Courses

This First-Year Writing Seminar is devoted to the anthropological study of the human condition.  Anthropology  examines all aspects of human experience, from the evolution of the species to contemporary challenges of politics, environment, and society.  The discipline emphasizes empirically rich field research informed by sophisticated theoretical understandings of human social life and cultural production. The diversity of anthropology's interests provides a diverse array of stimulating opportunities to write critically about the human condition. Topics vary by semester.

Full details for ANTHR 1101 - FWS: Culture, Society, and Power

This course examines the relation between humanity as a species, our group affiliations, and our individual selves. In an era of increasing division, what remains of our commitment to one another as members of a human community? As contemporary problems challenge us at a global scale, there is a pressing need to revisit the question of our shared human existence. We will touch on an array of human productions and activities, from literature and labor to ritual and religion, in order to assess our commitments to self, community, and species. Together we will seek answers to a single pressing question: what are the obligations of being human? This is not only a question of "who we are", but also where we are headed.

Full details for ANTHR 1190 - Humanity

The evolution of humankind is explored through the fossil record, studies of the biological differences among current human populations, and a comparison with our closest relatives, the primates. This course investigates the roots of human biology and behavior with an evolutionary framework.

Full details for ANTHR 1300 - Human Evolution: Genes, Behavior, and the Fossil Record

Full details for ANTHR 1520 - Tamil Conversation in Context

This course explores what has been termed "the modern plague."  It investigates the social history, cultural politics, biological processes, and global impacts of the retrovirus, HIV, and the disease syndrome, AIDS. It engages material from multiple fields: life sciences, social sciences, & humanities as well as media reports, government documents, activist art, and community-based documentaries. It explores various meanings and life-experiences of HIV & AIDS; examines conflicting understandings of health, disease, the body; investigates political struggles over scientific research, biomedical & public health interventions, and cultural representations; and queries how HIV vulnerability is shaped by systems of power and inequality. As well, we come to learn about the practices, the politics, and the ethics of life and care that arise in "the age of epidemic."

Full details for ANTHR 2021 - Viruses- Humans-Viral Politics (Social History and Cultural Politics of HIV & AIDS)

This course will introduce students to the politics, practices, aesthetics, and purposes of North American Indigenous music.  Students will learn about socio-historical contexts of colonization and sovereignty, and how they influence the production and reception of North American Indigenous musical expressions. Other topics of focus will include issues of representation, cultural property ownership, and ethical concerns. Our readings, as well as the music we listen to and see performed, will be organized according to overlapping themes and genres such as "welcoming, asking permission, and thanksgiving," or "revitalization and resistance," and more. Students will learn how music exists as a means to express cultural continuity, and is embedded in and reflective of myriad aspects of Native American social life.

Full details for ANTHR 2045 - American Indian Music in Context

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are," wrote renowned gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825. Since then, it has become axiomatic within anthropology that social relationships are constructed through food-related practices and embodied in food, from the most basic tasks of acquiring food resources to the social and political contexts of the consumption of food and drink. In this course, we will consider the theoretical and methodological approaches that archaeologists use to study food and eating in ancient societies from a global anthropological perspective. Topics to be addressed include transitions to agriculture; ritual foodways; feasting and politics; gender and identity; colonialism; and food scarcity. Readings will include a range of Old and New World case studies.

Full details for ANTHR 2165 - They Were What They Ate: Food in the Ancient World

Throughout most of the human career, people survived by hunting and gathering wild foods. The advent of food production is one of the most profound changes in (pre)history. This course examines the current evidence for the appearance and spread of agriculture (plant and animal domestication) around the world. We will consider definitions of agriculture and domestication, the conditions under which it arises, the consequences for those who adopt it, and why it has spread over most of the world.

Full details for ANTHR 2201 - Early Agriculture

This course will introduce students to the meaning and significance of forms of cultural diversity for the understanding of contemporary issues. Drawing from films, videos, and selected readings, students will be confronted with different representational forms that portray cultures in various parts of the world, and they will be asked to examine critically their own prejudices as they influence the perception and evaluation of cultural differences. We shall approach cultures holistically, assuming the inseparability of economies, kinship, religion, and politics, as well as interconnections and dependencies between world areas (e.g., Africa, Latin America, the West). Among the issues considered: "political correctness" and truth; nativism and ecological diversity; race, ethnicity, and sexuality; sin, religion, and war; global process and cultural integrity.

