ANTH 266 - Culture, History, and Memory: An Introduction to Ethnohistory

3 Credit(s)

This course introduces students to the study of ethnohistory, which has been essential to cultural anthropology since the days of early 20th C. “salvage ethnography”, when young anthropologists scrambled to record the languages, myths, and oral traditions of indigenous peoples before they disappeared from memory. By challenging dominant historical narratives, ethnohistory contributes to anthropology’s larger goal of giving voice to and empowering marginalized non-Western people around the world. Ethnohistorical research involves the compilation and analysis of a wide array of data, including cultural artifacts, images, ethnographic interviews and fieldnotes. In this course, students will gain experience collecting, analyzing, and interpreting primary ethnohistorical data. They will learn to verify sources of information, validate their integrity, and place the evidence those sources provide in its proper social and cultural context. Students will also investigate the limits of human memory and the relative value of observed and self-reported data on human behavior.
Satisfies a SSCI general education requirement.