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Majors, minors + certificates

Majors, minors + certificates

Certificate in the Ethnography of Communication (ETHCOMACRT)Department of Anthropology

Students on Summer 2018, Fall 2018, or Spring 2019 requirements.

Description

Students pursuing the certificate are introduced to theories, methods, and contexts essential to the comprehensive study of communication in cultural contexts. Students learn to navigate the vast diversity of cultural life in the world that exists simultaneously with a universal equality in the human capacity for thought, imagination, and expression. The certificate courses provide students with a foundation from which they can explore shifts, circulations, and innovations in public culture, particularly as it is manifested in language and practice in the emerging global arena as well as among local communities. This certificate involves the study of performance, language, and media as they engage the full range of communication, from the everyday to special forms, genres, and uses, and from face-to-face to mediated encounters.

Certificate requirements

The certificate requires at least 24 credit hours, including the requirements listed below.

Introductory Sequence. Two (2) courses:
- ANTH-A 122 Interpersonal Communication
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Introduction to the study of communication, culture, identity and power. Each student does original primary research. Topics range from groups in North Africa to high school and college students in the United States, and issues such as gendered language, slang, verbal play, and institutional language.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-A 122 or CMCL-C 122.
  
  Spring 2021CASE DUScourse
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-L 222 Global Communication
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Examines the cultural assumptions around the world that underlie why some communicative acts occur smoothly, while others become contentious. Provides a set of analytical tools for understanding the cultural specificity of communication, and a basis for analyzing miscommunication cross-culturally.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
Electives. Additional credit hours to complete remaining requirements (may include only one additional 200–299 level course) from the Electives list.
- (approved topic: "Bad Language")
  ANTH-A 200 Topics in Anthropology of Culture and Society
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Selected topics in the anthropological study of social and cultural institutions. Emphasizes understanding and developing anthropological approaches to questions about social, economic, political, and historical relationships among groups and individuals in contexts across the globe. Course topics may utilize ethnographic, archaeological, linguistic, and historical information.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- (approved topics: "Arts, Politics and Global Encounters"; "Sex, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll: Subversive Culture")
  ANTH-A 208 Topics in the Anthropology of the Arts and Expressive Behavior
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Introduction to selected topics in the anthropology of art, performance, music, literature, folklore, belief, and ritual. Examines the methods anthropologists use to study the arts or other expressive behaviors and explores art and expression in a variety of cultural settings.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 206 Chanting Down Babylon: Protest and Popular Culture in the Afro-Caribbean
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Explores Afro-Caribbean popular culture as a mechanism of political protest against colonialism and its legacies, the failures of local government, and first-world political and economic hegemony. Examines popular culture on the grass-roots level while incorporating mass-media content such as recorded music and film.
  
  Spring 2021CASE GCCcourse
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 208 Global Jazz, Reggae, and Hip-Hop: African Diasporic Music Beyond the African Diaspora
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  With focus on jazz, reggae, and hip hop, this course links musical production and consumption in the African diaspora to issues of social identity. Among those aspects of social identity considered are race, nation, religion, class, and gender. The course investigates the spread of these musical genres around the world.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 220 Performing Human/Nature: Defining Relationships with the Environment
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Reflects on the complexity of human experience from personal, creative, and cultural perspectives using fiction, poetry, journalism, creative nonfiction, visual art, music, and films. Students explore others' and their own experience of what it means to be human, analyze and compare the tacit philosophies present in these works, and pose their original organizing frameworks. Emphasis on interpretive skills and theory building, testing, and revising these theories to incorporate the lived experiences of others.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 220 or CMCL-C 220.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 270 Captivity Narratives
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Explores ideas of freedom, containment and contact through a wide range of historical and fictive captivity narratives from the U.S. and beyond. Using perspectives from anthropology, literature and film, the course includes texts about slavery, prison, mental hospitals, and wartime kidnappings.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- ANTH-E 317 Ethnographies of Media Worlds
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Examines the challenges that focusing on the mass media—including technologies, production processes, content, and reception—present for studying cultures. Explores the relationship between media and culture to understand people's experiences and conceptualization of time, space, communities, families, and identities.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 317 or CMCL-C 310.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 338 Stigma: Culture, Identity and the Abject
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Stigma theory speaks broadly to the nature of the social relationships that create marked categories of persons. Examines both theory and particular cases of stigmatized persons and groups with an aim toward identifying historically effective strategies for combating stigmas of race, class, gender, sexuality, and physical ability.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 338 or CMCL-C 333.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 383 A World of Work
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Ethnographic study of how people learn to work in a range of real jobs around the world. Focuses on how people learn to do a job and get along with co-workers in different cultures. Shows how much a country's legal or economic policies can affect daily work lives.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 386 Performance, Culture, and Power in the Middle East and North Africa
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Middle Eastern cultures are well known for their rich and diverse performance practices. Taking an ethnographic perspective, this course views performances as communicative events through which social relations are organized. It explores how performances both participate in local arrangements of power and constitute responses to colonialism, nationalism, and globalization.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 386 or CMCL-C 422.
  
