82 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 1010Introduction to Anthropology3
Effective Date 03/01/2009 This is a broad introductory course covering race, language, and culture, both as intellectual concepts and as political realities. Topics include race and culture as explanations of human affairs, the relationship of language to thought, cultural diversity and cultural relativity, and cultural approaches to current crises.
Effective Date 09/19/2013 Culture is the central concept that anthropologists use to understand the striking differences among human societies and how people organize the meaningful parts of their lives. In this course we explore this diversity, examine its basis in neuroplasticity and human development, and consider its implications for human nature, cognition, creativity, and identity. By learning about other cultures, we gain new understanding of ourselves.
Effective Date 01/01/2024 This course explores anthropological understandings of culture and the environment, particularly with respect to the ecology of human perception, histories of colonialism and related inequalities, food production, consumerism, nature conservation, the Anthropocene concept, and pervasive environmental logics of globalizing capitalism.
Effective Date 04/11/2017 Introductory course in which the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, race, racism, and nationalism are critically examined in terms of how they are used and structure social relations in American society and, by comparison, how they are defined in other cultures throughout the world.
Effective Date 02/17/2023 This course examines the many ways that people have managed, shared and made claim to water—the construction of water worlds. It also looks at waterscapes, dam projects, water in cities, and wastewater and sewage systems globally. Importantly, the course addresses conflicting notions of how to value water, including contemporary debates about the sale of water and water rights, and examines the notion that water will be the locus of future wars.
Effective Date 01/01/2023 Explores the social and cultural dimensions of biomedical practice and experience in the United States. Focuses on practitioner and patient, asking about the ways in which race, gender, and socio-economic status contour professional identity and socialization, how such factors influence the experience, and course of, illness, and how they have shaped the structures and institutions of biomedicine over time.
Effective Date 01/01/2020 The course introduces medical anthropology, and contextualizes bodies, suffering, healing and health. It is organized thematically around a critical humanist approach, along with perspectives from political economy and social constructionism. The aim of the course is to provide a broad understanding of the relationship between culture, healing (including and especially the Western form of healing known as biomedicine), health and political power.
ANTH 2285Anthropology of Development and Humanitarianism3
Effective Date 10/01/2015 This course explores anthropological writings on development and humanitarianism to better understand the historical context and contemporary practice of these distinct modes of world saving. We will attend to critiques of development and humanitarianism, and will also consider writings by anthropologists who champion the humanitarian project
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Introduces the interrelationships of linguistic, cultural, and social phenomena with emphasis on the importance of these interrelationships in interpreting human behavior. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required.
Effective Date 04/28/2023 This course explores the languages spoken with varying degrees of fluency within students’ own families and home communities, either at present or in recent generations. The course prepares students to draw upon linguistic diversity as a positive resource in developing their own identities and interacting with others in our multicultural society. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 2559 topic #44 Your Heritage Language
Effective Date 08/01/2011 Reviews key findings in the study of language variation. Explores the use of language to express identity and social difference.
Effective Date 10/03/2017 Examines the evolution of our capacity for language along with the development of human ways of cooperating in engaged social interaction. Course integrates cognitive, cultural, social, and biological aspects of language in comparative perspective. How is the familiar shape of language today the result of evolutionary and developmental processes involving the form, function, meaning and use of signs and symbols in social ecologies?
Effective Date 04/14/2011 Looks historically at speech and language in Hollywood movies, including the technological challenges and artistic theories and controversies attending the transition from silent to sound films. Focuses on the ways that gender, racial, ethnic, and national identities are constructed through the representation of speech, dialect, and accent. Introduces semiotics but requires no knowledge of linguistics, or film studies.
Effective Date 08/01/2026 As AI technology expands, so do the questions surrounding its use and implications. In this course we will focus on AI and its relationship with language and language users (i.e., us!). We will cover the basics of how things like LLMs operate including the biases that are baked into the data upon which they are trained. We will discuss the unseen labor the enables the “magic” of tools like Chat GPT. And we will debate the ecological pros and cons of the proliferation of such tools.
Effective Date 09/28/2023 In this course, students rethink assumptions about what “language” and “environment” are. Both depend on living systems to be rendered meaningful, and together we will wrestle with how these two ideas can be brought into relation and the implications associated with different frames of understanding. There are many perspectives on the issues raised in this course, and you will receive a broad introduction to that diversity.
