing co-sponsorships, writing invitations, and introducing and hosting the speakers. Open to first- and second-year Ph.D. students in Anthropology only.  ½ Course cr
HTBA

ANTH 5730a, Engaging Anthropology: Histories, Theories, and Practices  Lisa Messeri

This is the first course of a yearlong sequence for doctoral students in Anthropology and combined programs. Students are introduced to the discipline through theoretical, historical, and experimental approaches. In addition to gaining an expansive view of the field, students have the opportunity to hone foundational scholarly skills.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5740b, Anthropological Imaginations  Louisa Lombard

This is the second course of a yearlong sequence for doctoral students in Anthropology and combined programs. The seminar explores anthropological imaginations as modes of experience, perception, and writing. Anthropology as a discipline has transformed from the frontline of colonial projects to critical reflections on power dynamics that produce and reproduce systems of oppression, injustice, and violence. Yet knowing and representing are never external to these power dynamics, and there is simply a vast unknowability of human and non-human experiences. How do we as anthropologists give meanings to the world out there that is so intertwined and complex beneath what we see and hear? How do we see what seems invisible and how to listen to silence? How do we account for our own implication in the encounters through which we experience and learn, and reflect upon? How do we weave stories through writing? While there are no right or wrong answers to these questions, in this seminar we explore how different imaginaries open up new possibilities as we embark on our ethnographic research.
T 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5750a, Research in Sociocultural Anthropology: Design and Methods  Marcia Inhorn

The course offers critical evaluation of the nature of ethnographic research. Research design includes the rethinking of site, voice, and ethnographic authority.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 5823a, The Anthropology of Possible Worlds  Paul Kockelman

This course focuses on the nature of possible worlds: literary worlds (Narnia), ideological worlds (the world according to a particular political stance), psychological worlds (what someone remembers to be the case, wishes to be the case, or believes to be the case), environmental worlds (possible environmental futures), virtual worlds (the World of Warcraft), and—most of all—ethnographic works in which the actual and possible worlds of others are represented (the world according to the ancient Maya). We do not focus on the contents of such worlds per se, but rather on the range of resources people have for representing, regimenting, and residing in such worlds, as well as the roles such resources play in mediating social relations and cultural values.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5824a, Politics of Memory  Yukiko Koga

This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. The course explores the politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. It asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia, and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the United States, the course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 5838a, Culture, Power, Oil  Douglas Rogers

The course analyzes the production, circulation, and consumption of petroleum in order to explore key topics in recent social and cultural theory, including globalization, empire, cultural performance, natural resource extraction, and the nature of the state. Case studies from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union, among others.
M 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 5839b / AFST 6639b, Africa, Politics, Anthropology  Louisa Lombard

A historical-anthropological study of politics in Africa. How have anthropologists made sense of the workings of African politics, both those of state and nonstate actors? This course charts how African states came into being, how they operate, and how state agents and the people they govern negotiate legitimacy, authority, and belonging.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 5852a / CPLT 5530a / GMAN 5530a / SOCY 7610a, Karl Marx's Capital  Paul North

A careful reading of Karl Marx's classic critique of capitalism, Capital volume 1, a work of philosophy, political economy, and critical social theory that has had a significant global readership for over 150 years. Selected readings also from Capital volumes 2 and 3.
TTh 9:25am-10:15am

ANTH 5860a / AFST 5516a, African Migration and Diaspora  Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen

This seminar examines the politics of migration to, from, and within Africa. We explore intercontinental, regional, and rural-urban migratory circuits and diasporic formations to consider mobility and immobility in relation to race, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial travel accounts and trade diaspora histories to black critical theory and fiction, we examine theorizations and representations both about migration and by diasporic peoples to unsettle and retheorize imaginaries of globalization, nationalism, and the politics of belonging.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 6258a / ARCG 6258a, Archaeology of China  Anne Underhill

