John Hartigan

This seminar has two goals: first, to survey the transformative impacts of new technologies on how we socialize and organize human existence; second, to evaluate how cultural theorists are responding to these developments, asking how the task of theorizing culture and society is being fundamentally challenged or reimagined. Technological developments are rapidly reconfiguring the scope and depth of the human experience, from the rise of social networking to the expansion of media infrastructures and various techniques of surveillance. Our aim will be to map the breadth of these developments and pose a series of basic questions about the ways that what counts as human today is being altered or reconstituted. We will consider how well a series of theoretical concepts—biopower (Foucault), assemblages (Deluze and Guattari), and nonhuman agency (Latour)—can be applied to analyzing these developments. Readings will range across cultural studies broadly, in order to understand the array of publics that are emerging today. The seminar may also hone an historical perspective, depending on the extent of participants’ interests in assessing this aspect of techne.

The city is one of humanity’s most profound and unwieldy inventions. This course surveys the culture of cities, exploring their historical development and their current dynamism. Our perspective will encompass the great global cities as well as major urban areas in the United States. We will frame the urban experience from a number of perspectives, examining the distinctive forms of expressive culture, ethnic and racial conflict, and political or economic activity that cities generate. Students will gain an understanding of the profound impact of new technologies, immigration, and gentrification on how cities grow and decline. We will consider each of these dimensions of urban experience from a cultural perspective, which focuses on how people create meaningful lives.

Why are race and ethnicity such important aspects of our everyday lives? This course critically examines how these forms of identity matter so intensely, both in this country and around the world. We will work at comprehending the fundamental dynamics that shape the development and maintenance of racial identity by drawing on key concepts from anthropology. After a general overview of how racial relations are socially structured in the United States, we will examine some of the symbolic materials and mediums through which people express a sense of ethnic identity and belonging—music, dress, dance, and stories. This portion of the course will also focus on the performance of racial and ethnic identities in various forms of popular culture. Subsequently, we will concentrate on a variety of urban settings where ethnicity is the basis for political and social mobilization. Students will have an opportunity to develop a detailed awareness of a particular ethnic group through a research paper.

No single figure has so profoundly influenced contemporary fields of cultural studies and social science as Michel Foucault. The purpose of this seminar is to systematically examine Foucaultís major works in order to comprehend and assess his theoretical and methodological contributions to scholarly research and political activism. Participants in the seminar will engage in close readings of each text, developing a systematic understanding of both his analytical styles and his diverse subjects. The purpose of this engagement is to cultivate studentís abilities to theorize cultural matters and to delineate novel or disparate subjects of study. The final portion of the seminar will feature several works that apply Foucauldian perspectives, drawn from a range of disciplinary orientations. We will not devote time to considering secondary literature on Foucault, privileging instead works that apply theoretical tacks derived from Foucaultís research.

The city is one of humanity’s most profound and unwieldy inventions. This course surveys the culture of cities, exploring their historical development and their current dynamism. Our perspective will encompass the great global cities as well as major urban areas in the United States. We will frame the urban experience from a number of perspectives, examining the distinctive forms of expressive culture, ethnic and racial conflict, and political or economic activity that cities generate. Students will gain an understanding of the profound impact of new technologies, immigration, and gentrification on how cities grow and decline. We will consider each of these dimensions of urban experience from a cultural perspective, which focuses on how people create meaningful lives.

Today cultural analysis is being applied more widely than ever before, across varied domains—expressive, corporate, scientific, and social—that require different types of expertise and knowledge to properly comprehend. In this expansion of the scope of “cultural” as an explanatory framework, a focus on form provides a free-floating type of attention across a range of milieus and mediums. The analysis of form is as ancient as Greek philosophy (e.g. rhetoric) but as current as our interests in the latest technologies. This seminar surveys the variety of ways that an overarching interest in form is fueling interdisciplinary research, particularly in projects that track disparate cultural phenomenon across complex landscapes as they manifest in dense, multi-layered arrangements, often fusing financial, aesthetic, and political interests. We will examine the trend towards melding topic areas—such as “media ecology” or using “publics” with collectives of nonhuman life forms—to devise distinct ways of comprehending emergent cultural objects and activities. Media—as it references an array of substances, instruments, or channels—and mediation (in biotechnologies, communication infrastructures, legal practices, and market expansions) will serve as a basic point of orientation for seminar readings and discussion. Other examples of emergent phenomenon will be drawn from current work in science studies, post-human and biodiversity projects, and urban ecologies, which are each held together by an overriding attention to cultural forms of expression and exchange.

