Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Evolutionary theory and processes, comparative primate fossil record, human variation, and the adequacy of theory, and empirical data.

Economic Anthropology (Egan, J.)
Economic systems in comparative perspective: production, distribution, and consumption in market and non-market societies; agricultural development in the third world.

Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Explores what the study of language can reveal about ourselves as bearers of culture. After introducing some basic concepts, examines how cultural knowledge is linguistically organized and how language might shape our perception of the world

An introduction to probability and statistics. Emphasis on a thorough understanding of the probabilistic basis of statistical inference. Emphasizes examples from sociology, anthropology, and related social science disciplines.

Anthropological consideration of global environmental sustainability from the perspective of human cultures and communities. Causes and consequences of population growth, natural resource management, environmental law, environmental ethics. Case studies emphasize tropical rain forests, arid lands of Africa and North America.

Explores anthropological perspectives on issues of importance in an increasingly global society. Topics include emphases on ethnic conflict; identity; immigration and citizenship; religion and religious diversity; medical anthropology; legal anthropology; development and economic change; gender.

Explores ethnography, anthropology's classic method. Students obtain hands-on training in participant observation, interviewing, and other methods, in local communities, and the preparation of research reports. Also provides theoretical and reflexive readings on ethnography.

Focusing on the construction of culture through visuality, this course engages traditional ethnographic films, popular media and anthropological texts to analyze ethics, "reality" and fiction; propaganda and documentary, construction of a frame, the responsibility of the filmmaker, photographer, and anthropologist.

Offers a general overview of the rise of global interdependence in political, economic, demographic, and cultural terms. Considers what drove people from relative isolation into intensified intercourse with one another, and investigates the consequences of this shift.

Organization of social life primarily in preindustrial societies. Theories of kinship, marriage regulations, sexual behavior, and social roles. Comparisons of biological, psychological, sociological, and economic explanations of social organization.

Explores the construction of "gender" in national and transnational contexts. Special attention is given to how race, sexuality, class, and global inequalities shape different experiences of gender, and to how gender structures political, institutional, and social life across the world.

Explores peoples' relationships with other animals, a topic that continues to shape anthropological understandings of humanness, culture, and the social. Subthemes: symbol and matter, nature/culture, ontologies, relations, moralities, ecologies, futures.

Explores ways in which the social sciences conceive of science as a sociocultural practice. Emphasis on literature in Science and Technology Studies (STS), especially writings that concern the relationship of science to space and place, power, and politics.

Perfect for pre-health, science and social science majors wanting to appreciate how science and society interact. Race and gender as biological and socio-cultural constructs are examined. Questions explored: What is disease? What is science? What are social and biological differences.

Introduces students to cross-cultural perspectives and critical theories in anthropological studies of medicine. Special attention is given to diverse ways of understanding bodies, illnesses, and therapeutic practices in our changing world.

Probes culture and politics of the female body in contemporary American life. Focusing on "feminine beauty," examines diverse notions of beauty, bodily practices, and body politics embraced by American women of different classes, ethnicities, and sexualities.

Consumption & Culture (Straughn, I.)
Do we live in a time of too much stuff? Are we poised to enter an age that shuns the impulse to consume ever more material things? Or do our attachments to the products of our labor so define us that we cannot live without them? This course explores the ways in which objects – from the most mundane commodities to exceptional works of human artifice – shape our social relationships, concepts of nature and culture, and our very selves. Does the material culture that we make, use, and discard on a daily basis have its own agency, the power to have us do what it wants? As the internet of things and AI become increasingly more ubiquitous and sophisticated such concerns over the agency of the stuff we produce and consume force us to think about the ethical relationships we have with our possessions. We already think about them, obsess over them, and, paradoxically, ignore them quite a lot. In fact, certain categories of objects are enshrined with certain rights and protections such as archaeological artifacts and other forms of "cultural patrimony." Others are just trash, waste, and hazards to the environment. A key aspect of this course is to provide tools and methods for how to analyze material culture and practices of consumption in order to unpack the ways in which societies both possess and are possessed by their stuff. Here, the concepts of ritual, habitus, and phenomenology become important frameworks for understanding the ways in which we experience our world of things.

Urban Ethnography US (Sojoyner, D.)
The urban ethnographer. Out in the big city, clawing amidst the calamity that add complexity to people's lives. However, what is the point of urban ethnography? Rather than an existential question, an emphasis of this course is to cull through the history of the field and understand the very oft-problematic stance of urban ethnography to racialized, gendered and sexed populations in the United States.

The prehistory and cultural evolution of the civilization which originated in Mexico, including the Olmecs, Aztecs, Toltecs, Maya, and Zapotec, as well as the Pueblos of the Southwestern U.S. Topics include the origins of food production and of the state.

