Anthropology - Spring 1999

Students can access the 1998 version of Anthropology 3, Introduction to Archaeology WebSite, at the following url:

http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~anth3/

PLEASE NOTE: Requirements, text, assignments, etc. subject to change.

Advance Course Information for HISC 80C (Science and Politics) and Anthropology 80U (Culture and Religion)

***IMPORTANT NOTE***

These two courses will be taught together in Thimann Lecture Hall 3 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 to 1:45 pm. The instructors will be Susan Harding from Anthropology and Donna Haraway from History of Consciousness. You may register for either HISC 80C or ANTH 80U; you may not register for both.

***Please note there is an error in the information in the Spring 1999 Schedule of Classes. If you register for HISC 80C, it is NOT necessary to register concurrently for HISC 81C. HISC 81C is a one-credit film and video course complementing the joint History of Consciousness and Anthropology course on Alien-Nation and Outer Space. Enrollment in HISC 81C is limited to 25, and the course will meet in Oakes 109, Tuesdays, 2-3:30 pm. Please see Advance Course Information for HISC 81C for details.

Registration in a discussion section is required for HISC 80C and ANTH 80U. Please register for whatever discussion section meets your schedule. Check the times for "Secondary Discussion" under both ANTH 80U and HISC 80C. We will adjust discussion section registrations as needed to balance sections and student schedules the first day of class.

From the point of view of approaches to Culture and Religion and Science and Politics, this course explores alien knowledges and ufologies in contemporary America.

Millennial America is an alien nation,

a nation of aliens,

a nation that is alien.

Most Americans believe that the federal government is covering up evidence of extraterrestrial encounters of one kind or another. We are told millions of Americans have seen UFOs with their own eyes, or have had direct contact with alien beings, or have been abducted by aliens and taken to their space stations. Many women testify that they given birth to alien/human babies. Others, men and women, tell us they are "walk-ins," their bodies having been occupied by aliens. We hear that there is a vast network of secret underground chambers and tunnels centered in Dulce, New Mexico, where thousands of alien beings, both alien grays and reptoids, live and work on trans-species genetic experiments. And we wonder if these unearthly visitors somehow signal the beginning of the end. Are cataclysm and redemption, one or the other or both, just around the corner?

Trust no one.

The sudden mainstreaming of ufologies and alien knowledges in the 1990s indexes the extent to which a politics of suspicion has displaced and de-centered science, the state, and rationality as sources of American common sense and national consensus regarding "the truth," what it is, and who knows it. What is at stake-and for whom-in this contest for what counts as evidence, truth, rationality, and experience? How is trust established in public culture in the late twentieth century? What roles do the institutions of religion, science, entertainment, medicine, psychiatry, the academy, and government play? How do 'alternative intellectual communities' outside these institutions operate in alien and ufo discourses? Why have the planet earth and the American citizen become the focus of multiple invasions and abductions now? Are there precedents historically for these kinds of accounts? How do discourses about viruses infecting organic bodies and computers, genetic engineering and genetic pollution, commercialized genomes, high-technology vaccines, mystery diseases, and animal-human hybrids bleed into alien abduction and forced surgery narratives?

The truth is out there.

Alien discourses are functioning as a kind of clearinghouse, or master search engine, for all sorts of contemporary idioms. Everything is aggressively and anxiously connected across the field of these discourses: high technology, information, death and life, body and spirit, science, government, reproduction, disease, sexuality, race, immigration, colonizing and being colonized, fear and desire, trauma and hope, catastrophe and salvation, revealed truth, persecution, research, and cover-up. The growing secondary literature on alien knowledge is still quite small and dwarfed by insider and complicit accounts, textual and graphic, obsessed with and possessed by their own fantastic, phantasmic terms. The latter form a literature which insists on its own terms, but also one which may also be read as an insistent-and incessant-critical commentary, a post-modern popular midrash, on contemporary American politics, society, culture, and everyday life.

