36 courses with the subject ANTH, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ANTH 1160Introduction to Anthropology4
Goals: To introduce the approaches and perspectives of the anthropological study of human beings. To survey the ways human cultures shape and are shaped by historical, environmental, biological and social forces. To introduce the importance of context in social research. Content: This course is an introductory survey of the different anthropological approaches to the study of human beings through introducing key concepts, basic content, approaches and guiding theoretical questions about human beings and our relationship to each other and our world. Students will acquire a basic working knowledge of key anthropological vocabulary, research orientations and methods. Class lecture, discussion and readings will be applied in weekly field exercises spanning a range of research approaches. This class emphasizes learning about anthropology by doing it—data collected by students will be discussed and analyzed in class. Taught: Annually, both semesters
Crosslisted: Also listed as ECST 1500 Goals: This course considers the conditions that make it possible for people – and societies, and our more-than-human neighbors – to live together on Earth in the longer term. Surveying the conditions of global crises such as climate change and environmental injustices, as well as exploring how those crises make us feel and treat each other, our readings, discussions, and in-class collaborative projects help us understand what it will take to care for the Earth as home as we move together into the future. Content: We explore socio-cultural, economic, and political relationships from the perspectives of anthropology and environmental studies to better understand how we have arrived, globally, at profound disparities in wealth, health, life expectancy, population density, and access to opportunity and hope. In contrast, we explore global grocery chains and land commons projects to understand how people are rebuilding these systems, and to practice creating and sharing instructions for “planetary home care.” Drawing broadly on contemporary literature from geography, economics, political science, rural sociology, anthropology, and Afro- and Indigenous futurisms, this course helps prepare students to grapple with some of the more challenging issues of our post-colonial world, with its global division of labor, cultures of consumption-as-self-soothing, differential poverty and privilege, intellectual property battles, increasing systemic instabilities in the face of climate crisis and pandemics, and social responses to global connectivity. Course comes with Planetary playlist.
Goals: To understand the process of biological evolution and the evolution of the human species. Content: Study of evolutionary theory, population genetics, comparative primate anatomy and behavior, evolution of social behavior, fossil evidence for primate and hominid evolution, origins of bipedalism, tools. Taught: Annually
ANTH 1600Anthropocene: Culture and Climate Change4
Crosslisted: Also listed as ECST 1600 Modern humans appeared in the most recent moment of Earth’s long geologic history, and yet in a spectacularly short time we have dramatically impacted our planet. Human-induced changes to the landscape, chemical composition of the atmosphere, and the living biosphere have accelerated to the point that the Earth is no longer the planet on which our species evolved. It has been suggested that the planet has, in fact, already changed so much that it should be named as a new geologic era: The Anthropocene. This course introduces the anthropological study of the Anthropocene—a holistic consideration of the world humans have made through our use of technology, our means of production, our systems of consumption, our waste, and the many other expressions of human culture that are changing the Earth. As an introductory course, it focuses on basic literacy with the foundational questions of human culture and the biosphere. It is framed by five questions that structure the content of the class: What should we call this period? What is happening? How did we get here? Does the Anthropocene have a culture? How do we learn to live in this world we have made? Some key topics of interest include deep time, material culture, media, evolution, nature, kinship, ruins, adaptation and solidarity. As these issues are a shared concern of humanity, this course spends considerable time investigating difference and collaborative means for a human response.
Goals: To study specialized topics in the subdiscipline of sociocultural anthropology. While intended primarily for anthropology majors or those interested in majoring in anthropology, these topics courses welcome interested students from other disciplines. Content: Focus varies. While the specific topic of the course varies from year to year, ANTH 3030 focuses on studying humans as social and cultural beings. The approaches that sociocultural anthropologists take to the study of human beings are many, varied and occasionally contentious. With this in mind, this course will take up a specific topic and examine it using various approaches—emphasizing the ways that humans make, remake and represent meanings and behaviors in social and cultural contexts. The class will discuss anthropological approaches to research and the ethnographies that sociocultural anthropologists typically produce. Taught: Annually, Fall semester
Goals: To study humans as social and cultural beings. To examine the topic using various approaches—emphasizing the ways that humans make, remake and represent meanings and behaviors in social and cultural contexts. To discuss anthropological approaches to research and the ethnographies that sociocultural anthropologists typically produce. Content: How do anthropologists understand the nature and purpose of art and performance? Are these universal categories of human behavior or are they unique to Western modernist and postmodernist activities and theoretical assumptions? Does it make sense to discuss art as an autonomous sphere of action outside of religion, ritual, medicine, tourism, or other forms of practice? How might representations that we encounter in painting, sculpture, or performance align with ethnographic depictions? How are identity, difference, and cultural values produced and reproduced by both art and anthropology? How might art forms or performances be used as political protest and what might such creations offer that other practices do not? These are just some of the many questions we will discuss this semester. Ultimately, our goal is to interrogate the notion of art as we have come to conceptualize it in the West as a way to expand our understanding of what it means to be human.
