ANTH 101-6-21 First Year Seminar: Making the Fittest: Issues in Evolution
We recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. But what would he think of our world today? We have a sophisticated understanding of genes and the ability to trace our ancestry over generations. Yet despite this knowledge, conclusive and irrefutable proof that we have or are continuing to evolve has not been found. In this course we will address where we might have come from and where we might be going. We will cover some of the major "issues" in biological evolution ranging from those of originating in Darwin's time to the many questions that persist today.
ANTH 101-6-21 First Year Seminar: How the 99% Live
In this seminar, students will read about, discuss, write about, and thus gain the intellectual tools to begin to evaluate past and present American urban inequalities—including not only those of class, but also race/ethnicity, gender & sexuality, nationality. We will read across several different academic disciplines and journalism to become familiar with key analytic concepts, methods, and historical phenomena, such as the Great Compression, the War on Poverty, urban regimes, ethnography, political economy. Using them, we will explore arenas of inequality: employment; urban space, housing, migration, and neighborhoods; schooling, criminal justice, the public sphere. We will watch two highly relevant videos. And for one class session, we will host and read work written by noted crusading Chicago Reader journalist Ben Joravsky, an expert on many of these issues in Chicago.
ANTH 101-6-21 First Year Seminar: Natives Beyond Nations
Indigenous peoples around the world are often imagined as "traditional" and "local" with customs "as old as time." But in reality Indigenous peoples engage with the globalizing processes of the 21st century just as the rest of their fellow humans do. This course surveys key issues in Indigenous peoples' lives as related to globalization, transnationalism, and diaspora. We will explore theoretical approaches from Native American and Indigenous Studies as well as ethnographic examples from Asia, Oceania, Europe, and throughout the Americas.
ANTH 101-6-22 First Year Seminar: Fantastic Archaeology: Science & Pseudoscience
Did astronauts from another planet establish ancient civilizations on Earth? Were the Americas discovered by Columbus, a Ming dynasty fleet or by Vikings much earlier? Did the Maya Aztec build their pyramids to resemble those of dynastic Egypt? Television is replete with stories of ancient aliens and archaeological mysteries. The impact of such alternative realities on society and history cannot be discounted. They have been used to support nationalistic agendas, racial biases, and religious movements, all of which can have considerable influence on contemporary society.
In this course, we will study "fantastic" stories, puzzles, hoaxes, imaginative worlds and alternative theories. We will learn when, how and what kinds of evidence these alternative theories have used to fascinate the public and illustrate their hoaxes. We will question such theories by using critical thinking and analytical tools to diagnose what is fact and fiction. We will utilize the surviving evidence that archaeologists find to understand cultural contact and interactions.
ANTH 101-6-22 First Year Seminar: Anthropology of Time
This seminar for freshmen will stress critical thinking and writing. Its theme will be deriving and applying social and cultural frameworks for understanding the dynamics of time or, more generally, temporalities. Ideas about time pervade human experience. Time also provide templates for academic theory -- anthropological theory of the past, for example, depicted societies in an evolutionary continuum from primitive to modern. Among the domains in which temporal dimensions of experience loom large are bodily and farming cycles, memory, history, and ritual. The forms that time and temporalities can take, however, are immensely variant. The course will touch on these and other themes. Of particular interest will be society\'s views of the ordering and pacing of life events. The course will center on an ethnographic research project based on field notes, observations, and participant observation. Sessions and readings are designed to work toward this, focusing on ideas of time, plus skills in framing a research question, developing a bibliography of readings to accompany it, and establishing a point of view. Student projects will concern something close at hand involving time.
ANTH 101-6-22 First Year Seminar: An Anthropology of Westeros: Theorizing a Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) deliberately poses questions, but also embeds assumptions about the nature of humanity. How do elites maintain power? How do cultures develop such vastly different technologies, worldviews, and expectation of gender and sexuality? Is violence inevitable in a world of conflicting interests and limited resources? Do ‘great players’ dictate the course of history or are our fates tied to the unassailable power of climatic forces? Anthropologists pursue these same questions as they strive to understand human diversity on earth. In this course students will examine ASOIAF from an anthropological perspective and learn to identify and evaluate theories of human nature that the saga poses. Discussion will center upon six major themes – ORIGINS, OTHERS, BODIES, VIOLENCE, MATERIAL/IMMATERIAL, ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY. “Power is a curious thing”, and inspired by the riddle Varys poses to Tyrion, we will question throughout: where does power reside? How do the stories we tell about ourselves hold the power to shape our destinies for good or ill?
