| ANTH 101-01 |
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Instructor: James Ellison
Course Description:
This course is a comprehensive introduction to how cultural anthropologists study culture and society in diverse contexts. We will use ethnographic case studies from across the world to examine the ways people experience and transform social relationships and culture in areas including families, gender, ethnicity, health, religion, exchange, science, and even what it means to be a person. We will examine how culture and society are embedded within, shape, and are shaped by forces of economics, politics, and environment.
Offered every semester.
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09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 313 |
| ANTH 110-01 |
Archaeology and World Prehistory
Instructor: Matthew Biwer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ARCH 110-01.
Archaeology is the primary means by which we decipher human prehistory. Using archaeology as a guide we will start with the origins of culture from its rudimentary beginnings nearly 4 million years ago, follow the migrations of hunters and gatherers, explore the first farming villages and eventually survey the complex urban civilizations of the Old and New Worlds. We will examine the development of technology, economic and social organization through the lens of archaeological techniques and discoveries throughout the world.
This course is cross-listed as ARCH 110. Offered every year.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203 |
| ANTH 205-01 |
Listening Across Cultures
Instructor: Ellen Gray
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 209-01. Is music a "universal language"? How might we listen to, consume, and participate in music across a diverse cultural spectrum without engaging in "cultural tourism" or appropriation? Can we listen across cultures? Working with a wide range of approaches to these questions, this course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology (the study of music and sound in relation to social life). Students will study sound recordings and ethnographic films, read widely, and examine material objects (like musical instruments) drawn from socio-politically and geographically diverse case studies. No previous musical training or note reading skills are necessary.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
EASTC 411 |
| ANTH 205-02 |
Music and Place
Instructor: Ellen Gray
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 355-01. Music often shapes deeply felt experiences of place and a sense of belonging or identity. At the same time, musical styles, genres, and sounds possess a facile ability for travel, displacement and transformation through sound recording and the movement of people between places. In this seminar, we consider "world" music as a stimulus for thinking about the tension between the sampling, marketing, the international sonic circulation of cultures. How are foreign and out of the way places or places imagined in relation to sound recordings? How are the sounds of the "local" transformed in their circuit of the global? To explore these questions and the ethics that they prompt, we work with varied case studies (from soundscapes of consumption in the United States, to musical histories and global representations of the Mbuti people from the Congo region of Africa, to second line jazz parades in New Orleans). In this interdisciplinary seminar, we draw on readings from music and performance studies, ethnomusicology and anthropology. In addition to reading widely, we will consider sound recordings and films. Skills in note reading not necessary and majors from across the College welcome.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
EASTC 411 |
| ANTH 216-01 |
Medical Anthropology
Instructor: Amalia Pesantes Villa
Course Description:
Comparative analysis of health, illness, and nutrition within environmental and socio-cultural contexts. Evolution and geographical distribution of disease, how different societies have learned to cope with illness, and the ways traditional and modern medical systems interact.
Offered every other year.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 110 |
| ANTH 230-01 |
Ethnography of Postcolonial Africa
Instructor: James Ellison
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01. This course is intended as both an introduction to the ethnography of Africa and an examination of postcolonial situations in Africa. We will learn a great deal about the cultural, social, political, and economic diversity of the continent while avoiding the typological thinking that once characterized area studies. Through ethnography we will learn about African cultures, their historical contingencies, and their entanglements in various fields of power. We will assess the changing influences of pre-colonial traditions, colonialism, postcolonial states, and the global economy.
Offered every fall.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 204 |
| ANTH 241-01 |
Quantitative Methods in Biocultural Anthropology
Instructor: Karen Weinstein
Course Description:
This course introduces quantitative data analysis used in biocultural anthropological research. Students will learn statistical methods to engage in research about health status, diet and nutrition, socioeconomic, and other salient factors that affect peoples quality of life in the United States and globally.