In this course, we use the lens of archaeology to explore life in early China from the Neolithic through the Han Dynasty. Drawing on all available lines of evidence, we examine important themes, such as the rise of social complexity, ritual and religious practices, urbanism, and the development of writing. Finally, we outline the history of archaeology in China and situate new finds and research within the larger global context.
HTBA

ANTH 6556a, Research Methods in Biosocial Anthropology  Claudia Valeggia

This graduate seminar focuses on research methods aimed at capturing the human experience as a whole. That is, we look at humans as biosocial beings, both responding to and affecting the environment in which they grow and develop. We go over quantitative and qualitative approaches to best capture the nuance in human biology and behavior. We take a cross-cultural approach when reading both seminal and current works in anthropology. Emphasis is placed on human health across the life course. Prerequisite: At least one introductory course in sociocultural or biological anthropology.
Th 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 6665b / ARCG 6665b, Evolution of Human Diet  Jessica Thompson

This course examines human nutrition and subsistence behavior from an evolutionary perspective. It begins with human nutritional literature and discussions of our biological requirements, then moves into comparison of modern human dietary ecology with those of other primates, especially our closest living relatives, the great apes. We then turn to literature that demonstrates the methods and theoretical approaches that are currently used to reconstruct past diets. As we begin to follow the evidence for changes in subsistence in the hominin lineage, case studies using these methods are integrated into discussions of how we know what we do about past nutrition. The course spends time on key issues and debates such as changes from closed-habitat to open-habitat foraging, the origins of meat-eating, the role of extractive foraging in human social systems, variation in hunter-forager subsistence systems, the origins of domestication, and the phenomenon of fad diets in industrialized nations. The course is delivered in a seminar-style format, with key readings each week that follow topical themes, with assessment based on in-class participation, critical essays, and a final research project.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 6816b, Shadows  Erik Harms

This course grapples with the surprisingly complex relationships people have with shadows, both real and imaginary, material and metaphorical, across cultures, in varied geographies, and at different points in time. If storytellers sometimes evoke the shadows of night to portend sentiments of doom, they also sometimes draw on shadows to describe spaces of sanctuary and escape. If the worst parts of human experience are said to cast a shadow over the living, it is worth remembering that the comfort of shade is a kind of shadow too. Criminals rely on shadows to conceal illegal activities and even death itself is said to lurk in the shadows, but artists use shadow to represent the world in three dimensions, imbuing a kind of life into the empty whiteness of flat paper. Undesirable governments cast shadows over their people, but people seeking to flee state oppression might find the shadows a convivial place to hide. All these dualities promise to make shadow an elusive but provocative topic that will demand the nuanced kinds of reading and discussion that can animate a good seminar. Using shadows as our provocation, the course is modeled on what anthropologists call praxis—a combination of theory and practical engagement with the real world. On the one hand, our praxis involves empirical engagement with actual shadows, both through course readings and engaged assignments (e.g., adopting a shadow for the semester, studying Javanese shadow puppets, making a sundial, observing shade patterns in New Haven, and engaging in playful experiments that fit the needs of the class as they emerge through the semester). On the other hand, our praxis uses shadow as a flexible theoretical prompt that allows us to move through conceptual readings drawn from philosophy, analytic psychology, art history, folklore, literature, and, of course, anthropology. Expect readings from beyond anthropology (by authors like Bloch, Casati, DaVinci, Jung, Plato and Tanizaki) as well as anthropologists (like Sophie Chao, Jane Goodall, Mary Douglas, Michael Dove, Erik Mueggler, Carolyn Nordstrom, James Siegel, Terence Turner, and more). No specific prerequisites exist for this course, but students should note that it is designed to appeal to students with a background in humanistic social sciences, so it is desired to have some background in anthropology or adjacent fields like sociology, intellectual history, social theory, philosophy, art history, humanistic area studies, and so on. Students without such background, but who come with practical skills in optics, physics, fine arts, astronomy or sextant-based navigation may appeal in writing to the instructor for special permission.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 6841a / ENV 836a / HIST 8160a / PLSC 7790a / SOCY 7170a, Agrarian Societies: Culture, Society, History, and Development  Jonathan Wyrtzen and Elisabeth Wood

