Anthropology

I. OVERVIEW

II. DIALOGUES

Anthropology Overview

Address urgent social and political problems of the 21st century. Since its inception, the Department of Anthropology has fostered cutting-edge empirical, historical, and ethnographic scholarship. Dedicated to providing the interdisciplinary breadth necessary for innovative research, the department builds on its close relations with the entire faculty of The New School for Social Research and the university as a whole.

As members of a leading department for graduate anthropology studies in the United States, the faculty emphasize critical reflection at all levels of inquiry. The department fosters an intimate, dynamic intellectual environment in which students can thrive. Faculty and student work is characterized by carefully conducted ethnography, innovative research methodologies, and an awareness of the importance of historical context.

Students explore analytic and social issues through ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and theoretical reflection. They can participate in faculty courses and projects developed both individually and in collaboration with other graduate programs and centers at The New School, including the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility; the Graduate Institute of Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought; the Center for Research with Infants and Toddlers; the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs; Parsons School of Design; the India China Institute; the Janey Program in Latin American Studies; and the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. MA students can also focus on the Anthropology and Design or the Science and Society subject area.

Degrees Offered

The Department of Anthropology offers MA and PhD degrees. All graduate anthropology students at The New School enter through the MA program. Students who complete MA requirements with sufficient distinction may apply for admission to the PhD program.

Recent Courses

Contagion: Affect, Law & Bioinsecurities Science and Society Anthropology and Time Anthropology and Design Critical Foundations of Social Theory Technopolitics

Recent Outcomes

Katyayani Dalmia (PhD ’19): Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Zurich (Switzerland) Charles McDonald (PhD ’19): Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University Jason Euren (PhD ’18): Senior Scientist, Metabiota Rhea Rahman (PhD ’18): Assistant Professor, Brooklyn College Marisa Solomon (PhD ’18): Assistant Professor, Baruch College Blair Bainbridge (MA ’16): Doctoral Student, University of Chicago Cameron Brinitzer (MA ’16): Doctoral Student, University of Pennsylvania Diego Cagüeñas Rozo (PhD ’15): Director, Center of Ethics and Democracy, Universidad Icesi (Colombia) Elise Gerspach (MA ’15): Marketing and Operations Project Manager, Accion U.S. Network Matthew Rosen (PhD ’14): Assistant Professor, Ohio University

Expressing Immortality Through an Artistic Lens

Abou Farman Assistant Professor of Anthropology

When you first meet Abou Farman, he will tell you he has “all the time in the world.” One would expect nothing less from an anthropology professor who studies secular immortality. Although he researches the ways in which people strive to permanently extend the future, Farman himself remains grounded in the present, attentive to every thought and idea presented to him. His measured words reflect the rigor and intellect of his scholarship.

A self-described anthropologist of “not dying,” Farman’s research concentrates on secularism, death, and the history of death in relation to the process of secularization. Farman states that the anthropology of death can intersect with religion and include cross-cultural approaches to dying but also intersect with medical anthropology and include brain death and organ transplants. He focuses on efforts to extend life radically or indefinitely through technoscientific means, including cryonics, artificial intelligence, and biogerontology.

Through his research on immortality, Farman has been able to cross boundaries and disciplines, working with sociologists, scientists, technologists, and artists. However, “artist” is a label Farman himself rejects. Although he has actively pursued an art practice for more than 16 years, he prefers to think of this work as a method of producing spaces and possibilities that text cannot. For years, he kept his art practice and his research separate, but recently, influenced by NSSR’s focus on interdisciplinary study, he has merged both into a holistic area of scholarship. Now, instead of simply giving a straightforward talk at an academic conference, Farman might give a performance. He notes that his research greatly influences his art projects, which have recently covered topics marginalized by both secularism and religion, like shamanism, possession, and magic. With his interest in artistic expression, Farman has enabled students to work with multiple media and complete nontextual projects.

Although his research is specialized, Farman still spends a great deal of time teaching traditional anthropology to students. He says the traditional approach has shaped his own thinking, even as he operates in an unorthodox space in the discipline. According to Farman, the big questions anthropology raises, from “What is human?” to “How do people relate to nonphysical entities?” resonate today as much as they did in the past, even as the way those questions are asked and answered has evolved. In working with graduate students, Farman describes himself as an “anarchist shepherd,” guiding students without explicitly telling them to follow him. Rather, Farman advises students to look for the research paths that emerge from their own interests and their interactions with him.

Applying Critical Anthropological Theory to Current Issues

Ann Laura Stoler Willy Brandt Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and History

After a career spanning more than 30 years of scholarship on the political economy of imperialism, one might assume Ann Laura Stoler had exhausted nearly all possibilities for research on that subject. But motivated by a deep need to ground theoretical work in current issues, Stoler continues to find new avenues in her work and new methods to rethink how the imperial past and present inflect the racial and political climate of today.

At the start of her career, Stoler researched the ways in which labor relations were shaped by relations of sexuality and gender on plantations in Southeast Asia. This work led her to investigate the colonial history of Sumatra to gain an understanding of how colonial labor regimes have informed those of the present and changed the very topography of Indonesia. As her work continued throughout the years, Stoler focused on how racial categories are constructed, how race permeates the contemporary landscape, and the politics surrounding sentiment as a marker of racialized distinctions. Stoler recently began research on the assessment of sentiment in American legal decisions and how race figures in the judgment of “appropriate” sentiment, particularly as it relates to the expression of remorse.

Stoler finds her work drawing her closer to the edges of the academy, stating, “I don’t think theory matters unless it is grounded in critical issues that speak to the problems in the world today. And that’s how I think of The New School: It’s not a place where you just do theory— conceptual work should provide leverage for understanding what passes as common sense and what practices and conceptual conventions contribute to the inequities we inhabit.” This personal philosophy led her to found the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry. For one week each summer, the institute invites three top scholars to teach on the topics for which they are well-known. Doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty from around the world come to the institute to immerse themselves in intensive “master classes,” workshops, and rigorous discussion. Stoler calls the institute an outgrowth of her teaching and a place where the academic community can feel accountable to the world in which they live.

Stoler, like the rest of the anthropology department, adopts a hands-on approach with graduate students. Both she and the program invest a tremendous amount of time and energy in MA students, ensuring that they are ready to join top doctoral programs around the country. Stoler credits the interdisciplinary nature of the program with strengthening students’ scholarship. She also points to the collaborative nature of the program as a benefit. In the department, different cohorts come together in workshops to share and review knowledge from fieldwork and dissertations, enabling new students to learn from more experienced ones. Together with Stoler, students find unexpected angles and open one another up to completely new ways of thinking and working.