Why are race and ethnicity such important aspects of our everyday lives? This course critically examines how these forms of identity matter so intensely, both in this country and around the world. We will work at comprehending the fundamental dynamics that shape the development and maintenance of racial identity by drawing on key concepts from anthropology. After a general overview of how racial relations are socially structured in the United States, we will examine some of the symbolic materials and mediums through which people express a sense of ethnic identity and belonging—music, dress, dance, and stories. This portion of the course will also focus on the performance of racial and ethnic identities in various forms of popular culture. Subsequently, we will concentrate on a variety of urban settings where ethnicity is the basis for political and social mobilization. Students will have an opportunity to develop a detailed awareness of a particular ethnic group through a research paper.

This seminar has two goals: first, to survey the transformative impacts of new technologies on how we socialize and organize human existence; second, to evaluate how cultural theorists are responding to these developments, asking how the task of theorizing culture and society is being fundamentally challenged or reimagined. Technological developments are rapidly reconfiguring the scope and depth of the human experience, from the rise of social networking to the expansion of media infrastructures and various techniques of surveillance. Our aim will be to map the breadth of these developments and pose a series of basic questions about the ways that what counts as human today is being altered or reconstituted. We will consider how well a series of theoretical concepts—biopower (Foucault), assemblages (Deluze and Guattari), and nonhuman agency—can be applied to analyzing these developments. Readings will range across cultural studies broadly, in order to understand the array of publics that are emerging today. The seminar may also hone an historical perspective, depending on the extent of participants’ interests in assessing this aspect of techne.

Scientific research and technological innovations are developed in social contexts and respond to social interests and desires.  Race fundamentally informs the social influences that influence the production of technology and the pursuit of science.  This course examines the multiple intersection and linkages between race, science, and technology.  We begin by reviewing the array of current anthropological and sociological studies of science, which regard science as an institutionalized set of cultural practices charged with generating objective knowledge of the world.  But in addition to generating knowledge, the practice of science often has drastic effect on social life.  In this regard, we then turn to surveying the lkong history of “scientific racism” experiments conducted to validate the racist notions held by Europeans and Americans regarding peoples of color.  In particular, we will consider how “data” was constructed in these various experiments.  The second half of the course will survey the numerous ways that scientific endeavors and creations are reconfiguring racial formations in the US and around the globe.  These include:  environmental racism, genetic “harvesting and collecting” (of humans and seeds) and intelligence testing.

“Public culture” developed over the last 20 years as an interdisciplinary means to analyze a series of spatial and social transformations stemming from the Enlightenment that profoundly contour our daily lives. From the rise of coffee houses to reconfigurations of urban space (e.g. plazas and boulevards) and the open display and circulation of scientific experiments, the public sphere sprung from an array of sources, each, in turn, shaped by dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. While these developments can be linked to the rise of the nation state, the spread of capitalism, and colonization, the distinctive mode of attention with “public culture” is towards the elusive, ephemeral, and highly local realms of everyday life.  This seminar provides a survey of attempts to theorize about and analyze popular forms of sociality. Then we turn to ask how well “public culture” fares today in assessing a host of newly emergent cultural forms associated with music, advertizing, biosocial political activity, and the rapid expansion of social networking. This will involve a tangle of interesting questions related to agency (particularly nonhuman varieties) and technologies that both reflect and transform basic cultural dynamics.

Selected Readings:

The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary, Ramón Saldivar.

Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria, Brian Larkin.

The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics, Charles Hirschkind.

Insect Media: An Archeology of Animals and Technology, Jussi Parikka.

This course explores human cultural diversity and the relation of culture to human experience.  Cultural anthropology takes the position that, if we wish to understand the human condition, we must study the full range of human societies, past and present, and not just our own.  This introductory course will sample a broad range of cultures, ranging from hunter/gatherers, small scale tribal and village societies, to the emerging post-industrial cyberculture of tomorrow.  What do these cultures have in common, what makes each unique, and what is it like to live within them?  Our comparative approach will examine political and economic systems, religion, language, family and kinship, law, the arts, and other institutions to better understand ourselves and all of humankind.

Introduction to Race and Ethnicity, ANT 310L, 2009

Dr. John Hartigan

MEZ BO.306, MW 9:00-10:00

E-mail: Hartigan@mail.utexas.edu; Tel.232-9201

Office Hours: Wed, Fri 1-2pm, & by appt. (EPS 1.142)

Teaching Assistants:

Emily Lynch, Office Hours: 10-11 on Mondays and by appointment in EPS 4.110.