At the height of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, it was often said that the fears of the disease globalized more quickly than the disease itself. These kinds of statements - and the proliferation of official efforts to control Ebola outbreak in West Africa and elsewhere - show the significance of cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of epidemics. This first-year seminar privileges a critical medical anthropology perspective on the dynamics of epidemics: from disease transmission to prevention and control. Together, we will investigate how complex interactions among social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors influence the natural history of infectious disease and public health efforts to understand and address them. The seminar focuses on contemporary problems and issues with the explicit purpose of addressing questions of equity and justice.
Professional wrestling is often disparaged as "fake" and its fans are seen as dim-witted, low-class rednecks. But in many ways professional wrestling reflects the society in which it is created and enjoyed. This class looks at wrestling in a variety of contexts, including the United States, Mexico, Japan, India, and Bolivia, to examine what we might learn about broader social contexts from this form of pop culture. Taking an anthropological eye to wrestling, we will examine issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship through ethnographic accounts of various forms of exhibition wrestling. The course will teach students basic anthropological concepts, critical observation and thinking, as well as research and writing techniques.
How do cultural anthropologists ask and answer questions about the vast diversity of human life and experience? This course introduces the history, methods, and concepts of cultural anthropology. Topics include the study of kinship, gender and sexuality, economic exchange, race and ethnicity, religious practice, music and art, and applied/medical anthropology. We explore a set of questions such as: How do humans organize their lives? How do social differences and hierarchies impact those lives? How do people relate to one another and create meaning about those relationships? How do cultures change and travel over time and space? What kinds of solutions can anthropology offer for human problems? We look at case studies from contemporary cultures worldwide, including our own.
Anthropology is a holistic analysis of the human condition. The study of human origins, or paleoanthropology, is a subfield of physical anthropology that focuses on the biological history of the human species including their evolution, emergence and radiation. We will explore the scientific method and how theories like evolution have come about and expanded over time. We will learn about our closest living relatives - primates - and how an appreciation of their life history and behavior reflect the modern human condition. Many of the principles and concepts that comprise our understanding of how humans have evolved and adapted over time involve an appreciation of ecology, genetics, physiology, adaptation and cultural development that will also be explored. Lastly we will look at modern human diversity and discuss how we are continuing to evolve today.
The Pyramids, Stonehenge, Cahokia, and Great Zimbabwe: who built these monuments, and why? They are often associated with buried treasure, lost civilizations, and a forgotten past. But archaeologists look beyond a Romantic view and ask questions about why they were built, and what they tell us about humankind. By learning about past cultures, what made them different and what made them similar, we gain a better understanding of human history and the state of the world today. People in the past were very different, but they shared one thing in common -- they left behind stones and bones, pottery fragments, great monuments and burial offerings. These fragments of the past are used by archaeologists to build an understanding of what it means to be human. In this class, you will be introduced to the questions, theories, and methods of archaeology. You will learn about how archaeologists locate, survey and excavate the great monuments of the past; how they study artifacts in the lab; and how they use the stuff they find to piece together stories about the past, and test those stories against the evidence. You will learn about the diversity of ancient and modern peoples, their cultures, and the past they inhabited. You will also learn about the place of archaeology in the modern world -- how archaeologists engage with questions such as long-term climate change and human response, sustainability, and inequality.
ANTH 215-0-1 *The Study of Culture Through Language
The scope of linguistic anthropology from the study of language as an end in itself to the investigation of cultures through the medium of human languages.
Use of key anthropological insights about value judgments and cultural relativism to examine the survival strategies and turbulent histories of contemporary African societies.
In barely a decade, social media has transformed the world around us, the way we learn, the way we communicate, and our relationships. The changes have inspired claims about the ways social media are changing our lives. Yet most of these claims are very general. Taking an anthropological view, this course looks at a variety of forms of social media in very different social contexts, concentrating on content of social media rather than platforms. We will also use social media as a research method for understanding people's lives as they converge in both online and offline spaces. We will see not only how social media has changed people's lives but also how these people have changed social media. Interestingly, this course challenges many of the claims that are made about what social media is by showing the incredible variation in social media that emerges on different continents, among people of different class and religious backgrounds, for people with different gender identities and sexual preferences, for producers, consumers, and students. As we will find, social media can tell us much about the contemporary world at large.
