Anthropology - Daytime Option

Course details

Anthropology is the study of humankind in all its fascinating diversity. As a discipline, it aims to discover and explain the patterns of behaviour behind the world’s astounding variety of human societies and cultures: from the hunters and gatherers of the rainforest to the elite worlds of global corporations. Because they endeavour to understand and interpret other cultures, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to foster better understanding of differences such as those of ethnicity, gender, or generation, or across the lines of wealth or politics. Anthropology is subdivided into specialities which examine particular realms of human experience—such as medical anthropology, language and culture, the study of religion, psychological anthropology, and so on. Anthropology is also famous for its remarkable methodology – ethnographic research. Anthropologists write descriptive and analytic accounts of other cultures based on living with a group of people for an extended period of time. Our students will learn from anthropologists who work in very different parts of the world, from Papua New Guinea to disadvantaged areas of Dublin’s inner city, and from the Sudan to Russia. Students will learn about issues ranging from famine to drug use, from gang violence to high-tech surveillance, and from linguistics to consumer cultures.

Course Aims

This Certificate level course is designed to provide participants with the opportunity to develop an understanding of anthropology and to introduce the student to anthropological concepts and methods. The Certificate runs concurrently with the First Arts Anthropology Programme at Kilkenny Campus.

Content

Module 1

Anthropology: An Introduction

An outline of what anthropologists do as well as of a sense of the rich range of human culture.

Module 2

Ethnography

Anthropologists do fieldwork, write ethnographic texts, and make contributions to a body of theoretical knowledge; in this module, we explore these distinctive styles of research and representation. In fieldwork, anthropologists gather information about people and places, creating diverse forms of data: interview transcripts, life histories, village diagrams, maps, kinship genealogies, grammars and dictionaries, photos, videos of rituals or political protests, recordings of myths and songs, material artifacts, and much more.

Module 3

Culture: Themes in Anthropology I - Food

This module will not make you a better cook or a more accomplished food connoisseur. It won't serve as a guide for healthy eating either. To reduce food to mere nourishment and physical survival is to impoverish our human life to its bare animality. We all need to eat in order to survive, but food is more than that - in all societies. Food can be seen as a prime symbolic vehicle through which we construct our world, spin our subjectivity and mark boundaries between social classes, regions, nations, cultures, occupations, genders, etc. This is the mission of this module.

Module 4

Culture: Themes in Anthropology II – Sex/Bodies

This module is designed to introduce students to how anthropologists understand the relationship of culture to nature through a series of readings and projects around the human body and human sexuality as meaningful products.

Admission Requirements

• Applicants must be 21 year or over
• Have adequate skills to participate fully in an NUI certificate level course

Assessment Procedures

• 85% Minimum Attendance
• Participation in Class
• Continuous Assessment
• Written Examination