Spring 2008

ANT 391 • Oral Traditions & History

Course Description

This course will examine oral traditions (narratives about the past) and the politics of writing histories. We will explore how ethnographers recover historical information and reconstitute community histories. Auto-ethnography and autobiography will also be explored as historical methods and theoretical approaches that attempt to change the relations between author and informant.

Central issues of analysis include: hermeneutics, oral tradition theories and methods, how people remember the past, memory, the politics of writing, and race.

Texts

Textbooks/tentative; Fabian, J: Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object Frye: Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town Manzano, Juan Francisco: Autobiography of a Slave Menchú, Rigoberta: I, Rigoberta Menchú Murgía, Alejandro. 2003. The Medicine of Memory: A Mexican Clan in California Foley, The Heartland Chronicles Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past. Beacon Press. 1995. Hernandez, Maria. Delirio. UT Press.

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