Class Schedules

The cultural perspective on human behavior including case studies, often illustrated by ethnographic films and slides, of non-Western and American cultures. May include some field interviewing. Includes the cross cultural treatment of economic, legal, political, social and religious institutions and a survey of major approaches to the explanation of cultural variety and human social organization. Prerequisite(s): Not open to students who've taken ANTH 101.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The cultural perspective on human behavior including case studies, often illustrated by ethnographic films and slides, of non-Western and American cultures. May include some field interviewing. Includes the cross cultural treatment of economic, legal, political, social and religious institutions and a survey of major approaches to the explanation of cultural variety and human social organization. Prerequisite(s): Not open to students who've taken ANTH 101.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The origin and development of prehistoric peoples and cultures. The concepts, methods, and theories of prehistoric archaeology, human paleontology, and human biology as a framework for examining the fossils and artifacts left by humans. Course includes films and the use of casts and slides to illustrate concepts.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics

Course Materials

This class is a broad survey covering topics such as genetics, evolutionary mechanisms, adaptation, primate studies, the human fossil record, and human variation. All of these areas will be placed within the framework of the interaction of humans within their environment. The course is divided into three sections: human genetics, human ecology and primatology, human evolution and adaptation.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics

Course Materials

Language loss is accelerating at alarming rates. In fact, Linguists predict that only five percent of the six thousand languages currently spoken in the world are expected to survive into the 22nd century. In this course, we will examine the historical, political, and socio-economic factors behind the endangerment and/or marginalization of languages in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. We will also concentrate on the globalization of English (and other major languages), which plays a primary role in language endangerment and marginalization. Additional topics include: linguistic diversity, language policy, multilingualism (in both nations and individuals), global language conflict, and language revitalization. Students will have the opportunity to learn first-hand about these issues by interviewing speakers of an endangered and/or minority language.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Human beings have an unprecedented ability to shape the environment around them, yet the environment powerfully shapes both individuals and species. Two main questions run throughout this course: 1. How does language influence the way we think about and perceive nature, which in turn influences the way we interact with and shape nature? 2. How has our environment shaped the Language faculty and individual languages? To answer these questions, we'll start by asking, what is language and what is nature? Then we'll turn to the way that our environment has impacted the evolution of Language. Next we'll look at indigenous knowledge as it is encoded by language and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, which says that language influences the way we perceive the world. With this as background, we'll look at the language of environmental discourse. Next, using the metaphor of ecology, we'll examine languages as if they were organisms and analyze the ecosystems that sustain them. Knowing what makes a healthy language, we'll look at endangered languages and the connections between linguistic diversity and biodiversity.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