  Spring 2021CASE GCCcourse
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- ANTH-E 415 Topics in Communication and Culture in Comparative Perspective
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Cross-cultural exploration of communication systems, ranging from face-to-face interaction to mediated forms of communication, with an emphasis on their cultural foundations and social organization.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in ANTH-E 415 and CMCL-C 415.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 422 Native American and Indigenous Media
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Study of contemporary Native American and global indigenous representation and communication, including oral performance and media. Explores the poetics and politics of media and performance in the context of indigenous histories, cultures, and experiences of colonization. Examines the use of performance forms as symbolic resources in literature, film, the Internet, music and television. Addresses intersections of gender, class and race in indigenous media worlds.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 422 or CMCL-C 430.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 432 Cultures of Democracy
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Examines the role of culture in how democracies are practiced. Ethnographic focus varies and includes cross-cultural comparisons of political speech, voting, and democratic representation in different cultures. Particular attention is paid to the dilemmas surrounding the exportation of democracy, especially to the Middle East, Africa, South Africa, the Pacific, and the Balkans.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 432 or CMCL-C 446.
  
  Spring 2021CASE GCCcourse
- ANTH-E 437 Power and Violence: Political Systems in Ethnographic Perspective
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Different political systems are founded and maintained by varying combinations of overt violence and more subtle workings of ideas and ideologies. Through cross-cultural case studies, the course examines how coercion, persuasion, consensus, and dissent operate in and through the politics and performances of everyday life.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 437 or CMCL-C 417.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 438 Communication in the Digital Age
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Examines the everyday issues surrounding public speech in new media: how people establish appropriate behavior in new media and respond to new possibilities for deceptive behavior; how ideas of what counts as 'public' and 'private' change as the result of changes in the way communication circulates; why scholars believe public speech and democracy are so intertwined.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 438 or CMCL-C 429.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-E 454 India Lost and Found in Diasporic Feminist Films
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Uses an historical and ethnographic approach to study the films and related readings of Indian diasporic filmmakers from the 1980s to the present. Focuses on the films of two prolific feminist filmmakers, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 460 The Arts in Anthropology
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Visual art, music, dance, drama, and oral literature, viewed as structural entities, as aspects of human behavior, and in terms of their anthropological context.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with different topics for a maximum of 9 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 463 Anthropology of Dance
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Techniques of dance research, bibliographic and archival sources, historical and comparative studies, function and structure of dance, distribution of dance styles, and symbolic aspects of dance performance. A variety of dance forms will be considered in their social and cultural contexts.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ANTH-E 485 Art and Craft of Ethnography
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Ethnography is the defining core of social and cultural anthropology; field research is at the heart of ethnography. The definition and purpose of ethnography, the role of ethnographer, voice, ethics, and modes of presentation, standards, craft, art, and evaluation are examined through specific cases and exemplary ethnographies.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-L 200 Language and Culture
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  An introduction to the study of language and its relations to the rest of culture.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-L 208 Ways of Speaking
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Exploration in comparative perspective of the social use of language, with a focus on the interrelationships among verbal form, social function, and cultural meaning in ways of speaking.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-L 208 or CMCL-C 229.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ANTH-L 314 Performance as Communicative Practice
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Introduction to performance as a communicative practice, focusing on performance as a special artistic mode of communication and performance and as a special class of display events in which the values and symbols of a culture are enacted before an audience.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-L 314 or CMCL-C 313.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
  
  ANTH-L 400 Topical Seminar in the Ethnography of Communication
  
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Current issues in linguistic anthropology, designed to acquaint the student with readings and points of view not covered in the introductory courses. Topics such as languages of the world, variation in language, problems in linguistic structure, and culture and communication. Topic varies.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 9 credit hours.
- ANTH-L 410 Language and Society in Central Eurasia
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  This seminar explores how language is used to accomplish economic, political, and sociocultural ends in Central Eurasia. Topics covered include multilingualism; regional ethnolinguistic categories; the relationship between language policy and nationalities policy; gendered language; code choice in interactions; the politics of translation; poetics; standardization; and language shift, endangerment, and revitalization.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of ANTH-L 410 or CEUS-R 492.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ENG-R 212 Communicating Sustainability
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  'Sustainability' is the capacity to negotiate environmental, social, and economic needs and desires for current and future generations. Traces historical and global discourses of sustainability; defines key terms and frames sustainability; engages related concepts of democracy, citizenship, and community; and develops critical thinking, research, and communication skills.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of CMCL-C 212 or ENG-R 212.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- ENG-R 228 Argumentation and Public Advocacy
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Reasoning, evidence, and argument in public discourse. Study of forms of argument. Practice in argumentative speaking.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of CMCL-C 228 or ENG-R 228.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- ENG-R 348 Environmental Communication
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  This class is grounded in the perspective that symbolic and natural systems are mutually constituted and therefore, the ways we communicate about and with the environment are vital to examine for a sustainable and just future. The focus of the class may vary to engage topics such as environmental tourism or environmental disasters.
  
