Anthropology (ANTH-GA)

A problem-focused course required of all graduate students in anthropology. Team taught by faculty from two different sub-disciplines, this course Emphasis is on explores ing distinctive subdisciplinary approaches to anthropological issues. Theme and faculty vary

Students explore fundamental theoretical and methodological issues for the academic study of religion, including some of the more important theories of the origin, character, and function of religion as a human phenomenon. Students cover psychological, sociological, anthropological, dialectical, post-colonial and feminist approaches, as well as some problems for the study of religion today: secularization theory and the intersection of religion and media. Departmental permission required

Introduces the principal theoretical issues in contemporary social anthropology, relating recent theoretical developments and ethnographic problems to their origins in classical sociological thought. Problems in the anthropology of knowledge are particularly emphasized as those most challenging to social anthropology and to related disciplines.

Focuses on a group of central anthropological concepts, examining their geneaologies and limits. Looks at the relation of theoretical and ethnographic practices as they developed in post-World War II and post-colonial contexts, primarily in the Anglophone traditions, as anthropologists grappled with rapid social change. Attention is paid to multilayered power relations, social movements, practical consciousness, practice theory, invented traditions, and the production of culture.

This course explores how modern molecular genetics techniques and data are deployed by forensic science. DNA data, especially, have both in reality and in the cultural imagination become a primary tool of forensic investigation. We will look at how crime scenes are investigated, what types of data are collected, how molecular genetic information is turned from a crime scene sample to a probabilistic match to a suspect. We will review numerous case studies that illustrate how genetic data can be used (or misused) in criminal cases, mass disasters, and the search for missing persons.

Introduces and examines the interdependence of anthropology and the study of language both substantively and methodologically. Topics include the relationship between language, thought, and culture; the role of language in social interactions; the acquisition of linguistic and social knowledge; and language and speech in ethnographic perspective.

Focuses on recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of gender in prehistory. Topics include the ideological biases in the inteFocuses on recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of gender in prehistory. Topics include the ideological biases in the interpretation of rules attributed to women and men in prehistory; the impact of major historical transformations known from the archaeological record; and the effects of long-term historical processes on the lives of women and men.

This seminar introduces graduate students to the principles and practice of working in archaeology, both in academic and industry contexts. The seminar’s goal is to provide training through examples on how to create the documents students will need to craft a varied professional self, and the reflectiveness to use it. The seminar also focuses on helping students develop time and work management skills, set themselves up for successful academic development, and cultivate better networks. It also aims to explicitly describe the implicit rules by which the academy, as well as the “real world” beyond it work. By the end of the seminar we will learn how to write effectively, copiously, and professionally. We will learn to give conference papers, write abstracts, perform and respond to peer reviews. We will also learn how to master oral presentations, and to understand the ethics of research and teaching.

Provides an in-depth study of South Asia from the earliest sedentary settlements in the region through the development of food-producing economies, urbanization, and state-level societies in the third millennium BC. Focuses on processes that led to the development of the Indus Valley civilization and its collapse, and the growth of societies on its margins (the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, Central Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula).

Surveys the prehistory of the Near East and Egypt from the earliest occupation to the domestication of plants and animals, covering the period from over one million to eight thousand years ago.

Covers the period from about ten thousand to four thousand years ago, the prehistoric to Ur III (Mesopotamia and Old Kingdom periods in Egypt). The course is comparative and concentrates on archaeological evidence, although written documentation is considered. Origins of agriculture; development of towns, villages, and cities; invention of new technologies; and emergence of state-level societies.

This course’s main objective is to provide students with a firm understanding of the African prehistoric record and its importance for the evolution of human biology and cultural behavior. Africa provides the world’s longest and richest archaeological record. It furnishes evidence for the earliest representatives of the human family, the first artifacts, and the most complete account of the development of a hunting-gathering way of life. This course takes a different approach to African prehistory focused on thematic areas rather than chronological developments. Topics of discussion include archaeological approaches to diet and mobility, technology, climate change, cognition, and prehistoric population demography. The class is taught in a symposium format with specific importance placed on class discussions and debates.

This seminar will provide an in-depth look at the Stone Age prehistory of Eurasia to the end of the last Ice Age (roughly 13 thousand years ago). Graduate students and advanced undergraduates will progress chronologically, beginning with the first hominins to come out of Africa, moving on to the world and lifeways of Homo erectus and the Neanderthals and Denisovans, followed by the second major dispersal out of Africa by the first modern humans, and ending with the Last Glacial Maximum and the warming period leading up to the Holocene. Students will be reading critically from primary sources and writing and presenting about the preserved material culture remains of different periods and their environmental and biological contexts.