This class examines key religious elements, bit historical and contemporary, that have profoundly influenced Southeast Asian history, culture and the Southeast Asian diaspora. cla both a historical and cultural overview of various religions that have been practiced or are currently practiced in Southeast Asia. The class will look at various forms of animism (such as nat worship in Burma, shamanism among the Hmong and the Barong dance in Bali), forms of Hinduism/Brahminism (including kingly cult worship based on Saivism and Vaishnavism that was a major part of the region's past), Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and the many syncretic ways in which various religious traditions were often uniquely blended together in Southeast Asia.

The culture of ancient Egypt, everything from its mythology and ritual practice to its monuments and every day
artifacts, has captured the imagination of the various civilizations that followed and came in contact with the land of
the Nile. Long before Europeans descended upon the sands of Egypt to hunt for its treasures and give rise to their
academic study, the Pharaohs and their mark on the landscape intrigued Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and
countless others. This course examines this fascination with all things Egypt and how it has become transformed into
both a field of study – Egyptology – and as a scientific, commercial, artistic and even spiritual passion.

Explores the complexities of the sciences and scientists – the interwoven cultural, technical, social, ethical, and political dimensions of scientific worlds from laboratories to legislatures. We learn from the writings of scientists, science writers, anthropologists, and other researchers how to understand the sciences not as a disinterested pursuit of abstract eternal truth, but as a human activity fully immersed in a world of uncertainties, charged histories, scarce resources, differences of language and culture, and the harsh realities of both nature and politics. Over the course of the quarter students will develop an independent research project on a topic of their choice, building toward a short article about a scientist, a recent discovery or controversy, a health or environmental problem in need of better scientific insight, or similar topic of contemporary interest and importance.

Honors Field Research (Jenks, A.)
Students begin or continue ethnographic field research that combines exploratory field research (e.g., participant-observation, interviews, study of archival and documentary materials) with fixed format data collection methods (e.g., standardized interviews, behavioral observations).

Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Introduction to cultural diversity and the methods used by anthropologists to account for it. Family relations, economic activities, politics, gender, and religion in a wide range of societies. Stresses the application of anthropological methods to research problems.

Evolutionary theory and processes, comparative primate fossil record, human variation, and the adequacy of theory, and empirical data.

Archaeological theory and cultural processes with emphasis on the American Southwest, Mesoamerica, and Mesopotamia.

An introduction to probability and statistics. Emphasis on a thorough understanding of the probabilistic basis of statistical inference. Emphasizes examples from sociology, anthropology, and related social science disciplines.

Explores ethnography, anthropology's classic method. Students obtain hands-on training in participant observation, interviewing, and other methods, in local communities, and the preparation of research reports. Also provides theoretical and reflexive readings on ethnography.

Offers a general overview of the rise of global interdependence in political, economic, demographic, and cultural terms. Considers what drove people from relative isolation into intensified intercourse with one another, and investigates the consequences of this shift.

Examines science in historical and cultural context (Scientific and Darwinian Revolutions, Manhattan Project, contemporary biosciences) to understand scientific truths and their limits, scientists as social actors, and vital intersections of sciences with religion, politics, gender, and other forms of culture.

Organization of social life primarily in preindustrial societies. Theories of kinship, marriage regulations, sexual behavior, and social roles. Comparisons of biological, psychological, sociological, and economic explanations of social organization.

Cultural differences and similarities in personality and behavior. Child-rearing practices and consequent adult personality characteristics, biocultural aspects of child development and attachment, culture and behavior evolutionary models, politically linked personality, cognitive anthropology, psychology of narrative forms, comparative national character studies.

An introduction to the anthropolobical study of biomedicine and biotechnology. Topics include medicalization, experimentation and discovery, diagnosis, expertise, health activism, and biotechnology.

Examines human bodies as both biological and sociocultural entities and explores the relationship among mind, body, and society cross-culturally. Topics include embodiment; race, sex, gender, and the body; somatization; control of the body; commodified bodies; and hybrid/cyborg bodies.

Provides foundational knowledge in the discipline of anthropology by reviewing competing approaches in anthropological theory, from the nineteenth century to the present. Covers historically fundamental approaches—social evolutionism, functionalism—and recent movements such as feminism, cultural studies, poststructuralism, and postmodernism.

Looks at the connections between schools and prisons in the United States. Students learn about ideas that push beyond common trope of the "school to prison pipeline."

course description

course description

An introduction to archaeological fieldwork through participation in an active excavation on campus. Students engage with research design and learn the foundational methods of archaeological recovery: survey, mapping, sampling strategies, documentation, excavation, artifact identification, and interpretation.

Exploring modern Iran through film, literature, photography, travel writing, philosophy and social science texts introduces students to important concepts in post-colonial studies, social thought, war culture, religion and media as experienced through the paradigm of a non-Western modernity.

course description

Student drafts a senior honor thesis (typically) with the following sections: problem statement, literature review, ethnographic background, description of the methods, results, and conclusions.