Goals: This class will introduce students to the connections (both historically and cross-culturally) between social protest, music, and sound-making practices. Primarily we will examine how people have used music and sound as mediums of social protest as well as the ways in which governments have deployed these same mediums as counter-insurgency tactics. Ultimately, our goal will be to place sound and sound-making approaches at the center of social protest activities in order to understand them both as objects of analysis and as tools for broader engagement. Content: Reading assignments, videos, active listening exercises, and lectures will provide students with an understanding of the connections between sound and social protest. Students will also be asked to create their own sonic interventions through the digital recording and manipulation of sound.
This course introduces digital anthropology by considering the material and sociocultural contexts of the design and production of hardware, the work of code and software design, and the use of digital technologies, software, games and networks (social or otherwise.) Since the digital is global in scope and local in practice, we also look at how the digital works between different locations and cultures: the globalization of social media, the circulation of games and software, or questions of the material conditions of production and electronic waste. Human history has been dominated by the use of physical tools and analog devices. Over the past few decades, however, we have witnessed the dramatic proliferation of digital tools and technologies throughout our everyday lives. Digital information, its management, and movement through networks and technological apparatuses are a human construction and as such are a prime site for studying humanity at this moment. Digital anthropology examines what the arrival of these new technologies mean for human culture and sociality—what it means to be digitally human.
Goals: To introduce students to the history and sociocultural contexts of various forms of travel from religious pilgrimage to the rise of mass tourism and how each structures knowledge and experience of other places and peoples. Content: Historical and contemporary travel narratives, ethnography, films, and guest lectures will be supplemented with theoretical essays to examine the power of the practice of travel in various forms both historical and contemporary. This course will emphasize the connections and tensions between various forms of the journey and issues such as self-knowledge, authenticity, class, the nature of “others,” and the construction of “culture.”
Goals: To study topics in the subdiscipline of archaeology. Intended primarily for anthropology majors or those interested in majoring in anthropology. Content: Focus varies. While the topic covered in this course may vary from year to year, all versions of ANTH 3040 will provide students with an understanding of archaeological method and theory including how archaeologists study landscapes, settlement patterns, and material remains to understand human history and human culture. Instructors will use a case-study approach (i.e. pre-contact North American archaeology, historical North American archaeology, or archaeology of the modern world) to help students understand the nature of human variation and diversity as culturally, biologically, linguistically, historically, and geographically situated. As part of this course students will develop writing and research skills such as writing a literature review, an annotated fiction, and a heritage preservation proposal. Recent example: North American Archaeology. Taught: Annually, spring semester
Goals: To understand principles of archaeology - the varying ways archaeologists recover, analyze, and interpret information about the past. To gain proficiency in general scientific practices, reading archaeological literature, and grant writing. To critique archaeological practice by examining the bias inherent in American archaeology. To consider ethical and practical issues in the management of cultural resources and understand how to balance the sometimes conflicting views, voices, and histories found in our contemporary world. Content: Archaeologists are often described as “time detectives” sifting through the material traces of past lives in order to better understand human behavior and human history. We will critique this limited view of the discipline by exploring how the “past is present” and the need for a socially responsive and civically engaged archaeology. Students apply their knowledge by writing a grant proposal that combines scholarship, community engagement, and an expanded archaeological practice. Taught: Alternate years, spring semester
Archaeologists are traditionally understood to study our ancient human past. This course takes a different view of the discipline. Here we will use the methods and theories of archaeology to examine our contemporary world. That is, this class will investigate the archaeology of now. We will take archaeology’s concern for things, context, and people to gain a unique perspective on our world and our lives. Our class will examine archaeology’s contributions of everything from death investigations to graffiti studies, tracking our material culture from space junk floating around our planet to micro plastics floating throughout our oceans. We will also consider ethical and practical issues about archaeology and heritage in the context of massive and global challenges faced by humanity. We will consider the meaning of our Anthropocene legacy where “preservation” is unavoidable and whether archaeology can be a force for social good. This course is designed to give students the archaeological tools they can use to better understand our 21st Century world. We will use lectures, readings, discussion, and exercises to introduce these tools and develop their use. As students in this class, you will regularly engage in field and lab exercises, learning how to observe, document, and analyze our contemporary archaeological record, including work with waste studies, ethnoarchaeological observations, and counter-mapping. Taught: Alternate years, spring semester