Full details for ANTHR 2400 - Cultural Diversity and Contemporary Issues

Medicine has become the language and practice through which we address a broad range of both individual and societal complaints. Interest in this "medicalization of life" may be one of the reasons that medical anthropology is currently the fastest-growing subfield in anthropology. This course encourages students to examine concepts of disease, suffering, health, and well-being in their immediate experience and beyond. In the process, students will gain a working knowledge of ecological, critical, phenomenological, and applied approaches used by medical anthropologists. We will investigate what is involved in becoming a doctor, the sociality of medicines, controversies over new medical technologies, and the politics of medical knowledge. The universality of biomedicine (or hospital medicine) will not be taken for granted, but rather we will examine the plurality generated by the various political, economic, social, and ethical demands under which biomedicine has developed in different places and at different times. In addition, biomedical healing and expertise will be viewed in relation to other kinds of healing and expertise. Our readings will address medicine in North America as well as other parts of the world. In class, our discussions will return regularly to consider the broad diversity of kinds of medicine throughout the world, as well as the specific historical and local contexts of biomedicine.

Full details for ANTHR 2468 - Medicine, Culture, and Society

Hip Hop/Hipster/Immigrant/Brownstone Brooklyn. This course borrows from hip hop's notion of "representing" to explore popular and cultural understandings of race and place in Brooklyn as depicted in print, music, film, and online. While today Brooklyn is New York City's hippest borough and the site of swift gentrification, booming real estate, and the ever-escalating displacement of immigrant and Black communities, in the 1980s and 1990s it was a hotbed of hip hop music, making the borough synonymous with Black cultural production. The course examines Black cultural production as it relates to representations of Brooklyn and deconstructs images and discourses that marginalize the borough's Black residents. Spanning the period from 1945 to the present day, the commodification of hip hop in the 1980s-1990s, and close readings of films including Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," to reflect on how Black popular culture engages with Brooklyn's diverse communities. While materials are interdisciplinary in approach, our investigation is informed by anthropological, historical, and literary texts covering topics including immigration, youth culture, transnationalism, gentrification, authenticity, and classed, gendered and racialized inequality.

Full details for ANTHR 3020 - Representing Brooklyn: Race, Place and Popular Culture

Computers are powerful tools for working, playing, thinking, and living. Laptops, PDAs, webcams, cell phones, and iPods are not just devices, they also provide narratives, metaphors, and ways of seeing the world. This course critically examines how computing technology and society shape each other and how this plays out in our everyday lives. Identifies how computers, networks, and information technologies reproduce, reinforce, and rework existing cultural trends, norms, and values. Looks at the values embodied in the cultures of computing and considers alternative ways to imagine, build, and work with information technologies.

Full details for ANTHR 3061 - Computing Cultures

This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for ANTHR 3110 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.  

Full details for ANTHR 3235 - Bioarchaeology

This course explores research on race, ethnicity and language in American education. It examines historical and current patterns of school achievement for minoritized youths. It also examines the cultural and social premises undergirding educational practices in diverse communities and schools. Policies, programs and pedagogy, including multicultural and bilingual education, are explored.

Full details for ANTHR 3405 - Multicultural Issues in Education

The idea of the barbarians is as old as civilization itself. But what is a barbarian, and what is the role that barbarians play, as the savage enemies of civilization? In this course we will address such questions by looking at how different civilizations have imagined their barbarians, ranging from their key role in Greek drama, and as infidels in religious conceptions, to Chinese walls, and American savagery. We will examine both historical examples, and the barbarians of today -- the terrorists and insurgents so often framed as dark and primitive, in contrast with ourselves. Through readings and visual materials, we will seek to discover what these barbarians have in common. We will look comparatively for the underlying patterns of history that the barbarians are drafted from, to draw a new picture of the barbarians. At the same time, we will arrive at a new understanding of civilization as such, as well as of the general nature of human inequality, and how it is justified.   

Full details for ANTHR 3416 - The Barbarians

The common perception of ethnicity is that it is a "natural" and an inevitable consequence of cultural difference. "Asians" overseas, in particular, have won repute as a people who cling tenaciously to their culture and refuse to assimilate into their host societies and cultures. But, who are the "Asians?" On what basis can we label "Asians" an ethnic group? Although there is a significant Asian presence in the Caribbean, the category "Asian" itself does not exist in the Caribbean. What does this say about the nature of categories that label and demarcate groups of people on the basis of alleged cultural and phenotypical characteristics? This course will examine the dynamics behind group identity, namely ethnicity, by comparing and contrasting the multicultural experience of Asian populations in the Caribbean and the United States. Ethnographic case studies will focus on the East Indian and Chinese experiences in the Caribbean and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Indian experiences in the United States.