Required Books for Alien-Nation and Outer Space:

Michael F. Brown, The Channeling Zone. American Spirituality in an Anxious Age (Harvard University Press, 1997)

C.D.B. Bryan, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter's Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T. (Penguin, 1995)

Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outer Space to Cyberspace (Cornell University Press, 1998)

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Ballantine Books, 1982; ©1968)

William F. Hamilton, III, Cosmic Top Secret: America's Secret UFO Program (New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Books, 1991)

Patrick Huyghe, The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials (Avon, 1996)

Karla Turner, Into the Fringe: A True Story of Abduction (Berkeley Books, 1992)

Caroline Young, ed., UFOs (Usborne Publishing, 1st © 1977; 1st US edition 1997, available from EDC Publishing, 10302 E 55th Place, Tulsa, OK 74146)

Films:

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), 92 minutes, B&W

Blade Runner (1982), 114 minutes, color

Men in Black

Videos and Television:

Communion (Whitney Strieber)

Confirmation (Whitney Strieber)

Alien Autopsy, Fact or Fiction? 1995, Roswell story material

X-Files, selected clips

Other readings and resources (preliminary list):

Joan Acocella, "The Politics of Hysteria," New Yorker, April 16, 1998, vol. 74, no. 7, pp. 64-79

Kurt Andersen, "The Origin of Alien Species," New Yorker, July 14, 1997, pp. 38-39

Octavia Butler, Dawn (1st book of the xenogenesis trilogy)

Lynn Cheney

William Cooper, 'Behold a Pale Horse' (Sedon, AZ: Light Technology Publishing, 1991)

Frederick Crews, "The Mindsnatchers" (review of Jacobs, The Threat, Dean, Aliens in America, Strieber, Confirmation), New York Review of Books , June 25, 1998, pp. 14-19

Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; A Scanner Darkly; Radio Free Albemuth; VALIS (idiosyncratic list-many sf writers should be added)

Michel Foucault, I, Pierre Riviére

Ian Hacking

Susan Harding, "Updating Bible Prophecy," on Heaven's Gate, from Histories of the Future

Bud Hopkins, Missing Time (1981)

J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Regentry, 1972)

David Jacobs

J. Keel. The Mothman Prophecies (IllumiNet Press, 1991)

Bob Larson, UFOs and the Alien Agenda (Nelson, 1997)

David Lavery, Angela Hague, and Marla Cartwright, eds., 'Deny All Knowledge': Reading the X-Files (Syracuse University Press, 1996)

Martha F. Lee, The Nation of Islam. An American Millennariun Movement (State University of New York Press, 1996)

Susan Lepselter, "Why Rachel Isn't Buried in Her Grave," from Histories of the Future

Susan Lepselter, "From the Earth Native's Point of View: The Earth, the Extraterrestrial, and the Natural Ground of Home," Public Culture 9 (1997): 197-208

Michael Lieb, Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time (Duke University Press, 1998), esp. chpts on the Nation of Islam's prophetic teachings

Deborah Lupton, "Panic Computing: The Viral Metaphor and Computer Technology," Cultural Studies, (date and volume?), pp. 556-68

John Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, revised edition (Ballantine, 1995)

G. Marcus, ed., Paranoia within Reason: A Casebook on Conspiracy as Explanation (Chicago UP, 1999), esp. Kathleen Stewart, "Conspiracy Theory's Worlds"; Michael F. Brown, "The New Alienists: Healing Shattered Selves at Century's End"; James D. Faubion, "Deus Absconditus: Waco, Conspiracy (Theory), Millennialism, and (The End of) the Twentieth Century"; and Jamer Hunt, "Paranoid, Critical, Methodical: Dalf, Koolhaus, and..."

Jorge Martin, "UFOs, the Government and the Conspiracy. The Chupacabras Phenomenon", ed. OVNI Evidencia

Amalee Newitz, "Alien Abductions and the End of White People," Bad Subjects, #5, May 1993

Phil Patton, Dreamland: A Personal Journey through the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51 (Villard, 1998)

C. Penley, NASA/TREK: Popular Science in America (Verso, 1997)

C.J. Peters, Virus Hunters: Thirty Years of Battling Hot Viruses (Anchor, 1997)

Andrea Pritchard, et al, eds., Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference (North Cambridge Press, 1994)

"The Roswell Files," cover story for Time magazine, June 23, 1997

Carl Sagan and Thorton Page, eds., UFOs-A Scientific Debate (Barnes and Noble, 1996; © 1972, Cornell University Press)

Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, introduced by Samuel Weber (Harvard UP, 1988)