An introduction to ethnographic field interviewing learned in the context of individually run student field projects. Focuses on the anthropologist-informant field relationship and the discovery of cultural knowledge through participant observation and ethnosemantic interviewing techniques. Prerequisite(s): ANTH 101 or ANTH 111 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines issues of health, illness, and healing from a variety of anthropological perspectives. From a cross-cultural perspective, we will examine the diversity of beliefs about human health and sickness, and a variety of healing practices by which people treat them. From the perspective of critical epidemiology, we will wrestle with recurrent problems of socioeconomic inequalities, ecological disruptions, and their impact upon the differential distribution, prevention, and treatment of human diseases.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines issues of health, illness, and healing from a variety of anthropological perspectives. From a cross-cultural perspective, we will examine the diversity of beliefs about human health and sickness, and a variety of healing practices by which people treat them. From the perspective of critical epidemiology, we will wrestle with recurrent problems of socioeconomic inequalities, ecological disruptions, and their impact upon the differential distribution, prevention, and treatment of human diseases.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to Middle Eastern history, politics, and cultural life through the lens of film. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the development of both local and regional cinematic traditions; the role of film in the production of collective memory of conflict and war; techniques and visual rhetorics of ethnographic film; and the power relations inherent in the cinematic gaze. Readings will offer an introduction to methods of film analysis as well as to the political and artistic history of the modern Middle East.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines and critically analyzes various approaches to the study of how different individuals and communities in particular historical and cultural scenarios in contemporary Latin America create meanings about their past experience with political violence. The course addresses questions related to the tension between remembering and forgetting, the presence of conflicting memories and truths and how these are negotiated or not through distinct forms of representation. The cultural analysis of different means of representation: human rights and truth commission reports, testimonials, film, art and memorials will be the basis for class discussions on different notions of truth and different forms of truth-telling. A close examination of these forms of representation will reveal the extent to which they can conflict with each other while at the same time feed on each other, creating "effects of truth" and leaving room for secrecy as a mode of truth-telling. Finally, the course will also compel students to think about what consequences the politics of memory have for the future.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Asia and the Pacific Islands host more of the world's Indigenous people than any other continent -- roughly 260 million out of 370 million worldwide (70 percent). In addition, Indigenous people in Asia generally make up the continent’s “poorest of the poor,” facing systemic disadvantage including limited access to healthcare, education, land, capital, and labor, as well as weaker political representation. In this course, we examine the lived experience of indigenous people in the Asia-Pacific through three analytical frames: their relationship to the state and the global order, their relationship to territory and the environment, and challenges to cultural survival. Along the way, we discuss colonialism and settler colonialism, colonial and contemporary representations of indigenous people, the challenges to both cultural and political survival of indigenous people posed by state formation, the challenges of resource extraction and globalization, conservation as a form of colonialism, and the creation of an indigenous diaspora. The course includes guest speakers and field trips.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Cultural heritage sites, including libraries, archives and museums, have existed in some shape or form for a very long time. Computers, on the other hand, have only been a part of these institutions for about sixty years. Although technologies offer more efficient and cost-effective ways to store and disseminate information and promise greater accessibility to materials, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they successfully facilitate the missions of these cultural heritage sites or the needs of their visitors. Why is this the case? Do digital technologies truly have the potential to decentralize and democratize these spaces? What can they tell us about what we value, as a culture? In this interdisciplinary course, we will reflect on the impact of digital technologies on cultural heritage sites, and museums in particular, starting in the 1960s and continuing through the present. Interwoven throughout the course, we will discuss decolonization, digital repatriation, obsolescence, cultural heritage and AI, and collective remembering. The course culminates in the creation of an online exhibition.