Studies techniques used to identify animal remains found in archaeological sites. Practical laboratory work is emphasized. Topics include ethnoarchaeology, taphonomy, and paleoecology.

Surveys the archaeology of temperate Europe from the end of the Ice Age to the arrival of the Romans. Topics include Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and post-Pleistocene adaptations; the origins of agriculture in Europe; the development of metal technology; the emergence of social inequality; and the beginnings of urbanism in the later Iron Age.

The study of disease in ancient bones. Provides in-depth survey of the various ways in which disease presents in the mammalian skeleton. Reviews major disease classes and how they influence bone; how to construct a differential diagnosis; and how diseased remains are used to interpret aspects of population history.

This course offers a critical revision of the history of the genre of ethnographic film, the central debates it has engaged around cross-cultural representation, and the theoretical and cinematic responses to questions of the screen representation of culture, from the early romantic constructions of Robert Flaherty to current work in film, television, and video on the part of indigenous people throughout the world. Ethnographic film has a peculiar and highly contested status within anthropology, cinema studies, and documentary practice. This seminar situates ethnographic film within the wider project of the representation of cultural lives, and especially of ?natives.? Starting with what are regarded as the first examples of the genre, the course examines how these emerged in a particular intellectual context and political economy. It then considers the key works that have defined the genre, and the epistemological and formal innovations associated with them, addressing questions concerning social theory, documentary, as well as the institutional structures through which they are funded, distributed, and seen by various audiences. Throughout, the course keeps in mind the properties of film as a signifying practice, its status as a form of anthropological knowledge, and the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation.

In the last decade, a new field?the ethnography of media?has emerged as an exciting new arena of research. While claims about media in people?s lives are made on a daily basis, surprisingly little research has actually attempted to look at how media is part of the naturally occurring lived realities of people?s lives. In the last decade, anthropologists and media scholars interested in film, television, and video have been turning their attention increasingly beyond the text and the empiricist notions of audiences (stereotypically associated with the ethnography of media), to consider, ethnographically, the complex social worlds in which media is produced, circulated, and consumed, at home and elsewhere. This work theorizes media studies from the point of view of cross-cultural ethnographic realities and anthropology from the perspective of new spaces of communication focusing on the social, economic, and political life of media and how it makes a difference in the daily lives of people as a practice, whether in production, reception, or circulation.

Yearlong seminar in ethnographic documentary video production using state-of-the-art digital equipment for students in the Program in Culture and Media. The first portion of the course is dedicated to instruction, exercises, and reading familiarizing students with fundamentals of video production and their application to a broad conception of ethnographic and documentary storytelling approaches. Assignments undertaken in the fall raise representational, methodological, and ethical issues in approaching and working through an ethnographic documentary project. Students develop a topic and field site for their project early in the fall term, learn to write and pitch their documentary proposals and treatments, begin their shooting, and complete a short, 5 minute video preview/trailer by the end of the semester. This work should demonstrate competence in shooting and editing using digital camera/audio and Adobe Premiere Pro nonlinear editing systems. Students devote the spring semester to intensive work on the project, continuing to shoot and edit, presenting work to the class, and completing their (approximately 20-minute) ethnographic documentaries. Student work is presented and critiqued during class sessions, and attendance and participation in group critiques and lab sessions is mandatory. Students should come into the class with project ideas already well-developed. In addition to class time, there are regular technical lab sessions on the use of equipment. Students who have not completed the work assigned in the first semester are not allowed to register for the second semester. There is no lab fee, but students are expected to provide additional memory cards as needed, and their own external hard drives for backing up their project.

Yearlong seminar in ethnographic documentary video production using state-of-the-art digital video equipment for students in the Program in Culture and Media. The first portion of the course is dedicated to instruction, exercises, and reading familiarizing students with fundamentals of video production and their application to a broad conception of ethnographic and documentary approaches. Assignments undertaken in the fall raise representational, methodological, and ethical issues in approaching and working through an ethnographic and documentary project. Students develop a topic and field site for their project early in the fall term, begin their shooting, and complete a short (5- to 10-minute) edited tape by the end of the semester. This work should demonstrate competence in shooting and editing using digital camera/audio and Final Cut Pro nonlinear editing systems. Students devote the spring semester to intensive work on the project, continuing to shoot and edit, presenting work to the class, and completing their (approximately 20-minute) ethnographic documentaries. Student work is presented and critiqued during class sessions, and attendance and participation in group critiques and lab sessions is mandatory. Students should come into the class with project ideas already well-developed. Students who have not completed the work assigned in the first semester are not allowed to register for the second semester. There is no lab fee, but students are expected to provide their own videotapes. In addition to class time, there are regular technical lab sessions on the use of equipment.