An interdisciplinary examination of agrarian societies, contemporary and historical, Western and non-Western. Major analytical perspectives from anthropology, economics, history, political science, and environmental studies are used to develop a meaning-centered and historically grounded account of the transformations of rural society. Team-taught.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 6868a, Economic Anthropology  Paul Kockelman

An introduction to understanding economic systems in other cultures and societies. How work and leisure are organized, who gets what and how, and how economic concerns tie into other aspects of social life. Major debates and controversies examined, and examples from different parts of the world presented. No prior background in economics or anthropology assumed.
M 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 7101b / ARCG 7101b, Foundations of Modern Archaeology  Richard Burger

How method, theory, and social policy have influenced the development of archaeology as a set of methods, an academic discipline, and a political tool. Prerequisite: a background in the basics of archaeology equivalent to one of the introductory courses.
W 11:35am-12:50pm

ANTH 7116La / ARCG 7116La, Introduction to Archaeological Laboratory Sciences  Ellery Frahm

Introduction to techniques of archaeological laboratory analysis, with quantitative data styles and statistics appropriate to each. Topics include dating of artifacts, sourcing of ancient materials, remote sensing, and microscopic and biochemical analysis. Specific techniques covered vary from year to year.
HTBA

ANTH 7143a / ARCG 7143a, Archaeological Research Design and Proposal Development  William Honeychurch

An effective proposal requires close consideration of all steps of research design, from statement of the problem to data analysis. The course is designed to provide an introduction to the principles by which archaeological research projects are devised and proposed. Students receive intensive training in the preparation of a research proposal with the expectation that the final proposal will be submitted to national and international granting agencies for consideration. The course is structured around the creation of research questions; hypothesis development and statement of expectations; and the explicit linking of expectations to material patterning, field methods, and data analysis. Students review and critique examples of funded and nonfunded research proposals and comment extensively on each other's proposals. In addition to developing one’s own research, learning to constructively critique the work of colleagues is imperative for becoming a responsible anthropological archaeologist.
HTBA

ANTH 7154a / ARCG 7154a, Statistics for Archaeological Analysis  William Honeychurch

An introduction to quantitative data collection, analysis, and argumentation for archaeologists. Lectures, readings, and exercises emphasize the exploration, visualization, and analysis of specifically archaeological data using simple statistical approaches. No prior knowledge of statistics is required.
F 4pm-5:15pm

ANTH 7171a / ARCG 7171a, Early Complex Societies  Anne Underhill

A consideration of theories and methods developed by archaeologists to recognize and understand complex societies in prehistory. Topics include the nature of social differentiation and stratification as applied in archaeological interpretation; emergence of complex societies in human history; case studies of societies known ethnographically and archaeologically.
W 4pm-5:55pm

ANTH 7176b / ARCG 7176b, GIS and Spatial Analysis for Archaeology  William Honeychurch

Introduction to the practice of Geographical Information Systems in anthropology with attention to archaeological applications. The growing use of GIS among anthropologists has transformed the way we carry out research and conceive of space. The course draws on research examples from a range of theoretical, analytical, and geographical contexts and introduces students to current software. Emphasis is placed on understanding how anthropological archaeologists have employed GIS as part of generating evidence to assess their hypotheses.
Th 4pm-5:55pm

ANTH 7185b / ARCG 7185b, Archaeological Ceramics I  Anne Underhill

Ceramics are a rich source of information about a range of topics including ancient technology, cooking practices, craft specialization, regional trade, and religious beliefs. This course provides a foundation for investigating such topics and gaining practical experience in archaeological analysis of ceramics. Students have opportunities to focus on ceramics of particular interest to them, whether these are low-fired earthen wares, or porcelains. We discuss ancient pottery production and use made in diverse contexts ranging from households in villages to workshops in cities. In addition we refer to the abundant ethnoarchaeological data about traditional pottery production.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 7186b / ARCG 7186b, Archaeological Ceramics II  Ellery Frahm

