HIST 201 History and Anthropology
This course will trace the emergence of anthropology as a field of study in the 19th century; its complicated relationship to imperial conquest; its attempts to free itself of scientific racism and cultural evolution; as well as its pursuit of the full range of human possibility through different ways of conceptualizing the world–particularly at a moment of Western dominance when those possibilities seemed to be increasingly foreclosed. It has been said that the purpose of “anthropology is to make the world safe for differences.” That’s not as straightforward as it sounds. Indeed, anthropology has found itself mired in a number of controversies in its attempts to understand and speak for others: ranging from Margaret Mead’s explanations of adolescent sexuality in Samoa to Napoleon Chagnon’s depiction of violence among the Yanomamo natives of Brazil. We will examine those controversies as well as the ways in which anthropologists like Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins have contributed to new methodological approaches to history--especially cultural history and ethnohistory.