Full details for ANTHR 3703 - Asians in the Americas: A Comparative Perspective

"Res ipsa loquitur" -- the thing speaks for itself. This common expression captures a widespread belief about objects' roles in human lives, but "hearing" what objects have to say is actually a complex cultural process. An object rarely has a single meaning; they are read variously in different cultural settings, and even by different individuals within a cultural system. How does one know -- can one know -- the meanings of an object? How are objects strategically deployed in social interaction (particularly in cross-cultural interactions, where each side may have radically different understandings)? How does one even know what an object is? We will explore the history and variety of ways that material culture and its meanings have been studied, using archaeological and ethnographic examples.

Full details for ANTHR 4235 - Meaningful Stuff: Interpreting Material Culture

This course follows from last semester's Zooarchaeological Method. We will shift our emphasis here from basic skills to interpretation, although you will continue to work with archaeological bones. We will begin by examining topics surrounding the basic interpretation of raw faunal data: sampling, quantification, taphonomy, seasonality. We will then explore how to use faunal data to reconstruct subsistence patterns, social structure, and human/animal relations.

Full details for ANTHR 4264 - Zooarchaeological Interpretation

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the "empire" of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

Full details for ANTHR 4268 - Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics

This course is an introduction to the practice and conceptual foundations of qualitative research methods in the social sciences. Students will learn different approaches with the opportunity to experience the practical dimensions of conducting a qualitative study, including research design, participant observation, interviewing, discourse analysis, and narrative inquiry. In the process, we will explore the principles, theories and epistemologies informing various paradigms in qualitative research. What does it mean to do interpretive research? What do feminist and critical ethnographies look like? What are critical race methodologies? What does it mean to think with performativity, power, deconstruction, desire or decoloniality? We will also examine dilemmas and issues concerning ethics, informed consent, researcher positionality and relationships, and writing and reporting.

Full details for ANTHR 4409 - Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences

The concept of historical progress of mankind (sic) cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time. - Walter Benjamin

Full details for ANTHR 4451 - Time and Temporality

An exploration of the ways that cultural heritage is embodied in things, particularly archaeological landscapes, sites, and artifacts.   Identifying stakeholders in relation to collecting and controlling these things and representing heritage is a key focus:  what voices should states and other political entities have?  local residents? descendants?  How should descendants be identified?  Other key topics include looting and the market in smuggled antiquities; repatriation; the ethics of studying and publishing looted objects; community engagement; forces that destroy heritage and strategies for preserving it; re-invented and imagined heritage.  These issues will be examined using the collections of the Johnson Museum of Art and through case studies, including Colonial Williamsburg, African Burial Ground, Harriet Tubman House, the ancient Maya, and archaeology in the Third Reich.

Full details for ANTHR 4460 - Heritage and its Entanglements: Representing, Collecting, and Preserving Cultural Identity

This course combines Jewish religious history with studies in the philosophy of modernity, focusing on changing conceptions of time and history.  We will interrogate possible or implicit connections between traditional Jewish notions of Messianic redemption on one hand, and post-Enlightenment conceptions of revolution and progress on the other (always bearing in mind that the dominant Christian ideology in the West also has Messianic content).  Some readings will provide historical background on Jewish Messianism.  We will explore aspects of the intellectual dialogue between Walter Benjamin, a leading European thinker on literature and the philosophy of history in the first decades of the twentieth century, and his lifelong friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the scholarly study of Jewish mysticism.  We will continue by considering how post-World War II thinkers, especially on the Continent, have responded to the critique of modern ideologies of progress inaugurated by Benjamin and his friends in the so-called "Frankfurt School."

Full details for ANTHR 4473 - Messiah and Modernity

Full details for ANTHR 4520 - Society and Culture in the Nilgiris: Engaged Research in Rural South India

American Jews have frequently been touted as a "model minority." This course will take a more critical look at the historical interactions between Jewish immigration, United States industrialization, and processes of social and geographical mobility—all through the prism of New York's Lower East Side, first home for over 750,000 Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere between the mid-19th century and the 1920s.  We will compare the Jewish experience to that of other immigrants/migrants by considering social institutions as well as material and other cultural practices. We will examine interactions with the built environment —most especially the tenement—in Lower East Side culture. Special attention will be paid to immigrant labor movement politics including strikes, splits, and gender in the garment trade. From the perspective of the present, the course will examine how commemoration, heritage tourism and the selling of [immigrant] history intersect with gentrifying real estate in an "iconic" New York City neighborhood. Projects using the ILR's archives on the Triangle Fire and other topics are explicitly encouraged. This course counts as an out of college elective for B. Arch and M. Arch students.

