PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Spring, 2001
Dr. Ron Reminick
Cleveland State University
Required Reading for Purchase:
- Charles Lindholm, Culture and Identity.
- Jared Diamond, Why Sex is Fun.
- Gilbert Herdt, The Sambia.
- Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair.
Required Reading on Reserve and On Line:
Week 2:
- Chris. Badcock, “Freud’s Findings in the Context of Evolutionary Theory”
Week 3:
- Robert LeVine, “The self in African culture”
- Don Kulick, “Introduction: The Sexual Life of Anthropologists”
Week 8:
- Ron Reminick, “Symbolic Significance of Ceremonial Defloration”
- Ron Reminick, “Sport of Warriors on the Wane”
- Sisaraw Dinku, “Afar Pastoral Warrior Identity”
- Memuna M. Sillah, “Bundu Trap”
- Meridith F. Small, “A Woman’s Curse?”
- Inga Muscio, Cunt (selections)
Week 14:
- Newsweek article, “Stress”
- Ari Kiev, “The Study of Folk Psychiatry”
- Weston LaBarre, “Confession as Cathartic Therapy”
- Cathy Joseph, “Scarlet Woundings: Issues of Child Prostitution”
- Thomas Adeoye Lambo, “Psychotherapy in Africa”
Week 15:
- Erika Bourguignon, “Trance and Meditation”
- Holger Kalweit, (selections from Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men)
Course Requirements:
Five examinations will cover the course content. The examinations will be part multiple-choice, surveying the breadth of material for each section of our assignments, and an attached essay problem on a particular aspect of the section under assignment.
A research paper on an issue chosen by the student and approved by the instructor, of +/- 12 pages, will be due at the end of the course. For those students familiar with my appeal process: This will not be in effect in this course. Therefore, the student should study before the exam.
However, an extra-credit assignment will be available as an option. The extra-credit paper will be assigned cumulative points which will be a significant contribution to one’s point average. This assignment will be in the form of an original research project which could involve such topics as
- an interesting person’s life history
- an ethnography of a religious service or ritual with the student’s reactions to the experience
- the course of someone’s symptomatology precipitated under stress
- sexual experiences
- a critical review of the course with personal responses to particular sections. The student is encouraged to dream up a topic of one’s own interest.
Although attendance records will not be kept, the student is responsible for any information transpiring in class. Class participation will be noted and may have some form of credit associated with it.
Schedule of Topics and Reading Assignments.
(Total Reading: +/-1264 pages; 79 pages / week)
PART I | PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY |
Week I | Introduction to the course. |
1/15 | Rdg.:
|
Week II | The science of anthropology. |
1/22 | Person and culture in Western philosophy. Levels of human functioning:
The theoretical categories of analysis:
Film: on Chimpanzee social behavior and emotional response dramatizing our instinctual heritage. Rdg:
|
Week III | Methodology and the strategies of data-collection. |
1/29 |
Film: on growing up among the Hamar Rdg: (92 pp.)
EXAMINATION I |
Week IV | Dialectical concepts in personality and culture. |
2/5 | Profiles of personalities in cultures.
and Models for the interpretation of human experience. |
Week V | Love and culture. |
2/12 | Rdg:
EXAMINATION II |
PART II | Evolution of Human Sexuality (what you won’t get from the human sexuality course) |
Week VI | The evolution of human sexuality. |
2/19 | Ecological factors in the differentiation of gender.
Films:
Rdg:
|
Week VII | The Reminick paradigm: The ontogenetic basis of human bisexuality. |
2/26 | Film: female anatomy and paraurethral ejaculation.
Note: Due to the emotional sensitivity of the subject-matter this film will be optional viewing. Rdg:
EXAMINATION III |
Week VIII | Gender issues and the ecology of gender differentiation. |
3/5 | Symbolic meaning of rituals of masculinity.
Symbolic meaning of menstruation and orgasm. Film: on variations of human sexual expression. Note: due to the emotional sensitivity of the subject-matter this film will be optional viewing. Also, no outside visitors without permission of instructor. Rdg (113 pp. Reserve Library):
EXAMINATION IV |
Week IX | S P R I N G B R E A K 11 – 18 March, 2000 |
WELCOME BACK! (now get to work!) | |
Week X | Rites of initiation: social, emotional, and cognitive meaning. |
3/19 | The socialization of gender-specific behavior and mentality.
Case Study: The Sambia of New Guinea. Films:
|
Week XI | |
3/26 | Rdg. (2 weeks):
EXAMINATION IV |
PART III | RELIGION, RITUAL, AND IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION |
Week XII | The structure of religious ideology and ritual process. |
4/2 | Private vs. public religious symbols. Varieties of religious experience. |
Week XIII | Psychoanalysis of asceticism. |
4/9 | Film: on the rattlesnake handlers of Appalachia.
Rdg:
EXAMINATION V |
PART IV | ILLNESS, HEALING, AND THE SHAMANIC VISION |
Week XIV | Stress as a causative agent of illness. |
4/16 |
Films: Healing
Rdg (59 pp.):
|
Week XV |
Sacred journeys to paths of power. |
& 4/30 |
Modalities of the altered states of consciousness. Cultural configurations of spiritual power. Film:
Rdg (111 pp.):
EXAMINATION VI: Wednesday, 9 May. |