Introduces students to the variability of human behavior cross-culturally and provides an understanding of the holistic approach to human behavior. Explores interrelationships, in a variety of cultural contexts, between beliefs, economic structures, sexuality, eating habits, ecology, politics, living arrangements, psychology, symbolism, and kinship. May be delivered hybrid.
For students with special interests in Anthropology or the Life Sciences. Studies fossils and living primates, primate biology and behavior. Surveys humanoid fossils. Investigates human evolution and variations of basic biology as it pertains to human development. Stresses the importance of the distribution and diversity of humankind.
Introduces the archaeological record of human prehistory. Explores the earliest fossil remains, and follows the development of humans throughout prehistory. Examines techniques used by archaeologists to find, recover, date, and analyze prehistoric artifacts.
Provides an overview of modern and historical American Indian communities in the United States. Explores political and historical issues of major tribes and Indian communities by region. Provides students with information and perspectives on key social and cultural issues: spirituality, relations with the Federal government, notable individuals, art, literature, dance, media, health, education and activism.
Provides foundational skills for analytic reading and writing in anthropology. Explores how to apply theory to ethnographic data. Teaches how to write argumentative essays that engage with anthropological texts.
Introduces cultural linguistics. Analyzes features of human languages that make possible semantic universality. Examines distinction between phonetic and phonemic units. Explores relationship between language and culture. Studies how language shapes culture and how culture shapes language.
Introduces a comparative study of music traditions from a variety of cultural settings. Presents concepts and research methods of ethnomusicology. Provides opportunities to develop skills of listening, observation, analysis, and demonstration. Utilizes ethnography, archaeology, and personal observation.
Examines reciprocal roles of culture, environment, and disease in human health. Covers nutrition, stress, and traditional non-Western treatments. Explores cultures' use of their own global medicine to sustain health and welfare.
Explores the complex relationships between food, culture, and human action. Examines the cultural underpinning of human nutrition. Discusses the selected social, cultural, medical, political, and ideological uses of food. Examines the symbolism of food to better understand taboo, fasting and feasting, class and social stratification, sacrifice, hosting, cannibalism, and narrative grotesque.
Explores the different ways anthropologists have studied Muslim social life, including attempts to apply Muslim ethical frameworks to the domains of finance, politics, leisure, and the modern domestic sphere. Addresses the variety of ways Islam is practiced and interpreted. Covers Islam in Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. Explores issues in interfaith relations, such as the challenges Muslims face when living in a Christian-majority society.
Explores the history, goals, theories, and methods of anthropological and archaeological research, especially as influenced by the natural sciences. Examines variations in prehistoric human behavior by analyzing the physical remains of ancient peoples throughout diverse time periods and geographical locations.
Provides an overview of the anthropological study of international development. Analyzes development practices and anthropological critiques of these practices. Explores the way anthropological approaches can increase the likelihood of development project success. Explores peasant studies and the many concerns of rural development. Discusses poverty and how it relates to economic, social, and political development. Appraises ways to ameliorate poverty and the role of governmental and non-governmental organizations in the process.
Investigates the prehistoric and ethnographic peoples of the Great Basin of North America through the study of their archaeological remains. Examines how the analysis of ancient technology, subsistence, skeletal material, rock art, settlement patterning, the environment, and archaeological theory shapes our understanding of cultures in the region. May include a field trip to an archaeological site.
Explores the people and cultures of Mexico. Discusses borders and immigration, indigenous cultures, rural/peasant societies, urban societies, and historical/political issues specific to Mexico. Emphasizes awareness of cultural relativity and global connectivity among the diverse peoples of Mexico.
Offers an updated synthesis of the development, key achievements, material, organizational and ideological features of pre-Hispanic cultures of the Andean region of western South America. Spans around 12,000 years of pre-Hispanic cultural developments, from the earliest hunters-gatherers to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Focuses on the modern nation of Peru with an emphasis on the Paijan, Cupisnique, Chavín, Paracas, Nasca, Gallinazo Moche, Recuay, Tiwanaku, Wari, Cajamarca, Sicán, Chimú, and Inka.
Examines key aspects of contemporary American culture. Discusses American values and popular culture, ethnicity, gender, childhood, food, reproduction, technology, crime, and globalization. Highlights aspects of American culture that may not be explored in other Behavioral Science curricula.
Examines theories on the biological and cultural construction of sex and gender. Covers how different communities organize their lives around gender distinctions and sexual practices. Utilizes anthropological theories to analyze cultural practices and concepts pertaining to the following: differences between men and women, perceived sexual deviance and accepted sexual practices, non-binary people and third genders. Explores the way contradictory gender norms coexist and compete within the same culture.
Explores the social and cultural processes that characterize the societies that descend from the Inca Empire--Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru--as they have developed since the Spanish invasion. Discusses contemporary political, economic, and social problems in these countries in the context of global society.
Explores the many aspects of religion, including its history, diversity, and how it relates to social science studies. Examines terms such as myth, magic, religion, ritual and shamanism, among others. Covers how these terms are used to discuss religious and spiritual practices around the world.
