Tok Thompson was born and raised in rural Alaska. At the age of 17, he began attending Harvard College, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. In 1999 he received a Master’s degree in Folklore from the University of California, Berkeley, and three years later received a PhD in Anthropology from the same institution, all the while studying under the late great folklorist Alan Dundes.

After receiving his PhD, Tok became a a Research Fellow with the Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he helped launch a new M.Phil. in Translation Studies. He also worked in Northern Ireland, lecturing on cultural heritage at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, and was engaged in linguistic research on the use of Irish (Gaelic) in County Fermanagh on behalf of the Fermanagh District Council and the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, Magee. He has also been a visiting lecturer for the University of Iceland (Reykjavik), a faculty field advisor for Vermont College Online, and is co-founder and co-editor of the journal Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture.

He has published widely in the fields of folklore, popular culture, translation studies, and heritage studies, both in the United States and in Europe, and has ongoing research projects in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Alaska, and (most recently) Ethiopia, as well as contemporary American and global culture.

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This course aims to introduce students to the essential works, methods, and contours of advanced liberal studies.

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Attendance and readings are mandatory. Each student will complete two short (3-4 page) papers, an in-class presentation, and a final term paper. The grading will be as follows:

• Short papers: 10% each

• Attendance and particpation: 20%

• Presentation: 10%

• Final Paper: 50%

Please note that this class will be graded as credit/no credit. Any student receiving less than 80% will be graded as no credit.

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Articles are all available via JSTOR unless otherwise noted. The continuing possibility of other articles and excerpts selected by the instructor, dependent on classroom discussions.

• Nora, Pierre. Between Memory and History:Les Leux de Mémoire. Representations 26:7-25. 1989.

• Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. 1992. Cultural Anthropology 7. pp. 6-23.

• Chamberlin, T.C. The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses.

• Dundes, Alan. “Thinking Ahead: A Folkloristic Reflection of the Future Orientation in American Worldview”

• Sandhya Shetty; Elizabeth Jane Bellamy. “Postcolonialism's Archive Fever” Diacritics, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Spring, 2000), pp. 25-48.

• Michael Brown. Can Culture Be Copyrighted? 1998. Current Anthropology 39. pp 193-222.

• Peter B. Shand. 2002. Scenes from the Colonial Catwalk: Cultural Appropriation, Intellectual Property Rights, and Fashion. Cultural Analysis 3. (available at: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum)

• Rushford, Scott. “The Legitimation of Beliefs…” 1992. American Ethnologist.

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• Foucault, Michel: Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison

• Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

• Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978.

• Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University.

• Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Culture, Media and Identities Series)

• Mugnaini, Fabio, et al, eds. 2006. The Past in the Present: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Catania: ed.it  (ebook: http://www.editpress.it/0602.htm)

• de Certeau, Michel. 1988 (paperback). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.

• New Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society . Edited by Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris.

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week	topic	due dates	articles	books
1	Constructing knowledge		Dundes, Chamberlin, Rushforth	Kuhn
2				Foucault
3	Nations, ethnicity			Anderson
4			Gupta/Ferguson
5	Other points of view	Due: 1st paper		Said
6			Shetty
7	Praxis and  habitus			Bourdieu
8			Nora
9	Cultural studies			Hall
10			Brown
11		Due: 2nd paper	Shand
12	Case studies			Mugnaini
13
14	Future directions	Presentations.		De Certau
15		Presentations.
Dec 06 (Wed)		Due: Final Paper

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Office: THH 378
Phone: (213) 740-5195
E-mail: thompst@earthlink.net