Time Schedule:
Cabeiri Debergh Robinson
SIS 590
Seattle Campus
Seminar. Course content varies. Offered occasionally by visiting or resident faculty.
Class description
This seminar employs ethnographic studies and anthropological theory to examine the relationships between culture and power in the analysis of religious and political violence. In Winter 2008, the focus is on current issues in the ethnographic examination of religious and political violence. The course also explores how ethnographic researchers recognize the violence they encounter in their research alternately as “religious” or as “political.” Seminar participants will engage in close critical readings of recent ethnographic studies of religio-political violence in order to understand what is “at stake” for ethnographers’ interlocutors and for anthropology in contemporary encounters with violence. Great emphasis is placed on the development of graduate research projects, and scheduled time is devoted to work-shopping participants’ writing. Short writing assignments on weekly readings; seminar discussion; and research paper or annotated bibliography and literature review.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Seminar discussion. Great emphasis is placed on the development of graduate research projects, and scheduled time is devoted to work-shopping participants’ writing.
Recommended preparation
Graduate status in any social science or area studies program.
Class assignments and grading
Short writing assignments on weekly readings; seminar discussion; and research paper or annotated bibliography and literature review.
The final grade will reflect your full participation in this course weighted as follows: précis and participation 60%; final project 40%.