Ceramics are the most abundant, diverse, and imperishable objects of material culture present in the archaeological record. This course approaches ceramic analysis from experimental, ethnoarchaeological, and archaeological perspectives. Topics include the scope and potential of ceramic analysis, range of theoretical and methodological approaches, and analytical techniques archaeologists employ in their study. Students have ?hands-on? experience with ceramics and formulate a research design for the study of ceramics in a specific geographical and (pre)historical context.

This introduction to socio-cultural anthropology is designed for graduate students working primarily in other disciplines, and is intended to give them a grasp of specifically anthropological ways of defining researchable questions, collecting data, and drawing inference. In the first half of the semester, we will consider the 20th century development of some of the basic concepts and practices that have defined the discipline (notably the culture concept, ethnographic fieldwork methods). In the second half of the semester, we will read a series of recent ethnographic case-studies to further explore current anthropological approaches to a selection of specific topics. These will be chosen largely as a function of student interests, but may include gender, religion, education.

This seminar explores the intricate relationship between culture and consumption in contemporary neoliberalizing contexts. We explore the ways in which culture (comprising material culture, spaces, ideas, social relations and practices) is commodified and consumed in everyday life and how processes of commodification and consumption affect and shape different aspects of contemporary life, from the notions of race, class, identity and citizenship we claim, to the spaces we dwell. After some introductory considerations about the making and nature of commodities and the meaning, history and definition of contemporary consumption, we turn to an examination of the politics of consumption and how these processes intersect with the making of class, racial, gender, and national identities. Topics include the rise of neoliberal subjectivities, the creation of global middle class identities, space and geographies of consumption, value and distinction in art markets, and overall issues of space, value and mobilities (of the social and physical type) as these play out in neoliberal economies.

As you read this course description there are approximately three billion people across the globe engaging in a range of practices, activities, and encounters in online fora. In this graduate level seminar, we will read selected ethnographic and theoretical texts and reflect on our own quotidian ‘digital’ practices, to critically engage with the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) across a range of geographic and social locations. A key part of the work in our time together will be to contextualize platform based communicative and creative practices and the worlds they create by carefully scrutinizing the materialities, infrastructures, and labor arrangements that undergird and maintain them, as well as think through how these technologies are being utilized in ongoing projects of governance and extraction. Our other equally important goal will be to grapple with how ethnography – a method of knowing premised on ‘being there’ – has been recalibrated and reimagined to research digital culture(s), a term used to broadly describe the various self and worldmaking practices and encounters that ICTs enable and engender.

This seminar is designed to visit a wide range of explorations on the concept of “the political.” We begin with some classic statements from the mid-century British school and consider its reverberations in building political anthropology through the 1970s.

Investigates the key role that objects have played within the discipline of anthropological theory, methods and practices. Traces the theoretical lineage of concepts such as objectification, material culture, commoditication, materialism, perspectivalism, to build up a nuanced picture of the analytic frameworks used to understand the material qualities of social life, and to make sense of the divergent ways in which things are magnified within social worlds.

Stone tools, or lithics, are often the only material remain of past culture, especially when we go back far enough in time, to the first human ancestors. Therefore, they have received an enormous amount of scrutiny from archaeologists. This course will review the history of research in lithic analysis with the aim to identify which areas of the field are in need of improvement and develop ideas for the future. The course has an intensive practical component, involving the analysis of experimentally knapped stone tools.

The goal of this class is to teach students the basics of dental anthropology and how to apply it to a variety of research areas including population variation, evolution, bioarchaeology and forensics. Topics covered include: dental anatomy, evolution, growth and development, dental genetics, pathology, variation in nonhuman primates, recent and fossil hominins, age estimation, forensic applications, and cultural modifications. There is a separate lab component to the class. In the labs students learn how to identify human and non-human teeth, how to distinguish deciduous and permanent teeth, how to age individuals based on dental wear and eruption, how to score and interpret dental morphological traits and how to take dental measurements. Grades are based on mid-term and final exams, lab exercises/quizzes and a term paper.

Law is basic to social life but highly variable in different cultural and historical contexts. This course offers theoretical and methodological tools in legal anthropology for understanding the cultural dimensions of law and the multiple ways law acts and influences a diverse range of social and cultural relationships. With specific attention to law as a form of discipline, power and governmentality, we will also explore legal pluralism, the colonial lives of property law and the legal dimensions of settler colonialism, transnational law and its localization, and the implications of quantitative measurements and standards for global governance and international law. Drawing upon ethnographic studies of everyday legal phenomenon, we will discuss the relationship between theory and method and how an analysis of law can help make visible intricate relationships of power central to the operation of daily life. Permission of Instructor required.

