Fall 2008

ANT 305 • Expressive Culture

Course Description

Cultural assumptions condition how we tell and respond to stories, whether in the form of fairy tales, movies, or television news.

The course introduces some of the ways the disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies have analyzed expressive culture. After an initial discussion of regional American accents, in which basic sociological understandings are set out, we take up a number of scholars' approaches to fairy tales. These include psychoanalytic, historical, and feminist perspectives. The bulk of the course then turns to movies in order to demonstrate how social and cultural issues raised earlier in the course pertain to Hollywood, Bollywood, and other non-Western films. The focus is not on evaluating the films but rather on seeing the solutions (usually fantastic) films proffer in response to widely shared tensions and contradictions in contemporary social life. In addition to the lectures held MW 10-11:00 JGB 2.216, students are required to attend the accompanying discussion sections. Movie times and locations will be announced during the first two weeks of class.

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