Explores religion prior to the Spanish conquest in the countries that were part of the Inca Empire--Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Surveys the nature of Catholicism that was recreated after colonial conquest. Discusses the contemporary religious issues of Andean societies, such as secularity, and how Andean religious categories differ from categories that guide academic research on religion.
Explores the religious systems of indigenous peoples, particularly those which have been called shamanic. Focuses on the classical study of shamanism and the literature on indigenous shamanism. Locates the study of shamanism within a social context that includes social relational and political economic contexts of the groups within which shamanism is found. Poses questions of how shamanism is different from the expanding world religions and compares and contrasts shamanism with non-shamanic indigenous religions. Analyzes at the current marketing of shamanism in New Age contexts.
Explores how an anthropological approach can enable a more in-depth comprehension of Mormonism as a religious tradition and cultural phenomena.
Explores the key issues that have arisen in the literature that explores Christianity from an anthropological perspective. Examines the development of Christianity from its historical origins to its current status as a "world religion." Discusses how Christianity becomes relevant to different cultural contexts in the modern world. Analyzes Pentecostal, Evangelical Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholic forms of Christianity.
Explores classical theoretical positions on representation, meaning, discourse, and poetics. Examines performance of culture and the implications of performance theory for scientific epistemology and methodology. Surveys recent work by anthropologists who grapple with these theoretical concerns in empirical research in a range of global settings.
Studies how societies remember and represent their past and present in various contexts. Examines how societies employ different senses of temporality in these processes. Explores the relationships with historiography and ethnohistory and how anthropologists and historians have dealt with these issues.
Explores the cultural patterning of violence and nonviolence. Draws on theories of human values and ethics to understand how people morally justify different types of violent action, such as riots, genocide, warfare, and ritual violence. Explores cultural processes of pacifism, self-sacrifice, and reconciliation.
Explores the development and reactions to globalization. Traces the formation of community of nation-states and multilateral agencies called "global society." Explores the implications of global society for peoples far removed from this sphere of social organization. Provides an understanding of the world in which nation-states and their citizens are enmeshed.
Explores interrelationships of individual personality to elements of Western and non-Western sociocultural systems. Examines relations of sociocultural contexts to self, motives, values, personal adjustment, stress and pathology using case histories and ethnography. Discusses the idea of self and personality, normality and deviance, and mental health and mental illness across social and cultural boundaries.
Surveys the ethics and methods used by applied anthropologists. Surveys a range of areas where applied work is performed, including development anthropology, anthropology and health, industrial anthropology, anthropology and marketing, etc. Also explores the political, social, and theoretical implications of applied work.
Focuses on the biological and contextual study of human remains recovered from archaeological sites. Presents an updated synthesis of bio-archaeological science dealing with the study of the human skeleton to reconstruct patterns of biological stress, infectious disease, lifestyle and physical activity, diet, violent death, and genetic relationships in the past. Temporal coverage principally falls on the last 10,000 years of history, and the spatial scope is global. Involves the dynamic nature of skeletal tissues and the influences of environment and culture on human variation. Acquired skills will be of value to any students interested in skeletal studies including archaeology, bioarchaeology, paleopathology, forensic science, vertebrate biology, biomedical sciences, and behavioral science.
Explores the interactions of nature and nurture as a complex whole, rather than as mutually exclusive possibilities or separate streams of influence. Includes a significant research project.
Examines the utility of ethnographic research techniques for answering different research questions. Formulates research ethics protocols. Engages in participant observation research and teaches techniques for recording observations in field notes. Employs ethnographic writing genres to compose reports on original research. Develops skills in qualitative interview techniques and the analysis of qualitative data.
Explores anthropological theories of politics and power in relation to human events and social institutions. Provides a critical history of anthropological approaches to understanding processes of regulating and controlling populations, of justifying and executing power, of coaxing populations into self-governance, and of disciplining deviance. Analyzes political processes in non-state societies and the workings of nation-states.
Surveys anthropological thought, theory and its philosophical roots from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Focuses on the concepts and theoretical paradigms deployed in different social and intellectual conjunctures, as well as on the major debates that have formed the field and separated it from other social science disciplines.
Explores social theory and other disciplines. Surveys current debate through exploration of the conceptual apparatuses that are deployed and the issues that motivate current research. Analyzes contemporary anthropological writings.
Explores anthropological thinking on familial relationships and uses theoretical concepts to analyze a variety of kinship practices. Covers the history of the anthropology of kinship. Evaluates the adequacy of different anthropological approaches to kinship for understanding the distinct ways humans organize themselves into family groups.
Presents selected topics in Anthropology and will vary each semester. May be repeated for a maximum of 15 credits toward graduation.
Introduces students to archaeological field technique and a critical approach to the methods by which archaeology is conducted. Provides involvement in all phases of field excavation, lab processing, curation and preservation of archaeological remains, and data analysis. Provides students with hands-on training in archaeological research. May be repeated for a maximum of 27 credits. May be graded Credit/No Credit.
For qualified students who wish to undertake a well-defined project or directed study related to an area of special interest. Requires individual initiative and responsibility. Includes limited formal instruction and faculty supervision. Projects may include writing a publishable paper, passing a competency exam, producing an annotated bibliography, an oral presentation, or other options as approved by instructor. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits.