Full details for ANTHR 4733 - The Lower East Side: Jews and the Immigrant City

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 4910 - Independent Study: Undergrad I

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 4920 - Independent Study: Undergrad II

Full details for ANTHR 4925 - Nilgiris Independent Study

Final write-up of the thesis under the direct supervision of the thesis advisor, who will assign the grade for this course.

Full details for ANTHR 4984 - Honors Thesis Write-Up

Course will consist of weekly, seminar-style meetings of all thesis writers until mid-semester, under the direction of the honors chair. This second semester concentrates on preparation of a full draft of the thesis by mid-semester, with ample time left for revisions prior to submission. Group meetings will concentrate on collective reviewing of the work of other students, presentation of research, and the like.

Full details for ANTHR 4992 - Honors Workshop II

This course explores advanced topics in anthropological theory and practice. It builds on the history of the discipline that students will have examined in the preceding course ANTHR 6020, and seeks to immerse students in major contemporary theoretical developments and debates and the discipline's most pressing concerns. Coursework will proceed mainly by way of reading, writing, and discussion.  

Full details for ANTHR 6025 - Proseminar in Anthropology

This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for ANTHR 6110 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.

Full details for ANTHR 6235 - Bioarchaeology

The idea of the barbarians is as old as civilization itself. But what is a barbarian, and what is the role that barbarians play, as the savage enemies of civilization? In this course we will address such questions by looking at how different civilizations have imagined their barbarians, ranging from their key role in Greek drama, and as infidels in religious conceptions, to Chinese walls, and American savagery. We will examine both historical examples, and the barbarians of today -- the terrorists and insurgents so often framed as dark and primitive, in contrast with ourselves. Through readings and visual materials, we will seek to discover what these barbarians have in common. We will look comparatively for the underlying patterns of history that the barbarians are drafted from, to draw a new picture of the barbarians. At the same time, we will arrive at a new understanding of civilization as such, as well as of the general nature of human inequality, and how it is justified.   

Full details for ANTHR 6416 - The Barbarians

This seminar focuses on preparing a full-scale proposal for anthropological fieldwork for a dissertation. Topics include identifying appropriate funding sources; defining a researchable problem; selecting and justifying a particular fieldwork site; situating the ethnographic case within appropriate theoretical contexts; selecting and justifying appropriate research methodologies; developing a feasible timetable for field research; ethical considerations and human subjects protection procedures; and preparing appropriate budgets. This is a writing seminar, and students will complete a proposal suitable for submission to a major funding agency in the social sciences.

Full details for ANTHR 6440 - Proposal Development

The common perception of ethnicity is that it is a "natural" and an inevitable consequence of cultural difference. "Asians" overseas, in particular, have won repute as a people who cling tenaciously to their culture and refuse to assimilate into their host societies and cultures. But, who are the "Asians?" On what basis can we label "Asians" an ethnic group? Although there is a significant Asian presence in the Caribbean, the category "Asian" itself does not exist in the Caribbean. What does this say about the nature of categories that label and demarcate groups of people on the basis of alleged cultural and phenotypical characteristics? This course will examine the dynamics behind group identity, namely ethnicity, by comparing and contrasting the multicultural experience of Asian populations in the Caribbean and the United States. Ethnographic case studies will focus on the East Indian and Chinese experiences in the Caribbean and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Indian experiences in the United States.

Full details for ANTHR 6703 - Asians in the Americas: A Comparative Perspective

In recent years, it has become fashionable in anthropology to write about ontology, so much so that some have begun referring to an "ontological turn" in the discipline. Although many see interest in questions of ontology as something new, in fact such questions have important antecedents both in anthropology and related disciplines. Accordingly, we will read classical as well as more contemporary works that engage with issues now considered "ontological." The idea is neither to advocate for nor "debunk" the notion of ontology, but rather to engage with it in its proper historical and theoretical context. We will reflect deeply and critically on what – if anything – "ontology" enables us to think/analyze that older notions like "worldview" and "culture" do not.