This course is intended as a survey of potential ethnographic approaches to the significance of food in human life. "Food" refers to organic matter . . . once living plants, fungi, and animals . . . that we farm, raise, hunt, fish, collect in order to kill, process, ferment, prepare, brand, market, sell, buy, steal, or give away, in order to cook, eat and digest and thus sustain our lives and that of the astoundingly large community of microbes living in our guts, without which we would also perish. Study of food thus encompasses the entire cycle of production, circulation, and consumption, from the ecological relations between persons and "nature", the impact of and on the environment and climate of our food procuring practices, the labor relations of such production and structural inequalities involved, the circulation of raw food products and the second phases of "production" in food processing, fermentation, branding and marketing, and finally, cooking, to the consumption of foods in restaurants and around the kitchen table, and the deep social ties that are engendered through the sharing of food and drink. The course ranges through inquiries into the senses and the body, human/animal distinctions, our inevitable use, abuse, and destruction of plants and animals and the moral quandaries that result, forms of structural violence inherent in food systems, the role of food in religion, and in carnivalesque experience. Encompassing also the study of drink, from water to juice and fermented, alcoholic beverages, the course is particularly focused on the place of food and drink "systems" in the transmission of culture through social memory. Along the way, we consider the role in our lives, and in human history and the social forms we call "modern", of global food encomiums, capitalist enterprise, and industrial food regimes. We also consider fast and slow foods, local foods, food and social differentiation, food branding and marketing, food and gender, food and hygiene, food and the intersecting microbiomes of persons, animals, and plants, and related processes of fermentation, digestion, and disease. Also treated is the matter of property (from the ownership of land and animals to IP, IGP, and GMO regimes), cuisine and regional or national food heritage, food as cultural capital, food security and food sovereignty.

Dispenses with the convention of approaching Islam in terms of “a fixed cast of Islamic dramatis personae, enacting a predetermined story,” and tries to understand that the coherence of “the world of Islam is essentially ideological, a discursive representation” (Asad).

We tend to think of the secular as an absence of sorts: the neutral emptiness that remains once religion is removed. In this course, we will explore how the secular is imagined, represented, and produced. Like religion, the secular requires and creates particular images, sensibilities, regulations, practices, and beliefs. Like religion, it also operates through the authorization of certain forms of knowledge and the refusal of other actions and ideas as impossible. In everyday language, “secular” can imply a host of meanings, including atheist, profane, rational, or modern. We will work to give greater specificity to the concepts of secularism, secularization, and the secular. We will also address the presumed secularity of scholarly critique. What kinds of assumptions undergird scholarly inquiry? How do these assumption limit the agents, practices, and connections deemed significant or plausible? Together, we will take up the task of articulating what it means to live in a “secular age”—a framework which, although often invisible or implicit, establishes and limits much of what we experience, expect, and encounter in our daily lives.

Examines the mind and brain as sites of conflict over difference, value, control and self-determination. Drawing on literature from anthropology and science and technology studies, the course will alternate between two lenses: 1) reconceptualizations of mental phenomena as political, and 2) specific contests over racialized and gendered neurosciences of intelligence and criminality, antipsychiatry/survivor movements, post-colonial psychiatry, neurocapital and neurochemical prosthesis, autism, addiction, trauma and recovery.

This seminar will explore the classic and recent work that defines the expanding field of critical race studies. Our readings will be interdisciplinary and will include thinkers from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries who have grappled with definitions of “race,” with the ways that race intersects with other categories of identity, and with the potential for the concept of “race” to inform anti-racist forms of agency and practice. We also will be interested in the work of race: the ways that theory is shaped by practice and practice is guided by theory.

This course will will explore, interrogate, and challenge the theoretical frameworks that define performance ethnography, along with the methodologies employed by researchers, artists, and practitioners (not mutually exclusive roles) under the umbrella of performance ethnography and ethnographic writing. However, not all of our interlocutors will define themselves as ethnographers or anthropologists nor their work as anthropological. Our task is to engage everything we encounter in our seminar through our ethnographic lens to determine what we find essential for our own research and writing investments - in and beyond the academy.

Examines lifeways of people in rural villages, plantations, mines, towns, and cities of Central and South America. Contrasts prehistoric systems of production and distribution with the changed relationship between human beings and land resulting from the Spanish Conquest and colonialism, revolution, and industrialization. Explores similarities and differences between culture areas, institutions, and practices, such as curing, child rearing, slavery, feasting, art, and warfare.

