The Anthropology of Politics: U.S. Presidential Election Edition

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS	DUE DATES
1	Introduction
2	Ethnography of Elections (1)
3	Ethnography of Elections (2)
4	Ethnography of Elections (3)
Foundational Myths of American Elections
5	Consensus
6	Equality
7	Authority	Choose electoral site for final paper
Mass Markets, Consumers and Consensus Experts
8	Citizens / Consumers Screening JustAdamCurtis. “The Century of the Self - Part I: ‘Happiness Machines’.” June 20, 2016. YouTube.	Assignment 1: Ad Analysis due
The Science (and Politics) of Campaigning
I. Polling and Consensus
9	Public Opinion and Consensus (1)
10	Public Opinion and Consensus (2)
11	Consensus by Aggregation	Research questions for final paper due
12	Representation and Minorities
13	Consensus and Difference
II. Candidate Branding
14	Campaigning for Hearts and Minds	Assignment 2: Imagining a Campaign due
15	The Multimodality of Message
16	Celebrity Politics
17	Popular Politics
18	Politics on the Ground Screening Street Fight. Directed by Marshall Curry. Color, 83 min. 2005.
III. Engineering Majorities
19	Microtargeting	Preliminary observations for final paper due
20	Ground Wars (1)
21	Ground Wars (2)
22	Ground Wars (3)
23	Ground Wars (4) Fake News Exercise Everyone picks one “fake” news article and shares it with the class. Fake news articles can include satirical news, native advertisement (click bait), fabricated news, and legitimate yet controversial articles (see examples in the Readings section). The instructor will print out the pieces in plain text, with no photos, without any formatting, and without author identification. We will read and discuss the articles in class, we’ll try to spot which ones are “fake news” and we’ll talk about the differences in style, content, and intent of each piece.
24	Controlled Interactivity
25	Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age
26	Presentations
27	Presentations and Wrap-Up	Final paper due