This course introduces life history theory as an integrated framework for understanding the biological processes underlying the human life cycle and its evolution. After constructing a solid foundation in life history theory and the comparative method, the class will address questions such as: Why do humans grow and develop much more slowly than other primate species? Why do we have so few offspring? What is the significance of puberty? What is the function of menopause? In-depth analysis of several case studies will allow the class to examine in detail the utility of life history theory for explaining aspects of human development and behavior from an evolutionary perspective.
Knowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains.
Knowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains.
This course will provide an overview of current theory and research in human population biology. The course will focus on the influence of ecological and social factors on various aspects of human biology (e.g. metabolism, growth, nutritional status, disease patterns). The adaptation concept will first be presented, discussed, and critiqued. We will then examine how adaptation to different ecological stressors (e.g. temperature, solar radiation, high altitude, diet/nutrition) promotes human biological diversity. Prerequisite: 213.
In this course we will examine human growth and development. By its very nature this topic is a biocultural process that requires an integrated analysis of social construction and biological phenomena. To this end we will incorporate insight from evolutionary ecology, developmental biology and psychology, human biology and cultural anthropology. Development is not a simple matter of biological unfolding from birth through adolescence; rather, it is a process that is designed to be in sync with the surrounding environment within which the organism develops. Additionally we will apply these biocultural and socio-ecological insights to emerging health challenges associated with these developmental stages. Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level course in anthropology, psychology, or biology or consent of instructor.
Theories of interactions between culture and biology that affect human health. Beliefs and practices for curing illness and maintaining well-being. The Cross-cultural study of infectious and chronic diseases, mental illness, infant/maternal mortality, poverty, and gender. Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level anthropology or sociology course, or consent of instructor.
Forensic anthropology focuses traditional skeletal biology on problems of medicolegal significance, primarily in determining the personal identity and trauma analysis from human remains. Prerequisite: 200-level anthropology or biology course or consent of instructor.
ANTH 322-0-1 Introduction to Archaeology Research Design and Methods
Quantitative and numerical approaches to the description and analysis of patterns in archaeological data, including typology, sequence ordering and attribute analysis. Prerequisite: 301 or 302 or equivalent.
ANTH 327-0-1 The Archaeology of Ethnicity in America
History of different ethnic groups in America as shown through living quarters, burials, food remains tools, jewelry, etc. How groups have been portrayed in museums claiming to depict the American past. Focus on African Americans and Native Americans.
ANTH 330-0-1 Peoples of the World: Ethnography of N. Africa with MENA 390-3-20
While North Africa (the Maghrib) is often considered an appendage of the Muslim Middle East, this Mediterranean region merits study on its own, given its French colonial past and its connections to both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. This course introduces students to the region through text and expressive culture (visual culture and music). Required readings will include one book or its equivalent in articles per week, drawing from anthropology, related social sciences and humanities, and historical fiction. In-depth study of Amazigh (‘Berber') and rural populations will complement the study of Arab and urban populations in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Major themes include language and expression, orality and literacy, colonialism, nationalism, religion, migration, and gender.
This course examines HIV/AIDS from an anthropological perspective, looking critically at the history of anthropology's involvement with the AIDS crisis from the disease's discovery to the present day. It offers a broad overview of the social, cultural, political and economic factors shaping the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, and of the policy responses that the epidemic has generated in different settings.
Combined advanced undergraduate and graduate course. Run as a weekly workshop on methodology and discourse analysis, this course tackles the collection, transcription, and analysis of verbal data. We explore the ways in which conversation, narrative, and other verbal expressive genres can help us better understand cultural processes. Interaction is central to the course, and we are particularly attentive to the power dynamics between interlocutors, situational constraints and conventions, and political economies that condition everyday talk. Each student will collect audio recorded data, transcribe it, and become familiar with data collected by course peers. We use the class corpus in discussion and in written analyses. Each week's readings explore a different analytic approach, and we link microsocial and macrosocial processes to investigate ways in which the seemingly mundane everyday particulars are both reflective of and constitutive of broader meaning. Prerequisite: 215 or consent of instructor.
