A comparative approach to the concept of culture and an analysis of how culture structures the worlds we live in. The course examines human societies from their tribal beginnings to the postindustrial age. We will consider the development of various types of social organization and their significance based on family and kinship, economics, politics, and religion.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None. Not open to students who have taken this course as ANTH 104.
Instructor: Staff, Armstrong
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: This course was formerly offered as ANTH 104.
This course will examine the evolutionary foundations of human variability. This theme is approached broadly from the perspectives of anatomy, paleontology, genetics, primatology, and ecology. For this purpose, the course will address the principles of human evolution, fossil evidence, behavior, and morphological characteristics of human and nonhuman primates. Explanation of the interrelationships between biological and sociobehavioral aspects of human evolution, such as the changing social role of sex, are discussed. In addition, human inter-population differences and environmental factors that account for these differences will be evaluated.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
A survey of the development of archaeology. The methods and techniques of archaeology are presented through an analysis of excavations and prehistoric remains. Materials studied range from the Bronze Age and classical civilizations of the Old World and the Aztec and Inca empires of the New World to the historical archaeology of New England. Students are introduced to techniques for reconstructing the past from material remains. The course includes a field trip to a neighboring archaeological site.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Crosslisted Courses: CLCV 10 3
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Minor
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes: Wendy Judge Paulson '69 Ecology of Place Living Laboratory course. This course does not satisfy the Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory requirement.
This course will provide an overview of the theoretical ways in which the topic of food can be addressed from an anthropological perspective. We will examine the role food plays in shaping identity, gender construction, and the co-evolution of human food practices and society. The seminar will ask students to engage with food and foodways in their own surroundings and think about the way food is a source of nutrition, a focus of individual life, and a mechanism of labor. This course will draw upon readings from the various sub-fields of Anthropology (socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology) and thus also serve as an introduction to the discipline.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course is intended to provide a theoretical framework as to how anthropologists construct questions, design research strategies, and produce anthropological knowledge. Students will discuss and explore major framing questions for anthropological methods while pursuing an independent project of their choice. Working with a faculty advisor, students will engage in independent research, while using the class as a workshop and discussion environment to refine their project. Students will be exposed to issues of positionality, ethical obligations in research, mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and writing for specific audiences. This course is required of all anthropology majors and will provide a bridge between introductory and advanced courses.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ANTH 101, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff, Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes:
The hominin fossil record provides direct evidence for the evolution of humans and our ancestors through the past 5 million to 7 million years. This course will provide an overview of human evolutionary history from the time of our last common ancestor with the living great apes through the emergence of "modern" humans. Emphasis is placed on evolutionary mechanisms, and context is provided through hands-on examination of the hominin fossil record and its history. The human story begins with origins and the appearance of unique human features such as bipedality, the gradual beginnings of an expanded brain and durable material technology, increased social complexity, and eventually the emergence of a human-like ecology. The emergence of contemporary humans is examined through the interaction of environmental, evolutionary, genetic, fossil, and archaeological evidence.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
The identification of human remains for criminological and political purposes is widespread. This course explores issues in the identification and interpretation of human bones including methods for determining sex, age, stature, and ancestry as well as for identifying pathologies and anomalies. The course will pay particular attention to those anatomical elements, both soft tissue and bones, that aid in the reconstruction of individuals and their life history. In addition, the course explores search and recovery techniques, crime-scene analysis, the use of DNA in solving crimes, and the role of forensic anthropology in the investigation of mass fatalities from both accidents and human rights violations.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 42
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: NPS - Natural and Physical Sciences
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes: Does not fulfill the laboratory requirement.
This course explores major themes in the subfield of political anthropology. How do anthropologists locate “the political” and study it the ethnographically – that is, through the long-term fieldwork they conduct? Throughout this course, we will delve into anthropological approaches to power, authority, and domination; statecraft and transnational governance; everyday forms of resistance and collective action; violence and disorder; and the politics of care and abandonment, among other themes. We will consider the animating questions that helped consolidate the subfield during the 1940s and 1950s, and trace anthropology’s growing concern with (post)colonialism and global capitalism. Finally, we will explore questions of labor restructuring, activism, caregiving, and life itself in an era that is often characterized as “neoliberal.”
