ANT (0103) 275 - Culture and the Decorated Body

Credits: 3.00

Focusing on bodily adornment, students will trace attitudes about the human body, gender, and class to changing dimensions of culture. Through local, regional, and global expressions of clothing and aesthetics, students explore the decorated body and its relationship to loci of power, patterns of consumption, and ideas of beauty.

Free Note: Previous completion of a 100 level course in anthropology is recommended.

Course Learning Goals: At the completion of this course, students will be able to:

Describe and distinguish vocabulary, concepts, theories, and arguments that inform the anthropological study of the body, bodily decoration, and related cultural practices.
Demonstrate the ability to critically analyze the body, clothing, and adornment with respect to a wide range of cultures and the institutions and persons who propagate its values and practices.
Articulate, orally and in writing, the ways in which ideas of beauty and body are culturally located and constructed and therefore not reducible to notions of “authenticity” or biology.
Critically evaluate some of the significant ways in which culture and institutions of power affect the ways in which the body and its adornment are interpreted.
Collaborate with classmates in team learning experiences that build upon individual strengths and interests to achieve a shared knowledge outcome specific to this course.