Nature/Culture

Catalog description

What are the frontiers of the nature/culture debates? What is their lineage in cultural and critical theory? And how do these debates unfold in the practice of ethnography and in ethnographic writing? These three questions guide this graduate seminar, whose topic for 2013 will be 'Objects and Environments.' Foundational readings may include works by Strathern, Serres, Canguilhem, Tsing, Bateson, Latour, Haraway, and Barad, and will be put into conversation with a series of recent ethnographies. Seminar participants will be responsible for writing weekly reading notes, guiding course discussions, and writing a final research paper.