ANTH 370-0-20 *Anthropology in Historical Perspective
Major schools of thought in social, archaeological and biological anthropology over the last century. Prerequisite: one 200-level course in anthropology or consent of instructor.
Overview of history and present realities of American urban life, with a focus on ethnographic knowledge and stratification by class, race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and sexuality. Prerequisite: 100- or 200-level cultural anthropology or sociology course or consent of instructor.
Introduction to anthropology of law; institutional knowledge as seen in material culture and legal documents; colonial and post-colinial settings; examines the relationships between law and culture, colonialsim, evidence, globalization. Prerequisite: 200-level course in anthropology or consent of instructor.
A laboratory-based introduction to international research in human biology and health; methods for assessing nutritional status, physical activity, growth, cardiovascular health, endocrine and immune function. Prerequisite: 362 or consent of instructor.
Descriptive, naturalistic study of the culture of human social groups. Data gathering through observation and interview. Data analysis for ethnographic reporting. Prerequisites: 211 or 215.
ANTH 390-0-21 Power and the Public Sphere in America: Inequality, Information, Activism - Cancelled
How do we come to understand ourselves as Americans? How do some visions of American lives deny full citizenship to other Americans? What is the connection between that denial and both enduring domestic political, economic, and social inequalities, and the history and contemporary realities of US foreign policy? This seminar will focus on shifts in the US public sphere over the last half-century, and in particular on its variegated role in the present, and on a range of lively minority counterpublics. We will investigate neoliberal globalization and widening inequalities on American self-understandings of their lives within a world of nations; the roles of corporations and wealthy individuals in the construction of publicly recognized "common sense" understandings; the devastating effect on journalism of the rise of the online world; and recent upsurges of misogyny/homophobia, racism, and xenophobia. What is the history of "fake news"? How have individuals and groups attempted to counter it? Students will read widely on these topics, and engage in their own mini-research projects related to course concerns.
Food is a universal requirement for humans to survive, yet different cultures have developed radically divergent cuisines. In this course, we will use archaeology to explore the diversity of human foodways throughout time, and the role of food in human evolution and culture. You will learn about the origins of cooking over 1 million years ago, the `real' Paleodiet, how the Incas used beer at parties to build social alliances, and how Columbus's discovery of the Americas spurred global scale shifts in food and agriculture. The course begins with an overview of how anthropologists and archaeologists study food, and then moves through time, beginning with our early hominid ancestors and ending with colonialism.
ANTH 390-0-25 Sex & Surveillance with GNDR_ST 353-0-20
Scopophilia is the derivation of pleasure from looking. What pleasures does the surveillance state gain from looking at us? From feeling and documenting us? How do privacy activists fight back against such surveillance, and what might be wrong with privacy rights discourse? Which groups are always already surveilled? In this class, students will play with notions of surveillance—including sousveillance, lateral surveillance, and counter surveillance—as engaged by queer and feminist studies, the cultural anthropology of expertise, and social studies of science and technology. We will draw on case studies ranging from police technologies, facial recognition software, PornHub’s data collection projects, TSA airport body scanners, Facebook ads, science fiction like Black Mirror, and more to understand how bodies, races, genders, and sexualities are made known and contested by activists, artists, corporations, and governments.
ANTH 390-0-26 Ancient Health and Migration: Shaping Patterns of Global Diversity Today combined with ANTHRO 490-0-24
Why are different modern populations more or less susceptible to certain diseases? Does the "Paleo Diet" actually mimic early human diets? Do differences in rates of lactose intolerance and sensitivity to bitter tastes reflect past diets? How have behaviors, such as cooking and domestication of livestock, influenced co-evolutionary relationships with parasites, such as tapeworms? What genetic material did we acquire through interbreeding with other species of Homo (Neanderthals and Denisovans)? In this course, we will examine how the paleogenomic revolution in biological anthropology is transforming both how we ask questions about early humans and what questions are possible to ask. We will begin the course with an overview of methodologies used to study ancient DNA, paleopathology, and paleoecology, with an emphasis on recent advances in paleogenomics. We will then examine new research where evidence from ancient DNA is supplementing or transforming theories about early human health, diet, and migration, and discuss how these new theories improve our understanding of how our population histories have influenced modern human health, adaptation, and diversity today.