Goals: To study topics in the subdiscipline of linguistic anthropology. Intended primarily for anthropology majors or those interested in majoring in anthropology and/or minoring in linguistics. Content: Focus varies. While the topic of this course may vary from year to year, all variations of ANTH 3050 will introduce students to the anthropological study of human language in its sociocultural context. We will explore the social and cultural dimensions of language in general and (a) language(s) in particular. Key concepts include language as system, language as performance, semiotic mediation, social context, indexicality, and language ideology. Some readings are theoretical, others ethnographic, drawn from a variety of speech communities and communities of practice around the world. Writing assignments range from sociolinguistic field observations and autobiographies to book reviews and analytical essays. Recent example: Language, Culture, and Society. Taught: Annually, Spring semester
Goals: To study topics in the subdiscipline of biological anthropology. Intended primarily for anthropology majors or those interested in majoring in anthropology. Content: Focus varies. While the topic of this course may vary from year to year, all variations of ANTH 3060 will explore the complexity of the relationship between biology and culture and the impact of culture change on human biology. Biological anthropologists believe that human biology must be understood in the context of the associated culture. With this in mind, a variety of different methods and theories will be introduced during the class to provide a framework from which to interpret and explain human behavior practiced by human societies in the past and present. As part of this course, students will develop oral communication skills commonly engaged in by biological anthropologists including presentational speaking at an academic conference (a mock conference with 3 – 4 presenters, a moderator, and question/answer session), group discussion of published literature, and proposal presentation to affiliated interested parties, i.e. descendant community members and governmental agencies. Recent example: Bioarchaeology.
Benjamin Franklin famously once wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” While he was correct that death remains a universal inevitability, the ways in which people around the world and through time experience death and dying are far from universal. This class takes an anthropological perspective to explore cross-cultural attitudes towards death in both the past and present. We will center the dead body itself as we explore the anthropology of death. The topics we will explore fall under three broad themes: 1) the history and ethics of studying the dead; 2) death rites and the many ways in which diverse human societies have disposed of the dead; and 3) the materiality of the dead body itself and how we can learn about past peoples’ lives through their material remains.
This course traces the role of biological anthropology in the scientific and pseudoscientific study of human variation and difference and the impacts of this study on society, from politics to medicine to identity and beyond. The course will trace the historical development of the now debunked biological race concept, from the misuse of scientific concepts and methods by early biological anthropologists to create racist, white supremacist “hierarchies of humanity,” to the role of biological anthropologists in scientifically disproving this same concept. Additionally, the course will explore how the erroneous concept of “biological race” and racism within biological anthropology have affected scientific knowledge production and narratives about human origins, evolution, and biological and cultural differences.
Goals: 1) To learn to recognize, describe, and possibly diagnose evidence of disease in human skeletons; 2) to understand how to use the skeletal evidence of health and disease to learn more about ancient peoples and how they interacted with and were affected by their environment; 3) to understand the biocultural approach in anthropology and how it pertains to paleopathology; and 4) to appreciate the incredible amount of information contained within the human skeleton. Content: The human skeleton can tell us much about its owner. Bones and teeth record evidence of nutritional stress, infectious diseases, trauma, and habitual activities. Paleopathologists learn to use this evidence as clues to behavior and disease load. We will maintain a biocultural focus, examining the interactions between human biology and culture. Topics to be covered include the history of paleopathology; the paleoepidemiological approach; how to recognize and describe disease in bones; how to do a differential diagnosis; how to assess the potential impact of a disease process or traumatic injury on an individual; and how to estimate possible care or medical interventions. Infectious, degenerative, nutritional, developmental, and dental diseases as well as trauma will be covered.
Goals: To study specialized topics in the subdiscipline of environmental anthropology. While intended primarily for anthropology majors and majors in environment and climate studies, these topics courses welcome interested students from other disciplines. Content: Focus varies. While the specific topic of the course varies from year to year, ANTH 3070 focuses on studying humans in the larger contexts of the environments and worlds we create and maintain. This course will take up a specific topic and examine it using various approaches—emphasizing the ways that humans make, remake and represent meanings and behaviors in social and cultural contexts in various contexts on our shared planet.
