Deanna Barenboim

This interdisciplinary psychology and anthropology seminar will address mental health in diverse cultural contexts, drawing upon a range of case studies to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of mental illness across the globe. We open the course by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness in order to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We explore the globalization of American understandings of the psyche, the exportation of Western mental disorders, and the impact of psychiatric imperialism in places like Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Oaxaca, and Japan. Through our readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological, psychiatric, and medical anthropology, we explore conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, susto, and mal de ojo to understand the entanglements of psychological experience, culture, morality, sociality, and care. We explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to the client’s race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Finally, we explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world are interpreted as temporary, fleeting, and manageable elsewhere—and how such expectations influence people’s ability to experience wellness or (re-)integration into family, work, and society. Several of our key authors will join us as invited guest speakers to talk about their current work. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

This seminar asks how contemporary immigration shapes individual and collective identity across the life course. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cross-cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology, we will ask how people’s movement across borders and boundaries transforms their sense of self, as well as their interpersonal relations and connections to community. We will analyze how the experience of immigration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and other boundaries that immigrants cross. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions? How might immigrants acculturate or adapt to new environments, and how does the process of moving from home or living “in between” two or more places impact mental health? Through our close readings and seminar discussions on this topic, we seek to understand how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. In our exploration of identity, we will attend to the ways in which immigrants are left out of national narratives, as well as the ways in which people who move across borders draw on cultural resources to create spaces and practices of connection, protection, and continuity despite the disruptive effects of immigration. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects, engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and our work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate, as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and have engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems; our collective responsibility to protect the natural world; and our work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches, as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

This interdisciplinary psychology and anthropology seminar will address mental health in diverse cultural contexts, drawing upon a range of case studies to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of mental illness across the globe. We open the course by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We explore the globalization of American understandings of the psyche, the exportation of Western mental disorders, and the impact of psychiatric imperialism in places like Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Oaxaca, and Japan. Through our readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological, psychiatric, and medical anthropology, we explore conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, susto, and mal de ojo in order to understand the entanglements of psychological experience, culture, morality, sociality, and care. We explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to clients’ race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Finally, we explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world are interpreted as temporary, fleeting, and manageable elsewhere—and how such expectations influence people’s ability to experience wellness or (re-)integration into family, work, and society. Several of our key authors will join us as invited guest speakers to talk about their current work. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

This seminar asks how contemporary immigration shapes individual and collective identity across the life course. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cross-cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology, we will ask how people’s movement across borders and boundaries transforms their sense of self, as well as their interpersonal relations and connections to community. We will analyze how the experience of immigration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and other boundaries that immigrants cross. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions? How might immigrants acculturate or adapt to new environments, and how does the process of moving from home or living “in-between” two or more places impact mental health? Through our close readings and seminar discussions on this topic, we will seek to understand how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. In our exploration of identity, we will attend to the ways in which immigrants are left out of national narratives, as well as the ways in which people who move across borders draw on cultural resources to create spaces and practices of connection, protection, and continuity despite the disruptive effects of immigration. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field.

This seminar asks how contemporary immigration shapes individual and collective identity across the life course. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cross-cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology, we will ask how people’s movement across borders and boundaries transforms their sense of self, as well as their interpersonal relations and connections to community. We will analyze how the experience of immigration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and other boundaries that immigrants cross. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions? How might immigrants acculturate or adapt to new environments, and how does the process of moving from home or living “in-between” two or more places impact mental health? Through our close readings and seminar discussions on this topic, we will seek to understand how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. In our exploration of identity, we will attend to the ways in which immigrants are left out of national narratives, as well as the ways in which people who move across borders draw on cultural resources to create spaces and practices of connection, protection, and continuity despite the disruptive effects of immigration. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field.

In this seminar, we will explore child and adolescent development through a cross-cultural lens. Focusing on case studies from diverse communities around the world, we will look at the influence of cultural processes on how children learn, play, and grow. Our core readings will analyze psychological processes related to attachment and parenting, cognition and perception, social and emotional development, language acquisition, and moral development. We will ask questions like the following: Why are children in Sri Lanka fed by hand by their mothers until middle childhood, and how does that shape their relations to others through the life course? How does an Inuit toddler come to learn moral lessons through scripted play with adults, and how does such learning prepare them to navigate a challenging social and geographic environment? Is it true that Maya children don’t do pretend play at all? How does parental discipline shape the expression of emotion for children in Morocco? How does a unique family role influence the formation of identity for Latinx youth in the United States? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, our course material will draw from developmental psychology, human development, cultural psychology, and psychological anthropology and will include peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and films that address core issues in a range of geographic and sociocultural contexts. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course and may opt to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center.

