ANTHRO 103 Introduction To Cultural Anthropology Credits: 3

An introduction to culture and the basic concepts of anthropology. Topics include kinship, language, and cultural change.

ANTHRO 103 - MOTR ANTH 201: Cultural Anthropology

ANTHRO 300 Special Topics in Anthropology Credits: 1-3

Each time this course is offered, a different area of anthropology, to be announced, will be examined.

ANTHRO 305 Language and Culture Credits: 3

This course is designed to familiarize students with the basic objects, aims, and methods of linguistic anthropology. Students will acquire this familiarity by studying both theoretical and ethnographic articles that focus on some of the major areas of concern within the field including: the evolution of human language, linguistic particularity and universality, the relationship of language to thought, structuralism and semiotics, trope theory, language and emotion, sociolinguistics, the development of writing systems, and language conservation and change.

ANTHRO 306 Culture, Emotion, and Identity Credits: 3

This course introduces students to some of the key theoretical perspectives and debates within the field of psychological anthropology. By drawing upon cross-cultural studies of emotion, personhood, sexuality, illness, and consciousness it seeks to understand some of the ways that culture and society influence human psychology and experience.

ANTHRO 308 The Social Life of Things Credits: 3

This course examines the connections between people and things. It explores how social relationships are created and changed through the use and exchange of objects, and how objects themselves take on particular meanings and values in these processes.

ANTHRO 315 Writing Culture: The Craft of Ethnography Credits: 3

This course will explore the ways anthropologists document and write about cultural practices, processes, and beliefs. Students will become familiar with debates about representation while they consider differences in the ways ethnographic writing rhetorically conveys culture. Students will also compare ethnographic methods, theories, and styles of writing as these have changed over time.

ANTHRO 322 Race And Ethnic Relations Credits: 3

The nature, origin and dynamics of ethnic and race relations in the U. S. and other societies. Specific attention will be given to the historical and contemporary contexts of prejudice, discrimination and confrontation.

ANTHRO 326 Consumer Society Credits: 3

This course explores the emergence of Consumer Society as both a sociohistorical development and as an object of social scientific inquiry. Students will explore how the study of Consumer Society has been animated by different scholarly questions, debates, and analytic approaches.

ANTHRO 328 Body and Society Credits: 3

Body and Society is an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of the body as the subject and object of social processes. Interdisciplinary approaches to topics such as meaning, ritual, performance, and practice will provide a framework for classical as well as contemporary explorations of bodily representation and experiences across a variety of cultural contexts.

Prerequisites: ANTHRO 103.

ANTHRO 331 Urban Anthropology Credits: 3

A course designed to apply anthropological methods to the study of various urban environments. The approach to the subject is comparative, seeking to spell out those features of the urban setting which vary from culture to culture as well as those which are common to all.

ANTHRO 333 The Living Dead Credits: 3

This course investigates the variety of ways human beings construe and configure relationships between the living and the dead. Topics include how attitudes towards death and dying vary across different cultural and historical contexts, whether there is universal terminology on how humans respond to and ritualize death, and how the dead come to animate the lives of the living in different social contexts. This course also explores why death and dying remain central to cultural anthropology.

ANTHRO 373 Anthropology of Religion Credits: 3

This course explores the ways anthropologist have gone about studying religion from the opening decades of the 20th century to present. The course introduces students to the diversity of human religious expression and experience through anthropological literature and to the diversity of anthropological expression especially as it has been revealed in social scientific studies of religious life. The course is designed to generate a critical dialogue about the special role that religion has played in the ongoing anthropological engagement with 'other' societies and cultures over time.

ANTHRO 380 Technology and Society Credits: 3

This course will help students explore the ways technology shapes and is shaped by human interaction. Students will read interdisciplinary literature that builds theoretical and interpretive frameworks around classical and contemporary case studies. A fundamental question to be addressed throughout the course: how does the comparative study of technology help us understand what it means to be human?

ANTHRO 397 Independent Readings in Anthropology Credits: 1-3

Intensive readings in an area selected by the student with prior consultation with instructor.

Prerequisites: Twelve hours of anthropology.