What is Love?

Everywhere, love suffuses human sociality. To see how this can play out with many-splendored diversity, we will study two cases, one of a family with an “adopted” American member in strife-ridden modern Syria, and the other of a forager culture in the Kalahari Desert of South West Africa. We will talk about healing, family bonds, romance, sharing, affection and much more. Class members may share at their discretion their own experience as, inter alia, lovers.

Readings: Emily Robbins,  A Word for Love, ISBN 978-0399185854; Richard Katz, Boiling Energy Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung, ISBN 978-0674077362.

Steven Piker is an anthropologist who did field work in Thailand and in the US and  taught for 44 years at Swarthmore College. He has offered 25 courses at three of Maine’s senior colleges.