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Winter Quarter Class: Destination Nepal, Ethnography of Encounter + Cultural Resilience

The Nepal Studies Initiative in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies/South Asia Center and the Department of Anthropology are offering an exciting new course offering for Winter 2018.

This course will offer an ethnographic view of Nepal that is heterogeneous, dynamic, and global. Students will explore the historical and contemporary frictions of encounter between tourists and Nepali communities, researchers and shamans, nomadic hunter-gatherers and development workers. Considering the precipitated changes through such encounters, the course will also explore notions of cultural resilience and holding on to origins.

We will be reading the following:

  • Liechty, M. (2017). Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal. University of Chicago Press.
  • Fortier, J. (2009). Kings of the forest: the cultural resilience of Himalayan hunter-gatherers. University of Hawaii Press.
  • Maskarinec, G. G. (1995). The rulings of the night: an ethnography of Nepalese shaman oral texts. University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Shneiderman, S. (2015). Rituals of ethnicity: Thangmi identities between Nepal and India. University of Pennsylvania Press.

This course is cross-listed as JSIS 485A/585 and ANTH 469D. There are no prerequisites!

Time: Tues & Thurs 12:30-2:30pm