Course Syllabus

Subaltern Communities

This seminar will examine and highlight the role of ‘people without history’ not by simply pitching them as rebels against dominant powers but by exploring the subtle and manifold connections that interweave subaltern communities with hegemonic groups.

Key topics that will feature prominently in this graduate seminar include notions like resistance, power, hegemony, subalternity and hybridity, while material culture will naturally constitute the common thread to be woven throughout the course and its topics. The course will involve reading and discussing some of the writings by and about Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci, while we will also read and discuss in class archaeological and (social) anthropological work by archaeologists, (social) anthropologists and historians like Eric Wolf, John and Jean Comaroff, Matthew Liebmann and Alfredo Gónzalez-Ruibal.

ARCH 2157  |  W 3.00-5.20 pm  |  Rhode Island Hall 008

Peter van Dommelen

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