ANTH 390-0-27 Native American Health with GBL_HLTH 390-0-21
We will devote the first half of the quarter to readings and discussions. During the second half, students will embark on individual mini-research projects arising from seminar concerns with the American public sphere and counterpublics. These projects should include an interviewing/ethnographic component. Students will present their findings in the last two seminar meetings, and turn in papers describing that research and those findings at the end of the quarter.
ANTH 390-0-28 Islam in Asia with ASIAN_ST 390-3-20 & RELIGION 359-0-20
This class introduces you to a wide variety of ethnographies on Muslim communities in Asia, both in the range of regions and states – Iran, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China – as well as in terms of themes – how Muslims engage secularizing states, coexist with hegemonic non-Muslim majorities, survive as refugees on the battleground of rival nation states, and, with native languages other than Arabic, make the Qur’an collectively meaningful. At the same time, you will sharpen your ability to read and evaluate difficult books. We will analyze the ethnographies as texts to understand how the authors combined different kinds of texts to achieve the effect of a unified ethnographic whole, which different fieldwork activities yielded specific forms of data or empirical materials, which writing techniques authors used to give voice to different groups of informants, and how authors attempted to represent the hold of the past on the “now” of fieldwork.
ANTH 390-0-29 Dietary Decolonization with HUM 370-5-20 & AMER_ST 310-0-22
In response to the negative social effects of globalization and industrialization on the contemporary food system, there has developed increased attention to questions of sustainability, food justice, and food sovereignty. While such concepts are useful for thinking about liberatory food futures more generally, they often draw upon foundational Indigenous concepts without directly naming them as such. This course, then, focuses on new discourses about food sovereignty by highlighting (rather than obscuring) the linkages between decolonial or sovereign food futures and histories of erasure and dispossession of Native peoples. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, course readings draw from the fields of Food Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Pacific Island Studies in the form of academic articles, cookbooks, short film, and poetry. Throughout, we will question the potentialities of food sovereignty within the settler state, whether dietary decolonization is possible in the so-called age of the Anthropocene, and the limits of working within and against today’s legacies of the colonial food system.
ANTH 390-0-30 Introduction to Cultural Resource Management and Environmental Policy with ENVR_POL 390-0-24
”Why is it important that we save significant cultural places, landscapes, and structures, and intangible culture?” This will be the focal question of this class. Through the next 10 weeks we will explore this question and gain a better understanding of what makes something culturally significant and the laws and policies that govern cultural resources. Cultural Resources Management (CRM) is concerned with traditional and historic culture including archaeology; architecture; language; cultural landscapes; sacred sites; ecosystems; mortuary practices; ethno-biology; oral and intangible culture and history; intellectual property rights; enforcement and monitoring of preservation laws and policies; and can also encompasses contemporary culture.
This Course will follow the development of the preservation movement and policy in the United States, with comparisons to Britain and Europe, Egypt, and Japan. We will examine the role of the industrial revolution in the creation of national preservation policies and ideas of national identities, and how the later influenced policies and enforcements. We will examine congressional acts ranging from the 1906 Antiquities Act, 1916 National Parks Act, to the 1978 Archeological Resource Protection Act and 1990 Native American Graves and Protection and Repatriation Act. We will discuss the ethics and moral decision making that goes into these laws and the issues that arise with legislation and enforcement of cultural preservation.
ANTH 390-0-30 Introduction to Cultural Resource Management and Environmental Policy with ENVR_POL 390-0-24
”Why is it important that we save significant cultural places, landscapes, and structures, and intangible culture?” This will be the focal question of this class. Through the next 10 weeks we will explore this question and gain a better understanding of what makes something culturally significant and the laws and policies that govern cultural resources. Cultural Resources Management (CRM) is concerned with traditional and historic culture including archaeology; architecture; language; cultural landscapes; sacred sites; ecosystems; mortuary practices; ethno-biology; oral and intangible culture and history; intellectual property rights; enforcement and monitoring of preservation laws and policies; and can also encompasses contemporary culture.
This Course will follow the development of the preservation movement and policy in the United States, with comparisons to Britain and Europe, Egypt, and Japan. We will examine the role of the industrial revolution in the creation of national preservation policies and ideas of national identities, and how the later influenced policies and enforcements. We will examine congressional acts ranging from the 1906 Antiquities Act, 1916 National Parks Act, to the 1978 Archeological Resource Protection Act and 1990 Native American Graves and Protection and Repatriation Act. We will discuss the ethics and moral decision making that goes into these laws and the issues that arise with legislation and enforcement of cultural preservation.
