Spring 2005

WGS 393 • INTRO TO GRADUATE ANTHROPOLOGY

Course Description

This seminar considers the history and contemporary practice of feminist anthropology and archeology. After a survey of the impact of first, second, and third wave feminism within anthropology, we will turn to contemporary topics including intersections among race, ethnicity, class, and gender; gendered analyses of history, colonialism, and material culture; social and physical reproduction; feminist methodologies, including ethnography; and postcolonial studies of power, marginality, and resistance. This course fulfills a core course requirement in Anthropology. Course Requirements Active participation in the seminar, including serving twice as a discussion leader; 2 short position paper; 1 15-page final paper or project. Texts Micaela di Leonardo, ed., Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era. University of California Press, 1991. Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. Routledge, 1999. Joan M. Gero and Margaret M. Conkey, Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory. Blackwell, 1991. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds., Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Duke University Press, 2001. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, eds., Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. University of California Press, 1995. Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg, eds., Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Oxford University Press, 1999.

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