This Critical Thinking Seminar introduces students to the depth and breadth of human diversity and to the methods anthropologists use to study human diversity. Organized around the material, ecological, and ideological interplay between cultures, this course focuses on the divergent ways that peoples of the world have adapted to their environments, created communities, moderated conflicts, developed cosmologies, and expressed creativity.

A survey of sociocultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. The course takes a comparative approach to the study of culture. Topics include: family, kinship, and marriage; cultural ecology and economics; political organization; gender roles and socialization; religion and ritual; and culture change. Basic concepts, methods of research, and analytic perspectives are introduced.

A survey of physical anthropology and archaeology. The course follows an evolutionary approach to the development of human life and culture. Topics include: human genetics; comparative primatology; the fossil record; the emergence of human culture; and prehistoric and historic archaeology. Basic concepts, methods of research, and analytic perspectives are introduced.

An introduction to anthropological approaches to race and racism, this course explores why race persists as a powerful social force and cultural idea despite its fallacy as a biological concept. Topics covered include human biological diversity, racial hierarchies around the world, historical and contemporary intersections of race and sexuality, and racism in everyday language use.

This course introduces students to anthropological theories and methods for the critical analysis of gendered structures of inequality globally. By comparing culture specific ideas and practices, anthropology provides a unique lens for understanding the cultural construction of gender identity. As we explore gender identity cross-culturally, students will also discover their own culturally formed, taken for granted, notions of the role of gender. Topics explored include: the saliency of the categories man and woman; the relationships between race and gender; the role of colonialism and neocolonialism in the representation of gender, sex and sexuality; and the role of gender in the family and the household, the realm of religion and the world of work.

In settler societies, Indigenous peoples face a variety of social and institutional pressures to conform to certain expectations. These range from the need to be recognized by the state in order to have rights, to pressures associated with the representation of Native peoples in media. Indigenous people face considerable tensions between embodying external stereotypes and racial expectations, while trying to forge individual and collective identities that go beyond these expectations. In this seminar, we will engage with recent scholarship in Native American and Indigenous Studies that addresses indigeneity as a political status, a supposed biological category, a social experience, and a point of departure for political involvement and activism. Our readings will also engage feminist and queer perspectives on the problem of authenticity and we will devote attention to the appropriation of Indigenous culture by non-Indigenous people. Geographic focus includes North and South America, Oceania, and some examples from Europe and Asia. Moreover, we will discuss indigeneity as a source of global affinity among colonized peoples and as a human rights framework within the United Nations.

In the midst of global climate change, environmental crises surrounding water resources, and the concomitant national and international conflicts over water, humans all around the world are coming to grips with our complete dependence on water. Indeed, as the source of life, water is deeply imbricated in our understanding of the past, present, and future of human life on earth. This course investigates our long-term engagement with water through cultural ecology, environmental history, visual, literary and ethnographic sources. We will explore the flow of cultural meanings of water as well as political contestation over water resources globally. And, paying particular attention to the gendered engagements and aspects of sustainability, we will cross the world through case studies of rivers, lakes, oceans and urban water infrastructures as they connect life on this planet. And in these case studies – of Lake Michigan, Lake Titicaca, Peru, the Bay of Bengal, Bali, Indonesia, the Mekong, Vietnam, Yunnan, China, and the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia – we will examine connections and disconnections among social movements focused on sustainability.

The presentation of selected subjects not included in regular departmental offerings. The course content and format will be determined by student and faculty interest. Materials may be organized variously according to culture area, theme, or issue. Prerequisites established by the instructor. May be repeated with a different topic.

Independent readings, individualized seminars, or field projects in selected areas designed to meet the special interests of advanced students. Prerequisites: 6 hours in ANTH, junior or senior status, and permission of the instructor. May be repeated.

Work in an approved anthropological setting such as a museum or research center under professional supervision. Graded S/U. Prerequisites: 9 hours in ANTH and permission of the department chair. May be repeated.