Gwen Ferreti, Office Hours:, 12:30-1:30 on Thursdays at the Medicci Cafe (on Guadalupe) and by appointment.

Objectives: Why are race and ethnicity such important aspects of our everyday lives? This course critically examines how and why these forms of identity matter so intensely, both in this country and around the world. Our aim is to understand the fundamental dynamics shaping racial and ethnic identity by drawing on theories and methods from anthropology. The first third of the course will cover key concepts and the basic forces that make ethnicity and race important. The second portion of the course will develop a cultural perspective on these topics by surveying a range of ethnographic work on these forms of identity. The final third of class will address a variety of ways that race and ethnicity operate in the sphere of public culture. Rather than attempt to present a survey of various groups and traditions, the aim of this course is to introduce students to the challenges of producing social knowledge about race and ethnicity.

Dynamics: The lectures and readings will present various aspects of ethnic and racial identity, using examples drawn from around the globe and our everyday lives. Discussion sections on Fridays provide students the opportunity to comment on and raise questions about the material.

Grading and Course Requirements: Evaluations in this course will be based on one exam and two assignments (a book review and a mini-ethnography), as well as class participation. The exam will cover roughly the first half of the course and represent 30% of your grade. The book review, of Blue-Chip Black, will count for 20% and the ethnographic project, regarding some aspect of race and ethnicity, will be worth 40% of your overall grade. Both these assignments are described below. Class participation (i.e. active involvement in discussions, attendance, etc.) will count for 10% of the final grade.

Attendance Policy: Attendance for lectures is expected and is mandatory for discussion sections. Students with two or more unexcused absences from discussions will have their final evaluation reduced by at least one letter grade.

This syllabus is not a contract; reading assignments and topics are subject to change, reflecting the general pace of student/instructor progress in this class.

Texts: (available at University Co-op and Beat the Bookstore).

Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World, Cornell & Hartman.

Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class, Lacy.

A reader will be available at Abel's Copies, 715-D W.23^rd Street. Phone: 472-5353.

Class Schedule.

Week 1 Introduction.

W 8-26: Why race and ethnicity matter.

Week 2 Colonialism, Nationalism, Post-colonialism.

M 8-31: Historical overview. Readings: Ethnicity & Race, Chps 1-2.

W 9-2: The Balkans and the Caucus Mts. Readings: Ethnicity & Race, pgs 146-153.

Week 3 Ethnicity: The Middle East and Africa.

M 9-7: No class for Labor Day.

W 9-9: Postcolonial Ethnicity. Readings: Ethnicity & Race, Chps 3-4.

Week 4 Race, Culture, Power.

M 9-14: What is Race? Readings: Ethnicity & Race, Chp 5.

W 9-16: Race, Culture, Nature. Readings: Ethnicity & Race, Chp 6

Week 5 Landscape of Race: Politics, Labor, Residence.

M 9-21: Possessive Investment in whiteness. Readings: Lipsitz.

W 9-23: Pulling it all together. Readings: Ethnicity & Race, Chp 7-8.

Week 6 America's "National Conversation on Race."

M 9-28: 2007: A year of race in the news: "arenas" and "interpretive repertoires." Readings: Hartigan, "From 'gangsta parties' to the 'post-racial' Promised Land: A year of race stories"

W 9-30: 2009: updating the conversation. Readings: Hartigan, "'Race Doesn't Matter': Manic glimpses of a post-racial future."

Week 7 Cultural Perspectives on Race.

M 10-5: EXAM.

W 10-7: Ethnography and Cultural analysis. Readings: Restaurants Book (selected chps.) and Blue-Chip Black, Preface and Appendix A.

Week 8 Whiteness: Ethnographic Perspectives.

M 10-12: Studying white people, pt 1. Readings: Hartigan, "White Detroit."

W 10-14: Studying white people, pt 2. Readings: Hartigan, selection from Race in the 21^st Century.

Week 9 Blackness: Ethnographic Perspectives.

M 10-19: Studying black people, pt 1. Readings: Kelley, "Yo' Mama's DisFUNKtional."

W 10-21: Studying black people, pt 2 . Readings: Jackson, "Real Fiction."

Week 10 Beyond Black and White: Ethnographic Perspectives.

M 10-26:  Latino ethnographies. Readings: Limon, "Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque."

W 10-28: Asian and diasporic identities, Readings: Parrenas and Siu, "Asian diasporas."

Week 11 Ethnography of Race. [ethnographic research topics due in disc. sections]

M 11-2: Blue-Chip Black, Introduction + chps 1-3.