ANTH 3071Environmental Conflict and Collective Violence4
This course explores the anthropological meanings and effects of violence in both historical and cross-cultural contexts with a special focus on responses to climate change and environmental degradation. Our goal will be to examine how we might understand violence, in and of itself, as an always already contested category of cultural practice. To do so, we will work to examine the various experiences and subjectivities of perpetrators, victims, and witnesses in relation to acts that some may deem violent while others may seek to legitimize or condone. To this end, we will explore how violence is complexly defined and how such definitions involve contestations about whether or not a certain act is considered legitimate or illegitimate, prosaic or extreme, individual or collective, etc. Throughout class, we will examine notions of physical, psychological, state, gendered, structural, and environmental violence while also exploring the role violent imaginaries assume in contemporary culture.
It is an anthropological observation that humans make worlds. The current world we have made on our planet is notable for the multiple, complex and enduring infrastructures we have built—both sociocultural and material. From automobile-centric transportation, the delivery of freshwater, electricity and digital networks, to the managerial, educational and governmental formations, we are individually and collectively enmeshed in multiple human-created infrastructures. This course examines the history, formation and function of key infrastructures in the human age of the Anthropocene using examples across cultures and geographies. Our goal will be to examine the relationships between humans, the worlds we build and the functioning of the infrastructures we create. These are questions particularly important in the age of globalized connection, resource extraction, and impacts on the biosphere in the age of climate change. To study infrastructure is also to consider options and alternatives to our current situation.
This course surveys the variety of ethnographic research methods and techniques used by anthropologists. It builds on the foundation of the fieldwork exercises introduced in introduction to anthropology through a much more detailed examination of the work anthropologists do and the nature of the data they collect. This course will cover both the practical aspects of actual ethnographic research—the methods and skills of anthropological fieldwork—and review theoretical examinations and critiques of the work anthropologists do. We will discuss formulating research questions, writing a research proposal and collecting data in sociocultural contexts (through, for example, written fieldnotes, interviews, observations, translation, visual techniques and archival research.) We will also read some outstanding ethnographies. Taught: Alternate years, fall semester
ANTH 3620Ethnography of Sound and the Environment4
This course will introduce students to the multifarious connections that exist at the intersection of sound studies, acoustic ecology (ecoacoustics), and ethnography. Our ultimate goal will be to examine the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment. To do so, students will engage in close reading, listening, and other forms of sensory observation in order to understand how various sounds (of human activity, of the planet itself, and of other species) are inextricably linked to placemaking and place-sensing activities. In the end, students will use their increased understanding of sound and soundscapes to realize their own ethnographically-informed, audio-based interventions.
ANTH 3710Human Osteology and Skeletal Identification (with Lab)4
The human skeleton is a dynamic and living biological system essential to life as we know it. It provides support and protection for vital soft tissues of the body, allows us to move, and acts as the production and storage site of cells and nutrients essential to our continued survival. Moreover, with rare exception, human skeletal remains provide the only direct evidence we have of past peoples’ lives, including their anatomy, evolution, behavior, and health. In this class we will 1) explore historical and contemporary ethical dilemmas facing biological anthropologists; 2) use skeletal morphology and anatomical landmarks to identify all 206 bones and 32 permanent teeth of the human body and distinguish them from non-human animal remains; 3) contextualize the skeleton within a functional anatomical context to understand how relevant soft tissues (muscles, ligaments, nerves, blood vessels, etc.) work with the skeleton to facilitate real-life function; and 4) understand the biology, growth and development, and biomechanics of the human skeletal system. This multi-faceted approach to human osteology will provide a holistic foundation of osteological knowledge relevant to a variety of academic and applied disciplines, including bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, paleoanthropology, paleopathology, dental anthropology, comparative anatomy, medicine, dentistry, kinesiology, veterinary science, as well as many others. Taught: Annually
This course will introduce students to the scope of knowledge, theories, and skills forensic anthropologists bring to forensic casework. Students will learn about the process of forensic death investigations and their application to domestic criminal cases as well as international human rights violations. Students will understand and apply methods of skeletal identification and reconstruction of individual life histories from bone that may be applied in both contemporary forensic and ancient archaeological contexts, including techniques for estimation of age-at-death, sex, stature, identification of skeletal indicators of biological affinity, trauma, and pathology. Additionally, students will discuss and grapple with ethical dilemmas facing forensic anthropologists practicing in the field today. Students will develop and practice problem solving and critical thinking through close observation, evidence analysis, and presentation of results through written reports and oral testimony. The course will culminate in the production of an osteological profile on a set of skeletal remains. Taught: Alternate years
