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Anthropology & Sociology Courses

Anthropology & Sociology Courses

ANSO 102 Introduction to Anthropology

This class introduces students to a wide range of human societies and cultural forms throughout the world, along with some of the major concepts and methods that anthropologists have used to understand them. Our approach is ethnographic and comparative, with an emphasis on appreciating cultural complexity, understanding the global connections that link one society to another, and most of all, learning to think analytically about other people's lives and our own.

ANSO 103 Introduction to Sociology

This introductory sociology course begins with an examination of globalization and social inequality in the U.S. from both a microsociological and macrosociological perspective. We then explore the "rationalization" of social and economic life and the social dimensions of consumerism. The course invites students to develop their "sociological imagination" by attempting to link their lives as workers and consumers to broader social and economic forces at work in the contemporary world.

ANSO 201 School and Society

Acquaints students with the forces that have shaped the formation of American public education and explores the social context of which schools are a part. The relationships between the school and the wider social, political, economic, and cultural order are explored. Course includes 20 hours of aiding at a local social service agency.

ANSO 203 Human Origins

Humankind's place in nature, the origins of humanoid traits, the nature of the earliest human societies, and the relation of biology to human behavior are discussed on the basis of current anthropological evidence.

ANSO 205 Race and Ethnic Relations

This course examines the development and role of race and ethnicity in comparative perspective.

ANSO 208 The Sociology of Gender

This course provides an examination of the ways in which social systems create, maintain, and reproduce gender dichotomies with specific attention to the significance of gender in interaction, culture, and a number of institutional contexts, including work, politics, family, and nation.

ANSO 212 Medical Anthropology

What role does culture play in the practice, provisioning, and experience of medicine? This course serves as an introduction to the key theoretical frameworks, ethical concerns, and empirical areas of research for medical anthropology. Moving beyond narrow conceptions of health as a solely biological process, we will focus on the complex ways that illness, health, and healing are entwined in social, economic, political, and cultural webs. Drawing on case studies from around the world, we look at a series of tensions that characterize the field: between biomedical and non-biomedical views of bodies, diseases, and health; between local understandings of health and an increasingly globalized systems of medical knowledge and practice; between the politics inherent in medical care and the political governance of access to health care; between health as a liberating condition and medicine as a vector of both productive and repressive power.

ANSO 216 Music and Conflict

See description for MUS 216.

ANSO 218 Urban Sociology: Cities and Society

This course studies the sociological dimensions of urban life. It will focus on ideas about cities and the people who live there through a series of lenses including: city as symbol; city as locus of social relationships and cultural forms; city as a site of segregation, power, and capital. How do cities work and for whom? By combining theoretical readings with case studies, we will move from historical ethnographies of cities and communities to current studies of cities in sociological contexts. The course will begin with an overview of the field and then cover several advanced topics, such as the processes of urban change, urban poverty and social conflict, and strategies for urban revitalization.

ANSO 220 Reading and Writing in Anthropology and Sociology

In this seminar, students will continue to develop the ability to read and write as social scientists. In order to be productive researchers, students need to read monographs and journal articles effectively and purposefully, which means that they need to develop a set of strategies for consuming and comprehending these types of academic work. Likewise, students need to be able to develop social scientific arguments, create literature reviews, and report on analytical conclusions. This course will help students continue to develop these skills, so that they can understand other people's research projects and communicate effectively their own.

ANSO 221 Art Work: Culture, Power, and Meaning in Aesthetic Practice

What is art? Who decides? What distinguishes ordinary objects from art and everyday activity from artistic practice? In this course, we conceive of art as a social construction: a product of situated social action rather than an essential thing-in-itself. Tracing the historical and cultural variation of the objects and practices now considered art, we analyze how artistic boundaries are maintained, contested, and subverted in everyday aesthetic practice. Students apply cultural theory and sociological research to analyze their own qualitative data, collected via semi-structured interviews with two artists of students' choosing.

