Report problems and inconsistencies on this page to tprewitt@uwf.edu

note, THIS PAGE IS a PUBLIC INFORMATION RESOURCE FOR STUDENTS; course modifications and schedule changes will be announced in class and through group email.

The basic reading assignments, lecture sequence, writing assignments, and exercises for this course are listed at the bottom of this page in the class matrix.

You may contact me in the office before class, by telephone at 474-2186, and by email at tprewitt@uwf.edu. 

Introductions, class assignments, attendance policies.  This class is an upper level consideration of how cultural anthropologists have treated ecological issues through theories of culture and through scientific studies of human relationships to the environment.  The key course learning outcomes are as follows:

1.  Distinguish traditional, modern, and postmodern systems of human ecological engagement.

2.  Define the core concepts necessary for analysis of culture through environmental systems.

3.  Extend the prominent 20^th century theories of cultural ecology from traditional to postmodern societies.

4.  Apply descriptive terms in the illustration of ecological principles in studies of culture.

There are three texts for this class. 

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson

African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South by Richard Westmacott

This is a classroom course. As with all courses, attendance to classroom sessions is very important, since much of the material offered in class is not easily available elsewhere.  The classroom sessions also require attendance because they sometimes involve graded assignments.  Additional materials supporting the lectures for this course are provided directly through links here. Lecture summaries, writing submissions, and examinations will be managed in class and through email. If you must miss class, please let me know in advance so we can attempt to plan alternative means of getting the information or experience you will miss.

EXCUSED ABSENCE POLICY: The excused-absence policy is relatively liberal, but you will not be given makeup work without legitimate excuses for illness or family crisis.  The nature of the makeup work will depend upon the kind of assignment missed, prior attendance, and the reason for your absence.  Habitual absences, especially on assignment dates, will result in significant impact on the final grade.

ASSIGNMENTS: some lectures will be followed by a short-answer response-essay worksheet or exercise that will be completed in-class.  Other response essays are assigned as take-home work. The complete list of graded assignments are as follows:

Two Take-Home Response Essays	18%
Two In-Class Review Essays	18%
One “Annual Cycle” Project—this assignment is to collect information from a published ethnography concerning the annual cycle of life, and develop that material in a circular graph (to be described in class) supplemented by an essay of no more than 1000 words.	18%
Ethnographic Project—this assignment is to collect information about a cultural space (garden, home, workplace, public space) in a diagram that identifies functional spaces and materials according to an ethnographic matrix (to be provided in class), and to supplement the diagram with an essay of no more than 1000 words.	18%
Final Examination – Blue Book Essays	28%

Writing Assignment Short Guide

Each writing assignment has specific goals, but there are a few general rules that apply to all writing.

1.  All of your work should be original.  You may achieve this by developing a question or thesis that requires you to analyze and synthesize information.  Original work cites sources of information or supporting analysis while maintaining an independent line of thought.  Remember that a string of arranged quotations which have been gleaned from sources is not a paper.

2. The best writing will concern what you know.  Information you control which is not “common” knowledge springs from your experience of the world.  It matters little whether that experience derives from action, conversation, or reading.  You must have an authentic experience of any topic to write about it. Experience, however, should include the course readings and other materials designed to “instruct” you of the topic of the class.

3.  The length of anything you write should be determined by your purpose in writing.  No magic number of words exists which can assure that you will express what you want to express.  Of course, the more you practice, the more progress you will make toward clear expression.  The word “practice” suggests that writing is a process involving repetition and stages of development.  You will find better improvement from redrafting two pages five times than you will from writing ten pages once.  Imposed word limits are sometimes an important feature of student writing, since limits often demand careful consideration of content.  Learning to summarize or abstract a theme is a useful tool for developing many kinds of writing.  In a university context, short essays often allow for more and better feedback on the writing process.

Technical Expectations.

1.  You may be asked to include draft material with the final version for each assignment as evidence of your writing process [NOTE: YOU SHOULD KEEP “DRAFT” FILES OR HAND-EDITED HARD COPY REVISIONS FOR EACH WRITTEN PRODUCT, AT LEAST UNTIL THE GRADING PROCESS IS COMPLETE.].