W 11-4: Blue-Chip Black, chps 4-6 + Conclusion.

Week 12 Sorting Out Race and Culture. [notes from initial observations/interviews due in sections]

M 11-9: Cultural Analysis. Readings: Hartigan, "Taking it to the field."

W 11-11: Racial Analysis: The case of "white music." Readings: Perry, "Doing Identity," Frere-Jones, "Paler Shade."

Week 13 Gentrification. [book reviews due in disc. sections]

M 11-16: Reproducing race in urban space. Readings: Turf Wars, Gabriella Modan

W 11-18: Multicultural Corona and Black Corona. Readings: Black Corona, Gregory.

Week 14 Immigration.

M 11-23: Debates over belonging. Readings: Oboler, "Racializing Latinos in the U.S.: Toward a New Research Paradigm."

W 11-26 No Class.

Week 15 Technologies of Race

M 11-30: Readings: Nakamura, "Digital Racial Formations."

W 12-2: Concluding Comments.

Assignments: Here are initial, basic descriptions of the written projects you will do in this class. More detailed information will be provided when we reach the portion of the course that features these assignments. These projects are designed to facilitate your engagement in the process of generating social data and analysis concerning race and ethnicity.

1. Reviewing Blue-Chip Black: (5 pgs, due November 13^th)

The goal in this writing project is to develop your understanding of what make a good ethnography. In reviewing Blue-Chip Black, your aim is to summarize the core methods, theories, and research questions developed and deployed by Karyn Lacy. You will need to provide an overview of the book's key concerns and findings. But you will also need to hone in on aspects of this ethnography that you find particularly interesting. In closing this review, you must convey an overall assessment of the work, reflecting on its strengths and weaknesses.

2. Ethnographic project: (7 pgs, due December 11^th) Based on interviews and additional observations, you will write an analytical description of some aspect of racial dynamics. The goal is to objectify some portion of the cultural processes by which we "do" race and ethnicity. Various templates or models for these projects will be presented through lectures and readings during weeks seven through twelve. As well, course materials during this period will illustrate the basics of developing a cultural analysis. These projects will be your opportunity to try out this approach to social science research. Your project may be comparative, by trying to distinguish race and ethnicity, or you could singularly focus on just one of these broad subjects. You will use ethnographic data to formulate a basic insight or intuition pertaining to the continuing significance of race. Ethnographic research is assembled from an array of preliminary tasks, which will be covered and assessed in discussion sections over the last few weeks of the term. Such preliminary tasks include:

• Identifying assumptions about and orientation towards race.
• Formulating a cultural question or frame of analysis.
• Practicing techniques of observation and interviewing.
• Identifying relevant units of analysis.
• Analyzing portions of interviews.

General Grading Criteria for Papers.

Scholarly writing is both an exercise in thinking and an expression of intellectual engagement with a topic or issue. Through writing you discover your relationship to a subject-not simply what you think and feel about it, but your investment or disinterest in this matter. I use the following evaluative registers for assessing the quality of a paper. While they overlap and interrelate, these foci are a means of specifying the elements of a paper.

A. Contextualize: How well has the subject been introduced? Is the context both clear and developed? Can I immediately recognize the issues that both have generated the discussion and that the paper will address? Are conclusions drawn in clear correspondence with the body of the paper?

B. Summarize: Is the topic well-thought out and clearly expressed? Are the scope and character of the issue cogently rendered? What is the tenor of the discussion and what form of evidence or data is being deployed?

C. Elaboration: How is the argument shaped and embellished? Is it effectively supported through a range of sources? Are examples well marshaled; do they enhance or disorient the discussion? Does the paper evidence developed thinking about the subject? Under this section, I often ask myself whether I have learned something.

D. Writing: Is it good? Remember: emphasis, unity, and coherence make a sentence effective and make its meaning clear; for paragraphs, be sure they correspond to the development of a complete thought, with all its qualifiers and correctives set forth in full.

Rhythm and internal strength are fundamental for each of these critical elements of composition.

E. Thoroughness: Is the work complete? Obviously, this answer is relative to the stated length requirements, but the question always keys upon whether a subject is adequately (and energetically) developed. Are ideas given multiple inflections? Is there complexity to the thought process? Am I offered competing views that resolve in a final, clear position or, perhaps, remain suspended in an engaged uncertainty?

I rely on these last registers to assess the overall capacity of a paper.

1. Strength of argument or exposition; is there sophistication to the way connections have been drawn, detailed, and commented upon?

2. Relevance to the course or assigned subject.

3. Innovation in choice of topic or mode of argument.