This course examines the impact of global dynamics on cities from the early 20th century to the present. By tracing urban formations from metropolis to global city, emphasis will be placed on the making of identities, communities, and citizens in the architectural spaces, cultural places, ethnic zones, and media traces of urban life in the context of globalization.

We see others as we imagine them to be, in terms of our values, not as they see themselves. This course examines ways in which we understand and represent the reality of others through visual media, across the boundaries of culture, gender, and race. It considers how and why visual media can be used to represent or to distort the world around us. Pictorial media, in particular ethnographic film and photography, are analyzed to document the ways in which indigenous and native peoples in different parts of the world have been represented and imagined by anthropologists and western popular culture.

Students will write a library-based research paper or research proposal, bringing to bear the knowledge, methodological skills, and theoretical perspectives accumulated during the prior years of study.

This is the first course of a two-semester Scholar's Thesis sequence in anthropology, in which students will conduct an original research project. In this first course, working with a thesis advisor, students will formulate a research question, conduct a literature review, prepare the research design, write a research proposal, and begin data collection, following the conventions of cultural anthropology or archaeology.

Students will write a library-based research paper or research proposal, bringing to bear the knowledge, methodological skills, and theoretical perspectives accumulated during the prior years of study.