Full details for ANTHR 7120 - Anthropology and Ontology

"Res ipsa loquitur" -- the thing speaks for itself. This common expression captures a widespread belief about objects' roles in human lives, but "hearing" what objects have to say is actually a complex cultural process. An object rarely has a single meaning; they are read variously in different cultural settings, and even by different individuals within a cultural system. How does one know -- can one know -- the meanings of an object? How are objects strategically deployed in social interaction (particularly in cross-cultural interactions, where each side may have radically different understandings)? How does one even know what an object is? We will explore the history and variety of ways that material culture and its meanings have been studied, using archaeological and ethnographic examples.

Full details for ANTHR 7235 - Meaningful Stuff: Interpreting Material Culture

This course is intended to follow on from Zooarchaeological Method in the fall; it is assumed that students have some familiarity with the nature of zooarchaeological material.  In this course, we will consider issues related to the interpretation of archaeological animal bones: quantification, seasonality, taphonomy, subsistence, the origins of hunting, animal domestication, modes of consumption, meat sharing, the use of secondary products (milk, wool, traction).

Full details for ANTHR 7264 - Zooarchaeological Interpretation

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the "empire" of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

Full details for ANTHR 7268 - Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics

This course is an introduction to the practice and conceptual foundations of qualitative research methods in the social sciences. Students will learn different approaches with the opportunity to experience the practical dimensions of conducting a qualitative study, including research design, participant observation, interviewing, discourse analysis, and narrative inquiry. In the process, we will explore the principles, theories and epistemologies informing various paradigms in qualitative research. What does it mean to do interpretive research? What do feminist and critical ethnographies look like? What are critical race methodologies? What does it mean to think with performativity, power, deconstruction, desire or decoloniality? We will also examine dilemmas and issues concerning ethics, informed consent, researcher positionality and relationships, and writing and reporting.

Full details for ANTHR 7409 - Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences

The concept of historical progress of mankind (sic) cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time. - Walter Benjamin

Full details for ANTHR 7451 - Time and Temporality

An exploration of the ways that cultural heritage is embodied in things, particularly archaeological landscapes, sites, and artifacts.   Identifying stakeholders in relation to collecting and controlling these things and representing heritage is a key focus:  what voices should states and other political entities have?  local residents? descendants?  How should descendants be identified?  Other key topics include looting and the market in smuggled antiquities; repatriation; the ethics of studying and publishing looted objects; community engagement; forces that destroy heritage and strategies for preserving it; re-invented and imagined heritage.  These issues will be examined using the collections of the Johnson Museum of Art and through case studies, including Colonial Williamsburg, African Burial Ground, Harriet Tubman House, the ancient Maya, and archaeology in the Third Reich.

Full details for ANTHR 7460 - Heritage and its Entanglements: Representing, Collecting, and Preserving Cultural Identity

This course combines Jewish religious history with studies in the philosophy of modernity, focusing on changing conceptions of time and history.  We will interrogate possible or implicit connections between traditional Jewish notions of Messianic redemption on one hand, and post-Enlightenment conceptions of revolution and progress on the other (always bearing in mind that the dominant Christian ideology in the West also has Messianic content).  Some readings will provide historical background on Jewish Messianism.  We will explore aspects of the intellectual dialogue between Walter Benjamin, a leading European thinker on literature and the philosophy of history in the first decades of the twentieth century, and his lifelong friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the scholarly study of Jewish mysticism.  We will continue by considering how post-World War II thinkers, especially on the Continent, have responded to the critique of modern ideologies of progress inaugurated by Benjamin and his friends in the so-called "Frankfurt School." 

Full details for ANTHR 7473 - Messiah and Modernity

Independent reading course on topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7520 - Southeast Asia: Readings in Special Problems

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7530 - South Asia: Readings in Special Problems

Full details for ANTHR 7540 - Problems in Himalayan Studies

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7550 - East Asia: Readings in Special Problems

A bi-weekly series of workshops and lectures on a range of themes in the discipline sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. Presentations include lectures by invited speakers, debates featuring prominent anthropologists from across the globe, and works in progress presented by anthropology faculty and graduate students.