Prerequisite: 100, 101 or 110.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 115 |
| ANTH 245-01 |
Paleoethnobotany Lab Methods
Instructor: Matthew Biwer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ARCH 200-01. This course is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of paleoethnobotany, the study of past human-plant interactions. Students will gain hands-on experience working with archaeological plant remains with a focus on the recovery, identification, and interpretation of macro-remains. We will also discuss micro-botanical remains, including pollen, starch, and phytolith data. Course readings will focus on field and lab methodology, the ways paleoethnobotanists use plant data to reconstruct environment, subsistence, spatial and temporal trends, and cultural practices involving plants. Class time will be divided between seminar discussion and lab analysis. Case studies will be selected and discussed during seminar meetings to emphasize the utility of plant data recovered from the archaeological record to answer questions about past societies. Students will collect data from archaeological soil samples using microscopes during lab analysis time. The course culminates in a class technical report project where students share their findings and interpretations of the dataset collected by the class.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DEAL 1 |
| ANTH 261-01 |
Archaeology of North America
Instructor: Matthew Biwer
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ARCH 261-01.
This course reviews Pre-Columbian landscapes north of Mesoamerica. We consider topics including the timing and process of the initial peopling of the continent, food production, regional systems of exchange, development of social hierarchies, environmental adaption and the nature of initial colonial encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. These questions are addressed primarily by culture area and region.
This course is cross-listed as ARCH 261. Offered every two years.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| ANTH 345-01 |
Restoring Personhood: Establishing Ethical Treatment of Unidentified Human Remains
Instructor: Karen Weinstein
Course Description:
Museums and universities that hold collections of human skeletons and other artifacts amassed during the 19th and 20th centuries are rightfully returning these materials to known descendant communities. Indeed, many professional and academic associations publish guidelines for anthropologists, anatomists and medical schools, biologists, museum curators, and academic legal offices to collaborate with descendant communities to return their ancestors in culturally appropriate ways. Despite these decades-long efforts, there are no guidelines for repatriation when cultural affiliation is lost or unknown. This course is devoted to exploring this pressing problem of how to restore personhood to unidentified human skeletons. We will work to establish protocols for the ethical treatment of unidentified human remains using methods and theories from forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, and archival investigations.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 115 |
| ANTH 345-02 |
Indigenous Movements in Latin America: Citizenship, Indigeneity and Interculturality
Instructor: Amalia Pesantes Villa
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 300-02. The goal of this course is to analyze contemporary Indigenous Movements in Latin America through a historic and ethnographic lens. We will explore and discuss the key demands of indigenous peoples, their strategies to negotiate at the national level as well as the policies that have been developed in response to indigenous activism in the region. We will discuss the various levels of success indigenous movements have accomplished in different countries, and analyze the explanations given to understand such differences. Using texts from a range of Latin American countries, this course will begin by doing a historical analysis of the position of Indigenous peoples after independence, during the nation-building processes, and their strategies to resist assimilation. We will discuss the particularities of indigenous identity in a region where the colonial hierarchies based on class and ethnicity persists and shapes privilege of lighter skinned Latin Americans and discrimination towards indigenous peoples. We will analyze contemporary intercultural policies in both education and health to learn about the possibilities and limitations of the concept of "interculturalidad." This approach, meant to improve the recognition of indigenous perspectives and culture has oftentimes resulted in the cooption of indigenous peoples demands.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204 |
| ANTH 495-04 |
Senior Thesis
Instructor: Amalia Pesantes Villa
Course Description:
Permission of Instructor Required. Senior anthropology majors who qualify with a cumulative GPA of 3.6 or higher by the end of the junior year can take this course during the spring semester of their senior year. This course involves writing a senior thesis based on original fieldwork or laboratory research and used to determine departmental honors.
Prerequisite: ANTH 400.
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| ANTH 495-05 |
Senior Thesis
Instructor: Karen Weinstein
Course Description:
Permission of Instructor Required. Senior anthropology majors who qualify with a cumulative GPA of 3.6 or higher by the end of the junior year can take this course during the spring semester of their senior year. This course involves writing a senior thesis based on original fieldwork or laboratory research and used to determine departmental honors.
Prerequisite: ANTH 400.
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