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How do cognitive neuroscientists examine words and word meanings?  What are the different ways we can remember words, such as definitions (“pollo”, “ji”, “chicken”) and lyrics, and how do words work in our brains?   Why do we sometimes struggle to remember a word that comes to mind easily later on?  Are words and images stored together or separately in our brains?  These questions and more will be addressed in this course, after an overview of the central nervous system.

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

How does love emerge under conditions of war? This seminar explores what it means to sustain intimate relations in the face of overwhelming violence. Through the Anthropology of Kinship, as well as through methods developed across the fields of Queer Studies, Black Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, this course considers how intimacy and love figure in the production and maintenance of racialized, classed, and gendered difference.