ANTH 2470Reflections of Exile: Jewish Languages and their Communities3
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Covers Jewish languages Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, and Hebrew from historical, linguistic, and literary perspectives. Explores the relations between communities and languages, the nature of diaspora, and the death and revival of languages. No prior knowledge of these languages is required. This course is cross-listed with MEST 2470.
Effective Date 05/07/2020 Topics to be announced prior to each semester covering the diversity of human cultural worlds and the field of anthropology as presented through film. A variety of ethnographic and commercial films will be viewed and discussed in conjunction with readings.
Effective Date 12/22/2015 Provides an anthropological perspective on relations of inequality, subordination, and class in diverse societies, along with consideration of American ideas of egalitarianism, meritocracy, and individualism. Specific topics will be announced prior to each semester.
Effective Date 04/06/2010 Topics to be announced prior to each semester, dealing with migration and migrants, and the experience of ethnic and racial minorities.
Effective Date 01/01/2014 Examines the manner in which ideas about sexuality and gender are constructed differently cross-culturally and how these ideas give shape to other social phenomena, relationships, and practices.
Effective Date 01/01/2015 Africa is commonly imagined in the West as an unproblematically bounded and undifferentiated entity. This course engages and moves beyond western traditions of story telling about Africa to explore diverse systems of imagining Africa’s multi-diasporic realities. Imagining Africa is never a matter of pure abstraction, but entangled in material struggles and collective memory, and taking place at diverse and interconnected scales and locales.
ANTH 2650Contemporary Indigenous Peoples in Latin America3
Effective Date 01/01/2026 Who identifies as Indigenous in Latin America today? What are the implications of self-identifying or being identified as Indigenous? How do Indigenous peoples relate to and interact with nation states in this region? Together, we will explore these and many more important questions, as this course provides an overview of contemporary Indigenous cultures in Latin America and introduces you to the main issues that Indigenous peoples in the region are confronting.
ANTH 2800Introduction to Anthropological Archaeology3
Effective Date 01/01/2026 Topics include alternative theories of prehistoric culture change, dating methods, excavation and survey techniques, and the reconstruction of the economy, social organization, and religion of prehistoric societies.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies the physical and cultural evolution of humans from the initial appearance of hominids to the development of animal and plant domestication in different areas of the world. Topics include the development of biological capabilities such as bipedal walking and speech, the evolution of characteristics of human cultural systems such as economic organization and technology, and explanations for the development of domestication.
Effective Date 01/01/2023 Surveys patterns in the development of prehistoric civilizations in different areas of the world including the Inca of Peru, the Maya, the Aztec of Mexico, and the ancient Middle East.
Effective Date 03/03/2025 When colonial empires invaded the Americas in the 16th century, Europeans marveled at the Indigenous cities distributed across the continent. This course examines the ancient cities of the Americas: their origins, their configurations, their operations, and their representations. It considers how archaeologists define urbanism among ancient societies, and why not every human settlement qualifies as a city.
Effective Date 10/08/2024 The theoretical, methodological and ethical practice of an engaged anthropology is the subject of this course, We begin with a history of applied anthropology. We then examine case studies that demonstrate the unique practices of contemporary sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological and bioanthropological anthropology in the areas of policy and civic engagement.
Effective Date 12/12/2018 This course engages with ways that historical process are inscribed in landscapes, which are the traditional territories of indigenous communities and have also been shaped by colonialism, extractive enterprise, and nature conservation. It challenges students to examine their assumptions to examine ways in which dominant values and stories are inscribed in landscapes and made to appear natural, and how indigenous people contest these processes.
Effective Date 08/01/2010 Explores the ways that culturally formed systems of values and family organization affect population processes in a variety of cultures.
Effective Date 08/01/2010 Explores the cultural life of media and the mediation of cultural life through photography, radio, television, advertising, the Internet, and other technologies.
Effective Date 08/01/2026 This course explores how photographs, films, art, and digital media are used to represent and study human cultures. Students will engage with core concepts including visual ethnography, representation, and the ethics of visual storytelling. Through film screenings, guest lectures, museum visits, and hands-on activities, students will develop both a critical understanding of visual anthropology and practical experience with visual research methods.