ANTH 490-0-21 Political Economy, Race, and Gender: Intellectual History and Contemporary Research with GNDR_ST 490-0-20
We now have had more than three decades of institutionalization and scholarly production in gender/sexuality and race/ethnic studies. We have also seen scholarship and activism largely part ways. Part of that process was the muting of attention to the class processes that always inherently suffuse gender, race, etc. stratification processes. And students are not often given the chance to trace the theoretical sources of our modern-day concerns. This seminar will help to fill in these elisions in two ways. First, we will be reading key texts by ten under-taught late-18th to mid-20th century Western theorists whose work on class, race, gender and/or nationality divisions has had a major impact on subsequent global thought. Then, we will be reading three excellent, relatively recent works by scholars that focus on race and/or class and/or gender stratifications globally, and the fights against them. Each seminar participant will then choose and report on her/his own fourth text in order to fill in missing geographic/topic areas, and to gain the opportunity to delve into work closest to their own research fields.
ANTH 490-0-22 Integrative Seminar in Society, Biology, and Health
This course is required for the SBH cluster. Presentations by departmental faculty on contemporary topics of importance to the development of anthropology. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.
Presentations by departmental faculty on contemporary topics of importance to the development of anthropology. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.
What were the lives of women, men, and other genders like in the past? Why are researchers calling the emergence of feminist and gender archaeologies one of the most significant theoretical developments in our field? This course examines three decades of gender research in archaeology. How do we recognize gender archaeologically? What are the benefits, as well as limitations of an engendered approach to the past? What are the interdisciplinary implications of doing engendered research in archaeology?
ANTH 490-0-23 Migrant Sexualities and Queer Travelers: Translocations co-list with GNDR_ST 490-0- 22
Presentations by departmental faculty on contemporary topics of importance to the development of anthropology. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.
Presentations by departmental faculty on contemporary topics of importance to the development of anthropology. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.
ANTH 490-0-23 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity with GBL_HLTH 390-0-22
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity.
ANTH 490-0-24 Ancient Health and Migration: Shaping Patterns of Global Diversity Today combined with ANTHRO 390-0-26
Why are different modern populations more or less susceptible to certain diseases? Does the “Paleo Diet” actually mimic early human diets? Do differences in rates of lactose intolerance and sensitivity to bitter tastes reflect past diets? How have behaviors, such as cooking and domestication of livestock, influenced co-evolutionary relationships with parasites, such as tapeworms? What genetic material did we acquire through interbreeding with other species of Homo (Neanderthals and Denisovans)? In this course, we will examine how the paleogenomic revolution in biological anthropology is transforming both how we ask questions about early humans and what questions are possible to ask. We will begin the course with an overview of methodologies used to study ancient DNA, paleopathology, and paleoecology, with an emphasis on recent advances in paleogenomics. We will then examine new research where evidence from ancient DNA is supplementing or transforming theories about early human health, diet, and migration, and discuss how these new theories improve our understanding of how our population histories have influenced modern human health, adaptation, and diversity today.
Advanced course designed to integrate topics from the four sub fields of anthropology (archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology). May be repeated for credit.
Philosophical and methodological problems that relate to cultural anthropology. Approaches to the analysis of cosmology, ritual and myth; comparison of scriptural and non-scriptural religions.
Recent trends in social theory. Examines work from outside as well as within anthropology, as it has contributed to debate within the discipline (e.g., structuralism, practice theory, post-modernism).
This course will provide a graduate level introduction to the anthropology of mind, body, and health. We will address broadly the question of how Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness and the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing. In addition, we will analyze medical practices as cultural systems, as well as the ways in which health, body, and mind are socially and politically constructed and manipulated, bodies are controlled and policed, and definitions of mind and mental processes influence and are influenced by social context. There will be a particular focus on the concepts of embodiment and trauma and their various uses and meanings in specific contexts. We will combine an examination of current theoretical paradigms with ethnographic case material from a number of societies, including Brazil, Japan, the US, and Canada. The goal of this comparative endeavor will be to analyze similarities and differences across understandings of mind and body and systems of healing, and to examine American perspectives, behaviors, and practices critically in order to illuminate the ways in which they are socially embedded and culturally specific.
