Courses in Anthropology

Biological anthropology studies the biological diversity of our species and the evolutionary history that has led us to our present condition. The course includes: (1) examination of the genetics underlying evolution and the mechanisms by which change occurs; (2) variation and adaptation among living humans; (3) living primate populations as keys to understanding our evolutionary past; and (4) human evolution. This course is designed to expose students to the breadth of biological anthropology and to prepare them for upper-level classes in anthropology and related disciplines. Enrollment limited to first-year students and sophomores.

Today people increasingly live in highly industrialized and urban civilizations. But how long have humans had "civilization"? What is "civilization" and how can it be recognized? This course will address these questions, first, by looking at the basic elements of archaeology and its place in anthropology. Some of the topics we will cover include the history of archaeology, fundamental aspects of fieldwork and analysis, and the prehistoric record from the first humans to the origins of civilization.

This course introduces students to the discipline that studies and compares other cultures. Students learn about the main concepts used in anthropology and how anthropologists conduct research, while also discovering how people live in other times and places. Students will learn about theories that provide frameworks for understanding and comparing cultures. Ethnographies--descriptions of life in particular places--give students factual materials with which to apply and critique such theories. Through this introduction to the study of culture in general, and an exposure to specific cultures, students inevitably come to re-examine some of the premises of their own culture.

Never before in any period of history have so many people had access to so many mass-mediated images. Yet in spite of this proliferation, anthropology has been a recent newcomer to the study of mass media production, distribution, and consumption as situated human activities. Uniquely suited to enter this discourse, an anthropological approach to mass media transcends the limitations of traditional media scholarship by paying closer attention to the broader social and political contexts in which they are embedded. This course endeavors to develop an anthropological understanding of contemporary forms of cultural communication and reception by analyzing the flow of media images across national borders, and particular emphasis is given to the local impact of media culture in different parts of the world. Students will examine the role of mass media in forging national and ethnic identities, body images, sexuality and gender, and experiences of war and violence. No prerequisites but ANTH 113 is strongly recommended. Offered every two years.

Maya hieroglyphic texts from the Classic period (CE 400-900) attract attention due to their beauty and the possibility of learning about Maya history, at least as conveyed in the words of the successful elites. The first half of the course will be devoted to methods of analysis: dating and calendrics, the structure of Maya discourse, phoneticism in the writing system, and basic vocabulary. The second part will consider texts from Yaxchilan, Tikal, Caracol, Uaxactun, Copan, Chichen Itza, and other sites. Topics covered will be the origins and growth of kingship, dynastic succession, warfare, religion, and the role of women among the elite. Prerequisite: ANTH 112 or 113, or permission of the instructor. Course offered when there is sufficient demand.

Music is deeply embedded in many forms of individual and cultural identity. This upper-level seminar examines the relationship of music to notions of cultural rights and human rights. Using case studies from a variety of music cultures, we will explore topics such as music censorship, music and warfare, music and disability, and music and AIDS awareness, among others. Engaging with literature from ethnomusicology, anthropology, and other social sciences we will explore the following questions: What roles does music and related forms of expressive culture play in notions of human rights? Who owns music? Who has the right to transform music? What are the artistic, political, and economic reasons for these transformations? What are their implications? What constitutes a cultural-rights violation? What role, if any, should regulatory agencies have with regard to monitoring cultural rights? Prerequisites: permission of instructorand any one of ANTH 113, MUSC 102, or MUSC 103.

This course investigates the central role food plays in human biology and culture. We will explore food from an evolutionary perspective, examining nutritional variations in subsistence strategies ranging from foraging to industrial societies. Students will come to understand that food is a cultural construction as we look at the symbolism and utilization of food from a cross-cultural perspective. Finally, utilizing a biocultural perspective, we will combine our understanding of biology and culture to see the effects of social, political, and economic issues on human nutrition. A variety of methods are utilized in nutritional anthropology, ranging from ethnographic techniques to methods in biological anthropology for assessing the impact of nutrition on human biology. Throughout the semester, students will become familiar with the variety of approaches used to study nutritional anthropology. Prerequisite: ANTH 111, 112, or 113, or permission of the instructor. Offered every year.

This course examines anatomical, behavioral, and genetic similarities and differences among living primates and humans, and the evidence for human evolution as reconstructed from the fossil record. Living primates will be studied as potential models for early hominin adaptation and behavior. The purpose of the course is to understand anatomical and behavioral adaptations of hominins and other primates both today and in the past, and to situate these adaptations in a larger ecological framework. This upper-level course assumes a basic knowledge of the fossil evidence for human evolution and some background in evolutionary theory. Prerequisite: ANTH 111 or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