This interdisciplinary course in psychology and anthropology will address mental health in diverse cultural contexts, drawing upon a range of case studies to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of mental illness across the globe. We open the course by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We explore the globalization of American understandings of the psyche; the exportation of Western mental disorders; and the impact of psychiatric imperialism in places like Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Oaxaca, and Japan. Through our readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological and medical anthropology, we explore conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, susto, and mal de ojo in order to understand the entanglements of psychological experience, culture, morality, sociality, and care. We explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to the client’s race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Finally, we explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world are interpreted as temporary, fleeting, and manageable elsewhere—and how such expectations influence people’s ability to experience wellness or (re)integration into family, work, and society. Several of our authors will join us as invited guest speakers to talk about their current work. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

This course will explore how social categories, law, and public policy shape processes of immigration and migrant lives across the globe. Drawing upon recent work in anthropology, sociology, psychology, public policy, critical ethnic studies, and critical indigenous studies, we will examine the ramifications of immigration policies and public discourses that demarcate citizenship, membership, and belonging in diverse contexts. We will analyze how the experience of unauthorized migration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and legal boundaries that migrants cross. In so doing, we will pose a range of questions. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions as emerging adults? How do families navigate transnational migration, separation, and the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation in places like Ghana, Nicaragua, Italy, Israel, and the United States? What forms do resistance and protest take, and how do migrants participate in social movements and social change? These questions will allow us to analyze how different forms of power—implemented across realms that include state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. The questions will also lead us to ask how the categories of legal status or citizenship help us to understand the sociocultural, economic, and political structures that shape all of our lives. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central themes of the course and may conduct service learning as part of their conference work.

Indigeneity, by definition, calls into play complex relations to place. In this course, we will address contemporary Native American and indigenous experience, politics, and imaginaries across the Americas by exploring questions of place, as well as migration and movement. How might our notions of indigenous peoples and cultures shift if we consider migration and mobility as central to indigenous life? How are connections to ancestral territories and homelands implicated in, or altered by, the increasingly globalized world we inhabit, and what are the politics at stake? Our central readings of recent ethnographic texts and case studies will explore a range of experiences, including: 1) the transborder lives of migrants from Mexico (Oaxaca), Peru, and Ecuador who are living in California, Oregon, and New York and the intersections of immigration status, labor exploitation, ethnic/racial identity, and technological change; 2) the links between incarceration and detention, vulnerability, and various forms of gendered and racial violence that shape indigenous women’s lives across borders, including the lives of Guatemalan women crossing into the Southern United States in the past decade; 3) questions of sovereignty, rights, and recognition for the Mohawk Nation, whose ancestral lands span the settler colonial borders of the United States and Canada; and 4) Native American hubs created in unexpected places, like Silicon Valley, that form the basis for resistance, community, and justice for indigenous people in urban centers. Our readings center the experiences and perspectives of indigenous peoples, with special attention to works written by indigenous scholars. In all of our readings about indigeneity on the move, we will invoke notions of borderlands and boundaries and explore forms of geographic, social, and virtual mobilities and their intersections with race, legal identity, and claims to space and place. We will look at the new forms of mobility evidenced by recent indigenous transnational migration, as well as the histories of chosen and forced movement, displacement, dispossession, and intergenerational trauma and resilience that shape the Native American experience. Students may do conference work related to any aspect of Native American and indigenous studies; geographic focus for conference projects is open. Key authors will join us as invited speakers to discuss their work.

What role do indigenous identities play in global social and political movements? How do ideas about native peoples shape nationalist sensibilities and international projects? How do notions of cultural authenticity and autonomy figure in the discourse of indigenous rights? Attending to the legacies of colonialism, this course addresses contemporary representations, performances, and politics of indigeneity in places such as Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and the United States. Through a close look at ethnographic texts on this topic, we will investigate how perceptions about, and participation by, indigenous peoples have figured in environmental activism, transnational trade agreements, educational reform, nationalist campaigns, multiculturalist politics, and international migration. Our course readings will explore how indigeneity is engaged in struggles such as the Zapatista resistance movement in Chiapas, Mexico, the pan-indigenous mobilizations against environmental pollution in Ecuador and North Dakota, and efforts toward social justice in the aftermath of ethnic genocide in Guatemala. We will attend to the role of globalization, transnational mobilities, and technological innovation in emergent social movements, as well as to new imaginings of Native American and indigenous identity. And we will contemplate the implications of indigenous intellectuals’ and activists’ presence as key actors in both academic and public debate. Students will have the opportunity to participate in a service-learning component of the course at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

This course will ask how words do things in the world, exploring the complex linkages of language, politics, and identity in both past and present contexts. We will pose a range of questions, such as: How does language enable powerful regimes to take force, and how do linguistic innovations constitute a creative means to challenge oppression? What role do the politics and poetics of language play in broader social movements and cultural revitalization efforts? How do particular political configurations produce language shift or constrain the possibilities for verbal expression in specific social groups? How does language take shape through specific narrative forms like testimonio, and how do such forms constitute or enable acts of political resistance? We will look at such topics in a range of ethnographic contexts, with a special focus on the Americas. Our readings will address case studies, including: the emergent Zapotec language and music revival in the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico; the lexicon of terror that shaped the political kidnappings and murders of Argentina’s Dirty Wars; the legacies of secrecy, silence, and creative resistance among Pueblo nations in the US Southwest; the challenges and joys of bilingualism among transnational migrants; and the acts of narrative witnessing employed by a range of activists, including political prisoners, Indigenous rights leaders, and undocumented youth. Students will be invited to draw upon original linguistic research as a central part of their conference work.