ANSO 229 American Crime and Punishment: Historical and Contemporary Mappings

The United States imprisons one in every hundred of its citizens, establishing it as the world's largest incarcerator. The over-representation of non-white bodies reflects the racial and economic apartheid persistent in America. This course traces historical and contemporary mappings of America's approach to crime and punishment in the context of broader political, social, and cultural currents. Some of the thematic concerns of this course include: slavery and the birth of the penitentiary; anti-prison resistance and reform movements; prison arts as resistance; prison writing; Indigenous incarceration; solitary confinement; queer abolition; and the carceral refracted through race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability.

ANSO 234 Culture and Identity in the Caribbean

This course offers a study of the diversity and distinctiveness of cultural practices and social contexts of the Pan-Caribbean, understood broadly. We examine the rhythms of everyday life of Caribbean people and how these articulate with historic and contemporary experiences of migration - both forced and free - of remembrances and forgetting, of social organization and political economy, and of the affective power of cultural expressions and identities. We foreground these vantage points through a series of stories, essays, films, music, and selected ethnographic case studies.

ANSO 237 Music and Culture in the Americas

This class seeks to understand music making and dance as powerfully affective expressive cultural practices that people invest with social value and meaning. We will study a series of conceptual frameworks as well as basic music terminology for thinking about, listening to, and discussing music in specific cultural contexts. Case studies covered include music making in Cuba; Brazil; indigenous and mestizo musics in Peru; North American old-time country, music of the 'folk revival', and of the civil rights movement, among other case studies. This class is designed for non-music majors (although music majors are certainly welcome).

ANSO 246 Working: The Experience, Structure, and Culture of Work in the U.S.

Work is one of our fundamental social activities. Our jobs define our identities, structure our days, and condition how we interpret the world around us. At the same time, work stratifies our population, creating highly divergent social and economic opportunities based on occupation and income. In this course, we use a range of sociological approaches to investigate the shape, nature, meaning, and outcome of work in the U.S., linking social theory, the everyday experience of work, and the sociopolitical structure of society.

ANSO 247 Anthropology of Religion

This course provides an anthropological introduction to the study of religion, highlighting the diversity of faith communities and reflecting on various forms of religion and ritual practiced in different geographic, social, and cultural contexts. In addition, the course explores how religion is represented within popular culture and considers how issues of power, identity (gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class), and politics intersect with religious institutions and traditions. The first half of the course will introduce a range of historical and conceptual approaches to the study of religion. The second half of the course will look at how contemporary faith communities negotiate questions of ethics and politics, focusing especially on debates over kinship, gender, education, and human rights.

ANSO 254 Food Systems

This course examines multi-faceted systems that make possible the daily food we eat on the Knox campus and beyond. Through systems thinking and agroecological approaches, we consider the sources of our food, the ways people are socially connected, divided, and organized through food, the labor conditions and environmental consequences of small and large-scale agriculture, and the post-consumer routes of food. Through readings, films, site visits, and hands-on participation, we cover a range of practical, ethical, and logistical challenges and opportunities in our understanding of and engagements with local, regional, and global food systems.

ANSO 255 Exploring Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agricultural systems seek to produce nutritious food in ways that restore habitat and biodiversity to landscapes, minimize energy and chemical inputs, and support greater social-ecological wellbeing. This class explores key principles and practices of regenerative systems design that help communities keep resources and productions more locally based, enhance local soil structure and microbiology, and provide collaborative contexts for community education and engagement. This class offers hands-on, active learning as we work together to explore annual and perennial food production at the Knox Farm, mushroom cultivation techniques, herbal plant guilds, bioregional herbalism, community-scaled composting, and organize community-based educational events.

ANSO 256 Examining the Anthropocene

In the early 21st century, the term 'Anthropocene' emerged to characterize the increasingly extensive impact of human generated transformations of ecological, geological, and biological processes at global proportions. This class examines the arguments surrounding the concept of the Anthropocene and accelerated demands on natural resources and corresponding eco-systemic pressures. We incorporate the insights of cultural ecology regarding the interrelationships of social, political, and economic organization and the local and regional environments within which humans live. Through ethnographic case studies, we examine the contested social and political fields in which people are making sense of, adapting to, and engaging these global transformations.

