UCL ANTHROPOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY UNDERGRADUATE COURSES 2015-16
FOR TERM 2 AFFILIATE STUDENTS
PLEASE CHECK THE ONLINE TIMETABLE AND MOODLE NOTICES FOR ANY TIMETABLE/ROOM CHANGE
Module
Module title
code
First Year Compulsory
ANTH1005B Introduction to Social Anthropology II
Second / Third Year
ANTH2009
Anthropology of the Body
ANTH3052
Primate Evolution and Environments
ANTH7004
The Anthropology of Art and Design
ANTH7006
Anthropologies of Religion
ANTH7018
Human Behavioural Ecology
ANTH7020
Anthropologies of Science, Society and
Biomedicine
ANTH7028
Linguistic Anthropology
ANTH7029
Digital Infrastructure: Materiality, Information
NEW
and Politics
Third Year Only
ANTH3017
Anthropology and Psychiatry
ANTH3049
Reproduction, Fertility and Sex
ANTH3050
Evolution and Human Behaviour
ANTH3053
Temporality, Consciousness and Everyday Life
ANTH3059
Anthropology of Ethics and Morality
Last updated 26/11/2015
Unit
Year
Term
Type
Page
0.5
1
2
Soc
2
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
2/3
2/3
2/3
2/3
2/3
2/3
2
2
2
2
2
2
Med
Bio
MC
MC
Bio
Med
2
4
6
6
7
7
0.5
0.5
2/3
2/3
2
2
Soc
MC
8
9
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
3
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
Med
Med
Bio
Soc
Med
3
3
4
5
6
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
ANTH1005B
back to top
Introduction to Social Anthropology II
This one term course provides an introduction to anthropological thinking
by examining two fundamental aspects of human social organisation provisioning (economics) and reproduction (kinship). These are two areas
of human activity where strong universalist claims have been made and
the course explores, through a wide range of case studies, how
anthropological understandings of culture and history can be reconciled
with economistic and biological reasoning. Topics include the evolution of
money, the false contrast of gift and commodity, the reproduction of
poverty in industrial society, kinship terminology, conceptions of the
relations between bodies, family, household and houses, and the role of
kin-based societies within the global political order.
0.5
2.5 hour unseen written exam (100%) + formative essays
Normally ANTH1005A: Introduction to Social Anthropology (0.5 unit)
However, this prerequisite is waived in some circumstances, especially for
Affiliate students arriving at the beginning of Term 2.
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
1
Term 2 only
Social Anthropology
2 hour lecture + 1 hour tutorial per week
TBC
Prof Michael Stewart; Dr Alison Macdonald
m.stewart@ucl.ac.uk; alison.macdonald@ucl.ac.uk
Module code
Module title
Course description
ANTH2009
back to top
Anthropology of the Body
The human body is a versatile thing. It is composed of organs, bone, and
blood, and these are composed of cells and minerals and molecules.
Organically speaking, the body is often perceived as a biological fact with
strengths and limitations. Anthropologically speaking, bodies are far more
than that, and they can be the most extraordinary things. Bodies are
intimately interwoven into every social place and process, and the body as
a cultural entity is constantly constructed. The body is deeply informed by
the cultural systems in which it is embedded, and, in turn, it can inform the
world around it. This course explores the human body as a cultural
category and explores corporality as an anthropological dilemma. How
does society ‘create’ and assign value to the physical body, its gender,
birth and death? How do people utilise the body, its parts, image and
restrictions, to reflect and explain their world? How is the biological body
reimaged through ritual and possession, and what are the implications for
therapy and medicine? Through critical readings of ethnography, case
studies of the body in society, and select science fiction, we will explore
how bodies make, and are made by, physical movements and historical
moments, and we will think through what the human body is becoming in
a contemporary, more than human world.
