Anthropology Major
Anthropology provides students the skills to navigate a rapidly changing world, marked by globalization and political turmoil. The anthropology major or minor helps students understand these global transformations and create bridges between different worldviews. Anthropology’s distinctive way of studying the world through intensive ethnographic fieldwork provides key insights into how people around the world experience gender, race and class hierarchies in their daily lives, but also how they challenge those hierarchies. Anthropology not only provides a diagnosis for the present, but also offers possible solutions to our pressing human problems.
Courses offer students opportunities to study people’s experiences in all seven continents. Topics explored include art, religion, economic change, genders, sexualities, race, urban life, kinship, national identities, colonialism, indigeneity, violence, borders, medicine, biotechnology, youth, consumption and fashion. Anthropology aims to educate global citizens who are knowledgeable about the world and can apply that knowledge in real-life situations, either locally or abroad. Students go on to use their anthropological skills in the realms of international business, law, diplomacy, education, public health, human rights, journalism, medicine and many other fields. The anthropology major or minor is available to students in any major except sociology.
Requirements
The major consists of a minimum of 10 courses.
| Code | Title |
|---|---|
| Required courses: | |
| Anthropological Perspective | |
| Ethnographic Field Methods | |
| Theory in Anthropology | |
| One advanced 300 or 400-level seminar, tutorial, or research practicum: | |
| Diaspora, Identity and Belonging | |
| Global Queer Activism | |
| Directed Honors Research | |
| Directed Honors Research | |
| Directed Readings | |
| Directed Readings | |
| Special Projects | |
| In addition to the courses listed above, the Department offers a variety of unique 300-level seminars on various topics. In recent years the department has offered: Witchcraft & Conspiracy; and Islam, Gender, & Globalization. | |
| Six electives from the list above or below (two may be sociology courses): 1 | |
| Informal Economies | |
| Anthropology of Law | |
| Gender & Development | |
| Gender & Sexualities | |
| Anthropology of Debt | |
| Medical Anthropology | |
| Anthropology Of Religion | |
| Race, Racism and Anthropology | |
| Cultures and Politics of Latin America | |
| Political Anthropology | |
| Economic Anthropology | |
| Fashion & Consumption | |
| Anthropology of Africa | |
| Coming of Age at the Border | |
| The Sociological Perspective | |
| Race & Power | |
| Social Class & Power | |
| Consumer & Corp Sustainability | |
| Race, Crime, and Justice | |
| Deviance, Normalcy & Control | |
| Logics of Inquiry | |
| Social Statistics | |
| Environmental Sociology | |
| Cities and Environment | |
| Environmental Racism | |
| Development of Social Theory | |
| Sociology of TV & Media | |
| Girls and Violence | |
| Self & Society | |
| Aging & Society | |
| Children & Violence | |
| Sociology Of Religion | |
| Medical Sociology | |
| Education and Society | |
| Families and Societies | |
| Sociology of Travel & Tourism | |
| Freedoms & Unfreedoms | |
| (Precarious) Work | |
| Illness Narratives | |
| Sociology of Trouble | |
| End of Life | |
| Utopian & Dystopian Worlds | |
| Global Sense of Home | |
| 1 | All electives are chosen in accordance with student interest and in consultation with a faculty advisor. |
Majors may take up to 14 courses in the department; double majors must take 18 courses outside of the department.