Effective Date 08/01/2010 Comparative analysis of different forms of production, circulation, and consumption in primitive and modern societies. Exploration of the applicability of modern economic theory developed for modern societies to primitive societies and to those societies being forced into the modern world system.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 This course approaches food from various social science perspectives, focusing on historically and culturally variable forms of food production, exchange, preparation and consumption as the means through which both individual and social bodies are constructed and reproduced. We examine food and the environment; food and colonialism; the globalization of food and food production; food and identities; and food and bodies.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Explores how globalization and development affect the lives of people in different parts of the world. Topics include poverty, inequality, and the role of governments and international agencies.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 What is a corporation? Contrary to wide belief, the corporation is a very ancient social form that arose in diverse world regions and is the heritage of many civilizations. In this course, we explore its history and relation to culture, economics, and law. How has financialization shaped today’s major business corporations and theories of corporate social responsibility? How might we improve the corporations of the future? Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 2590 topic #19 Anthropology of Corporation
ANTH 3280Introduction to Native American Studies: (Mis)Representations3
Effective Date 10/01/2020 An intro to the broad field of Native Studies, this class focuses on themes of representation and erasure. We read Indigenous scholars and draw from current events, pop culture, and historical narrative to explore complex relationships between historical and contemporary issues that Indigenous peoples face in the US. We examine the foundations of Native representations and their connections to critical issues in Native communities. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 2559 topic 37: Intro Native American Studies
ANTH 3290Life, Technology, and the Contemporary Condition3
Effective Date 08/01/2025 The scientific and administrative focus on life and the centrality of technology to it have become defining features of the contemporary condition. This course will explore various theoretical approaches for understanding this condition, and will explore case studies to elucidate them.
Effective Date 09/21/2021 This course introduces students to one of the key frameworks in anthropology’s “ethical turn”: moral experience. The investigation of moral experience explores questions of ethics from a phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective and attends closely to subjectivity, affect, and embodiment. We will explore moral experiences such as ethical self-cultivation, empathy, love, hope, breakdown, mood, and moral transformation.
Effective Date 08/01/2026 What is distinctive about being human in a capitalist economy? This course considers the broad experience of living in a particular economic moment, with a focus on understanding what ‘kinds’ of people capitalism both creates & emerges from. As we consider both contemporary life & examples of the transition to capitalism, students will actively engage various modes of procuring goods & services to understand what makes capitalism distinct, & what those characteristics mean for humans of capitalism.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course will examine anthropological perspectives on tourism practices and imaginaries. We will analyze how tourism imaginaries have come to shape our perceptions of different landscapes and peoples. We will also discuss the economic, political, cultural, and environmental impacts of the industry on different countries and communities around the world. We will pay special attention to how tourism shapes how local and Indigenous communities negotiate and accommodate outside expectations.
Effective Date 01/27/2025 Disabled people are considered the “world’s largest minority,” but does a shared disability experience exist? In this course we examine the diverse ways disability is understood in different social contexts. We use disability studies as a critical lens to examine issues of power and to ask key questions of anthropology, including; What does it mean to have an anthropology of embodied experience? An anthropology of the mind?
ANTH 3340Ecology and Society: An Introduction to the New Ecological Anthropology3
Effective Date 01/01/2015 Forges a synthesis between culture theory and historical ecology to provide new insights on how human cultures fashion, and are fashioned by, their environment. Although cultures from all over the world are considered, special attention is given to the region defined by South and East Asia, and Australia.
At least one Anthropology course, and/or relevant exposure to courses in EVSC, BIOL, CHEM, or HIST or instructor permission Credits: 3
ANTH 3344Anthropology and Anarchy3
Effective Date 10/09/2024 Anarchy - organizing society through horizontal relations of free association - has a modern European history contemporary with Anthropology and has Indigenous histories in many places where people decided together to organize society against the state and hierarchy. Readings survey anthropology of non-state societies and engage questions of how non-European anarchies of Black and Indigenous authors and organizers critique anthropological methods.
Effective Date 08/01/2018 Topics include the politics of cultural representation in history, anthropology, and fine arts museums; and the museum as a bureaucratic organization, as an educational institution, and as a nonprofit corporation.
ANTH 1010 or permission of the instructor. Credits: 3
ANTH 3390Pregnancy, Birthing and the Post-Partum3
Effective Date 02/01/2025 There’s no debate that human reproduction is a biological universal, but it’s also an intensely cultural phenomenon with widely disparate, & often contested, specific cultural routines, symbolic systems, ideas & practices whether focused on mothers, fathers, infants or communities or who is recognized as a birthing expert. Course examines variations in physiological & cultural processes globally & explores both the individual experiences & and systemic patterns associated with the phases of reproduction from pregnancy through to post-partum.