2.   Sparing use of non-standard English is acceptable only when necessary to convey the sense of a story or theme.

3.   You are responsible for preparing your work in an acceptable style, following either the APA or MLA guides.

4.   In all cases, the requirements of this guide must be followed in addition to the APA or MLA guides.

5.   All material quoted directly or paraphrased from any source must be cited with full page references.

6.   Citation rules also apply to recordings, photographs, videos, films, songs, and conversations directly integrated in your work.

7.   Any influence, idea, or theme drawn generally from a source should be cited specifically enough for the reader to locate it.

8.   Classical sources, especially published texts, should be cited by the line or numbering conventions of source. 

9.  BY THE STANDARDS OF 3-6,  ANY GENERAL WORK THAT INFLUENCES YOUR WRITING REQUIRES AT LEAST A “NAME” CITATION IN YOUR TEXT; THE LEVEL OF SPECIFICITY OF CITATION DEPENDS UPON THE SPECIFICITY OF THE REFERENCE.

10. No work should be listed in the bibliography of a paper without appearing as a citation in the paper. 

11. No cited work should be missing from your bibliographic listing.

12. An annotation estimating the original date of authorship should be included in all bibliographic entries concerning ancient texts.

13. The following criteria will be used in grading all writing assignments:

The following table may serve as a guide to how I look at your use of preparatory material (readings, discussion, etc.) and your writing process in terms of content and style.  The essays you write should show some consideration of the course readings or discussion.   Essays are not merely an opportunity for you to express opinions that do not take the course content into account.  The approximate grade equivalents are provided as a guide.  Any area can cause the point value of an essay to drop.

Points	Grade	Background Sources (if applicable)	Typical Content	Style/Grammar
9	A+	well-represented in original terms comprehensive	superior logical development	no errors, superior writing
8.5	A	complete with minor gaps	at least one superior key point	no errors, well written
8	A-	balanced basic sources and original development of ideas	complete, well-developed points	minimal errors
7.5	B+	shows reflection upon the preparatory material	complete, well-developed main point	few errors, very readable
7	B	some key sourced points are well-represented in original terms	expansion on one or two key ideas	occasional errors, readable
6.5	B-	effective use of sources	focus on one key idea	shows effort beyond primary writing,
6	C+	good connection to readings	good continuity and development	awkward syntax
5.5	C	adequate connection to readings	shows good basic development	still needs editing, reflects little effort beyond primary writing
5	C-	minimal reference to readings	minimal basic development	needs expansion
4.5	D	poor or incomplete connection to preparatory material	bad logical connections	poorly reworked from 1st draft
4 or less	F	work lacking in connection to preparatory material	lacking coherent argument	ungrammatical, unedited draft
0	F		missing assignments

PARTICIPATION: Students may earn extra-credit course percentage points for contributions to discussion, timely submission of work, and attendance. These are three separate categories that each receive up to a 1% course bonus. Discussion is also noted following a formal set of rules for contributions, commentary, and response. I keep a record of individual participation in the in-class discussions. In addition, there are on-line discussion topics in which you may participate.

Participation Extra-Credit Criteria -- Each regular assignment is valued in terms of course "percentage points".  This is a substantial potential augmentation of your grade, sufficient to raise a grade one full step in the grading scale. The "extra credit" percentage points are awarded according to the following criteria:

1 additional points for regular substantive participation in on-line discussions
.5 additional point for occasional substantive participation in on-line discussions
0 points for no substantive participation in on-line discussion

1 additional points for timely submission of ALL eight course assignments,
.5 additional point for submission of ALL eight course assignments, even though some may be late,
0 additional points if any of the course assignments are missing.