Africa is a vast continent with an incredibly diverse set of people and cultures. The goal of this course is to demonstrate the complexity and depth of sub-Saharan Africa's past through the exploration of human skeletal and archaeological evidence. Most people are aware that Africa is the birthplace of our species, and we will begin our journey by exploring human origins and technological innovations. Unfortunately, other cultural complexities such as emergence of food production, indigenous states, and the development of long-distance trade are usually attributed only to Egyptian civilization. This course seeks to fill in the missing details of innovation and complexity for the rest of the continent by discussing the evidence for a vast array of societies in sub-Saharan Africa's past. Prerequisites: ANTH 111 or ANTH 112 or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

Although biological anthropology relies heavily on an evolutionary perspective, it is also concerned with understanding the interactions between human biology and culture. This biocultural perspective seeks to appreciate how humans adapt to their environment through a combination of biological, cultural, and physiological adjustments. We will explore how humans adapt to a wide variety of environmental factors, including high altitudes, climates, nutrition, and disease. The emphasis of the course will be on understanding our biological and cultural responses to stress and the contexts in which these can be adaptive or maladaptive. Prerequisites: ANTH 111, 112, or 113. Offered every other year.

This course focuses on the application of human skeletal and morphological data to various interpretive problems (descriptive, comparative, and analytic) in biological anthropology. Topics include basic human skeletal and dental anatomy; determination of age, sex, and stature; developmental and pathological anomalies; osteometric methods and techniques; various comparative statistical methods; and problems of ethics, excavation, restoration, and preservation. The course also includes an examination of representative research studies that utilize the above data and methods. Prerequisite: ANTH 111 or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

Within anthropology, the life history has long been recognized as an important vehicle for learning about how culture is experienced and created by individuals. This seminar seeks to develop a better understanding of the research method known as life history, and of its attendant beliefs and limitations in diverse social and cultural contexts. The course will also address how categories of difference such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, age, religion, and geographic location are experienced and their relevance to personal identity. Equally important, this is a "learning by doing" course, as it will attempt to bridge theories of self-narrative with cultural anthropological research methods. Students will experience firsthand the theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues involved in collecting life histories. By undertaking individual projects, each student will learn to organize and conduct life history interviews, record them, transcribe them, edit them, and present them in written form. The goal is to explore the multiple stages involved in transforming a narrative life into an inscribed text. Prerequisite: ANTH 113 or permission of instructor. Course offered when there is sufficient demand.

The primary goal of this course is to separate the public perception and mythology of the "Indian" from the divergent experiences and everyday reality of Native Americans. A thematic approach will be applied to this study, and topics such as history, film, language, spirituality, commercialism, appropriation, subsistence, and sovereignty will be explored in some detail and from a variety of perspectives. Through a survey of various tribal groups, students will analyze some of the major concepts, methods, and theories used in anthropological studies of Native American cultures; assess the impact that stereotypes, biological and cultural interaction with non-Indians, and urbanization have had on Indian identity; and appreciate the richness and complexity of Native American life as it was and continues to be lived in diverse ways and in different places in North America. Offered every third year.

Central America is the home of some easily recognizable ethnic groups, such as the Mayas and Kunas, but there are other, less well-known peoples. After considering what ethnicity might or might not be, we will learn about a number of groups: Mayas, Garifunas, suppressed Native American groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Black Creoles, and immigrants from the Levant who are known as Arabes. Studying these groups will help us understand the hidden ethnic tensions sometimes cloaked by national assertions of mestizo identity. Prerequisite: ANTH 113 and permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

In popular thought, sex is about "the birds and the bees" and "doing what comes naturally." Yet anthropology teaches us that for human beings, the natural is the cultural. Based on that premise, this course looks for cultural patterns in sexual belief and behavior. We begin with an examination of the evolution of sexuality. Is sexuality or sexual behavior expressed the same way by all peoples? Why do humans avoid incest? To what extent are gender roles biologically determined? Are sexually transmitted diseases primarily biological or social problems? How do sexual norms reflect sociocultural adaptations? These are just some of the questions we will confront in this course as we examine the functional and structural significance of sexual behaviors in the sociocultural milieu. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Offered every year.

First, we look at how cognition (perception, thinking, and memory) are affected by language and culture. Then we examine how anthropologists have used Freudian frameworks to interpret other cultures. The second half of the course turns to questions about emotions and the self. Is there a political economy of the emotions? That is, how do survival and the dynamics of power influence human feeling? We will look at the latter question through an extended case study of infant mortality and maternal love in an impoverished community in Brazil. Prerequisite: ANTH 113 (13) or permission of instructor.

Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the influences of both biology and culture on the human experience of disease. This course introduces students to the anthropological study of disease ecology and medical systems in other cultures. We will explore the role of disease in humans from an evolutionary perspective, noting the influence that culture, ecology, economy, history, and politics have had in the past as well as the present. In addition, we will look at the efficacy and nature of both non-Western and Western ethnomedical systems and the cultural and psychodynamic features of illness. Throughout this course we will examine the application of a medical anthropological perspective in developing sensitivity for cultural and biological variation within the United States and abroad. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. This course will be offered every other year.