ANTH 3392African American Women and the Cultural Politics of Body Size3
Effective Date 11/20/2023 This course will examine the cultural politics of body size norms drawing on a range of perspectives within anthropology and related fields and from the lived experiences of diverse African American women. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 3590 topic #49 Af Am Wom & Cult Pol Body Size
Effective Date 08/01/2025 The study of pidgins and creoles emerged as a subfield of linguistics in the latter half of the 20th century. Its ideas have been borrowed, notably by anthropologists, to analyze the increased diversity and fusion we confront in a globalizing world. Where did such ideas come from? What are their (un)intended consequences? This course will trace the epistemological development of Creole studies and consider its historical and contemporary impacts.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Introduces the native languages of North America and the methods that linguists and anthropologists use to record and analyze them. Examines the use of grammars, texts and dictionaries of individual languages and affords insight into the diversity among the languages.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 Introduction to peoples, languages, cultures and histories of the Middle East. Focuses on Israel/Palestine as a microcosm of important social processes-such as colonialism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and modernization-that affect the region as a whole. This course is cross-listed with MEST 3470.
Previous course in anthropology, linguistics, Middle East Studies or permission of instructor. Credits: 3
ANTH 3480Language and Prehistory3
Effective Date 03/01/2009 This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics and discusses the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory.
ANTH 3679Curating Culture: Collection, Preservation, and Display as Cultural Forms3
Effective Date 09/22/2022 This course teaches the importance of understanding cultural meanings when curating items, whether material or intangible, drawn from social worlds other than one’s own. It provides a general introduction to collection, preservation, and display through study of a specific collection held by the instructor or by a local institution such as the Fralin Museum of Art. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 3559 topic #41 Curating Culture: Collection Preservation Display
Effective Date 01/01/2012 This class studies the intersection of anthropology, art and material culture focusing on Australian Aboriginal art. We examine how Aboriginal art has moved from relative obscurity to global recognition over the past thirty years. Topics include the historical and cultural contexts of invention, production, marketing and appropriation of Aboriginal art. Students will conduct object-based research using the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Provides a comprehensive training in archaeological field techniques through participation in research projects currently in progress under the direction of the archaeology faculty. The emphasis is on learning, in an actual field situation, how the collection of archaeological data is carried out in both survey and excavation. Students become familiar with field recording systems, excavation techniques, survey methods, sampling theory in archaeology, and artifact processing and analysis. (Field methods courses outside anthropology or offered at other universities may be substituted for ANTH 3810 with the prior approval of the student’s advisor.) Supporting Courses. The following list includes additional courses which have been approved for the major program. Other courses can be added, depending on the student’s area of concentration, with the approval of an advisor.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 This course is an introduction to the prehistory/early history of the Middle East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant and southeast Anatolia) from 10,000 to 4,000 BP.
Effective Date 04/27/2021 This course will review the history of South America from its earliest population to the Spanish Conquest. Emphasis will be placed on tracing the rise of civilization in the Andes. The Inka empire was only the last of a long sequence of states and empires. Comparison of the Inka state with earlier polities such as the Moche and Tiwanaku will reveal the unique and enduring traditions of Andean political organizations. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken ANTH 3589 Pre-Columbian South America.
Effective Date 01/01/2023 This course surveys transformations in the African past, from the Middle Stone Age emergence of modern humans, to the florescence of lifeways in the Late Stone Age, to the broad mosaic of small-, medium-, and large-scale Iron Age societies, to the archaeology of colonial encounters. We also consider how archaeological methods work to produce knowledge in combination with studies of genetics, climate and environment, and historical methods.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course introduces students to research methodology in medical anthropology by participating in a faculty member’s ongoing research project. It will include: formulating research questions, ethical review and IRB approval, partnering and collaboration, data collection, analysis, and presenting project findings. This practice-oriented course emphasizes learning by doing and mentored reflection. The topic and methodological approach will vary according to faculty interests.
Effective Date 08/01/2015 Survey of modern schools of linguistics, both American and European, discussing each approach in terms of historical and intellectual context, analytical goals, assumptions about the nature of language, and relation between theory and methodology.
Effective Date 01/01/2027 The majors seminars in anthropology offer majors and minors an opportunity to engage deeply with a topic of anthropological concern. Through these courses anthropology students gain experience in doing an independent research project on a topic they care about and produce a significant paper or other major work. Enrollment for majors and minors is preferred.
Effective Date 01/01/2010 Examines the quantitative analytical techniques used in archaeology. Includes seriation, regression analysis, measures of diversity, and classification.