0.5
Unseen exam (60%) + weekly blog (40%)
ANTH1005/A/B: Introduction to Social Anthropology
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
2
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
2
Term 2
Medical
2 hours lecture + 1 hour tutorial / week
TBA
Dr Aaron Parkhurst
a.parkhurst@ucl.ac.uk
Module code
Module title
Course description
ANTH3017
back to top
Anthropology and Psychiatry
The course examines: a) popular understandings of psychology, self-hood
and abnormal experience in different societies, and how they may be
organised into a body of knowledge; b) the relationship between popular
and professional notions of 'mental illness' and their roots in the wider
social, economic and ideological aspects of different societies, with
particular respect to women and minority groups; c) the contribution of
academic psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to social
anthropology; d )running through the course is the question of whether we
can reconcile naturalistic and personalistic modes of thought and, if so,
how.
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
0.5
2.5 hour unseen written exam (75%) + 2000 word essay (25%)
ANTH2006: Introduction to Theoretical Perspectives in Social Anthropology
and Material Culture and ANTH3007: Medical Anthropology or permission
from tutor.
3
Term 2
Medical Anthropology
2 hour lecture + 2 hour seminar per week
TBC
Prof Roland Littlewood
r.littlewood@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH3049
back to top
Reproduction, Fertility and Sex
In this course students to learn to apply different theoretical and
disciplinary approaches to the study of contemporary issues in
reproduction and fertility. Each week a different topic is examined from a
multi-disciplinary perspective including social anthropology, biological
anthropology, demography, biology and other disciplines The course is a
seminar based discussion with considerable student participation:
students have to identify an article each week on the topic and be
prepared to present their reading to the group. Topics covered are likely
to include love, hormones and bonding; adolescent reproduction;
reproductive loss (abortion, miscarriage and still birth); breastfeeding;
infertility; contraception and contraceptive methods; different roles and
priorities of men and women in reproduction; reproduction and migration.
0.5
2 hour unseen written exam (60%) + 2200 words essay (40%)
ANTH7005: Population Studies. With the exception of IBSc Medical
3
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
Anthropology and YJA affiliate students. NOTE: this course is capped at 25
students.
3
Term 2
Medical Anthropology
2 hour seminar per week
TBC
Prof Sara Randall
s.randall@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH3050
back to top
Evolution and Human Behaviour
The course will study to what extent evolutionary processes (genetic and
cultural) explain human behaviour, life history and cultural norms as
adaptive responses to their environmental circumstances. This is a
seminar based reading and discussion course for those who have already
had an introductory lecture course in animal and human behavioural
ecology (ie ANTH7018: Human Behavioural Ecology) and now want to
explore the subject in more depth.
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
0.5
2 hour unseen written exam (50%) + 1 x 2500 word essay (40%) + oral
presentation (10%)
3rd year Anthropology, Anthropology/Archaeology joint degree and Human
Sciences students only who have completed ANTH7018: Human
Behavioural Ecology in their second year.
3
Term 2
Biological Anthropology
2 hour seminar per week
TBC
Dr Emily Emmott
emily.emmott.10@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH3052
back to top
Primate Evolution and Environments
The course has two parts. The first part provides required background
knowledge:
- An introduction to modern primates and their habitats
- Knowledge of the tools used to interpret the fossil record (time proxies,
climate proxies, behavioural proxies)
- An introduction to Cenozoic climate history and its causes.
The second part builds on this knowledge in order to:
- Contextualise primate evolution (phylogenetically, chronologically,
environmentally)
- Generate an understanding of how major changes in environmental
conditions have influenced primate evolution
- Discuss the role of modern humans as environmental factors influencing
species and habitat diversity.
4
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Value
Means of assessment
0.5
1 Lab book 10% + 1 essay 2000 word 30% + 1 Open book take home
exam (7 days, 3000 word) 60%
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
ANTH1014 Introduction to Biological Anthropology (ANTH1014B for
Human Sciences students) or equivalent biological background.
2/3
Term 2
Biological Anthropology
2 hour lecture + 2 hour seminar/practical per week. 1 day palaeontological
field trip.
