Culture, Art, and Technology I Syllabus Fall Quarter 2009 Track 1B. T-Th 2-3:20, Pepper Canyon 106

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1 1 Culture, Art, and Technology I Syllabus Fall Quarter 2009 Track 1B T-Th 2-3:20, Pepper Canyon 106 Instructor: Guillermo Algaze, SSB 277; ; galgaze@ucsd.edu; office hours: Weds: 10AM-12M TAs and their sections: TAs: Tara Zepel B01 and B02 Marisa Brandt B03 and B04 Edward Sterrett B05 and B06 Tim Banham B07 and B08 Mary Gillespie B10 and B11 Katrina Boulding B09 Kara Nickels B12 and B13 About this course: TAs office hours/locations your TA will let you know. CAT 1 focuses on the key question: "How did human beings come to have culture, art and technology?" The course is centered on the human capacity for symbolic representation as it manifests itself in each of these domains. It presents a global historical overview of the general principles and patterns of past human development, and focuses particular attention on the causes and consequences of cultural variations spanning the last 50,000 years of human prehistory and history. The course explores the ways in which forces such as language, art, technology, sedentism, food production, cities, and writing helped shape the natural and created environments of human societies. Readings and textbooks: Available at UCSD Bookstore: Diamond, J. (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: WW Norton. Except for the Diamond book and articles noted as freely available on the web, course readings (as noted in the Class Syllabus below) will be available through UCSD library s electronic reserve system (E-Reserves).

2 2 Course requirements and grade components: 3 Commentaries - 10% each (1-2 pages summarizing readings and proposing questions) 2 Short Essays 15% each (2-3 pages summarizing readings and doing analysis) 1 take-home Final Exam (synthetic, research essay) 25% Class Participation 10 % Cat Events 5% Class Syllabus Week 0 : Sept 24 Course structure and goals: answers come and go, but questions. they are forever! Week 1: Sept. 29, Oct 1: What is worth knowing and how do we know what we know? a. The conduct of research: Is Google making us stupid, broadening our horizons, or both? And, is there life after Google? b. Introduction to epistemology; the role of authority in science, art, and religion. Controversies about how science works. The broad sweep of human history (Part I): biogeographical and cultural perspectives. READ Class: Carr 2008; Diamond 1999: 13-32; McNeill READ Asking Questions (on course WebCT site) Week 2: Oct. 6, Oct. 8. Human origins and the origins of human culture What is culture? Is culture uniquely human? Nature vs Nurture: Where does biology end if indeed it does -- and culture begins? Human Evolution: everything you wanted to know about the first 4 million years or so of humanity in one hour and twenty minutes! READ Class: Ehrlich 2000: 1-15; Lewin 1999: READ Paraphrase and Summary (on WebCT) WRITE Commentary #1

3 3 Week 3: Oct. 13, Oct. 15. The Big Bang or Great Leap Forward of Human Culture: a. Out of Africa (again!): Homo Sapiens Sapiens leaves home and colonizes the world b. Why did Homo Sapiens Sapiens prevail? READ Class: Diamond 1999: 35-66; Lewin 1999: ; Klein 2008: READ Taking Notes (on WebCT) Week 4: Oct. 20, Oct. 22. Human Intelligence, Language, and the Evolution of Complex Cultures a. The Sapient mind: Intelligence and its uses. b. The Language Hypothesis(ses). READ Class: Byrne 1995: ; D'Andrade 2002: ; Crystal 1997: WRITE Commentary #2 Week 5. Oct. 27, Oct 29 The Birth of Art a. What is art? When does it begin? What does it tell us about humans? Singing Neanderthals? b. Prehistoric Art: theories about the production and role of art in early human societies. READ Class: White 2003: 19-60; Hatcher 1999: READ Exploring Ideas (on WebCT) Week 6: Nov. 3; Nov. 5. Agriculture: The First Bioengineering Experiment Early agriculture and sedentism: Why they matter? READ class: Diamond 1999: WRITE Commentary #3

4 4 Week 7: Nov. 10, Nov 12. Sedentism: Why would you settle down? The Near Eastern Fertile Crescent READ: Diamond 1999: WRITE Short Paper #1 Week 8: Nov. 17; Nov. 19. Urbanization: How's life in the big city? a. The urban revolution: why cities matter? Propinquity, information flow, and the nature of innovation in cities. b. Social, technological, and artistic consequences of the urban revolution: an example from ancient Iraq. READ Class: Diamond 1999: READ Using and Citing Sources (on WebCT) Week 9: Nov. 24 (note: no class on Nov 26 due to Thanksgiving holiday). Social, technological, and artistic consequences of the urban revolution: an example from ancient Iraq, cont. READ Class: Algaze 2001: WRITE Short Paper #2 Week 10: Dec. 2, Dec 4 a. The broad sweep of human history (Part II). Does technology drive history, does history drive technology, or both? b. Technologies of the intellect. Is the pen is mightier than the sword?: the diffusion of information from the origins of writing to the internet. c. Where do we go from here?: CAT 2 and 3. READ: Diamond 1999: ; Heilbronner 1967: Final Take home Research Essay given out.

5 5 BIBLIOGRAPHY Algaze, G Initial Social Complexity in Southwestern Asia: The Mesopotamian Advantage. Current Anthropology 42: Byrne, R The Thinking Ape. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carr, N Is Google Making us Stupid? The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2008 ( (8 pages). Crystal, D The Origins of Language. In D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2 nd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp D Andrade, R Cultural Darwinism and Language. American Anthropologist 104: Diamond, J Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: WW Norton. Ehrlich, P Human Natures. Washington DC: Island Press. Hatcher, E Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art, 2 nd Edition. Westport (Conn): Bergin and Garvey. Heilbroner, R Do Machines Make History? Technology and Culture 8: ( Klein, R Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 17: Lewin, R.