Alexander Star, "The Truth Is Out There," review of Dean, Aliens in America and Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, New York Times Book Review, August 9, 1998, pp. 10-11

Whitney Strieber, Communion (1980) and Confirmation (1998)

John Tarver, "Communicating Aliens and Conspirators," Qualifying Examination, History of Consciousness, 1998

James Tiptree, Jr., "The Women Men Don't See"

Teri Tyler materials from John Tarver (Tyler v. Carter, et al)

Denis Walker, "The Black Muslims in American Society: from Millennarian Protest to Trans-continental Relationships," in G.W. Trompf, ed., Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements (Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), pp 343-90

Luise White, "Alien Nation", Transition no. 63 (Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 24-33

March 30, Tuesday, first class day

June 1, Tuesday, no class (exchange day)

June 3, Thursday, last class day

19 class days, total

I. Introduction (Aliens in America , "Alien Politics", pp. 1-24)

Lecture 1. Overviews and contexts. Course arrangements.

Lecture 2. End Times: Apocalypticisms and Millennialisms.

Religious Registers; Scientific Registers

A brief history of contact: "ancient," "Enlightenment," 1900, 1940ff, 1990s

The accounts/voices/tropes/stories

The American Moment: Cold War; post-CW politics

Apocalypse/Millennium; End Times; chosenness; cryptic revelation; midrash/hyperlink; gnostic themes; visions/apparitions; cyborgs; alien biologies

2. "Fugitive Alien Truth" (Jodi Dean, Aliens in America , chpt. 1)

Lecture 3. The 1950s aliens (SH)

Lecture 4. The Scientific Gaze and Invested Experts: the MIT conference (DH)

I, Pierre Riviére; Lynn Cheney

NYRB review of Jodi Dean, Aliens in America

evidence--texts, visual culture, "events", testimony, memory, 'facts'

ARA review

The insider/outsider problem (cf. Favret-Saada)

MIT conference (1992)

"Invested experts"-journalists (Bryan, Patton, Keel), scientists (Sagan, Hynek, Pritchard et al), psychiatrists (Mack), Jacobs

alien autopsy/Roswell--foundational material

3. "Space Programs" (Jodi Dean, Aliens in America , chpt 2)

Lecture 5. Space programs: scientific fact and science fiction (DH)

Lecture 6. Film: The Day the Earth Stood Still

NASA

Star Trek

Penley

astronaut narrative/male hero, masculinities

4. Abduction (Aliens in America , "Virtually Credible", chpt 3)

Lecture 7. Personal accounts: Mack and Turner (DH)

Lecture 8. Channeling: a menagerie of aliens and familiars (SH)

Lecture 9. Whitney Strieber videos, Communion and Conformation

early contact--fulfilled desires

current contact--more invasive and violent

reproduction, sex, bodies

Mack; Turner

Multiple Personality Disorder/therapy/flexible bodies & minds (Emily Martin, Acocella, Ian Hacking)

abductee narratives/female subjects; Tiptree

racial profiles

5. Creative Paranoia and Freedom

Lecture 10. Little Men and the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber. Guest lecture by John Tarver

6. Conspiracy/NET/movements (Aliens in America , "I Want to Believe," chpt. 4)

Lectures 11 and 12. Cult Surveys: Revelation and Surveillance (SH)

Lecture 13. Ezekiel and the Nation of Islam (DH)

Lecture 14. Conspiracy discourses (SH)

Cryptic revelation/politics of suspicion

Heaven's gate/Christians

Nation of Islam/Lieb, Lee, Walker

White militants and the End Times

Race/nation; Desire/fear

Mothman

'Behold a Pale Horse'

7. Colonization/immigration/globalization (Aliens in America , "The Familiarity of Strangeness," chpt 5 & "Commemorations, July 1997," postscript)

Lecture 15. Film: Syncopations in black and white: Men in Black and clips from The X-Files

8. Alien Biologies at Home

Lecture 16. Alien bodies, alien species (DH). Reading: The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials

Lecture 17. Film: Blade Runner. Reading: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Lecture 18. Flexible Alienation: Global Capital and Alien Biologies (DH)

Implosion of informatics and biologics: chips, genes, viruses, brains, fetuses, ecosystems, seeds, cyborgs

genetic pollution and venture capital; genetic diversity and the 'vampire project'

Virus Hunters-heroes and aliens

9. The End Game

Lecture 19. Student Projects, Conclusions

Possible Research Topics for Students:

The Godzilla Family: Members, Media, Times, Places, Contexts

UFOlogy and Aliens in children's and young adult literatures and television

Ironic Outer Space Voices (kitsch, SCHWA, etc.)