Traditional societies and contemporary problems of how traditional beliefs and behavior have been modified by modern changes. Topics: caste system and theories of inequality; world religions (Buddhism and Islam) as locally received; the impact of cash economy and markets on subsistence agriculture; the relation of religious beliefs to family and community structure; national culture and the international demands of industry, bureaucracy, and education. Includes Thailand, Indonesia, China, and Japan.

This course explores anthropological approaches to the study of complex western societies through consideration of cultural systems and social structures in contemporary Europe. Focusing on the significance of old, new, or uncertain divisions within the continent and boundaries around it, this course gives particular emphasis to commonalities and variations across Europe with respect to the impact on everyday life of shifting territorial and social borders, class and ethnic diversity, and conceptions of governance in Europe?s present and future. Considers relationships of anthropological knowledge to the other scholarly traditions that have largely shaped what we know about this part of the world.

This course focuses on the Indian subcontinent [India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka]. Reading a variety of historical and ethnographic material, we will examine the major theoretical issues and scholarly debates in the study of South Asia as a discrete cultural area. Some of the larger questions with which we will be engaging include the relationship between colonialism and knowledge production; the relationship of South Asia to anthropological theory; and the specificity or generalizability of the region. Topics will include [but not necessarily limited to] caste, kinship, gender, religion, nationalism, ethnic conflict, development ideologies, globalization and visual culture.

Comparisons of the Hispanic and Afro-Creole regions. Slavery, plantation structures, racial class stratifications, politicaComparisons of the Hispanic and Afro-Creole regions. Slavery, plantation structures, racial class stratifications, political-religious traditions, community family patterns, and the problems of postcolonial development are analyzed from an anthropological perspective.

Focuses on ethnographies of and about North America, examining the epistemology of fieldwork in a society where ?the natives read what we write,? as well as on the imperative of linking structure and action and local knowledge with larger processes. More generally, takes a sociology of knowledge approach, relating what anthropologists have written about American culture to both the context of the development of anthropology as well as to the changing character of American society and culture. Explores chronologically and topically how anthropologists studying North American culture are simultaneously engaged in constructing it.

This course provides an introduction to the history of biological anthropology from its origins to today. It begins with the foundation of anthropology as a field before focusing in on the emergence of physical/biological anthropology in the 19th century and subsequent incorporation of evolutionary theory and genetics. This includes the history of the study of human variation, comparative morphology, skeletal biology, primate evolution, paleoanthropology, molecular anthropology and the development of field primatology. The shifting intellectual paradigms of the discipline will be discussed, including how biological anthropology integrated ideas and techniques from geology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and zoology, to become a multidisciplinary field of diverse intellectual and methodological approaches. Students will come away from the course with a deep understanding of the history of biological anthropology.

Aims to provide an introduction to many of the ethical issues that confront students and scholars in biological anthropology, as well as to provide practical training in professional skills that students will find essential in their early academic careers. The topics included in this course are not generally covered as part of traditional disciplinary courses, but they are considered just as critical for long‐term professional development. Individual classes will focus on ethical issues related to science in general, research with animals and humans, and professional relationships, as well as practical skills such as proposal writing, writing for publication, the peer review process, oral presentation, and how to succeed in the job market.

This course serves as a broad introduction to the ecology, behavior, and conservation of nonhuman primates.

Molecular anthropologists use biochemical technologies to address anthropological topics such as the phylogenetic relationships among humans and African apes, models of modern human origins, and the identity of archaic humans like the Denisovans. This course intends to provide students with both a background in elementary genetics and also a review of some of the major research in molecular anthropology and primatology. The first section will begin with a brief overview of genetics, inheritance, population genetics, and major methodological advances of genomics. Subsequently, we will discuss major findings in human and primate genetics, including work on phylogeny, population genetics, molecular adaptation, and species’ history in detail. The main goal is to provide students with a background sufficient for i) an understanding of the field of molecular anthropology, ii) teaching it and related topics to undergraduates, and iii) future reading and research in genetics.

This course provides a detailed overview of the early stages of human evolution from the Miocene to the early Pleistocene, focusing on the fossil and archaeological record of the earliest hominins up to and including early Homo in East and South Africa. It emphasizes the anatomical, phylogenetic, and behavioral traits of Plio-Pleistocene hominins in Africa. Special topics include: a critical review of recently described fossils purported to be early hominins from the late Miocene of Africa; an introduction to phylogenetic methods, geochronology, and the evidence used to reconstruct global climate change; comparative morphology and tool-using behavior of extant hominoids; the earliest tool industries; models of early hominin dietary behavior; functional morphology and locomotor behavior; and debates surrounding early hominin biogeography, taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships. Students will supplement their reading of the primary literature with the study of comparative skeletal materials and casts of early hominins in the laboratory.