Students in this course will learn archaeological field methods through participation in ongoing research projects. We will work closely with various Federal, state, Tribal, and community partners. Our projects follow principles of community-based and Indigenous-based archaeology. The experiences of this course will help prepare students for professional careers in archaeology, heritage preservation, site interpretation, and related fields. Content varies depending on the field site. Recent projects include excavations at historic Split Rock Lighthouse on the north shore of Lake Superior to remote sensing investigations at a pre-contact stone quarry site in southeastern Minnesota. Basic techniques covered include pedestrian survey, GPS mapping, soil description, record keeping, excavation, and field conservation. Taught: Annually, summer term
Goals: To learn archaeological methods for understanding our material world. To critically examine the complicated legacy of archaeological collections. To prepare students for professional careers in archaeology, heritage preservation, museum work, and related fields. Content: Students in this course will learn the skills and techniques employed by archaeologists in the documentation, analyses, and preservation of artifacts and other materials recovered in archaeological fieldwork. Course content includes lectures and readings on methods and theory for laboratory work, collections management, and ethical concerns. Students will apply this content in discussions and laboratory exercises focused on stone artifacts, ceramics, animal bones, and a variety of other materials. Students will also learn about basic computer applications in artifact analyses and documentation. Taught: Alternate years, fall semester
Goals: To have students participate as part of an interdisciplinary team excavating a historic site on or near campus. This archaeological excavation is part of research focused on the early history of “Hamline Village.” It is also a public archaeology project with the goal of involving people from throughout the local community including Hamline Elementary students, neighborhood residents, and University alumni. Content: Students learn basic archaeological field and laboratory methods, principles of historic archaeology, and anthropological approaches to material culture studies through readings and lectures, but primarily through participation. This course emphasizes archaeology as a holistic discipline linking the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students help provide this interdisciplinary perspective by contributing to the overall research, educational, and public archaeology goals through individual and collaborative projects. Please note that this is a lab course. Lab meetings are built into the course schedule and students do not need to register for a separate lab section. Taught: Alternate years, fall semester
Goals: To present students with an introduction to museums and exhibitions, and their social, political, and cultural roles in society; to provide students with basic theoretical approaches for examining the power and politics of collection, display and representation at work in museums; to examine specific examples of the ways that museums and exhibitions provide spaces for articulating and practicing different communities and identities, and their relationship to “others”; and to provide students with an introduction to aspects of museum collection, exhibit design, and public interpretation. Content: The course is taught using a mixture of theoretical readings, ethnographies, field excursions to local museums, and a student field project. Topics covered include: a basic introduction to the history of collecting and display; the beginnings and institutionalization of museums; different museums and their publics; theories of representation and cultural production; and the design, collection, and curation of museum exhibits.
This course examines the ways culture and society are represented and imagined visually. While we will primarily focus on photography and film, we will also look more broadly at the visual aspects of culture as it intersects with material culture, media and the digital. A central concern will be to examine the ways that these technologies construct knowledge and understanding of ourselves and others. The course emphasizes equal parts of theory and practice. Film screenings and theoretical works will provide a foundation for members of the class to make their own films. The last half of the semester will engage students individually and in groups with creating documentary research projects using visual research methods.
ANTH 3840Minnesota Music and Performing Arts Archive4
Goals: To explore the history of Minnesota music and performing arts and to work with local artists to develop archival practices. Content: This course engages members of the local community to understand and develop digital archives of Minnesota music and performing arts. We will explore the formal and ethical issues surrounding archives, the importance of repatriation, and then work with local communities to create meaningful archives to meet a variety of goals and needs.
Goals: To become familiar with the kinds of explanations and methods anthropologists have used and/or are currently using to analyze cultural phenomena. To develop critical thinking. Content: Theoretical statements and exemplary analyses covering a spectrum of approaches employed by nineteenth and twentieth century anthropologists. Taught: Annually
At least two 3000-level anthropology courses Credits: 4
ANTH 5950Senior Seminar4
Crosslisted: Also listed as ECST 5950 Goals: To provide majors, in their senior year, the opportunity to bring together the variety of content and knowledge from the courses they have taken to broadly address theoretical or conceptual issues of contemporary relevance in the field. Content: This is a capstone course in the major that emphasizes the competencies of working in groups, understanding multiple viewpoints, discussion and presentation skills, critique, and the production of high quality written work. This course is intended to reaffirm the learning objectives of the program, and to be a gateway to using knowledge beyond the university in the world of work, or within further professional training.
ANTH 1160 and at least one 3000-level anthropology course (for anthropology majors), or ECST 1100 and ECST 1500 (for environmental and climate studies majors) Credits: 4
