[H] = Hamdy, Sherine, and Coleman Nye. Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution. University of Toronto Press, 2017. ISBN: 9781487593476. [Preview with Google Books]
[HO] = Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The New Press, 2018. ISBN: 9781620973493. [Preview with Google Books]
[K] = Kavedžija, Iza, and Harry Walker, eds. Values of Happiness: Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life. HAU, 2017. ISBN: 9780986132575.
[P] = Prieur, Annick. Mema’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226682570. [Preview with Google Books]
[GJ] Taught by Prof. Graham Jones
[HP] Taught by Prof. Heather Paxson
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory Lectures | ||
| 1 | The Good Life, and Its Meanings [HP] | Anthes, Emily. “The Glossary of Happiness.” New Yorker, May 12, 2016. |
| 2 | What Matters? [GJ] |
Basso, Keith H. “Wisdom Sits in Places.” Chapter 4 in Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780826317247. Rudiack-Gould, Peter. “Climate Change and Accusation: Global Warming and Local Blame in a Small Island State.” Current Anthropology 55, no. 4 (2014): 365-386. |
| Module 1: Family [HP] | ||
| 3 | The Ideals (and Realities) of Companionate Marriage |
Justice Kennedy’s Majority opinion on marriage equality (glance through the prologue, plus pp. 1–22): Obergefell, et al., v. Hodges, Director,Ohio Department of Health, et al. (2015) (PDF) Ethnography from 1990s of Mexican transnational families bridging Jalisco and Atlanta: Hirsch, Jennifer S. “From Respeto (Respect) to Confianza (Trust): Changing Marital Ideals.” Chapter 3 in A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520228719. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “‘Ya No Somos Como Nuestros Papas’ (We Are Not Like Our Parents): Companionate Marriage in a Mexican Migrant Community.” Chapter 4 in A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520228719. |
| 4 | The Moral Laboratory of Parenting |
Mattingly, Cheryl. “Moral Selves and Moral Scenes: Narrative Experiments in Everyday Life.” Ethnos 78, no. 3 (2013): 301–27. Kuan, Teresa. “‘The Heart Says One Thing but the Hand Does Another’: A Story About Emotion-Work, Ambivalence and Popular Advice for Parents.” China Journal 65 (2011): 77–100. |
| 5 | Module 1 Recitation |
Chua, Amy. “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2011. Kolbert, Elizabeth. “America’s Top Parent: What’s Behind the ‘Tiger Mother’ Craze?” New Yorker, January 31, 2011. Zhang, Carolyn, and Raymond Zhong. “In China, This Video Game Lets You Be a Tiger Mom or a Driven Dad,” New York Times, February 12, 2019. |
| Module 2: Wealth [GJ] | ||
| 6 | Reciprocity |
Freeman, Dena. Myers, Fred. |
| 7 | Money |
Ho, Karen. “Finance.” Chapter 23 in A Companion to Moral Anthropology. Edited by Didier Fassin. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. ISBN: 9781118959503. Schüll, Natasha Dow. “Gambled Away: Video Poker and Self-Suspension.” Anthropology Now 4, no. 2 (2012): 1–13. |
| 8 | Work |
Mason, Katherine A. “Quantitative Care: Caring for the Aggregate in US Academic Population Health Sciences.” American Ethnologist 45, no. 2 (2018): 201–13. Walker, Harry. |
| 9 | Module 2 Recitation |
Graeber, David. “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant.” STRIKE! Magazine, Issue 3, August 2013. Hughes, David McDermott. “A Jobless Utopia?” Boston Review, May 19,2017. |
| Module 3: Sex [HP] | ||
| 10 | The Meanings of Sex |
[P] "Introduction: The First Night." [P] Chapter 1: The Setting and the Approach, pp. 6–12, and 14–31. View: Sex(Ed) The Movie. Directed by Brenda Goodman. Color, 77 min. 2014. |
| 11 | Being Sexual |
[P] Chapter 2: Everyday Life of a Jota, pp. 41–89. [P] Chapter 3: Little Boys in Mother's Wardrobe: On the Origins of Homosexuality and Effeminacy, pp. 104–22. [P] Chapter 4: Stealing Femininity: On Bodily and Symbolic Constructions, pp. 152–60. [P] Chapter 5: Machos and Mayates: Masculinity and Bisexuality, pp. 198–206. |
| 12 | Sexual Bodies and Agencies | Wardlow, Holly. “Anger, Economy, and Female Agency: Problematizing ‘Prostitution’ and ‘Sex Work’ among the Huli of Papua New Guinea.” Signs 29, no. 4 (2004): 1017–40. |
| 13 | Module 3 Recitation |
Williams, Bianca C. “#MeToo: A Crescendo in the Discourse about Sexual Harassment, Fieldwork, and the Academy (Part 1).” Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology. October 24, 2017. ———. “#MeToo: A Crescendo in the Discourse about Sexual Harassment, Fieldwork, and the Academy (Part 2).” Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology. October 28, 2017. Zacharek, Stephanie, Eliana Dockterman, and Haley Sweetland Edwards. “TIME Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers.” TIME. |
| Module 4: Self-Cultivation [GJ] | ||
| 14 | Talent |
Irving, Andrew. “The Color of Pain.” Public Culture 21, no. 2 (2009): 293–319. Kavedžija, Iza. “The Good Life in Balance: Insights from Aging in Japan.” (PDF) Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5, no. 3 (2015): 135–56. |