Provides a detailed overview of the evolution of the genus Homo. The course focuses on the fossil evidence and archaeological record to provide insights into hominin evolution, ecology and culture. Students will supplement their reading of the primary literature with the study of comparative skeletal materials and casts and of stone and osseous tools, art objects and personal ornaments

Detailed survey of current problems and debates in the study of primate evolution. Considers the practical and theoretical issues concerned with evaluating the fossil evidence. Problems include those relating to phylogenetic interpretation, taxonomy, and paleobiological and paleoecological reconstruction.

Examines the social interactions of nonhuman primates from an evolutionary perspective, with a special focus on the roles that kinship and the social environment play in the development and expression of social behavior. Introduces relevant contemporary theoretical perspectives, including biological markets and social network theory, that complement traditional sociobiological approaches. Topics for discussion include dominance interactions; territoriality and inter-group aggression; coalitions, alliances, and other cooperative behavior; paternal care and cooperative breeding; and inter-sexual conflict.

Surveys the anatomy of the living primates from a structural, functional and evolutionary perspective. The subject is reviewed topically by examining different anatomical systems and behaviors ? external features, the cranium, dentition and dietary behavior, postcranial anatomy and locomotor behavior, viscera, sensory and nervous systems, and reproductive anatomy. The role of comparative anatomy in functional and behavioral studies, taxonomy, and phylogenetic analyses is emphasized.

An in-depth survey of the various ways in which biological anthropologists employ human osteology, the study of bones and the skeleton. In addition to presenting a detailed review of the anatomy of the human skeleton and its associated musculature, examines a series of thematic issues and topics that emphasize the multidisciplinary nature of the study of skeletal morphology. Topics include bone biology and development, comparative osteology, biomechanics, bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and taphonomy.

Despite the significance of culture in human adaptation, genetic variation and biological adaptability continue to affect human survival and reproduction in important ways. This course explores genetic, physiological, morphological, and behavioral variability in human populations today; its role in human adaptation; and its significance to our understanding of human evolution.

Provides an overview of the ecology, behavior, life history patterns, and social systems of nonhuman primates and examines these aspects of primate biology from the perspectives afforded by contemporary socioecological and sociobiological theory. Also discusses the ecological roles that primates play in their natural ecosystems and introduces key issues relevant to the conservation of nonhuman primates.

Provides an intensive introduction to the methods and techniques used to reconstruct soft tissue anatomy and behavior from the human skeleton. Focuses on techniques and applications to all areas of skeletal biology, including bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology, forensics, and anthropology. Addresses bone biology, developmental processes, and soft tissue anatomy. Students learn (1) fundamentals of aging, sexing, and individuating human skeletal remains; (2) how to estimate stature, weight, and, to the extent possible, geographic ancestry; and (3) how to recognize and evaluate pre- and postmortem modification, including evidence of disease and activity.

This laboratory course provides an intensive, 2 point, lab-based practical partner course to ANTH GA:1516 (Introduction to Human Osteology and Odontology). The laboratory emphasizes identification of fragmentary human remains, interpretation of anatomical features from bone, and differentiation of human and non-human remains. This hands-on lab will include weekly practical lab write-ups, weekly for-credit and practice quizzes and a final practical lab exam. By the end of this course you should be able to identify and side fragmentary human skeletal remains; differentiate human from nonhuman fragments and adult from subadult human remains; name and recognize normal muscle attachment sites and other bone features, their associated soft tissues and function and pathological manifestations. This knowledge forms the underpinning for research in forensic anthropology, paleoanthropology, and human osteology and cognate areas.

Intensive, lab-based practical partner course to ANTH-GA 1520 (Interpreting the Human Skeleton). The laboratory emphasizes the methods used in the interpretation of recovered human remains and production of the biological profile: age, sex, stature and mass, ancestry, pathology, trauma, and statistical methods.

Intense writing seminar that teaches the fundamentals required to develop and begin a scientific research project in biological anthropology. Provides overviews of the structure of a research project, how to identify research problems, how to construct methods of addressing these problems, how to interpret the resulting data and how to present these data.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

This is a stand-alone course on the biological profile, the process of determining age, sex, stature and mass, population affinity, and pathology and trauma based on the analysis of human skeletal remains. Students will read manuscripts and standards guides that establish the theoretical and practical applications of the methods of the biological profile and will be provided with skeletal material on which to apply those methods. By the end of this course students should be able to carry out a biological profile on human remains and fully understand the methods necessary to do so.

