This course provides an introduction to anthropological approaches to time, temporality, and history. Ideas about time have been part of anthropology ever since anthropologists began theorizing human development, and analyzing the ways in which people conceive of time can illuminate fundamental questions about how humans make sense of their world and act within it. In this course, we will focus on the relationship between cultural conceptions of time and power, and examine a few theoretical concepts that help us to analyze this relationship. We will study ways in which time was built into core anthropological concepts of difference (particularly between the West and the Rest) and then explore the relationship between time and political possibility, or how politics must make “historical sense” in order to be effective. In addition to the study of such “uses of the past,” we examine nostalgia, identify its cultural foundations, and show its politics as well as its limits as a way of thinking about history.
The seminar will be in English as will be the readings. However, students are welcome to speak German in class as well as submit their course requirements in German.
- Kursverantwortliche/r: Dr. Andrew Gilbert (he/him)