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Dr Nicholas Long OLD.6.02 and Prof Catherine Allerton OLD.1.10

This course will first be available during the 2025/26 academic session.

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Singapore) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course provides an examination of the cultural frameworks and social aspects of gender roles, personhood, human sexuality, and kinship systems, analysed through ethnographic examples from a diverse range of settings. It aims to equip students with the analytical tools to engage in theoretical debates concerning core concepts such as ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’, 'kinship', 'marriage',, and the relationship between 'nature' and 'culture', as well as exploring how the experiences of gender, sexuality, and kinship vary according to the regimes of politics, law and materiality in which they are embedded. The course charts the history of anthropological debates on sex and gender, sexuality, kinship, and relatedness, , and familiarises students with a range of contemporary approaches to these themes, placing ethnographic materials into a critical dialogue with recent developments in theoretical fields such as feminist theory, queer theory, the anthropology of colonialism, cognitive science, and psychoanalysis.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the LT.

Carsten, J. After Kinship (2003); Chodorow, N. The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender and Culture (1999); Donnan, H. and Magowan, F. The Anthropology of Sex (2010); Levi-Strauss, C. The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969); Lewin, E and Leap, W. Out in public: reinventing lesbian/gay anthropology in a globalizing world (2009); Moore, H. L. A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender (1994); Stone, L. Kinship and Gender: An Introduction (2006).

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.