Considers art and aesthetic practice as both specific historical categories and as a dimension of human activity. Considers non-Western societies but shows relation to broader theories of aesthetics, iconography, and style, with reference to art everywhere. Considers mainly visual and plastic arts but also oral literature and crafts.

The history of anthropology is rooted in philosophical questions concerning the relationship between human beings and the formation of society. This course surveys these issues as they relate to the development of method and theory. Focuses on French, British, and American anthropology and how they contributed to the development of the modern discipline. Covers key figures Franz Boas, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown. Issues: cultural relativism, relation between biology and culture, functionalism, and structuralism.

Within the last decade, anthropological interest and scholarship about neoliberalism has increased tremendously. A simple search of AnthroSource for the keywords, “neoliberal” or “neoliberalism” appearing in journal articles published since 1990 reveals that nearly 80 percent of this scholarship has been published since 2005. The growing usage of the terms, “neoliberal” and “neoliberalism,” within contemporary anthropological scholarship has even begun to attract criticism for being cursory or insufficiently theorized.

Through a focus on elites, this course examines how different forms of privilege, dominance, and power, are constituted, maintained, and reproduced across a variety of geographic and sociocultural contexts - from financial institutions, transnational organizations, and state bureaucracies to media industries, scientific laboratories, corporations, and educational institutions

The craftsperson in society; a culture-historical and functional analysis of technology in the nonindustrial world. Consideration of prehistoric and contemporary examples, problems, and technologies.

This course will review the development of archaeological theory from the beginnings of antiquarianism in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries to the emergence of the post-processual movements beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. The topics to be covered include the development of archaeology as a scientific/humanistic discipline, diffusionism and Childe’s modified diffusionism, the beginnings of modern archaeological theory, Lewis Binford and the processual movement, and the diversity of post-processual approaches.

Exposes and assesses in detail the framework of problems and questions that guides anthropological archaeology. Critically examines the process of theory construction and the nature and procedures involved in scientific explanation. Discusses dominant theoretical constructs within which the archaeological record is understood and/or explained.

Examines how archaeologists bridge the gap between the theoretical goals of anthropology and a static database. Includes the relatExamines how archaeologists bridge the gap between the theoretical goals of anthropology and a static database. Includes the relationship between theory and method, excavation techniques, sampling strategies, survey design, chronology building, taphonomy, faunal analysis, typological constructs, functional analysis of artifacts, and quantitative manipulation of archaeological data.

This seminar aims to introduce graduate students and advanced undergraduates to the most important habitats of human evolution that no longer exist because of climate change. Some of these places have been totally submerged under the waters of the Holocene, others have shifted character to the point where we no longer recognize them. Students will progress chronologically from environments such as Pliocene East Africa to Pleistocene "Savannahstan" to "Green Arabia", Doggerland, and the Ice Free Corridor, while learning to read critically from primary sources about scientific techniques of landscape and climate reconstruction. An ethnographic and ecological context will form a framework for discussions.

Covers the historical development of the concept of heritage as well as exploring the genesis of international heritage administration, charters, conventions, and national heritage laws. It will highlight emerging trends and practices including exploring the concept of “social memory” and contrast it with the more formalized techniques of heritage didactics and curation. Explores the increasing interest in “bottom-up” heritage programming that directly involves the general public in the formulation, collection, and public presentation of historical themes and subjects as an ongoing social activity. Case studies from different regions and social contexts will be explored: “conflicted heritage,” “minority heritage,” “indigenous heritage,” “diasporic heritage,” “sites of conscience,” long-term community planning and involvement in “eco-museums”, the relationship between heritage, development and tourism and public heritage interpretation centers.

This seminar examines the growth and development of Latinx Studies from the 1960s onwards and reflects on its potential and future in the U.S. academy. It analyzes major trends of analysis developing within the field including political economy, decolonial perspectives, transnationalism, and new approximation to analyzing multidvierse identities, and unrecognized groups and topics, from LBGTQ and Afro-Latinx communities to transnational Latinx studies beyond the U.S. We will examine the development of Latinx studies within different disciplinary and methodological approaches, while considering how Latinx studies transforms and expands traditional “disciplinary” spaces and methodologies. Throughout students will be encouraged to identify areas, debates and topics where they can contribute to expanding the conversation through their own original research. The course will also feature guest speakers discussing different approaches and methodologies to Latinx studies to expand student’s exposure to the field.

