WINTER 2026

It is a tremendous pleasure as an anthropologist and as a person to see in new, big ways how true Aesthetic Realism is for people of cultures around the world. Inspired by Eli Siegel’s poem “Anonymous Anthropology,” which we’ll illustrate the truth of in this semester—we will be exploring how three-dimensional, how real, and how related to ourselves, the individuals in tribes and prehistory are. As we do, we’ll be seeing that every ritual, every taboo, every aspect of kinship, every social custom, every religious tenet, has, as its deepest purpose, these two objectives: One, for a person to like the world outside oneself; and Two, for a person to make a one of opposites in himself or herself.

• Jan  21   The Anthropology of Here and There, Snug and Exterior

We include looking at a people who herd reindeer and live in snug dwellings in wide expanses of snow: it’s the arctic world from Siberia to Finland. How does someone who knows many nomadic reindeer personally relate the here—snug, warm, and immediate—to the faraway and possibly very cold there? And why do these opposites matter so much in how we ourselves—and individuals across the globe—see other human beings?

• Feb  4   Conflict—in Tribe, Society, & Self

We begin with conflicts in the tribe and go from there. We ask, for example: What do we have in common with a Lakota child called Ohiyesa long ago in a contest with another Lakota child, Chatanna, in the Canadian forest? Does knowing the structure of their conflict—in common with ours—encourage a more exact and kind state of mind?

• Feb 18   A World that Wants to Be Liked

We begin with two individuals—one is Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge. The other is in a tribe called The Dobu, notorious world-haters of New Guinea. Scrooge is described with an exact and rich understanding of his inner life by Ellen Reiss in The Rightness Of #2167. We ask, What ways of seeing the world did these two individuals share? How did it change? What have they to do with us in 2026? How does the Aesthetic Realism understanding of Scrooge add to the anthropology of New Guinea—and the world?

• Mar 8, Sunday (Not March 4)  “We Can Begin Again,” Say the Vegetation Gods

The Anthropology class and Visual Arts class, taught by Marcia Rackow, meet together from 11 am – 12:30 pm Sunday morning. We look at the art and rituals of vegetation—for example, concerning Osiris, green vegetation god of ancient Egypt—and more. We ask why, so surprisingly, did individuals across the globe feel a Vegetation God who dies and is reborn is needed? This includes Dewi Sri, Rice Goddess of India and Bali, and those of Greece, Rome, Central and North America.

• Mar 18   Our Animal Heritage: The Desire to Be Separate—& Together

The human desire to be separate, individual, self-aware—and its contrary, to welcome togetherness and relation to the outside world without limit: Did both arise from earlier animal ancestors? Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, human ethologist, says Yes, in a work titled Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns (chapters 7 and 9). For example, the handshake belongs to many different cultures. Is it akin to animal gestures welcoming the world outside oneself? How deep, how universal, how important, are both desires in us? How much does the ability to make a one of these two desires make us human?

• Apr 1   The Urgently Needed Art Way of Seeing

Ethnographic studies and folklore tell of persons (1) who represent the art way of seeing and fare well; and (2) those who do not and fare ill or cause others to fare ill. An example of the second concerns a Lakota husband, too “proud” to show how much he cared for his wife—and who lost her to a cruel rival. We ask, for each example: Are we looking at evidence that the art way of seeing, because it is good will sheer, has been needed urgently throughout time? —and is now?

• Apr 15   Anthropology Continues to Grow: Papers Given by Students in the Class