Full details for ANTHR 7900 - Department of Anthropology Colloquium

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7910 - Independent Study: Grad I

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7920 - Independent Study: Grad II

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for ANTHR 7930 - Independent Study: Grad III

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are," wrote renowned gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825. Since then, it has become axiomatic within anthropology that social relationships are constructed through food-related practices and embodied in food, from the most basic tasks of acquiring food resources to the social and political contexts of the consumption of food and drink. In this course, we will consider the theoretical and methodological approaches that archaeologists use to study food and eating in ancient societies from a global anthropological perspective. Topics to be addressed include transitions to agriculture; ritual foodways; feasting and politics; gender and identity; colonialism; and food scarcity. Readings will include a range of Old and New World case studies.

Full details for ARKEO 2165 - They Were What They Ate: Food in the Ancient World

Throughout most of the human career, people survived by hunting and gathering wild foods. The advent of food production is one of the most profound changes in (pre)history. This course examines the current evidence for the appearance and spread of agriculture (plant and animal domestication) around the world. We will consider definitions of agriculture and domestication, the conditions under which it arises, the consequences for those who adopt it, and why it has spread over most of the world.

Full details for ARKEO 2201 - Early Agriculture

The course surveys the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt from its prehistoric origins down to the early first millennium bce. Within a chronological framework, the following themes or topics will be considered: the development of the Egyptian state (monarchy, administration, ideology), social organization (class, gender and family, slavery), economic factors, and empire and international relations.

Full details for ARKEO 2668 - Ancient Egyptian Civilization

What was it like to live in the Roman world?  What did that world look, taste and smell like?  How did Romans raise their families, entertain themselves, understand death, and interact with their government? What were Roman values and how did they differ from our own?  This course takes as its subject the everyday lives of individuals and explores those lives using the combined tools of archaeology, architecture and art, as well as some primary source readings.  In doing so, it seeks to integrate those monuments into a world of real people, and to use archaeology to narrate a story about ancient lives and life habits. Some of the topics explored will include the Roman house; the Roman family, children and slaves; bathing and hygiene; food; gardens, agriculture and animals.

Full details for ARKEO 2743 - Archaeology/Roman Private Life

Undergraduate students pursue topics of particular interest under the guidance of a faculty member.

Full details for ARKEO 3000 - Undergraduate Independent Study in Archaeology and Related Fields

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.  

Full details for ARKEO 3235 - Bioarchaeology

The purpose of the course is to place the Bible within the context of a larger ancient world that can be explored by systematic excavation of physical remains. Students will become familiar with archaeological excavations and finds from ancient Syria-Palestine from 10,000 bce to 586 bce. We will explore this archaeological evidence on its own terms, taking into consideration factors such as archaeological method and the interpretive frameworks in which the excavators themselves work, as well as the implications of this body of evidence for understanding the complexity and diversity of biblical Israel.

Full details for ARKEO 3588 - Biblical Archaeology

"Res ipsa loquitur" -- the thing speaks for itself. This common expression captures a widespread belief about objects' roles in human lives, but "hearing" what objects have to say is actually a complex cultural process. An object rarely has a single meaning; they are read variously in different cultural settings, and even by different individuals within a cultural system. How does one know -- can one know -- the meanings of an object? How are objects strategically deployed in social interaction (particularly in cross-cultural interactions, where each side may have radically different understandings)? How does one even know what an object is? We will explore the history and variety of ways that material culture and its meanings have been studied, using archaeological and ethnographic examples.

Full details for ARKEO 4235 - Meaningful Stuff: Interpreting Material Culture

This course follows from last semester's Zooarchaeological Method. We will shift our emphasis here from basic skills to interpretation, although you will continue to work with archaeological bones. We will begin by examining topics surrounding the basic interpretation of raw faunal data: sampling, quantification, taphonomy, seasonality. We will then explore how to use faunal data to reconstruct subsistence patterns, social structure, and human/animal relations.

Full details for ARKEO 4264 - Zooarchaeological Interpretation

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the "empire" of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

Full details for ARKEO 4268 - Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics

An exploration of the ways that cultural heritage is embodied in things, particularly archaeological landscapes, sites, and artifacts.   Identifying stakeholders in relation to collecting and controlling these things and representing heritage is a key focus:  what voices should states and other political entities have?  local residents? descendants?  How should descendants be identified?  Other key topics include looting and the market in smuggled antiquities; repatriation; the ethics of studying and publishing looted objects; community engagement; forces that destroy heritage and strategies for preserving it; re-invented and imagined heritage.  These issues will be examined using the collections of the Johnson Museum of Art and through case studies, including Colonial Williamsburg, African Burial Ground, Harriet Tubman House, the ancient Maya, and archaeology in the Third Reich.