6 Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, 4 th Edition. Malden (MA): Blackwell. McGraw, D. Sixth College Writing Handouts: Asking Questions Exploring Ideas Paraphrase and Summary Taking Notes Using and Citing Sources McNeill, W History Upside Down. The New York Review of Books, May 15, 1997 ( (8 pages). White, R Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSIONS POLICY Late assignments will be graded down one grade level (e.g. B to B-) for each day late. If you have an emergency and you discuss it with your TA before the deadline, it may be possible to make arrangements but this is not guaranteed. By university policy, the final exam will not be accepted late. You must submit all assigned work to pass the course. PARTICIPATION GRADES Here is a description of the kind of participation in the course that would earn you an A, B, C, etc. Your TA may use pluses and minuses to reflect your participation more fairly, but on this sheet we will simply show a general description for each letter grade. A EXCELLENT. You are practically always well-prepared for discussion in lecture and for section, with almost no absences. You can explain each reading in your own words. In addition, you have already asked yourself questions about what it means, focusing on specific passages that are interesting to you and making connections between various readings and ideas.

7 7 You express your thoughts clearly and politely, making and supporting specific claims. You respond to what other students are saying in order to have a dialogue with them. You find ways to connect the course material with issues that matter to you personally. You do all section activities with high energy and attention to detail, taking personal responsibility for achieving the assigned goal. B GOOD. You attend lecture and section with few absences. You have done most of the preparation. If you don t understand the reading the first time you read it, you wait to have it explained by the TA. You talk on a regular basis. Sometimes you offer well-thought-out ideas and connections, supported with evidence; sometimes your contributions are merely a statement of opinions or initial reactions. You do assigned activities willingly; but if you run into obstacles, you let the TA or someone else figure out how to overcome those obstacles. C SATISFACTORY. You are present in lecture and section, with few absences, and have done some of the reading some of the time. You occasionally contribute to the discussion; your contributions are opinions more often than they are thoughtful efforts to make connections. You re not a real selfstarter, and you have to be nudged to participate. You do activities when asked, because it s required. D UNSATISFACTORY. You have multiple absences from section. When you come, you re often not very prepared, and you don t say much. You may have a habit of using your cell phone or computer in class to chat or do things not directly related to the course. Playing online poker or shopping for surfboards in either lecture or section, for instance, would be ways to earn a D in participation. F FAILING. You have many absences, are habitually unprepared, or are uncooperative.

8 8 ACADEMIC INTEGRITY You are expected to uphold the standards of academic integrity in all your work. All work that you submit for credit in CAT is expected to be your own original work, created specifically for this class. Where you are making appropriate use of the work of another person, which may include brief quotations, photographs or drawings, charts, special information, specific arguments, etc., you must credit the author of that work by using appropriate and complete citations. If you choose to include in your CAT assignments any data, information, argument or artwork that you have produced for another course, you should identify it as such with an appropriate self-citation, and it should in no way constitute the bulk of the assignment that you are submitting for credit in CAT. UCSD has a university-wide Policy on Integrity of Scholarship, which can be found online at All students must read and be familiar with this Policy. All suspected violations of academic integrity will be reported to UCSD s Academic Integrity Coordinator. Students found to have violated UCSD s standards for academic integrity may receive both administrative and academic sanctions. Administrative sanctions may extend up to and include suspension or dismissal, and academic sanctions may include failure of the assignment or failure of the course. Specific examples of prohibited violations of academic integrity include the following: (although this should in no way be considered an exhaustive list of examples): Academic stealing refers to the theft of exams or exam answers, of papers or takehome exams composed by others, and of research notes, computer files, or data collected by others. Academic cheating, collusion, and fraud refer to having others do your schoolwork or helping or allowing them to present your work as their own; using unauthorized materials during exams; inventing data or bibliography to support a paper, project, or exam; purchasing tests, answers, or papers from any source whatsoever; submitting (nearly) identical papers to two classes. Helping other students to cheat or steal is also cheating. Misrepresenting personal or family emergencies or health problems in order to extend deadlines and alter due dates or requirements is another form of academic fraud. Claiming you have been ill when you were not, claiming that a family member has been ill or has died when that is untrue are some examples of unacceptable ways of trying to gain more time than your fellow students have been allowed in which to complete assigned work.

9 9 Please do not ask or allow friends or family members to write or substantially edit your work. That is both a violation of academic integrity and a shortcircuiting of the learning process. Plagiarism refers to the use of another s work without full acknowledgment, whether by suppressing the reference, neglecting to identify direct quotations, paraphrasing closely or at length without citing sources, spuriously identifying quotations or data, or cutting and pasting the work of several (usually unidentified) authors into a single undifferentiated whole. Receipt of this syllabus constitutes an acknowledgment that you are responsible for understanding and acting in accordance with UCSD guidelines on academic integrity. STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Students with physical or learning disabilities must work with UCSD s Office for Students with Disabilities to obtain current documentation, then contact instructor and TA s to arrange appropriate academic accommodations. For pre-existing needs this should be accomplished in the first two weeks of the quarter; for emerging needs do it as soon in the quarter as possible. To be fair to all students, no individual accommodations will be made unless the student first presents the proper documentation.