Ceramics are one of the most common archaeological materials. This course introduces students to techniques in the archaeological, geological, and materials sciences (microscopy, analytical chemistry, etc.) for the study of ceramic artifacts. Methods include (1) engaging with and assessing the literature on scientific studies of archaeological ceramics; (2) learning the mechanisms, strengths, and weaknesses of scientific techniques used for such studies (X-ray fluorescence analysis, petrographic and electron microscopy, neutron activation analysis, etc.); and (3) gaining experience in a research project that combines both literature engagement and hands-on experience. Prerequisite: ANTH 785/ARCG 785 (may be taken concurrently), or ANTH 716L/ARCG 716L, or permission of the instructor.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 7210b / ARCG 7210b, Settlement Patterns and Landscape Archaeology  Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

An introduction to the archaeological study of ancient settlements and landscapes. Topics include an overview of method and theory in settlement and landscape archaeology; field methods of reconnaissance, survey, and remote sensing; studies of households and communities; studies of ancient agricultural landscapes; regional patterns; roads and networks of communication; urbanism and ancient cities; and symbolic interpretations of ancient landscapes.
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 7226b / ARCG 7226b, Ancient Civilizations of the Eurasian Steppes  William Honeychurch

Peoples of the steppe zone, stretching from Eastern Europe to Mongolia, have played a pivotal role in Old World prehistory, though much about their societies and lifeways is still shrouded in mystery. The archaeology of this macro-region has developed rapidly since the 1990s, and this course presents an overview of major topics and debates in the region based on what archaeologists currently know about Eurasian steppe societies of the past.
F 4pm-5:55pm

ANTH 7236b / ARCG 7236b / NELC 5890b, Archaeologies of Empire  Harvey Weiss

Comparative study of origins, structures, efficiencies, and limitations of imperialism, ancient and modern, in the Old and New World, from Akkad to “Indochine,” and from Wari to Aztec. The contrast between ancient and modern imperialisms examined from the perspectives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology and political economy.
Th 4pm-5:55pm

ANTH 7255b / ARCG 7255b, Inca Culture and Society  Richard Burger

The history and organization of the Inca empire and its impact on the nations and cultures conquered by it. The role of archaeology in understanding the transformation of Andean lifeways is explored, as is the interplay between ethnohistoric and archaeological approaches to the subject.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

ANTH 7256a / ARCG 7256a, The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange  Richard Burger

This seminar focuses on archaeological approaches to exchange and trade. As background, we review some of the principal theories of exchange from anthropology and sociology, such as those of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi. The role of trade and exchange in different kinds of societies is examined by contextualizing these transactions within specific cultural configurations and considering the nature of production and consumption as they relate to movement of goods. We consider methods and models that have been used to analyze regions of interaction at different spatial scales and the theoretical arguments about the social impact of inter-regional and intra-regional interactions involving the transfer of goods, including approaches such as world systems, unequal development, and globalization. In addition, we examine the ways that have been utilized in archaeology to identify different kinds of exchange systems, often through analogies to well-documented ethnographic and historic cases. Finally, we consider the range of techniques that have been employed in order to track the movement of goods across space. These sourcing techniques are evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages from an archaeological perspective, and in terms of how the best technical analyses may vary according to the nature of natural or cultural materials under consideration (ceramics, volcanic stone, metals, etc.). The theme for this year’s seminar is obsidian; students select some aspect of obsidian research for their final paper and presentation.
W 11:35am-12:50pm

ANTH 7269b / AMST 7716b / ARCG 7269b / HSAR 6716b, Landscapes of Meaning: Museums and Their Objects  Anne Underhill