How do people construct meaningful places in a favela in Brazil or in the hill farms of Scotland? What should we make of “place-less” spaces or states, such as those instantiated through technologies like social media or Hindu yogic and meditative practice? How should we understand notions of displacement, transborder identifications, or longings for homeland as they play out for Sierra Leonean Muslims in Washington, DC, Ecuadorians in Italy, or indigenous Latin American migrants in California and Wyoming? This course explores issues of identity and difference, locality and community, in the context of transnational mobility and the globalized flow of people, ideas, values, and things. Engaging with recent scholarly work in the fields of anthropology, critical race studies, critical indigenous studies, sociology, geography, architecture, and literature, we will seek to decode sociospatial arrangements to better understand structures and processes of exclusion and marginalization. At the same time, we will observe how people’s navigations through space and their efforts at “place-making” create sites of collective identity, resistance, belonging, and recognition. Posed in a wide range of ethnographic contexts, our efforts to puzzle through these issues will require attention to the ways in which space and place are, for instance, embodied, gendered, racialized, and (il)legalized. We will likewise attend to the politics and ethics of decolonizing scholarship on space and place and to the meanings of an engaged anthropology that leans toward social justice.

This course explores issues of identity and difference, locality and community, through the lens of space and place. Engaging with recent scholarly work in the fields of sociocultural anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology, geography, architecture, and literature, we will seek to decode sociospatial arrangements to understand structures and processes of exclusion and marginalization. At the same time, we will observe how material realities and linguistic discourse shape people’s navigations through space and how efforts at placemaking create sites of collective identity, resistance, belonging, and recognition. We will ask questions such as: How does “talk of crime” instantiate racial segregation in a Brazilian favela? What boundaries are created by gated communities in places like Texas and Mumbai? How does public policy in San Diego police green spaces to restrict access by people who are unhoused? What should we make of “placeless” spaces or states, such as those instantiated through technologies like social media, radio, or meditative practice? How should we understand notions of displacement, transborder identifications, or longings for homeland, as they play out for Sierra Leonean Muslims in Washington, DC, Ecuadorians in Italy, or Indigenous Latin American migrants in California and Wyoming? Posed in a wide range of ethnographic contexts, our efforts to puzzle through these issues will require attention to the ways in which space and place are spoken, embodied, gendered, racialized, and (il)legalized. We will likewise attend to the politics and ethics of decolonizing scholarship on space and place and to the meanings of an engaged anthropology that leans toward social justice.

In this interdisciplinary course in psychology and anthropology, we will keep culture in mind as we explore the diversity of human behavior and experience across the globe. We will pay close attention to how culture influences psychological processes such as cognition, perception, and emotion, as well as people’s sense of self and their relations to their social world. Through our readings and discussions, we will ask questions like the following: How do parents in Sri Lanka raise their toddlers to adapt to local social expectations of attachment, hierarchy, and morality? How does an Inuit child come to learn the beliefs and values that structure adult social life in challenging geographic and environmental conditions? Is the experience of grief or anger universal or distinct in different societies? Do all people see color or experience time in the same ways, or does culture influence even those perceptual experiences that we often assume to be common to all people? What is it like to live across two cultural worlds or to move from one place to another, and how does the language that we speak or the communities in which we live influence the ways that we think, feel, and act? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, our course material will draw from cultural psychology, developmental psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology and will include peer-reviewed journal articles, books, as well as films that address core issues in a range of geographic and sociocultural contexts. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

In this FYS seminar, we will keep culture in mind as we explore the diversity of human behavior and experience across the globe. We will pay close attention to how culture influences psychological processes such as cognition, perception, and emotion, as well as people’s sense of self and their relations to the social world. Through our readings and discussions on the connections between culture and mind across the life course, we will ask questions such as the following: How does an Inuit child come to learn the beliefs and values that structure adult social life on a Canadian island? Is the experience of grief or anger universal or distinct in different societies? Why do some people experience cultural syndromes such as nervios or susto and others anxiety or depression? How does immigration influence Latinx adolescents’ identity? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, our course material will draw from cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology and will include peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and films that address core issues in a range of geographic and sociocultural contexts. Students will conduct a yearlong conference project related to the central topics of our course.