Neanderthals. Dull, dim-witted, hairy, beetle-browed, stooped, savage, primitive, and dragging a woman by the hair. These are among the images elicited from students in introductory anthropology classes when asked to describe our closest relative on the human family tree. Is this an accurate image? Did Neanderthals really have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time? This course will examine in detail the archaeological and paleontological evidence that informs us about Neanderthal behaviors and capabilities as well as the intellectual climate in which this information is interpreted. Topics covered will include the popular images of Neanderthals through time, functional morphology of the skeleton, dietary reconstruction, settlement patterns, and site use. Prerequisite: ANTH 111 or 112 and permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

In this course we will look first at how the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" have been defined within anthropology, particularly American anthropology. Does "race" exist? Why (or why not) are "race" and "ethnicity" the same? In exploring these questions, we will examine both bioanthropological and socio-cultural approaches to these terms. Next, we will look at a variety of groups within the United States that are known as races or ethnic groups: Native Americans; Hispanics/Latinos; Americans of Asian descent; and those of us whose ancestors came, in colonial times or later, from Africa. Lest we forget that even white folks have "race" and "ethnicity," we will look at a new trend in cultural anthropology, whiteness studies. Here we will discuss how various immigrant groups have "become white," and consider current ideas about the meaning of "whiteness." The course will use readings, films, and television as materials for study and discussion; students will be responsible for presentations on various groups, as well as for choosing some of the audio-visual materials. Prerequisites: ANTH 113 and junior or senior standing. Course offered when there is sufficient demand.

This course will provide hands-on experience with some research methods that cultural anthropologists use. Participant observation, interviews, and note-taking are standard methods, and we will consider how to organize and access qualitative data through electronic database management. There will be some attention to quantitative methods as well, including statistical inference based on methods such as unobtrusive observation or survey questionnaires. The difficulties of designing a good questionnaire and of becoming a perceptive interviewer or observer are best learned through practice. Students will be required to carry out a research project, from literature search and project design to writing and possibly publishing the results. Only by actually attempting primary research ourselves do we realize just how difficult it is to make statements about human ideas and behaviors that stand up to scientific scrutiny. It is only through such research, however, that we can contribute to knowledge. Prerequisite: ANTH 113 or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.

Beginning with the Age of Discovery, developing through the periods of conquest and colonization, and continuing into the present, anthropology has embodied as well as defined the Western world's experience with "other" peoples and cultures. Within this broad historical context, this course investigates the emergence and definition of anthropology as a discipline by focusing on (1) significant theoretical issues and "schools" of thought (e.g., evolutionism, functionalism, materialism, and structuralism); (2) biographical and intellectual portraits of several major figures who were instrumental in formulating these issues; and (3) continuing controversies in the elucidation of certain fundamental principles (e.g., "culture," "relativism," and "the primitive"). Prerequisites: senior standing. Offered every year.

Questions of identity, ethnicity, and social boundaries are fundamental to anthropological archaeology, yet they are among the most difficult to address using archaeological data. In this course we will use new theoretical and methodological approaches to examine how groups define themselves, how group identities are formed, and how we can recognize them in the archaeological record. This class will begin with a consideration of the terms "identity," "ethnicity," and "ethnic group," after which we will examine case studies of particular groups, looking at questions of identity formation and maintenance and their archaeological correlates. While most of the case studies will be drawn from the Precolumbian Americas (North, Central, and South), we will also examine identity formation in the Old World. This course should be of particular interest to majors in anthropology (especially those with a concentration in archaeology), sociology, and international studies (Latin American concentration). Prerequisite: ANTH 112. Course offered when there is sufficient demand.

The Anthropology Department reserves individual study for those students who are unusually motivated in an area of the field and who we believe are responsible enough to handle the challenge of working independently. Such courses might be research-oriented (e.g., students returning from Honduras with data) but are more commonly reading-oriented courses allowing students to explore in greater depth topics that are of interest or utility to them, or that overlap their major course of study. To arrange for individual study, a student should consult with a faculty member during the semester prior to when the independent work is to be undertaken. The individual-study course may be designed exclusively by the faculty member or it may be designed in consultation with the student. For reading courses, a bibliography is created, and the student reads the works on the bibliography, meeting periodically (weekly or bi-weekly) with the faculty member to discuss the works. Terms of course evaluation are left to the faculty directing the individual study, but typically involve either a research paper based on the material in the bibliography or an extensive annotated bibliography with a short explanatory essay tying the entries together and situating the debates which they represent. Another option is for the student to write one- to two-page assessments of each book or reading at intervals throughout the semester. The faculty member comments on these assessments and may request periodic reassessments. The course culminates with a synthetic paper that pulls together all the readings.

This course is for students pursuing departmental honors. Prerequisites: permission of instructor and department chair.

This course is for students pursuing departmental honors. Prerequisites: permission of instructor and department chair.