| 15 | Beauty |
Jones, Carla. “Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties about Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia.” American Ethnologist 37, no. 4 (2010): 617–37. Newell, Sasha. “Circuitously Parisian: Sapeur Parakinship and the Affective Circuitry of Congolese Style.” Chapter 11 in Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration. Edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes. University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780226405155. |
| 16 | Mindfulness |
 Schüll, Natasha Dow. “Tracking.” In Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense. Edited by Caroline A. Jones, David Mather, and Rebecca Uchill. MIT Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780262035149. |
| 17 | Module 4 Recitation | Gershon, Ilana. “Introduction: The Company You Keep.” In Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today. University of Chicago Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780226452142. [Preview with Google Books] |
| Module 5: Belonging [HP] | ||
| 18 | Remembering and Forgetting |
Lazarre, Jane. “The Richmond Museum of the Confederacy.” Chapter 1 in Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons. Duke University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780822361664. Hartman, Saidiya. “Prologue: The Path of Strangers.” In Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. ISBN: 9780374531157. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “So Many Dungeons.” Chapter 6 in Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. ISBN: 9780374531157. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 19 | Cultural Citizenship and Multiple Belongings |
Khabeer, Su’ad Abdul. Jacobsen-Bia, Kristina. “Radmilla’s Voice: Music Genre, Blood Quantum, and Belonging on the Navajo Nation.” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 2 (2014): 385–410. |
| 20 | Module 5 Recitation |
Chin, Elizabeth. “The Entries: My Grandmother’s Rings.” Chapter 2 in My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries. Duke University Press Books, 2016, pp. 147–56. ISBN: 9780822361367. Podcast: “NPR Code Switch: In Search of Puerto Rican Identity in Small-Town America.” National Public Radio. March 1, 2017. |
| 21 | Displacement, Loss and Crisis |
[HO] Chapter 2: “One Thing Good.” [HO] Chapter 3: The Rememberers. [HO] Chapter 9: The Deep Story. [HO] Chapter 10: The Team Player: Loyalty Above All. [HO] Chapter 13: The Rebel: A Team Loyalist with a New Cause. Jusionyte, Ieva. “Called to ‘Ankle Alley’: Tactical Infrastructure, Migrant Injuries, and Emergency Medical Services on the US-Mexico Border.” American Anthropologist 120, no. 1 (2018) : 89–101. Browse View “Op-Docs: 4.1 Miles,” New York Times, September 28, 2016. |
| Module 6: Faith [GJ] | ||
| 22 | A Cause |
Coleman, Gabriella. Elisha, Omri. “Faith Beyond Belief: Evangelical Protestant Conceptions of Faith and the Resonance of Anti-humanism.” Social Analysis 52, no. 1 (2008): 56–78. |
| 23 | Progress |
Bernstein, Anya. “Freeze, Die, Come to Life: The Many Paths to Immortality in Post-Soviet Russia.” American Ethnologist 42, no. 4 (2015): 766–81. Valentine, David. |
| 24 | Religion |
[H] Hamdy, Sherine, and Coleman Nye. “Creative Collaborations: The Making of 'Lissa (Still Time): A Graphic Medical Ethnography of Friendship, Loss, and Revolution'.” Somatosphere. May 13, 2016. |
| 25 | Module 6 Recitation |
Aveni, Anthony. “Colossal Celestial Spectacles.” Chapter 1 in In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses. Yale University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780300223194. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Watching People Watching Eclipses.” Chapter 2 in In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses. Yale University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780300223194. [Preview with Google Books] |
| Concluding Session: Community | ||
| 26 | Community |
Rubin, Caroline. “Writing Against MIT Culture.” (PDF) 2008. Note: This reading appears with the permission of the author. |
Additional Readings
Bonilla, Yarimar. “How Puerto Ricans Fit into An Increasingly Anti-Immigrant U.S.,” Washington Post, January 19, 2018.
Jusionyte, Ieva. “Op-Ed: Fractures, Trauma, Amputations: What Medics See When They Rescue Migrants at the Border,” Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2019.
Duhigg, Charles. “Wealthy, Successful and Miserable,” New York Times Magazine, February 21, 2019.
Pinsker, Joe. “The ‘Hidden Mechanisms’ That Help Those Born Rich to Excel in Elite Jobs.” The Atlantic, February 26, 2019.
Beck, Julie. “Crossing the Border to Hang Out With Your Friend.” The Atlantic, April 5, 2019.
Desai, Saahil. “The First Reparations Attempt at an American College Comes From Its Students.” The Atlantic, April 18, 2019.