Syllabus of Anthropology
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Professor: Jorge Martínez Lucena Syllabus of Anthropology
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Globalization, new media, and technological environments are present-day facts which are changing our world, our reality and the manner in which we think about them. The human being is a significant part of this reality. He is the one who is producing these transformations while he is constructing his identity and searching for meaning. He is the one transforming the narrative of his life and accomplishing, conscious or unconsciously, a real metamorphosis of his skills, his self-image, and himself. Modernity, with its rationalism and its development of science and technology, has created a fairer and more comfortable world. Nevertheless, it has also contributed to giving mankind the power to destroy himself and his environment. Post-Modernity has eroded the traditional and ideological frameworks of meaning, which have allowed us to experience our personal desires and social structures as one thing. Our approach to Anthropology aims to understand what the human being is, what it is becoming, and what is going to become in light of the uncertainty provoked by recent and ongoing cultural changes.
Transcript of Syllabus of Anthropology
Professor: Jorge Martínez Lucena
Syllabus of Anthropology
1. Description
2.Aims, Knowledge and Skills
3.Teaching Method
4.Assessment System
5.Contents
6.Basic Bibliography
Teaching Program
Globalization, new media, and technological environments are present-day facts which are changing our world, our reality and the manner in which we think about them. The human being is a significant part of this reality. He is the one who is producing these transformations while he is constructing his identity and searching for meaning. He is the one transforming the narrative of his life and accomplishing, conscious or unconsciously, a real metamorphosis of his skills, his self-image, and himself.
Description
Modernity, with its rationalism and its development of science and technology, has created a fairer and more comfortable world. Nevertheless, it has also contributed to giving mankind the power to destroy himself and his environment.
Description
Post-Modernity has eroded the traditional and ideological frameworks of meaning, which have allowed us to experience our personal desires and social structures as one thing.
William Wallace (Braveheart): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEOOZDbMrgE
Description
Our approach to Anthropology aims to understand what the human being is, what it is becoming, and what is going to become in light of the uncertainty provoked by recent and ongoing cultural changes.
Description
1. To make an in-depth inquiry into the human being and his humanhood.
2. To learn how the human image and concept has varied in Western Culture.
3. To acknowledge diverse anthropological conceptions: traditional, modern, and post-modern.
4. To explore the impact of media and new technologies on us, our skills, our literacies, and our way of thinking about and imagining ourselves.
5. To study the theory of social imaginaries and to find out how it can clarify our relationship with media and new technologies.
Aims, Knowledge, and Skills
4 parts of the course:
• Lectures: I will teach the basic contents of the subject during these lectures, which will usually last two hours.
• Screenings: We will watch two seasons of the TV series Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker, 2011-). This will take place during one-hour screenings that will be detailed in the time-schedule of the course. I will introduce each episode before its screening with a short speech detailing the questions and issues that the student should focus on.
• Workshops: After every chapter we will have a workshop discussing what we have watched taking into account the material from lectures. Afterwards, the student will have to answer a questionnaire and deliver it to me at the beginning of the following class. I will collect and correct these exercises. When I give them back, we will clarify and discuss the correct answers.
• Mandatory Reading: The compulsory book to read: The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr (2010). There will be a true-false test on this book. I will allow you to have a physical copy (in English) of the book during the test.
Teaching Method
• 50% of the assessment will consist of the final exam mark that will take place in June.
• 50% of the assessment will be the average of the marks from the partial exam (20%), the test on the compulsory reading (15%), and the questionnaires on the screenings and the student presentation (15%).
Assessment System
1.What is a human being?
2.The evolution of the idea of humanhood in Western Culture
3.Post-modernity and self
4.On social imaginaries: the new post-modern cultural order
5.Technology and humanhood: bodies, ideas, images and society.
6.Transforming the image of the humanhood: students’ presentations on media products.
John Lewis advert (2011):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o
Newsroom apologize:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og3D5UwxjU0
Lecture titles
• Charles Taylor (1989): Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Raymond Martin and John Barresi (2006): The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Nicholas Carr (2010): The Shallows. What the internet is doing to our brains. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Core Bibliography