Beyond text-centered dogma, philosophy, and scriptures we find lived religion in everyday life and practice: At the center of this course will be bodies in the materiality of their corporeal performances and physical sensations, amid the things they touch and use in their religious practices: “Tangible Religion” if you will. The course will serve as an introduction to various aspects of post-structuralist theory, covering embodiment, subjectivity, agency, affect theory and the materialist turn. We will look at the body in various situations—gendered, sexualized, covered, naked, suffering, disabled, altered, missing, ecstatic, monstrous—and interrogate notions of representations and ideals: from the religious ban on representing the human body to divine anthropomorphism. A variety of religious archives will be explored. The course will be team-taught by Angela Zito and Bill McGrath.

Implications of new research on gender for anthropological models of society and culture and for theories concerning production, wealth, and exchange; stratification, domination, and inequality; kinship and family roles; and the role of gender constructs in cultural ideologies.

This course explores how theories of sign relations, also known as “semiotics,” elucidate practices and processes of representation, interpretation, and classification pertaining to the construction of everyday social life and cultural forms.

This course will introduce you to the longstanding and complex connection between religious practices and various media, based upon the premise that, like all social practice, religion is always mediated in some form or other. Yet, religion does not function simply as unchanging content, while media names the ways that content is formed. Instead shifts in media technique, from ritual innovations to the invention of printing, through TV, to the internet, also shape religious practice. We are interested in gathering theoretical tools for understanding the form and politics of this mutual dialectic. We will analyze how human hearing, vision and the performing body have been used historically to express and maintain religious life through music, voice, images, words and rituals. Then we will spend time on more recent electronic media such as cassette, film, television, video, and the internet. We will consider, among other things: religious memory, both embodied and out-sourced in other media; role of TV in the rise of the Hindu Right; the material culture of Buddhism (icons, relics, sutras); religion and commodification; film as religious experience; Christian Evangelical media.

Major problems raised by contemporary theories of human evolution. Analysis of problems of systematics, phylogeny, natural selection, and variation from the points of view of classic as well as contemporary research.

Examines the contemporary elaboration and dissemination of human rights law and discourse in the post-World War II period. Explores the opposition between culture and rights and examines current anthropological work on human rights in political struggles in various parts of the world. Specific areas of focus include indigenous rights and women?s rights. The course also examines transnational, deterritorialized, and multisited ethnographic research methods for studying human rights.

Over the last 150 years, biomedicine as a sphere of ideas and practices has made increasingly powerful claims to define the conditions of human life and death. This seminar will look at the many historical processes through which biomedical power is constituted and sustained by addressing topics such as: the discovery/invention of standardized bodies, systems, populations; public health and governance; the emergence of diagnostic categories and pharmacologies; the role of biostatistics and other large-scale evidentiary technologies. Recent local, national, and transnational patient and provider activist movements, UN and NGO fora dedicated to diseases and disorders, indigenization of biomedical technologies and categories, and transnational medical tourism will also be examined.

This course offers a critical examination of foundational and contemporary work in the anthropology of science. This course is designed to be complementary with Cultures of Biomedicine, offered in the fall.

Examines theories and methods of ethnographic research, paying particular attention to the links between research questions and data collection techniques. In addition to readings, assignments include practice fieldwork exercises.

Critically explores the notion of ?practice? from a number of perspectives, including symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, language socialization, and contemporary social theory, utilizing ethnographic studies on the acquisition of a variety of cultural practices, including speech and gender practices, across a range of societies and contexts. Analyzes selected social practices in terms of how they are framed, keyed, and constituted through speech and other expressive resources, through use of video and transcription.

Professionalization seminars.

Professionalization seminars.

The single largest economic sector in the world, with unparalleled cultural authority to compel populations to participate, medicine has life altering effects on human bodies and subjectivities across the globe. Ethnographers have generated far ranging critical analysis of how these effects unfold, what drives them and what is societally at stake. In order to illustrate the scope of ethnographers’ insights into medicine(s) as cultural systems, this seminar employs exemplars of these insights, from the meanings of medicine to the role of medicine in colonial and missionary projects, from the cultural construction of race and gender to the nature of political economy and of the body itself.

Use of archaeological data, artifacts, and other materials for understanding past human-environmental relationships; materials that should be collected; methods for analysis. Relationships between archaeologically known cultures and the environmental setting in which these cultures are found.

Designed for advanced graduate students who present and discuss their research and current topics in the literature.

Designed for advanced graduate students who present and discuss their research and current topics in the literature.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Theoretical topics selected by students and faculty in consideration.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.

Adaptable to a wide range of academic pursuits and individual needs.