This seminar explores how museums convey various meanings about ethnographic, art, and archaeological objects through the processes of collecting, preparing exhibitions, and conducting research. Participants also discuss broader theoretical and methodological issues such as the roles of museums in society, relationships with source communities, management of cultural heritage, and various specializations valuable for careers in art, natural history, anthropology, history, and other museums.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 7818b / ER&M 6606b / SPAN 9718b / WGSS 7718b, Multi-Sited Ethnography: Methodological Pivoting Under Duress  Eda Pepi and Ana Ramos-Zayas

In the face of resurgent authoritarianism, nativism, and assaults on academic freedom, this course examines ethnographic pivots under conditions of duress that are not exceptions but constitutive of the method itself. “Fieldsites choose us” as much as we choose them, pressing ethnographers to move with the currents of empire, capital, and knowledge production while reckoning with their limits. We retrace the genealogies of ethnographic practice and “turns” tethered to geopolitical demands: from the long shadow of “the native,” carried forward in avatars such as “the welfare queen” and “the terrorist,” to World War II–era area studies, Cold War intelligence collaborations, and the backlash against codified ethics in fieldwork and classrooms. Equally formative are the bureaucracies of academia—funding cycles, time-to-degree mandates, thematic calls, and the logics of publishing and tenure—that shape how ethnographers pose questions and frame methods. As some field sites become foreclosed and others newly thinkable, the very concept of “the field” splinters across multiple scales. What is “multi-sited” is not only movement across places but the doubleness of sites themselves—at once local and global, discrete and imbricated in imperial and transnational formations. Securitized borders, shrinking budgets, and the weaponization of academia leave open the question of whether these frictions will consolidate into a new “Americanist turn,” yet they press us to imagine the ethnographic otherwise. What becomes possible when archives, digital platforms, and mapping technologies are brought into conversation with participant observation and thick description? How might studies of diaspora, migration, enclaves, personhood, and neoliberal subjectivities be pursued not as fallback designs but as deliberate strategies? A flagship offering of the interdisciplinary Yale Ethnography Hub, the course welcomes graduate and undergraduate students across the humanities and social sciences—those preparing dissertations, senior essays, or fieldwork-driven projects, as well as those curious about ethnography’s possibilities and limits.
T 4pm-5:55pm

ANTH 8408a, Topics in Evolutionary Morphology  Eric Sargis

Readings and discussions of literature on evolutionary morphology. Particular focus on systematics and functional morphology of mammals. Research projects are conducted in the Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology Lab.
HTBA

ANTH 8476b, Observing and Measuring Behavior  Eduardo Fernandez-Duque

The primary subject matter of the course is the methods used for the systematic observation and measurement of the behavior of living organisms and the quantification and analyses of the information collected.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 8512b, Current Topics in Anthropological Genetics  Serena Tucci

This course is a series of seminars on cutting-edge topics in the field of anthropological genetics. Topics include the use of modern and ancient DNA as powerful tools for studying human evolution, population history, and adaptation. The course also explores ethical and social implications of human genetic research and direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Students actively work through these topics, using readings, presentations, and class discussions. Students learn how genetic data can help us unlock our evolutionary past, how to interpret and communicate human genetic variation, and how to assess issues and challenges of conducting anthropological genetic research.
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 8513a or b / ARCG 8513a or b, Human Osteology  Eric Sargis

A lecture and laboratory course focusing on the characteristics of the human skeleton and its use in studies of functional morphology, paleodemography, and paleopathology. Laboratories familiarize students with skeletal parts; lectures focus on the nature of bone tissue, its biomechanical modification, sexing, aging, and interpretation of lesions.
HTBA

ANTH 8530a, Topics and Issues in Human Life History Evolution  Richard Bribiescas

This seminar reviews our current understanding of life history traits that have been central to human evolution. Traits to be examined include patterns of growth, sexual maturation, reproduction, and aging. Emphasis is placed on the examination of the literature of forager and non-industrialized communities as well as comparative information from nonhuman animal models, particularly nonhuman primates.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 8540b, Human Reproduction, Evolution, and Health  Richard Bribiescas