1 points for attendance to all class sessions (excused absences are not counted against you)
.5 point for no more than two unexcused absences during the term
0 points for more than two unexcused absences

% of Grade	Date	Lecture/Discussion Activity	Reading/Response
	Jan 7	Introductions, Course Mechanics, Assignments, Format. Begin Reading “Steps to An Ecology of Mind.” Specific target essays will be assigned in class as we proceed throughout the entire course..	STEPS-Bateson
		PART ONE: CONCEPTS FOR CULTURAL ECOLOGY	Opening exercise
	Jan 9	Lecture: General System Theory
	Jan 14	Ecology and Cultural Ecology  (powerpoint lecture outline)
	Jan 16	The Problem and Method of Cultural Ecology; anthropology of Julian Steward
	Jan 21	MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY…no class
	Jan 23	Ecology, the evolution of culture, and cultural evolution; the anthropology of Leslie White and Marshall Sahlins.
	Jan 28	Lecture "On natural and cultural structure" comparing the work of Marvin Harris and Kenneth Pike  (tutorial on "etic" and "emic")	reading/response
9%		First take-home essay due on JANUARY 30
9%		PART TWO: EVOLUTION OF CULTURE There will be an in-class response essay during one of the meetings during this part of the class.
	Jan 30	Chimpanzee and Bonobo society, comparisons and contrasts--communication, and parallels with human cultural modeling Gender from a Primate evolutionary perspective	Bonobo Communities
	Feb 4	Neanderthals and Homo sapiens Sapiens; and	"The Minimal Conditions of Argument"
	Feb 6	Guest Lecture: The upper Paleolithic and the origins of language	Autism and Origins of Language
	Feb 11	Lecture: General overview of “adaptive flexibility” and “adapted efficiency” in biocultural and culture-evolutionary examples.
	Feb 13	Material Culture and the ethnographic study of contemporary society. “The Garden”
	Feb 18	Describing “annual cycle” models and developing related ethnographic process descriptions.
	Feb 20	Applying language information to ethnographic process and place models.
		PART THREE: CULTURAL EVOLUTION
	Feb 25	Lecture: David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous and Australian dreamtime. You should begin reading Abram’s book before this date. There will be continual reference to Abram’s work through the remainder of the course.	SPELL-Abram
	Feb 27	Lecture: Chaco Canyon and integrative aspects of Native American culture in the Southwest	Animism and Totemism
	Mar 3	Levels of social and cultural integration "on story and place in oral culture"
	Mar 5	Lecture: Specific evolution or cultural adaptation.
	Mar 10	Lecture: The functions of writing in the development of human culture and “civilization.” Supplements: The ecological origins of civilization and primary states--Tokens and early Mesopotamian trade -- Egypt & Mesopotamia compared
	MAR 17-21	Spring Break
	Mar 24	Examples: Swiss and Himalayan Alpine Villages--a comparative case of cultural materialism
	Mar 26	Examples: Oklahoma Germans at the beginning of the 20th century
	Mar 31	Examples: Rural Irishmen in the 20th century
	Apr 2	Examples: Wet Rice Paddys and Problems with Tropical Development
9%		Second take-home essay due on APRIL 2
9%		PART FOUR: THEORETICAL APPLICATION VS. FICTION There will be one in-class response essay during this part of the course before Dead Week.	Review Questions
	Apr 7	Metaphors of War—Applications of cultural materialism: Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches.
	Apr 9	Metaphors of Witches --Applications of cultural materialism: Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches.
	Apr 14	Lecture: General System Theory, Revisited
	Apr 16	Lecture: General Ecology and Cultural Evolution
36%		The “Ethnographic Project” and the “Annual Cycle Project” will both be due on MARCH
		The week of April 21-25 is the last week of classes, Dead Week, during which time you may not be given any examinations or new assignments. It is against the dead week rules for classes to “opt” to take a final exam early. I expect students to be in class for the closing discussions, and will not give excused absences in order for students to attend or study for unauthorized examinations. All absences during dead week that are not justified with documentation will be considered unexcused.
	Apr 21	Closing group discussions—ethnographic description projects
	Apr 23	Closing group discussions—annual cycle projects
28%	Apr 30	FINAL EXAMINATION Wednesday 8:00-10:30