Full details for ARKEO 4460 - Heritage and its Entanglements: Representing, Collecting, and Preserving Cultural Identity

Early states emerged when select groups gained control over wealth and power and institutionalized that control. How this was accomplished is a question of political economy that we can approach from archaeological, anthropological, and sociological perspectives. The course introduces students to the intellectual development of historical materialism in Smith, Marx, and Weber, among others, and traces their influence on later socioeconomic historians such as Polanyi and Finley. More recent approaches deriving from world-systems, gender studies, post-colonial studies, game theory, and network theory are then applied to case studies that include the emergence of a Mesopotamian state ca. 3400 BC, the Akkadian and Ur III empires, Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian trade, pharaonic Egypt, the international Late Bronze Age world, Aegean palatial civilization, and the Phoenicians. Students are welcome to present and write on other topics also. Monroe will provide context and clarification to assist with the specialist literature, but prior coursework in ancient studies will be advantageous in critically evaluating and writing about all the course readings.

Full details for ARKEO 4670 - Wealth and Power: Political Economy in Ancient Near Eastern States

Independent work under the close guidance of a faculty member.

Full details for ARKEO 4981 - Honors Thesis Research

The student, under faculty direction, will prepare a senior thesis.

Full details for ARKEO 4982 - Honors Thesis Write-Up

Graduate students pursue advanced topics of particular interest under the guidance of a faculty member(s).

Full details for ARKEO 6000 - Graduate Independent Study in Archaeology

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.

Full details for ARKEO 6235 - Bioarchaeology

"Res ipsa loquitur" -- the thing speaks for itself. This common expression captures a widespread belief about objects' roles in human lives, but "hearing" what objects have to say is actually a complex cultural process. An object rarely has a single meaning; they are read variously in different cultural settings, and even by different individuals within a cultural system. How does one know -- can one know -- the meanings of an object? How are objects strategically deployed in social interaction (particularly in cross-cultural interactions, where each side may have radically different understandings)? How does one even know what an object is? We will explore the history and variety of ways that material culture and its meanings have been studied, using archaeological and ethnographic examples.

Full details for ARKEO 7235 - Meaningful Stuff: Interpreting Material Culture

This course is intended to follow on from Zooarchaeological Method in the fall; it is assumed that students have some familiarity with the nature of zooarchaeological material.  In this course, we will consider issues related to the interpretation of archaeological animal bones: quantification, seasonality, taphonomy, subsistence, the origins of hunting, animal domestication, modes of consumption, meat sharing, the use of secondary products (milk, wool, traction).

Full details for ARKEO 7264 - Zooarchaeological Interpretation

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the "empire" of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

Full details for ARKEO 7268 - Aztecs and Their Empire: Myth, History, and Politics

An exploration of the ways that cultural heritage is embodied in things, particularly archaeological landscapes, sites, and artifacts.   Identifying stakeholders in relation to collecting and controlling these things and representing heritage is a key focus:  what voices should states and other political entities have?  local residents? descendants?  How should descendants be identified?  Other key topics include looting and the market in smuggled antiquities; repatriation; the ethics of studying and publishing looted objects; community engagement; forces that destroy heritage and strategies for preserving it; re-invented and imagined heritage.  These issues will be examined using the collections of the Johnson Museum of Art and through case studies, including Colonial Williamsburg, African Burial Ground, Harriet Tubman House, the ancient Maya, and archaeology in the Third Reich.

Full details for ARKEO 7460 - Heritage and its Entanglements: Representing, Collecting, and Preserving Cultural Identity

This seminar course aims to provide students with a review of, and encounter with, a key selection of the main methods and techniques used in current archaeological work, and to develop an understanding of the current practice of archaeology. Topics included are: (i) methods and practice in field archaeology (prospection, archaeological excavation and stratigraphy, survey archaeology and landscape), (ii) investigation of the climate and environmental context of the past, (iii) relative and absolute dating methods in archaeology, (iv) artifact analysis in archaeology (ceramics, stone, metals, etc.) and the role of the object in the discipline, and (v) approaches and issues in the analysis and interpretation of archaeological evidence (what questions to ask, and how to ask them).

Full details for ARKEO 7741 - Methods and Approaches in Current Archaeology

Students, working individually with faculty member(s), prepare a master's thesis in archaeology.

Full details for ARKEO 8902 - Master's Thesis