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines the transformation of Indigenous religious systems in response to European colonial expansion and how radically new religious movements grow out of spiritual crises of conquest. We will study various types of prophetic traditions, revolutionary ideologies, and revitalization movements that Indigenous peoples developed to preserve their cultural identities in the face of forced integration into imperial systems. After problematizing the very notion of “Indigenous religions,” the course explores how traditional spiritual leaders attempted to explain and resist colonial presence through novel systems of belief, material culture, and ritual practice. Drawing on global case studies, we will focus on religious revolutions spurred by European expansion in North America, Mesoamerica, Africa, and Oceania. Key case studies include: Aztec responses to Spanish conquest, the Pueblo Revolt, the Ghost Dance, Haudenosaunee religious revitalization, the 1920s Pueblo Dance controversy, Melanesian cargo cults, the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing, and Christianity as a Jewish response to Roman imperialism. Contemporary Indigenous traditions of activism and protest against extractive industries, such as resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline and fracking near Chaco Canyon, will serve as a final focus of the course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the broad range of explanations for social and cultural phenomena used by anthropologists since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century. The course focuses on the development of three broad theoretical approaches: The American school of cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, and the French school that emerged from the work of Durkheim and his followers. The course also examines theoretical approaches such as cultural materialism, and symbolic and interpretive approaches to the study of culture. Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing.  Students should have at least two courses in anthropology including ANTH 101 or ANTH 111, or the permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the discipline of anthropology as a whole. It presents students with a theoretical grounding in the four major subfields: archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics. In this class the emphasis is on the holistic nature of the discipline. Students will be challenged with some of the countless links between the systems of biology and culture. They will explore key questions about human diversity in the past, present, and future. Prerequisite(s): Not open to students who've taken ANTH 111.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The cultural perspective on human behavior including case studies, often illustrated by ethnographic films and slides, of non-Western and American cultures. May include some field interviewing. Includes the cross cultural treatment of economic, legal, political, social and religious institutions and a survey of major approaches to the explanation of cultural variety and human social organization. Prerequisite(s): Not open to students who've taken ANTH 101.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to archaeology, the study of the material remains of human culture. Students will explore the history of the discipline and profession, its basic methods and theories, and the political and ethical dimensions of modern archaeological practice. Students learn to examine and interpret evidence using specific examples, from artifacts to sites to regions.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introduction to ethnographic field interviewing learned in the context of individually run student field projects. Focuses on the anthropologist-informant field relationship and the discovery of cultural knowledge through participant observation and ethnosemantic interviewing techniques. Prerequisite(s): open to Anthropology Majors and Minors only; or by permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The study of the human skeletal system is basic to the disciplines of biological anthropology, forensic science, medicine and even archaeology. This class will examine the fundamentals of osteology. It will also explore numerous pathological conditions associated with both infectious and non-infectious diseases in addition to those caused by traumatic events. Students will learn to identify and analyze human bone and pathological conditions of the skeleton to aid in the reconstruction of life histories from human remains. Prerequisite(s): One of the following: ANTH 101, ANTH 112, ANTH 115, ANTH 223, BIOL 112, BIOL 190, or BIOL 200.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics

