Expressive Arts of Africa


Anthropology 321

African expressive culture permeates every aspect of African life and functions in specific ways to foster individual and group survival. The processes by which these functions are accomplished may share significant functional and aesthetic elements cross culturally, but the techniques, styles, and symbolism vary immensely among African groups. Indeed, it is common for Africans of the same ethnicity to disagree over the meaning and interpretation of their cultural expressions, partly because people in all societies have varying levels of understanding and acceptance of their behaviors and practices. To get us as close as possible to observing and learning about Africa’s expressive culture, we will read a number of essays that explore the cultural practices of a few African groups, and address symbolic and aesthetic representations, implicitly understood and explicitly expressed by selected African peoples in cultural communication. The concepts we will discuss will center on the relationship between art, ritual, and symbols in cultural expression. The focus this semester will be the expressive cultures of sub-Saharan Africa as communicated mainly in the sculptural and other art forms of the region.


Cultural Contexts of Childhood--Iyam


Anthropology 374

This course examines “childhood” as it has been conceptualized, theorized, and experienced through time and space. Students examine the historical and social constructions of childhood, and gain a comparative perspective with their own culture by contrasting mainstream Euro-American cultural understandings and management of human development with those of other selected cultures.

This course is especially important for students wanting to understand childhood culture and its effect on the production of culture, or for those training to become engaged in social situations which involve children. To the extent we understand the cultural systems of the children and their families, we would help those children comfortably navigate the American cultural system, negotiate the conflicts between different cultural systems, and understand the differences and similarities with their own systems.

Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft --Iyam S09


Anthropology 350

In this course, we will be concerned with understanding how the religious, magical, and witchcraft practices found in diverse cultures relate to an overall attempt to explain the world beyond ordinary human understanding and to the pattern of social, psychological, or ecological needs of a society. We are not concerned with the competing notions of God, goddesses, or the Devil that are part of various supernatural beliefs, but rather we aim to understand the perspectives anthropologists have used to explain the cultural circumstances that foster certain supernatural beliefs and practices, the use of magical rituals in confronting social problems, and the role of witchcraft in shaping the behaviors and responses of people cross-culturally. We will explore readings which investigate the relationship of our diverse supernatural beliefs to different social and cultural phenomena; the attempt by diverse populations to grapple with or to explain social issues on the basis of diverse supernatural beliefs and practices, the influence of modernity on structuring emerging beliefs and practices, and generally, the stress of trying to make sense of our place in the world.