SMW 9/07
Archaeology, Anthropology, and History
ANT 380K (28485)
Fall 2007
Samuel
Wilson
- 20% of the final grade
will be based on participation, attendance, discussion, and contributions
of the following sort: each week, by Thursday night (say by Friday
at 7:30 am, since many like to work late), you should email me two
or three discussion questions based on the readings for that Friday.
You can also include comments, reactions, and connections to other
topics discussed in class. That will form the basis for a discussion
agenda for Friday morning.
- 20% will be based on case
studies presented in class. By "case study" I mean that I
want you to find an article or book chapter that in some useful way
demonstrates the kinds of bridging of disciplines and investigatory
strategies this course emphasizes. You should provide copies of the
article for the rest of the class the week before you are scheduled
to present, and then on the day of the presentation you should make
a short presentation about the paper. In particular, we're looking for
"best practices", so try to say what it was they did in the
way of combining data or approaches that you find productive. As we
proceed we'll try to keep track of the sorts of strategies that work
best.
- 20% About midway through
the course I will assign a short essay (~ 6-8 pp) on an assigned
topic, generally relating to the impact of the postmodern
critique within Archaeology, Sociocultural Anthropology, and History.
- The
impact of "postmodernism" (defined in many ways) has been felt
within nearly every artistic and scholarly enterprise in the
late 20th century. Given the disciplines under discussion in
this class -- archaeology, ethnology, and history -- please
providing a working definition of what postmodernism is, and
discuss the impact it has had on these disciplines. Please
comment on the timing of the intellectual impact of postmodernism
in the three disciplines.
- The
impact of "postmodernism" (defined in many ways) has been felt
within nearly every artistic and scholarly enterprise in the
late 20th century. Given the disciplines under discussion in
this class -- archaeology, ethnology, and history -- please
providing a working definition of what postmodernism is, and
discuss the impact it has had on these disciplines. Please
comment on the timing of the intellectual impact of postmodernism
in the three disciplines.
- 40% A final paper and presentation
dealing with a situation that requires the use of archaeological and
other material (archival documents, oral history, ethnography, indigenous
texts, etc.). The presentation will describe your final project for
others in the class over about 15 minutes or so. For this you should
describe the questions you addressed and they methods you employed,
the data you used and what you found out.
At about the half-way point in the semester you will also give a brief presentation (5 minutes or so) on what you are planning to do for this project. Before that, you should give me a one-page project description, so that we can both agree on the direction you are heading. I'll announce deadlines for these things as we proceed.
I would like for this assignment to connect to the rest of your graduate program. It would be possible for you to write a section of your masters thesis/report, grant proposal, prospectus, or doctoral dissertation that deals with the issues discussed in this course. If you are not at a point where it makes sense to try to write a part of one of these documents, we can devise another topic which will help you refine your ideas about a MA or doctoral project, or explore an area that you are interested in but have never had an opportunity to explore. We will discuss this assignment in more depth in class and individually.
That said, I would like to generally discourage the practice of writing one paper to fulfill the requirements of two related classes, even if both professors are OK with it. I've approved this many times but in most cases we ended up with work that didn't really fit the needs of either class very well.
What form should this final paper take? This will also vary according to what kind of progress you are trying to make in your degree program. A theoretical or interpretive chapter (or even a draft of one) might be longer than a proposal, for instance. You may be using this project assignment to explore a new area of research that will complement what you have done so far. You should probably end up with between 12-20 double-spaced pages.
Readings
A course packet will be available. See the schedule for what readings should be done when.