TBC
Dr Christophe Soligo
c.soligo@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH3053
back to top
Temporality, Consciousness and Everyday Life
This course examines the different social modes and states of
consciousness through which knowledge of the past may be gained in
world societies, while recognizing that views of the past are necessarily
conditioned by present experiences and intimations of the future. In the
West, rational research into documents and artifacts is generally accepted
as the authoritative means of knowing the past. Yet even within Western
societies people may contest official history with alternative accounts of
the past deriving from personal revelations sometimes received in altered
states of consciousness. In various societies from the Pacific to the Arctic
the elders possess exclusive authority to pronounce upon what happened
in the past. Amongst the First Nations of Canada, in the absence of written
sources documenting the ownership of land, a shaman may be called upon
to dream the truth of the past.
0.5
1 x 1500 word essay (33%) + 1 x 2500 word essay (67%)
3rd Year course, ANTH1005/A: Introduction to Social Anthropology and
ANTH2006: Theoretical Perspectives in Social Anthropology and Material
Culture.
3
Term 2
Social Anthropology
Weekly 2 hour seminar including student presentations and discussion of
the weekly readings.
TBC
Prof Charles Stewart
c.stewart@ucl.ac.uk
5
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
ANTH3059
back to top
Anthropology of Ethics and Morality
This course will critically engage with recent medical anthropological work
addressing the role of ethics and morality in anthropological practice and
ethnographic endeavor. In this course we will unpack the problematics of
medical anthropology’s engagement with ethics and morality, examining
the questions surrounding morality and ethics as a result of developing an
academically rigorous and socially engaged discipline, and the effects of
taking concerns for well-being and the good life seriously as the focus of
ethnographic enquiry.
0.5
2 hour unseen written exam (60%) + 1 x 2000 word essay (40%)
ANTH2006: Theoretical Perspectives in Social Anthropology and Material
Culture
3
Term 2
Medical Anthropology
weekly two-hour seminar with a short 20 minute lecture at the beginning
TBC
Dr Joanna Cook
joanna.cook@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH7004
back to top
Anthropology of Art and Design
The course is aimed at those who wish to deepen their understanding of
art in visual culture. It intends to capture the role of art and performance
in anthropological theory and methodology and introduce students to
questions that are at the core of an interdisciplinary debate about
artefactual form, image and materiality. It will reflect on what
anthropology has to say about how mere artefacts come to have agency in
culture and society by drawing on case studies that range from modernism
to the arts that have conventionally been studied by Anthropology.
0.5
2 hour unseen written exam (60%) + 2000 word essay (40%)
ANTH1001/A: Introduction to Material and Visual Culture
2/3
Term 2
Material Culture
2 hour lecture + 1 hour tutorial per week
TBC
Dr Timothy Carroll
t.carroll@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH7006
back to top
Anthropologies of Religion
This course addresses the topic of religion from multiple perspectives
(hence the plural 'anthropologies'). The course draws on evolutionary,
6
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
archaeological and theological perspectives to examine how and why
human populations acquired religious practices, and then consider the
socio-political and institutional aspects of religion. The later half of the
course focuses on religious practices examining the role of visual and
material registers within the religious imagination, the creation of divine
worlds and altered states, and asks questions concerning the relationship
between materiality, mind and spirit. A solid background knowledge of
anthropology will be assumed.
0.5
1 x 2000 word essay (50%) + Take home exam (40%) + 1 x 1000 word
Journal (10%)
ANTH1001 required, ANTH2006 encouraged.
2/3
Term 2
Material Culture
2 hour lecture and 1 hour tutorial per week
TBC
Dr Timothy Carroll
t.carroll@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH7018
back to top
Human Behavioural Ecology
This is an evolutionary anthropology course, open to all second and third
years. It is about how human behaviour evolves as a response to different
ecological circumstances. Topics will include basic behavioural ecology (as
applied to both animal and human behaviour) and also some evolutionary
psychology and cultural evolution. Topics will include mate choice, life
history evolution, kinship and marriage systems in humans.
This course is a pre-requisite for the third year options ANTH3050:
Evolution and Human Behaviour, and ANTH3005: Hunter Gatherers, Past,
Present and Future.