Course Materials

This course examines the dying process and the ways that humans beings come to terms with their mortality in different societies. We will learn how people die in major illnesses and critically analyze controversial issues regarding brain death, suicide, and euthanasia. We will survey funerary traditions from a variety of cultures and compare the social, spiritual, and psychological roles that these rituals play for both the living and the dying. We will examine cultural attitudes towards death; and how the denial and awareness of human mortality can shape social practices and institutions. Finally, we will consider issues regarding the quality of life, the opportunities and challenges of caregiving, and hospice traditions around the world. Please note that this is a civic engagement course in which all students will train and work as hospice volunteers. All students must be interviewed before they can register for the course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Birds are among the most visible and colorful members of the natural world. Across societies and over time, that fact has generated considerable human engagement with and awareness of birds, which have been utilized for both utilitarian and symbolic purposes.  This course introduces you to the knowledge that different cultures have of birds, and to their formal scientific study in modern times. The topics we will examine include the place of birds in myth and religion; indigenous ways to classify birds; how local traditions relating to birds can serve as models for conservation; the relationship of local and traditional knowledge to the development of modern ornithology; the colonial roots of ornithology; and the part played by amateur birders and other non-professionals in the emergence of ornithology as a science. The course includes a number of field trips, to birding sites to develop our own engagement with birds as wild things, and to museum collections, to understand the scientific value of birds as dead things.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to critical perspectives in museum studies. We will begin byexamining the historical setting within which these institutions evolved, considering therelationship with anthropology and how the discipline contributed to the construction of the“exotic” objects contained within the “cabinets of curiosities” that filled museums. In this course,we will engage in both theoretical and practical terms with museums as a public culture. Thus, we will pay close attention to the processes of collection, archives, and exhibits to examine howcuratorial practices and the gazes of visitors also contribute to making museum sites forcontestation, reconciliation, dialogue, fragmentation, and community. The critical aspect of thiscourse also includes perspectives of groups that are critical of museums but propose alternative “post-museum” and “anti-museum” experiences that enable multi-vocality and defy themonumentality of Western museum practices.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The history of North America before European invasion is one of political upheavals, sophisticated environmental knowledge, monumental architecture, and relationships with other-than-human beings and forces. But rarely do we learn about complex Indigenous histories and the lives of real people and societies in popular accounts of the Native American past. This course provides an introduction to the history, material culture, architecture, and worldviews of Indigenous peoples in North America from ca. 25,000 years ago through the arrival of Europeans. We will draw on knowledge from both archaeology and Native oral histories to gain a more holistic understanding. Subjects explored include: case studies of Indigenous archaeological sites and cultural groups across North America; archaeological methods; problematic stereotypes of Native Americans; ideas of complexity in archaeology; Native oral histories; religion and ontology; power and inequality; monumentality; traditional ecological knowledge (TEK); NAGPRA and museums; and Indigenous / collaborative archaeologies. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The word "ritual" is used in many contexts to refer to types of practice that are considered centrally important, as well as formalistic and repetitive. This seminar-style course concentrates on the concept of ritual as a central component of social practice, within and without religious groupings. Focusing on developing the concept of ritual, we will focus on ritual across traditions. This requires students to 'work with' concepts - forming a conception of what they mean by ritual, and be willing to change that conception when faced with contradictory evidence.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the human determinants of infectious diseases ranging from Paleolithic parasites to 21st Century pathogens. Yet even as we examine the latest disease threats, we will find that their evolution and emergence in human populations are largely based on ancient and recurring themes – i.e. the ways that people have interacted with, and disrupted, their natural and social environments. These lessons will help us gain further understanding into current issues such as animal- human spillover events, the evolution of virulence, and the inevitable rise of antibiotic resistance. This course is especially geared for students who enjoy making connections between the social and natural sciences. Previous courses in biology and anthropology are recommended but not required.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course exposes the complex realities of investigating and resolving forensic cold cases. When the traditional justice system stalls, forensic anthropologists are the vital link called upon by law enforcement to recover and identify human remains left unidentified for years and advocate for missing persons long sought. Here, you will look past the lab bench to interrogate the contributions of anthropology to long-term unresolved cases and the ethics, challenges, and limitations of modern investigations. We will dive deep into the concept of the "missing missing," expose the dangers of cognitive bias, and critique the intersection of media and law enforcement work. With an uncompromising focus on social justice, you will engage with advocacy organizations and novel approaches which are rewriting the rules of activism and identification sciences. By the end of the semester, you won’t just understand the barriers to solving cold cases, you will break them down by conducting an active investigation into a real cold case and promoting public awareness. Pre-requisites: None, but ANTH 115, ANTH 240, ANTH 294 (Maggots, Murder and Media) recommended. Consult instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The recent global success of The Odyssey film has reignited fascination with this 2,700-year-old Greek epic poem. Frequently, The Odyssey is framed as a classic work of “Western civilization,” a characterization that can decontextualize the poem from its historical and cultural context as an Archaic Period Greek narrative describing events set 500 years prior. This course asks: what if we were to read The Odyssey through an anthropological lens, as an ethnographic text through which to understand a different society and thereby reflect on our own? In this class, one day a week will be dedicated to in-depth discussion of The Odyssey, and the other will explore topics including: Late Bronze Age archaeology and the historicity of the Trojan War; the nature of oral literature; Archaic Greek concepts of hospitality, divinity, warriorship, and gender; colonialism in The Odyssey and Archaic Greek society; critiques of the “Western civilization” idea; and reinterpretations and appropriations of The Odyssey including cinema. Prerequisites: A prior class in anthropology or in CMME is recommended, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This reading-intensive seminar examines the range of methodological orientations and representational techniques in ethnographic writing. It takes a critical approach to this topic, recognizing that there is always a politics and an ethics to the ways that scholars approach their subjects. We engage a set of theoretical concepts that inform recent ethnographic work, organizing our inquiry around works that engage religion as a concept and questions concerning scholars of religion more broadly. What strategies have ethnographers used to represent religion as concept, as practice, as subject? What, if anything, differentiates “ethnography of religion” from an ethnography that does not take religion as a discrete object of concern—but that focuses on issues like conversion, translation, transformation, and narrative? These questions are used as our collective portal into a more general engagement with issues of ethics, representation, and epistemology in ethnographic works. As we read and discuss, we will pay close attention to the research methods that the authors employ and the genre choices that they make in representing their material and defining their subjects.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The senior seminar is for Anthropology majors who are working on their senior capstone project and is designed to help students develop that project for presentation. The seminar will also include reading of Anthropological works, guest speakers and discussion of current controversies in the discipline. Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111 or ANTH 101, and either ANTH 387 or ANTH 487.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials