Anthropology Courses With Available Seats

ANTH-A 122 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION (3) Introduction to the study of communication, culture, identity and power. Each student does original primary research. Topics range from groups in North Africa to high school and college students in the United States, and issues such as gendered language, slang, verbal play, and institutional language. (GenEd/CASE S&H, CASE Diversity in the US/DUS credit)

ANTH-E 200 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (3) 

Introduction to the study of humans and how they organize themselves: to get along, survive, thrive, and have meaningful lives. Emphasizes social and cultural theories and problems to understand people in diverse contexts across the globe, with focus on such topics as gender, language, family, migration, politics and power, race and racism, ethnicity, and nationalism. Students will practice ethnographic skills to help understand contemporary life. (GenEd/CASE S&H)

ANTH-A 208: ANTHROPOLOGY OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN (3) What does it mean to be a parent and/or a child in families around the world? This course is an ethnographic exploration of both dominant and alternative ideas about parents and children in societies both far away and close to home. What are the cultural, social and political dimensions of our notions of "proper" and "normal" childrearing? Of children's behavior at different stages of development? How do ideas about childhood and parenthood intersect with other areas of cultural life? This course focuses both on ethnography and on how people around the world express experiences of the child/parent relationship through various art forms. Students will employ both creative and critical methods to examine family structures in their own lives. Our exploration is organized by the life stages of children, from infancy through adolescence, in both their variety and universality around the globe. This will be a co-taught course in which both professors will be present at each meeting. We believe that our joint discussion of the course readings and materials will provide a scholarly dialogue into which students can enter with their own curiosity. In this way, it will also be a course that explicitly examines how we learn in a social environment. How do we foster reflexivity in each other, so that we may critically examine our own experiences historically, socially, politically and culturally? The dialogic form of our co-taught class will also serve as an analytic model of the "ideal" or normative American two-parent family, headed by two adults who may not always agree with each other. In addition to learning how to think anthropologically about texts ranging from academic articles to the popular press, and from novels to films, you will also use your own experiences as ethnographic data in group exercises throughout the semester. (GenEd/CASE A&H)

ANTH-A 208: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK N ROLL (3) Do you feel like a punk? Are hallucinogens illegal because they open the mind and somebody prefers to leave it closed? In short: Are you interested in the subversive culture that surrounds Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll? If so, you should take this course. In it we try to answer these and other provocative questions by proposing to take them on as legitimate academic inquiry. First, we introduce ourselves to various theoretical perspectives that shed light on the reasons for and inherent contradictions within forms of cultural expression and social practice that claim to be subversive but often run the risk of "selling out." Second, we divide the remainder of the course into three broad sections - (1) Sex (2) Drugs and (3) Rock-n-Roll in order to examine in detail particular kinds of subversive subcultures in their cultural and historical context. This includes various edgy rock subcultures like punk, extreme metal, rave, and goth. It also includes expressive subcultures that grow up around illicit substances (i.e. club cultures/hallucinogenic subcultures) and anti-normative sexual practices like modern polygamy/polyamory, homosexuality, alternatives to mainstream pornography, and BDSM. (GenEd/CASE A&H)

ANTH-B 400: EVOLUTION OF HUMAN COGNITION (3) This seminar will explore questions surrounding the origin and evolution of important aspects of human cognition and behavior. Theoretical perspectives that apply an evolutionary perspective to understanding human behavior will be discussed and critically evaluated. These have historically been controversial, as have the research programs that they inspire. This class will explore how evolutionary perspectives have informed an understanding of where our behavior comes from, why we behave the way we do, and to what extent our behavior is or has been modifiable. We will also discuss what this research might mean, if anything, for society. Topics to be addressed will include: the history of attempts to apply an evolutionary perspective to human behavior, the concept of inclusive fitness, evolutionary models of altruism, human sexual behavior and mating strategies from an evolutionary perspective, modularity in cognition, mental disease from an evolutionary perspective, human brain evolution and evolutionary models used to explain it (e.g. language, sociality, dietary shifts, and other behavioral adaptations), archaeological evidence of human behavioral evolution, the importance of cultural evolution, and the complex interplay between evolved predispositions and learned behavior over evolutionary time. We will also explore the ideas of emergence and "complex adaptive systems" as applied to human behavior. Participants will have the opportunity to take an active role in influencing the direction of the seminar towards areas of their particular interest. The goal of the seminar will be to integrate research from many fields of inquiry. There are no prerequisites, other than an interest in understanding evolutionary perspectives on human behavior. This course is limited to graduate students and upper-level graduates.