Summer Class: ANTH269 An Anthropology of Homelessness
Posted: 4/22/2019 (Local Events)
This summer, one of the Homelessness Research Initiative’s affiliates will be offering a course, ANTH 269 – An Anthropology of Homelessness. This is a unique opportunity to engage with current research on homelessness and public space and develop your own research proposal.
ANTH 269: An Anthropology of Homelessness –
The Study and Biopolitics of Unsettled Communities
The study of so-called “homelessness,” unhoused and unsettled communities has a deep and controversial history in social science research. Such research has been used for advocacy and policy development, to suggest strategies, best practices, and push for structural responses to the root causes of social inequalities. However, separating people according to constructed identities can (re)produce harm by formalizing implicit bias into governing systems, erasing the lives and needs of people who live outside official demographics. In this course, students critically analyze the research and representations of people who inhabit public space. We discuss influential studies alongside responses to their theories and methods, to understand how they may help or hinder the stabilization of unsettled neighbors. In the second half of the course, students develop a grounded research proposal that ethically and compassionately investigates an issue relating to “homelessness” and the habitation of public spaces. Class time includes lectures, viewing films, and small or large group discussions.