39426 - Historical Anthropology (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

Underscoring the importance of a diachronic dimension in anthropological thinking, the course will discuss the history and the core themes of scientific debate concerning historical anthropology and ethnohistory. At the end of the course, the student should have acquired a basic knolwledge of methods and theory of histirical anthropology, as well as the ability to carry on an anthropological reading of various kind of historical sources.

Course contents

Writing, history, and memory in Mesoamerica

The first classes will be devoted to the discussion of some debates concerning the theoretical and methodological statute of historical anthropology, especially those that tackled the topic of non-Western historicities and their relationships with various memory-recording modes. The lessons will then describe the pre-colonial Mesoamerican writing systems and the main indigenous historiographic genres, stressing their forms as well as their political and ideological functions. We will then analyse the main changes introduced by the European colonization and the historiographic genres – Indigenous, mestizos, and European – produced in early colonial times, with readings of some texts recording the memory of the Conquest. In the final part of the course we will discuss the topic of the European perception of the indigenous past and its inclusion in the universal histories written during the 16th and the 17th centuries.

Lessons starting on January 29th, 2018

Hours and places:

Monday, h. 11-13, Aula 2, Via Zamboni 33.

Tuesday, h. 11-13, Aula 2, Via Zamboni 33.

Friday, h. 11-13, Aula 2, Via Zamboni 33.

Readings/Bibliography

Readings:

A. Viazzo, Pier Paolo, Introduzione all'antropologia storica, Laterza, Roma 2000.

B. Two of the following volumes:

Reader including various articles on Mesoamerican indigenous historiographic genres. The reader in pdf format will be uploaded among the didactic materials of the course.

Gruzinski, Serge, La colonizzazione dell'immaginario. Società indigene e occidentalizzazione nel Messico spagnolo, Einaudi, Torino 1994.

Marcocci, Giuseppe, Indios, cinesi, falsari. Le storie del mondo nel Rinascimento, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2016

 

Students that did not attended the lessons must choose an additional book from the following list (or the one not chosen in group B):

Assmann, Jan, La memoria culturale. Scrittura, ricordo e identità politica nelle grandi civiltà antiche, Einaudi, Torino 1997.

Brokaw, Galen, A History of the Khipu, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010.

Douglas, Eduardo De J., In the palace of Nezahualcoyotl. Painting manuscripts, writing the pre-Hispanic past in early colonial period Texcoco, Mexico, University of Texas Press, Austin 2010.

Fabian, Joannes, Il tempo e gli altri. La politica del tempo in antropologia, L'ancora del Mediterraneo, Napoli 1999.

Hartog, Francois, Regimi di storicità. Presentismo e esperienze del tempo, Sellerio, Palermo 2007.

Kettunen, Harri and Christophe Helmke, Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs. Workshop Handbook, Fourteenth Edition, 2014. http://www.wayeb.org/resourceslinks/wayeb_workbook.php

Megged, Amos, Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010.

Sahlins, Marshall, Isole di Storia. Società e mito nei mari del sud, Raffaello Cortina Editore 2016..

Teaching methods

The frontal lessons, in which discussion of new findings and publication will be stimulated, will be integrated by discussion sessions and speeches aimed to inform the students about the ongoing field researches.

Assessment methods

The final exam will be an oral one, with questions aimed to verify the student's knowledge of the themes discussed during frontal lessons (only for students that participated in classwork) as well as those treated in the program's texts. The questions will deal with general themes, and in his answer the student should show his capacity to go into specific details. Among the elements that concur in the final evaluation there are: detailed knowledge of the book's content, property of language, and especially the capacity of organizing the information – also deriving from different sources – into complex answers showing expositive and critical skills.  

Proper language and the ability to critically speak about the books' content will lead to a good/excellent final grade

Acceptable language and the ability to resume the books' content will lead to a sufficient/fair grade.

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of the books' content will lead to a failure in passing the exam.

To sign up for the exam, please use the Almaesami website.

 

Teaching tools

The frontal lessons will be supported by Power Point presentations in order to visualize elements that, due to their "exotic" character, are scarcely known to the students. The Power Point presentation will be uploaded in the “Didactic materials” section of this website.

Office hours

See the website of Davide Domenici