Topic for Winter 2023: Ethnography of (Post)Cold War Europe
Prerequisites: sophomore standing, ANTH 110 or instructor consent
This course explores some of the profound ways that socialist ideals and politics structured lives in the region of Eastern Europe and Eurasia and, in many critical ways, continue to share lives in a post-Cold War era today. We will draw on ethnographic case studies to consider the meaning and utility of the term "postsocialism;" problematize geographically fixed entities such as "Europe" and Eastern Europe;" and explore the various cultural logics, shared political histories, and experiences of state socialism and postsocialism. Issues to be explored include materiality, precarity, class, gender, memory politics, activism, and identity construction.