ANSO 260 Topics and Methods in Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology can be defined as the study of music outside the Western classical tradition, or as the study of music as cultural practice. Our modes of ethnomusicological inquiry may include structural functionalism, paradigmatic structuralism, Marxist explanations, literary and dramaturgical theories, performance theory, gender and identity issues, and postcolonial and global issues.

ANSO 264 Religion, Science, & Technology

See description for RELS 264.

ANSO 270 Language and Culture

An examination of the relationship of language to culture and social organization. Topics include the relationship between language and thought, ways in which language structure (phonology and grammar) is shaped by culture, and communicative styles as culturally-embedded behavior.

ANSO 282 Language and Social Identity

This course explores the study of language and its relationships to individual, ethnic, and national identities. We consider selected cases, examining the political, economic, and other sociocultural factors which shape patterns of language loyalties, language use, and language policies. Since the power of various major languages to evoke loyalty and to advance the interests of certain social groups crosses international boundaries, we examine some of the processes involved in the spread of world languages, particularly English.

ANSO 300 Modern Theories of Society and Culture

Major nineteenth and twentieth century theorists are discussed, with particular attention given to the emergence of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology and the types of social theory that have been developed. Majors should take this course in the junior year.

ANSO 301 Methodologies in Sociology and Anthropology

An examination of philosophical, theoretical and practical issues that arise when humans attempt to study other humans scientifically. The strengths and weaknesses of a variety of methodological strategies that have been devised by social scientists to deal with these issues are explored. Majors should take this course in the senior year.

ANSO 321 Microsociology: Explorations into Everyday Life

Microsociology is the study of the taken-for-granted world of everyday interaction. Proceeding from the assumption that people cannot help but engage in interpretation and meaning making as they move through their daily lives, this course aims to uncover the patterns and structures by which these interpretations are made. We assume that common sense, group action, and social institutions are "achievements" that must be explained through the study of face-to-face interaction. Topics in this course include the structures of interaction, the production of reality, the self, conversational patterns, and the interactional foundations of social institutions.

ANSO 328 Race & Gender in the U.S. Welfare State

This course examines how political, economic, and cultural ideologies regarding race and gender work(ed) to frame the conception and creation of both the U.S. Welfare State and U.S. welfare policy. We will engage these ideas through an historical exploration of the ways that the U.S. Welfare State was enacted, framed, and codified through policy. In addition we will analyze how the creation of the Welfare State and its subsequent policies reflect American identity and cultural norms, and reinforce social inequities along racial and gendered lines.

ANSO 341 Anthropology of the Senses

This course explores a basic premise: sensory perception is as much a cultural act as a physical or biological function. In this class, we will consider a number of scholarly debates and concerns regarding the inter-relations of the senses with historically dynamic human bodily experience. What does it mean to study the senses? What are the possible relationships among physiological capacities; social, political, and economic organizations; and their corresponding relations of power? How might we examine the various ways in which food, drink, art, music, dance, and other corporeal practices are mediated through personal and collective ideologies and practices around the affective and the sensual?

ANSO 342 Sound Cultures

In this course, we examine how sounds are enacted through diverse cultural practices and invested with individual and collective meanings. We engage these phenomena through sensory ethnographies, films, cultural histories of sound reproduction technologies, and soundscape mapping. Students will refine their ethnographic techniques to document and make sense of the acoustic ecologies of Knox County and beyond.

ANSO 398 Research Design

Working closely with a departmental faculty member, each student prepares a research proposal including appropriate theoretical and methodological background materials and a detailed research design to be implemented in ANSO 399. During periodic group meetings, issues that have emerged in research design are shared and alternative solutions are discussed.

ANSO 399 Research Seminar

Working closely with a departmental faculty member, each student executes the research design prepared in ANSO 398 and prepares a "professional" research report. These reports are orally summarized and discussed during group meetings toward the end of the term.