Fall 2026
skylar tiange kaat
Lorna Simpson
Ice 4, 2018
Instructor Skylar Tiange Kaat Email [email protected] Office Alumnae Hall 216 Office Hours Tuesday and Thursday/1:00pm - 3:00pm
| Graded Activities | Percent of Final Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Participation | 10% | |
| Forum Posts | 50% | Labor-based grading |
| Mid-term Project | 15% | |
| Project Proposal | 5% | Labor-based grading |
| Final Project | 20% |
Midterm Project: Museum of Culture and Society
| DATE | TOPICS | READING (read before class meeting) | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 8/25 | Introductions, walk through syllabus | Syllabus | | | | | 8/27 | Framing: how do we study culture? | https://www.sapiens.org/culture/what-is-cultural-anthropology/ | | | | | 9/1 | Week on Definition | Keyword: Culture. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
recommended, not required: Fischer, Michael MJ. "Culture and cultural analysis as experimental systems." Cultural Anthropology 22, no. 1 (2007): 1-65 | | | | | 9/3 | | Durkheim, Emile. “What is a Social Fact.” In The Rules of Sociological Method.
recommended, not required: Ho, Karen et al. “What Happened to Social Facts?” American Anthropologist 121, no. 1 (2019):160-204 | | | | | 9/8 | Week on Other | Pick 1 Said, Edward W. 1978. “Knowing the Oriental.” In Orientalism, 31–49. New York: Pantheon Books.
Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press. | | | | | 9/10 | | | | | | | 9/15 | Week on Race | Pick 1 Moses, Yolanda T. 2010. “Thinking Anthropologically About ‘Race’: Human Variation, Cultural Construction, and Dispelling Myths." In Thinking Anthropologically: A Practical Guide for Students, 3rd edition, edited by Philip Salzman and Patricia Rice, 94−105. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Chou, Rosalind S., and Joe R. Feagin. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2016. (Selections TBD) | | | | | 9/17 (ASYNCH) | | Pick 1 Keyword: Whiteness. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
“Reading Trash: Deliverance and the Poetics of White Trash” in Society for Visual Anthropology Newsletter 8(2):8-15 by John Hartigan (2008).
(Pg. 316-343) “Unpopular culture: The case of ‘white trash’, Cultural Studies, 11:2, 316-343 by John Hartigan (1997). | | | | | 9/22 | Week on intersectionality | Pick 1 Keyword: Gender. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Plemons, Eric. The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans-Medicine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. (Read introduction) | | | | | | | Keyword: Gender. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Plemons, Eric. The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans-Medicine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. (Read introduction) | | | | | 9/24 | | Kimberlé Crenshaw, The Washington Post (2015), “Why intersectionality can’t wait. | | | | | 9/29 | Week on disability | Pick 1 Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Clark, John Lee. N.d. “Against Access.” McSweeneys 64: The Audio Issue. https://audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/against_access.html (Roughly 7 pages)
Robert Sparrow, “Defending Deaf Culture: The Case of Cochlear Implants,” Journal of Political Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2005): 135–152, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2005.00217.x | | | | | 10/1 | | Midterm workshop: No readings! Come to class prepared to work on your midterm. | | | | | | | | | | | | 10/6 | Week on Indigeneity | Pick 1 Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013. (30pages of your own choice) | | | | | 10/8 | Indigeneity | Pick 1 Perley, Bernard C. “Zombie Linguistics: Experts, Endangered Languages and the Curse of Undead Voices.” Anthropological Forum 22, no. 2 (2012): 133–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2012.694170.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/sep/04/miriwoong-waniwoogeng-language-is-the-only-way-to-understand-our-ancient-culture | | | | | 10/13 | Indiginous People’s Day - no class | | Midterm project due 10/14, 11:59pm | | | | 10/15 | Week on School | Poppendieck, Janet. 2010. Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, 133–60. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter: The Missing Millions: Problems of Participation.
Ames, Morgan G. The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. | | | | | 10/20 | Week on Science | Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”
Fadiman, Anne. "The spirit catches you and you fall down." | | | | | 10/22 | | | | | | | 10/27 | Week on Environment Sacrifice Zone | Lerner, Steve. 2010. Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Introduction and chapter on Green point, New York
Zee, Jerry. Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. | | | | | 10/29 | | | | | | | 11/3 | Election Day - no class | | | | | | | | | | | | | 11/5 | Final project workshop day | no readings! come to class ready to talk about your final project. | | | | | 11/10 | Week on social media | Steele, C. K. (2021). Black feminist pleasure on TikTok: An ode to Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression”. Women's Studies in Communication, 44(4), 463-469. Williams, Ruth. 2011.
‘Eat, Pray, Love: Producing the Female Neoliberal Spiritual Subject’, The Journal of Popular Culture, pp 1-21. | | | | | 11/12 | | | | | | | 11/17 | AAA annual conference - asych | https://www.sapiens.org/language/how-to-write-an-op-ed-a-free-sapiens-workshop/ https://www.sapiens.org/culture/what-is-anthropological-poetry/ | Final project proposal due 11/20, 11:59pm | | | | 11/19 | | | | | | | 11/24 | Week on Language | https://www.sapiens.org/language/the-day-i-heard-my-mothers-accent/ | | | | | 11/26 | Thanksgiving Break - no class | | | | | | 12/1 | Week on GenAI | Chiang, Ted (2023). ChatGPT is a Blurry JPEG of the web. The New Yorker.
Roberts, Sarah (2021). Your AI is Human. In Your Computer is On Fire eds Mullaney, Peters, Hicks, Philip. 51-67.
recommended: Cave, S., & Dihal, K. (2021). AI Will Always Love You: Three Contradictions in Imaginings of Intimate Relations with Machines. In Minding the Future: Artificial Intelligence, Philosophical Visions and Science Fiction. 107-125. | | | | | | | | | | | | 12/3 (ASYNCH) | | | | | | | 12/8 | Final Class: Thinking about the future | Keyword: Futurity. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Recommended: https://jiahuileeq.wixsite.com/clouds/project-description-1 https://feralatlas.org/# | | | | | | | | | | | | 12/9-12/10 | | | Final Project due 12/15, 11:59pm | | | | 12/11-12/17 | | | | | | | | | | | | |