Courses

• GRS AH 887: Seminar: American Art
  Topic for Spring 2018: Art in 1940s America. This seminar explores the ways that American artists negotiated the socio-political crises, cultural dilemmas, and aesthetic debates engendered by World War II and the inception of the Atomic Age, examining works by Noguchi, Lawrence, Shahn, Nevelson, Hopper, Rockwell, and others.
• GRS AH 891: Seminar: Photography
  Historical, archival, and theoretical examinations of photography, with emphasis on its role both as document and as art. Topic for Fall 2017: The Photographic Book. Examines the photographic book throughout the years from 1839 to the present. Concentrates on the book as a unique form for the medium, and image/text relationships, narrative structures, and the cultural constructions of the book's message.
• GRS AH 893: Seminar: Twentieth-Century Architecture
  Topic for Fall 2017: Histories of Modern Architecture. The historiography of modern architecture focused upon classics published since the 1920s by Pevsner, Giedion, Scully, Banham, Tafuri, and others. Accompanied by philosophies of history by Foucault, White, Kellner, and others. Learn to think critically about all constructions of history.
• GRS AH 895: Seminar: Twentieth-Century Art
  Topic for Fall 2018. Paris, 1900-1940. This seminar explores the representation of Paris in a variety of media, from the Exposition Universelle in 1900 to World War II. Although literature, painting, photography, and film construct different Paris images, common concerns are studied throughout the semester.
• GRS AM 735: Studies in American Culture
  Introduction to handling of primary materials from a number of disciplines in order to develop an American Studies perspective. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• GRS AM 736: The Literature of American Studies
  Introduction to classic problems in the interpretation of American society and culture. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• GRS AM 867: Material Culture
  Introduction to the theory and practice of the interdisciplinary study of material culture, which includes everything we make and use, from food and clothing to art and buildings. Explore contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines. Also offered as GRS AH 867.
• GRS AN 701: Cross-Cutting Perspectives in Anthropology
  An examination of current and historical perspectives across sub-disciplines of Anthropology: Social Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and Archaeology. Explores how methodologies, theories and interpretations have changed as disciplines have developed. Emphasizes group learning to facilitate exchange of ideas across the sub-disciplines.
• GRS AN 703: History of Theory and Practice in Anthropology
  An intensive introduction to the foundations of the discipline focusing on classic works from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. A critical analysis of the development of the discipline of anthropology, its subfields, literature, history, and contemporary research problems.
• GRS AN 704: Proseminar: Contemporary Anthropological Theory
  Examination of major theoretical trends and debates in anthropological theory from the 1960s to present.
• GRS AN 705: Graduate Proseminar in Anthropology: the Biological and Historical Past
  Examination of major contributions and debates in biological anthropology focusing on humanity's place in the natural world. Topics include evolutionary theory, fossil and living primates, human evolution, historical demography, human life histories, and the relationship between biology and culture.
• GRS AN 707: Turkey & Middle East Perspective (Area)
  Social and cultural diversity of the modern Middle East with particular attention to Turkey. Focus on the interplay of traditions and socio-economic changes that have occurred during the 20th century and their implications for the future.
• GRS AN 708: Food, Culture, and Society
  Study of foodways, culinary social history, diet and food ecology with special attention to Asian societies and Boston's food culture. Examines the use of food and cuisine as a focus for identity, national development, and social change.
• GRS AN 709: Boston: An Ethnographic Approach
  An anthropological study of Boston using the city as a site of recovery and discovery as students develop ethnographic skills and an understanding of the interplay between geography, history, and demography in the social mapping of urban spaces.
• GRS AN 711: Civil Society and the State
  Focuses on the civil society-state nexus. Features an interdisciplinary critical analysis of the civil society contruct, including its value for understanding democratization and liberalization in developing areas, as well as its role in mature democracies.
• GRS AN 716: Contemporary European Ethnography
  Approaches Europe and European societies through an exploration of significant social shifts: the creation of the European Union, the decline of the national welfare state, the rise of regionalist movements, and the socio-political transformation of post-socialist states.
• GRS AN 719: Anthropology of Muslim Cultures and Politics
  Muslim societies are today being buffeted by a struggle over the forms and meanings of Muslim culture and politics. This course examines this struggle, and its implications for religious authority, gender ideals, and new notions of citizenship, civil society, and democracy.
• GRS AN 720: Women in the Muslim World
  A cross-cultural approach to the diversity and complexity of women's lives in the Muslim world, including the United States. Looks at issues such as gender equality, civil society and democracy, sex segregation and sexual politics, kinship and marriage, and veiling.
• GRS AN 730: From Conception to Death: The Evolution of Human Life History
  Why do we grow? Why do we die? How do patterns in the lifespan inform our understanding of human evolution? This course answers these questions and more by examining human life history from an evolutionary perspective.
• GRS AN 731: Human Origins
  Introduction to human paleontology and methods for reconstructing the ancestry, structure, diet and behavior of fossil primates and humans. Survey of primate and hominid fossils, priimate comparative anatomy, radioactive dating, modlecular and structural phylogenies, climactic analyses, and comparative behavioral ecology.

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