HINK0101FU CANCELLED, Individually selected topic – American Indian Languages and Cultures

This course will examine the historical and conceptual development of the discipline of anthropology as well as some of the political and sociological impacts of applied anthropology in Mesoamerica. As we shall see, anthropological understandings of race, ethnicity and indigeneity in Mesoamerica have been subject to significant change and debate over time. Such epistemological shifts have influenced public policy and the application of anthropology in the field as well as related disciplines. The course will take a historical perspective, considering the lingering impact of nineteenth century positivism and scientific racism, the Boasian relativism of the early twentieth century, the indigenismo of the Mexican Revolution, the influence of developmentalism,  structuralism and Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, post-modernism and identity politics in the 1990s and 2000s, and more recent perspectives which question whether alterity is useful as a mode of analysis at all.