New graduate course: The Anthropology of  Freedom
Professor Yarimar Bonilla
Fall 2014
Rutgers University
Department of Anthropology

Open to students from other universities via the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium (see below for more information)

ANTH 604:01
Wednesdays 3:55-6:55pm
RAB Rm. 302
131 George Street | New Brunswick, New Jersey

Although often rallied as “self-evident,” freedom is an ambiguous, amorphous, slippery concept that most often proves difficult to define. Deceptively simple, terms such as freedom often stand in as markers for more complicated arguments about our social world and the ways we deem appropriate to live in it. In this class we will unravel how ideas about freedom (personal, political, economic, religious, etc.) undergird social arguments and projects of societal transformation. We will examine how projects like emancipation, democratization, secularization, decolonization,  nationalism,  neoliberalism,  and civic reconciliation have generated and relied upon particular notions of free subjects, free citizens,  free societies,  free markets,  free will,  freedom of the body,  the freedom of worship,  and the freedom of the mind. We will begin the course with some orienting texts that will frame our course as an anthropology of “embedded concepts.” This will include authors such as Talal Asad, Joan Scott and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. We will then examine foundational texts that have sought to define what freedom can and should mean. This will include authors such as: Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hannah Arendt, Vladimir Lenin, W.E.B. Dubois, Frantz Fanon, and Audre Lorde. Lastly, we will turn towards contemporary writers such as Saidiya Hartman, Uday Mehta, Lauren Berlant, David Scott, Saba Mahmood, Elizabeth Povinelli and others who have examined how notions of freedom underpin societal projects, legal institutions, social practices, political doctrines, and the realm of academic discourse. Over the course of the semester—through both class readings and the development of students’ final projects—we will think carefully about how to construct historically grounded and geographically situated projects of scholarly inquiry that keep in careful tension the relationship between freedom as an object of inquiry, a banner of reform, and a category of social analysis.

Note: The term Anthropology is used broadly here, reading selections will draw from various disciplines and students from other departments are welcome. Students from participating universities may register through the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium, see http://gsnb.rutgers.edu/sites/gsnb/files/IUDC_brochure_0.pdf

Requirements:
–       Weekly reading consisting of roughly ½ a book or 3 journal articles per session
–       Weekly blog posts to the course site

Assignments:
–       A scholarly book review suitable for publication
–       A “mock” research proposal and final presentation. Proposal will be developed in 4 stages (not necessarily in this order): (1) construction of a conceptual field (2) development of an object of inquiry (3) selection of an object of study (4) calibration of methodological tools and techniques of analysis.

Please contact Professor Yarimar Bonilla (yarimar.bonilla@rutgers.edu) with any questions.