  Repeatability
  
  Credit given for only one of CMCL-C 348 or ENG-R 348.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- FOLK-F 141 Urban Legend
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Urban legends are modern adaptations of older stories told in daily discourse, depicted in television, film and novels. Explores the defining features of urban legends: their cultural history, themes and role as cultural commentary; their popularity on the internet, in the news, and in popular culture.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
  
  Spring 2021CASE DUScourse
- FOLK-F 205 Folklore in Video and Film
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Acquaints students with a few of the current systems of folk belief diffused, reinforced, and, in some cases, originated by film and video, both in the form of the documentary and the feature-length drama. Aids students in the process of thinking and writing critically about the content, meaning, and social function of these modern forms of information systems.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- FOLK-F 252 Folklore and the Humanities
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Basic theoretical approaches to the study of folklore, emphasizing the relationship to other humanistic disciplines such as literary and religious studies and history.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- FOLK-F 253 Folklore and the Social Sciences
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Basic theoretical approaches to the study of folklore, emphasizing the relationship to other social science disciplines such as semiotics and anthropology.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- FOLK-F 256 The Supernatural and Folklore
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Examines patterns of belief and the features of supernatural folklore to understand the nature of surviving and declining tradition. Focuses on the phenomenological features of supernatural traditions; explanatory frameworks and their internal logic; means of developing and maintaining belief; functions and structures of belief traditions; and relationships between genres of belief. Emphasis on the ethnography of belief systems.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- FOLK-F 307 Middle Eastern Folklore/Folklife/Folk Music
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Folk traditions of the Arabic, Persian- and Turkish-speaking peoples, including folk festivals, rituals, folk dances, music, theatre, and verbal behaviors; the influence of Islam.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
  HIST-E 340 African Popular Culture
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  African popular culture (music, sports, fashion) is the lens used to explore how Africans responded to and shaped life under colonial rule and after independence. We consider questions like: What is the relationship between popular culture and politics? How does popular culture change how we think about colonialism and independence?
  
  Spring 2021CASE GCCcourse
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
  HIST-J 300 Seminar In History
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  The refinement of students' skills as historians; will focus on the skills of writing, interpretation, historical reasoning, discussion, and research.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic and the authorization of the history undergraduate advisor for a total of 6 credit hours.
  
  Spring 2021CASE SHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
  MSCH-F 392 Media Genres
  Credits
  
  3
  
  Prerequisites
  
  None
  
  Description
  
  Topic varies. Analysis of typical genres, such as westerns, situation comedies, documentaries, etc. Problems of generic description or definition: themes, conventions, iconography peculiar to given genres.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 392 and MSCH-F 392.
  
  Spring 2021CASE AHcourse
- (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
  
  MSCH-J 460 Topics Colloquium
  
  Credits
  
  1–4 credit hours
  
  Prerequisites
  
  At least junior standing; and consent of instructor
  
  Description
  
  Topical seminar dealing with changing subjects and materials from term to term.
  
  Repeatability
  
  May be repeated for credit with different topics in JOUR-J 460 and MSCH-J 460.
- 15 credit hours must be at the 300–499 level.
Anthropology. 18 credit hours must be in Anthropology (includes the Introductory Sequence courses).
Residency. 18 credit hours must be completed in courses taken though the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
GPA and Hours Requirements.
1. At least 9 credit hours in the certificate must be completed in courses taken through the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
2. At least 9 credit hours in the certificate must be completed at the 300–499 level.
3. Except for the GPA requirement, a grade of C- or higher is required for a course to count toward a requirement in the certificate.
4. A GPA of at least 2.000 for all courses taken in the certificate—including those where a grade lower than C- is earned—is required.
5. Exceptions to certificate requirements may be made with the approval of the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies, subject to final approval by the College of Arts and Sciences.

College of Arts + Sciences Bulletin

Majors, minors + certificates

Certificate in the Ethnography of Communication (ETHCOMACRT)Department of Anthropology

Description

Certificate requirements

Additional links and resources