This course will attempt the impossible, to survey the development of anthropological theory in a single quarter. Needless to say, it will not and cannot be exhaustive. Instead, it will focus on the careful scrutiny of a few primary sources by prominent individuals who have contributed to the development of the discipline, but who will also be taken as "representative" of various historical trends. The first part of the course will rapidly outline the prehistory of the discipline and focus more extensively on the notion of evolution central to 19th century social theory. The second part of the course will deal with the individual contributions of three "founding fathers": Marx, Durkheim and Weber. The final part of the course will cover a few of the numerous trends of 20th century cultural anthropology.
This course is concerned with the method, theory, and practice underlying spatial analysis using tools such as GIS to understand human landscapes in the past and present. We will focus on the kinds of data, methods of analysis, and frames of interpretation of landscapes in the past and present. In this course students will be exposed to underlying theories of space in the interpretation of ancient and modern landscapes and gain practical experience collecting and analyzing spatial data in the context anthropological research. While case studies will be drawn from a variety of contexts in anthropology, the course is relevant to anyone who wishes to analyze data about and within the spatial and temporal contexts of the research they are conducting.
ow did printed images translate and circulate ideas, both as independent objects and in early modern books? This graduate course will interrogate the culture of print and its many manifestations in the early modern period (fifteenth through eighteenth century) with a focus on Europe and its zones of contact. Through class discussions online and hands-on sessions at the Newberry, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Library at the University of Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings Department, the course will track the form, use, collection, and dissemination of the printed image. The course will culminate with a visit to the Art Institute exhibition Lines of Connection, curated by Jamie Gabbarelli (AIC) and Edina Adam (Getty). Sponsored by the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry, which requires an application to track enrollment numbers. For more information and to apply, go to: https://www.newberry.org/calendar/materiality-mobility-mind-early-modern-printed-images. Class will be held at the Newberry and other local collections, with some sessions on Zoom.
This graduate seminar in Black Studies is a transdisciplinary exploration of new and emerging technologies and their pivotal intersection with racial systems of power, disparity, and ethics in the context of democracy, colonialism, and public interest. Through rigorous analysis of race, futurity, and technology, students will examine the social, ethical, and geopolitical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence, genomics, precision medicine, AI weaponization, climate and environmental justice, and the geopolitics of technology, particularly as they relate to pan-Africanism and global Black communities. By engaging with theoretical frameworks and critical case studies from fields such as science and technology studies, critical race theory, and ethics, students will not only critique technological practices but will also explore the solution space for addressing complex societal challenges. This course invites students to imagine democratic futures that prioritize equity and social justice in an increasingly technology-driven world.
Comm St - MTS 525-0-8 Environment and Climate Issues
This Ph. D. seminar investigates environmental and climatological issues in relation to the field of Media, Technology, and Society. The seminar is organized into five themes: Land, Sea, Sky, Animals, Humans. In addition to readings, discussions, screenings, and in-class presentations, students will conduct research relevant to the themes of the class and their own research trajectories. PHD STUDENTS ONLY.
Comm St - MTS 525-0-9 Technology and the Future of Work
This course examines the impact of emerging technologies (e.g., AI and automation), management and organizational theories, and the role of communication in workplace processes. This class is designed as a survey course that sits at the intersection of communication, information studies, science and technology studies, and management.
This seminar introduces students in the arts-based humanities to the study of digital aesthetics across the arts, including literature, visual art, moving images, and music. It will examine a range of aesthetic forms responsive to the popular emergence of the computer and the internet, including computer-generated prints, video games, electronic music, hypertext, print fiction, and projects inflected by vernacular digital forms such as memes. Moving historically, roughly decade by decade from the 1960s to the present, the main task of the class will be to consider the difference digital computational technologies make in the creation of aesthetic forms and the experience of them. For instance, what new forms and modes of experience become possible with computers? What exactly makes something "digital"? And how can we tell (or not) -- and does it matter at all -- if something was made with the aid of automated processes? And finally, how do the answers to these questions change as we move from one computational era to another, e.g. from the mainframe and hobbyist eras to the domestic reception of popular electronics and computers in the 1980s to the emergence of the World Wide Web and social media and smartphones in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s up to and possibly beyond our historical present. The seminar will also emphasize the formal analysis of a range of both experimental and popular works across media, taking care to measure the aesthetic and historical meanings of the digital in the changing imagination of computers as central to society. Finally, students will encounter and write about forms native to their chosen discipline (literature, visual art, the moving image, music) but also about newer forms that do not fit easily into discipline-specific histories. Possible texts and objects of aesthetic analysis include computer-generated prints in the collection of Northwestern's Block Museum, the Detroit Techno and Chicago House electronic music scenes, fiction by William Gibson and Patricia Lockwood, net.art by Mendi + Keith Obadike and Ricardo Dominguez, films by Ridley Scott and the Wachowskis, glitch art by JoDi, Takeshi Murata, Jon Satrom, Rosa Menkman, and others, a group session devoted to video game play, meme aesthetics, and a class devoted to experimenting with artificial intelligence. Assignments will likely include a short presentation, a short formal analysis paper, and a final paper or project on digital aesthetics on an approved topic of the student's choosing.
This graduate seminar explores core concepts, questions, and methodologies within the environmental humanities. Rather than reading literature and literary scholarship in isolation, we will trace their entanglements in environmental history, anthropology, philosophy, geography, and other adjacent disciplines. What, we will ask, are the unique affordances of literary study when confronting environmental questions and challenges? What are the risks and rewards of conducting interdisciplinary environmental research? The syllabus will be tailored to support the particular interests and pursuits of students in the course, but topics may include climate writing, environmental justice literature, environmental racism, global and local scales, militarized and nuclear environments, and queer ecologies. Collectively, the readings will ensure familiarity with classic texts in the environmental humanities and introduce students to the cutting edges of this wide-ranging field.
This graduate seminar engages with Michel Foucault's concepts of biopolitics, sexuality, and power as they intersect with the AIDS crisis, while also exploring the parallels between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Foucault's History of Sexuality and his work on governance, health, and resistance, the course examines how the management of life, risk, and public health during both crises reflects broader structures of control and societal response. By investigating the medical, governmental, and activist discourses surrounding HIV/AIDS, and asking to what extent these frameworks can inform our understanding of the COVID-19 era, the seminar encourages a reflection on how epidemics reshape public perceptions of the body, sexuality, and state power. Through this lens, students will critically explore the historical, social, and cultural dynamics of a pandemic, as well as the evolving relationships between health, power, and resistance.
How does our understanding of global history change when we foreground law and empire? To what extent have international legal regimes arisen out of imperial dynamics? Why have slavery and settler colonialism been so important to so many constitutional and state histories? This course takes up these and other questions in order to make sense of the interplay between laws and empires around the world over the last five centuries (circa 1500 to 2000). We will examine: 1) the origins and effects of mixed jurisdictions (or legal pluralism) in different regions; 2) the ways empires have shaped key concepts of sovereignty, personhood, and citizenship; 3) the role of transnational corporations in bolstering imperial rule; 4) the roots of empire in the history of human rights and global governance; 5) tensions between scientific and legal definitions of race and ancestry; 6) histories of Islamic law; 7) entanglements between cultural and intellectual property; and 8) shifting legal definitions of indigeneity.
