Instructor: Gary B. Palmer, Professor

Office Hours: S 3:30 - 4:30 and by appointment; more hours will be announced

Email: gbp@nevada.edu

Home page: www.nevada.edu/~gbp

Anthropology is a holistic discipline in which the various subdisciplines (cultural, linguistic, physical, and archaeological) approach the study of languages with different objectives and goals. Linguistic and cultural anthropologists seek to know how language reflects the culturally relative structure of experience, how discourse conventions shape social intercourse, and how language reflects ethnic identities and social structures. Archaeologists seek to learn what languages can tell us about connections between cultures, such as the prehistoric common origin of the Southern Paiute of Las Vegas and the Hopi of Arizona. Physical anthropologists seek to understand the relations among language, gestures, and the evolution of the brain itself. Because anthropology seeks to be holistic, this course will foster academic discourse among students from various subdisciplines and disciplines. Each student will work on her/his own research problem and contribute by making presentations and participating in class discussions.

Since I am in Manila for a conference on literature the first week, I will appoint someone to get the seminar rolling. Ideally, everyone will read everything. Nevertheless, it helps to have one person take responsibility for each assigned reading and read it intensively so that they can present the gist of it to the class along with their own critique.

Since the topic may be new to you, I don't necessarily expect you to have the last word on a particular reading assignment, but I will hold you responsible for generating some thoughts or specific questions that you think need further discussion. Perhaps you can find some intriguing problem, or some faulty logic, or some prose that is so turgid it is worthy of comment. Maybe you don't have the slightest idea what the author is talking about. That, however, does not absolve you from identifying your own problem. Figure out where it is that you first encounter difficulty and raise that as a problem, along with subsequent difficulties that seem to depend on finding the solution to the original difficulty. In other words, I am not asking you to be experts, though I recognize that there may be some among you. I am looking for active reading and a desire to participate in academic conversation. One reason for this approach is to learn the language of the topic.

Responsibility should be assigned to individuals for each of the readings (book or chapter) listed under "Week 1, 2", but not everyone need be assigned a reading. Those who don't get one the first week can take one the next. You may go ahead and allocate those assignments if you want to get a head start.

If you undertake responsibility for a whole book, I don't expect a cover-to-cover reading, but you should abstract the essential ideas, which are often found in the introduction and conclusions, and in the topic paragraphs or summary paragraphs of other chapters. If you are assigned a group of chapters that seem to have no common theme, think about the theme of the week and how these chapters relate to that theme. I especially do not want you to summarize every chapter in a group. A graduate seminar is about thinking, not stenography. I will try to make all the readings available in the office or on reserve, but you may have to try the library or ask me for some items.

The following time-table is approximate. If we finish one section early, we may start the following ahead of schedule. If we fall behind on a topic agreeble to everyone, we may stay with it.

Weeks 1, 2

Week 3

Week 4

Weeks 5, 6

Week 7

Week 8

Weeks 9, 10

Weeks 11, 12

Each student will undertake a research problem determined in consultation with the instructor. A preliminary paper of 5 to 10 pages will be due at mid-term. This will be copied for the class and discussed in class. This paper should identify an original research problem and describe a strategy of library or other research that will lead to its solution. The strategy must be specific in specifying journals, books, or other resources that may contain information pertinent to the various aspects of the problem. A research paper of 15 to 25 pages in length will be due at the end of the term. This research will be the basis for a presentation to the class. A handout of one or two pages will accompany the presentation. The handout should contain an outline of your talk with strategic quotes or data, and it should contain the references that you cite. In the year following this seminar, members should consider presenting the results of their research at regional conferences, such as the annual meeting of the Southwestern Anthropological Association (held in April) and the annual Great Basin Conference. UNLV students from a graduate seminar such as this one won 1st and 3rd prizes at a recent SWAA meeting and both papers were published in the SWAA proceedings.

Should you read your paper or present your results extemporaneously? I often hear people complain that a conference presenter "just read her paper", as though that were a fault. In my opinion a paper should be so tightly written that it deserves to be read aloud, but it should be read carefully with sufficient modulation of tone to avoid monotony. However, this is a matter of style. I would like presentations of final papers in this seminar to approximate conference presentations. Therefore, they may be extemporaneous, or based on notecards, or they may rely on media or handouts, so long as there is a real paper behind them.

Grading will be based upon the quality of written work and class participation. I do not believe in assigning relative grade weights to these activities in a graduate seminar. Outstanding contributions to seminar discussions can make up for deficiencies in writing, and the reverse is also true. However, a grade of "A" will require an excellent research paper, that is, one with an interesting problem, logical organization, an intelligent review of the literature, extensive research, and good grammar and punctuation.