Apocalypticisms (ironic, divine, technological)

Space programs and SF culture (NASA/TREK, etc.)

Alien foe/alien friend films

First Contact stories in ethnographies, explorers' accounts, the Jane Goodall story and other animal-human stories, medical narratives, colonial histories, etc.

Medicalization of extreme experience

Readings of The Journal of Scientific Exploration

An investigation into the 'Need to Know' society

A study of a science fiction writer; e.g., P.K. Dick, Octavia Butler, or James Tiptree, Jr.

This course explores the ways in which anthropologists in this century have studied Mejicanos on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border with attention to key concepts and important debates in the literature. Students will learn to critically examine the methodologies, the theories, evidence and conclusions employed and/or produced in these works.

Prerequisites:

Ant. 2 and/or a course in Mexican/Chicano culture and history. Knowledge of Spanish is desirable but not required. Enrollment limited to 45.

Requirements:

1. This course will be run in lecture-seminar format. Students will be required to read approximately 150 pages of relevant scholarly works per week. Students must come prepared to discuss the readings assigned for that day.

2. Students will be evaluated on the basis of participation defined interms of regular attendance, actively engaging in class discussion, and completing all assignments on schedule. One book review, one intellectual profile/biography on an ethnographer and one 15 research proposal will be required. All written work must be typed (double-spaced). A handout will provide more details on the written assignments.

3. Incompletes will not be permitted except in cases of severe illness or hardships.

For more information on my courses students may consult my web page. http://anthro.ucsc.edu/anthro/nr.html

Mon - Wed. 5-6:45 p.m. Spring Quarter 1999

This upper-division lecture course deals with what is variously called "Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas," "Tribal Art," "Ethnic Art," or "Primitive Art."

*The first half of the course concerns the social history of the category of "Primitive Art," including the invention of "primitivism" in Europe, the invention of Primitive Art in the beginning of the 20th century, its institutionalization in major museums, and issues such as faking, looting, and the art market.

*The second half of the course deals with the meanings and uses of "art" objects in the societies that produced and continue to produce art-objects and artifacts, both for ritual purposes (not for sale) and for the art and souvenir market. (See week-by-week summary of topics, below.)

Please note that this is not a survey course that tries to cover everything. You will, however, learn a fair amount about art from North America (both the Northwest Coast and the Plains) and art of the Australian Aboriginals, and you will come to have a passing acquaintance with art from the West Coast of Africa.

Five books will be available for purchase from the Literary Guillotine, 202 Locust Street, Santa Cruz, and there will be a class READER availble at the Campus Copy Center. **Note that all required reading will be on reserve and consequently you need not buy any books!** If you by all of them, excluding the Reader, it will come to less than $100.

Books to be used fairly extensively in the course are the following:

>Berlo, Janet and Ruth Phillips. Native North American Art

>Errington, Shelly. The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress

>Morphy, Howard. Aboriginal Art (Art and Ideas) $23

>Price, Sally. Primitive Art in Civilized Places

>Steiner, Christopher. African Art in Motion

Also availble: "Woe is I" by Patricia O'Connor--a book on grammar to help you with your writing.

TOPICS WEEK BY WEEK

1. What is Primitivism?

2. The Invention of Primitive Art

*1-2 page paper is due at beginning of week 2

3. Primitive Art at the End of the 20th Century

4.The Art Market and the Issue of Authenticity

5 Midterm transition week.

* 4-5 page paper due beginning of week 5

6. Aboriginal Art I: Signifying Ancestral "Time"

7. Aboriginal Art II: Resistance and the Market

8. Northwest Coast Art I: Cosmology

9: Northwest Coast Art II: Looting, Resistance and Display

10. Native North American Art : Tradition, Resistance, and Constraints

*5-page paper due beginning of week 10  

Revised 7/29/04.