Survey of the current understanding of the physiology of reproductive function within the control of evolutionary and life history theory. Emphasis on population variation in female and male reproductive endocrinology as well as the sources of that variation.
W 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 8590b, Advanced Topics in Health of Indigenous Peoples  Claudia Valeggia

This seminar is an exploration of the current health status of indigenous populations around the world. We discuss epidemiological profiles, health disparities, and the uniqueness (or not) of the health situation of indigenous populations. We also use these topics as a base for developing oral presentation and teaching skills.
T 9:25am-11:20am

ANTH 8594a, Methods and Research in Molecular Anthropology I  Serena Tucci

A two-part practical introduction to molecular analyses of anthropological questions. In the first term, students learn a range of basic tools for laboratory-based genetic analyses and bioinformatics. In the second term, students design and carry out independent laboratory projects that were developed in the first term.
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

ANTH 8680b, Fathers and Fatherhood: Evolution and Behavior  Eduardo Fernandez-Duque

We explore what it means to be a father, for humans and for other animals where “dads” also play a major role in the care of the young. The course focuses on the evolutionary and behavioral sciences, while acknowledging that human behavior cannot be fully understood without attention to social and cultural contexts. Our readings cover the disciplines of anthropology, biology, psychology, animal behavior, sociology, human development, ecology and evolution, public health, and medicine. Students have the opportunity to attend a conference on “Fathers and Fatherhood” being held at Yale in March 2025. 
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

ANTH 8816a / WGSS 8816a, The Limits of Agency: Practical Reason, Ethnographically  Eda Pepi

You march. You chant. You show up again the next week. When resistance feels obligatory but ineffective, we learn to find agency everywhere—especially where it changes nothing. This seminar follows a history of practical reason that turns not on what agency enables, but on what remains when it does not deliver: when nothing shifts, when violent worlds hold. Rather than something one possesses, agency appears as an ethnographic problem, a historically formed, analytically ambiguous discourse tasked with rationalizing lives lived under conditions that feel structurally totalizing. Read this way, our identities as agents are not the endpoint of inquiry but its provocation, with the unsettling potential to undo the very terms we use to enter into solidarity. While the field draws from moral philosophy, our entry into practical reason is phenomenological: from Pierre Bourdieu to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, action comes into view as embodied, sedimented, and constrained within uneven fields of power. Agency cannot be assumed; it must be accounted for. We track how this idiom was inherited, stretched, and made to bear explanatory weight it cannot always sustain. Across ethnographic works where the language of agency begins to fray, human and other-than-human forces refuse, comply, persist, improvise. Standing ground or in fugitivity, we endure and sometimes even thrive in the long meantime … come the revolution. Whether agency names a capacity, an effect, a misrecognition, or something else not yet named animates our time together. Without presuming an answer, the seminar invites a different kind of attention: to forms of life that do not announce themselves as “vita activa,” to transformations that register in unintended effects, and to the possibility that we may need other vocabularies—quieter, sharper, less assured—for describing how people live in worlds that do not yield, in worlds that refuse us.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ANTH 8897a and ANTH 8898b / HIST 5804a and HIST 5805b / HSAR 6841a and HSAR 6842b / HSHM 7691a and HSHM 7692b, Topics in the Environmental Humanities  Paul Sabin

This is the required workshop for the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities. The workshop meets six times per term to explore concepts, methods, and pedagogy in the environmental humanities, and to share student and faculty research. Each student pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities must complete both a fall term and a spring term of the workshop, but the two terms of student participation need not be consecutive. The fall term each year emphasizes key concepts and major intellectual currents. The spring term each year emphasizes pedagogy, methods, and public practice. Specific topics vary each year. Students who have previously enrolled in the course may audit the course in a subsequent year. This course does not count toward the coursework requirement in history. Open only to students pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities.  ½ Course cr per term
T 11:30am-1:20pm