0.5
Unseen 2.5 hour written exam (100%) + 2000 word formative essay
None
2/3
Term 2
Biological Anthropology
2 hour lecture per week + 1 hour tutorial every two weeks (4 in total)
TBC
Professor Ruth Mace; Dr Andrea Migliano
r.mace@ucl.ac.uk; a.migliano@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH7020
back to top
Anthropologies of Science, Society and Biomedicine
This course will critically engage with recent anthropological research and
theory addressing the social and cultural context of novel developments in
the field of genetics, biotechnology and the life/medical sciences. These
7
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
Module code
Module title
Course description
shape shifting arenas of science and technology and their actual or
predicted implications for questions of disease risk, collective/individual
identity and the politics and ethics of health care has been the focus of
much recent research within medical anthropology, STS (Science and
Technology Studies) and the anthropology of science. The course
incorporates emerging research in different national contexts that include
the ‘global south’ drawing on ethnographic work in Asia and South
America to provide a critical comparative perspective on these
transnational developments.
0.5
1 x 2000 word essay (60%) + 1 x blog (30%) + group presentation (10%)
ANTH3007: Medical Anthropology or permission from tutor.
2/3
Term 2
Medical Anthropology
1 x 2 hour seminar per week
TBC
Dr Sahra Gibbon
s.gibbon@ucl.ac.uk
ANTH7028
Linguistic Anthropology
back to top
This course explores the linguistic construction of gendered cultures. It is built
around a set of key ethnographies on language, power and gender:
© Veiled sentiments
© The hidden life of girls
© Masking terror
© Vicarious language
© Pronouncing and persevering
© Eloquence in trouble
© I could speak until tomorrow
© The give and take of everyday life
© In the realm of the diamond queen
© From grammar to politics
The lectures include multi-media presentations, and draw on theory within
contemporary linguistic anthropology. First of all we consider linguistic relativism,
and the language socialization of boys and girls in differing cultural contexts. This
initial debate provides a framework to consider gendered affective regimes,
soundscapes, and verbal art. Finally, we consider the impact of rapid cultural
change, globalization and modernization on language and gender: the loss of
genres/gender, the postmodern construction of voices, and emerging rhetorical
and ironic selves.
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
0.5
1 x 1500 word essay (60%) + 1 x 1000 word field report (40%)
Subsidiary students will require permission from the tutor.
2/3
Term 2
Social Anthropology
2 hour seminar + 1 hour tutorial per week
TBC
8
Anthropology Undergraduate Courses 2015-16
Contact details
Email
Dr Alex Pillen
a.pillen@ucl.ac.uk
Module code
Module title
Course description
ANTH7029
back to top
Digital Infrastructure: Materiality, Information and Politics
This course will explore how digital technologies are affecting people’s
everyday lives, by approaching digital technologies as infrastructures. In
the face of globalisation and the challenge that this has posed to
community-based studies of cultural processes anthropologists have
become increasingly interested in how large scale technical systems such
communications networks, energy infrastructures, roads, water and waste
systems might act as fruitful sites for conducting an ethnographies of
contemporary relations. Building on this recent work within the
anthropology of infrastructure and applying it to digital technologies, the
course will covers issues such as the role of digital technologies in
mediating relationships between citizens, corporations and the state, the
place that digital media are playing in constructing social and political
imaginaries, the material basis of digital communication and the
emergence of the Internet of Things as a new realm of social relationality.
0.5
1 x 3000 word essay (85%) + 1 x 500 word blog post (15%)
The course is limited to students taking the BSc Anthropology /
Anthropology with a year abroad and the BA in Archaeology and
Anthropology.
2/3
Term 2
Material Culture
2 hour lecture + 1 hour tutorial per week
TBC
Dr Hannah Knox
h.knox@ucl.ac.uk
back to top
Value
Means of assessment
Prerequisites
Year
Term taught
Option type
Student contact hours
Timetable
Contact details
Email
9