SEMESTER 1
COMPULSORY MODULE
AN151 Introduction to Anthropology (Dr Ela Drazkiewicz)
Anthropology, from the Greek anthropos meaning 'human' and logia meaning 'study', is the discipline that explores the full richness of human beings and their cultures, past and present. Anthropology is a comparative and theoretical subject, and here in Maynooth we place particular emphasis on the knowledge that emerges from anthropological fieldwork. Anthropologists do fieldwork, write ethnographic texts, and make contributions to a body of theoretical knowledge; we explore these distinctive styles of research and representation. In fieldwork, anthropologists gather information about people and places, creating diverse forms of data: interview transcripts, life histories, village diagrams, maps, kinship genealogies, grammars and dictionaries, photos, videos of rituals or political protests, recordings of myths and songs, material artefacts, and much more. The data anthropologists collect in fieldwork is made intelligible through its relationship to a set of questions within anthropological theory. So when writing 'ethnography,' anthropologists weave interpretations of these data into detailed descriptive analyses of social and cultural life, often hoping to yield theoretical insight. Through a close reading of ethnographic texts, and through the completion of small projects/assignments, in this module we hope to understand the unique sensibility guiding anthropological ways of creating new knowledge about the world
Optional Module
AN155 The Anthropology of Performance (Dr Steve Coleman)
This module will introduce students to the ethnographic study of cultural performance. Performance is central to the social life of societies, and research into performance is one of the most effective ways of understanding sociocultural dynamics in particular places. We will introduce ourselves to several theoretical concepts in performance studies, including framing, performativity, remediation, semiotics of performance, and recent extensions and critiques of performance theory. As part of the module we will also investigate the ways in which film and video have been used both as research tools for documenting and studying performance, as well as being important media of cultural performance themselves.
SEMESTER 2
COMPULSORY MODULE
AN152 Introduction to Anthropology 2 (Dr Thomas Strong)
Everyone today is faced with an important question: how do we understand and relate to others who have very different beliefs about the world?
As a discipline, anthropology seeks to render the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. We often attempt to turn encounters with ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’ beliefs into occasions for creating fresh knowledge about social and cultural life, and into opportunities for gaining a deeper understanding of human beings. For example, in many parts of the world today, people live in fear of the malicious influence of those they believe to be witches. This module samples diverse contemporary and historical cases of witchcraft phenomena, including a famous Irish case, in order to introduce and contemplate fundamental topics of anthropological inquiry. By closely examining cultural difference and putatively ‘exotic’ beliefs, anthropology provokes us to question our own ‘taken for granted’ assumptions about the world.
This module continues the comprehensive first-year introduction to the discipline, covering a range of topics in which the problem of cultural difference comes into especially sharp focus. These include: moral and epistemological relativism, differing ideas about nature, the varied ways in which people around the world understand kinship, diverse systems for understanding affliction and healing, and cosmologies that posit the active influence of ancestral ghosts and spiritual beings in the everyday lives of people. Through an ‘ethnographic exercise’—a small fieldwork and interpretation project—students are encouraged to begin viewing social and cultural phenomena ‘close to home’ through anthropological eyes.
Optional Module
AN157 Clutter (Tara McAssey)
Netflix’s (2018) Tidying Up with Marie Kondo series marked a cultural moment where the ‘danger’ of clutter became a collective and pressing concern. The series advocated for a mindful approach for how we manage our surrounding material worlds and cast scrutiny on how we store, use and cling-onto our possessions and how they should ‘spark joy’. This course will examine this proliferation of popular interest into consumption and divestment practices focusing on a number of themes such as the meaning of material goods, how we construct our identities, upcycling practices, defining waste, design aesthetics and Instagram culture and alternative second-hand markets. Drawing on a range of sources including academic texts, personal memoirs, popular media content, internet memes, etc., we will engage meaningfully in anthropological discussion about this ‘clutter complex’ in contemporary times. |