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This is a course about race concepts and human biological variation, viewed from historical and biological perspectives. This course thus has two intertwined emphases. One is placed on the historical connection between science and sociopolitical ideologies and policies. The other is on the evolutionary origin of human biological and cultural diversity. Through lecture and discussion section, topics explored include the role of polygenism, historically and in current scientific thought; biological determinism and scientific racism; the rise of eugenics and other examples of “applied biology”; and the role of the race concept in current scientific and medical debates, such as those over the place of the Neanderthals in human evolution, as well as the importance of race in clinical practice. The course seeks to guide students through a critical exercise in studying the evolutionary origins of contemporary human biological variation and its close relationship with scientific and popular concepts of race.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Ancient Greek historians associated the ruins of Bronze Age cities with the legends of the Trojan War, the lost city of Atlantis, and the labyrinth of the Minotaur. This course takes a more archaeological approach, combing the ruins for evidence that allow us to reconstruct complex societies that integrated contributions from diverse participants, including enslaved people and foreigners, as well as heroic adventurers. We will investigate the role of African and Asian cultures in early Greek state formation and collapse, technologies of art and writing, and religious traditions featuring a mother goddess. The course requires no background and offers an introduction to archaeological analysis as well as the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: ANTH 215
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Burns
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis; HS - Historical Studies
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
The Balkan region has been a major trade and cultural crossroads for millennia and encompasses a variety of landscapes, peoples, and cultures. We will read authoritative historical studies and ethnographies as well as short stories, poetry, books of travel, and fiction. We will consider the legacy of the classical world, the impact of Islam, the emergence of European commercial empires, the impact of the European Enlightenment in national movements, the emergence of modernization, and the socialist experiments in the hinterlands. The course offers a critical overview of the politics of historical continuity and the resurgence of Balkan nationalism during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
In the course of Europe's road to modernity, the southeastern corner of the continent became known as the Balkans. The Western imagination rendered the peoples and the rich cultures of the area as backward, violent, and underdeveloped. This course examines the imagery of the area and its people through film. We will explore the use of history by filmmakers and the use of films in understanding a number of issues in the history of the Balkans. The course will trace the adoration of ancient Greek antiquity, the legacy of Byzantium and Orthodox Christianity as well as the Ottoman influence and the appearance of Islam. The historical past is (re)constructed and (re)presented in film, as are the national awakenings and liberation movements. The list of films we will watch and the anthropological and historical readings we will do aspire to cover various aspects of Balkan societies as revealed through visual and cinematic representations. Balkan film is politically, socially, and historically engaged, and we will use film narratives and stories to understand the area's diverse landscapes and cultures, religions and identities, love and hatred.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The course will examine epidemics and pandemics and how they shape society and culture. It will explore catastrophic disease events such as the 4th century BC Ancient Greek plague, the Black Death of Medieval Europe, the European infectious diseases that killed native populations of the Americas, the Spanish flu of 1918, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the late 20th century, and the present-day coronavirus pandemic. Key questions that will guide the course are: 1. Who holds the bio-political power to guide the population through the danger of widespread morbidity, and how is this power used and/or abused? 2. What kind of socioeconomic, gender, ethnic ,and racial disparities are perpetuated and constructed in times of disease? 3. How do individual political entities cooperate and coordinate in their efforts to curtail disease? 4. How is the rhetoric of “war” employed to describe epidemic and pandemic diseases? 5. What are the effects of actual war, violence, and genocide that often follow epidemics? 6. What are the uses and the limitations of international public health organizations in addressing pandemics?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Crosslisted Courses: PEAC 220
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course will introduce students to the anthropology of science and the use of anthropological methodology to study the making of science and technology. Through the analysis of case studies of biotechnology, energy, computing, lay and activist science, medicine, genetics, bioethics, the environment and conservation around the world, this class will investigate the global dynamics of science and technology. We will compare and contrast the production and use of scientific knowledge around the globe. What happens when science and technology travel and how do new places emerge as centers of knowledge production? How are culture, identity, technology, and science linked?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Do you ever wonder what your possessions say about you? Our possessions and other things we use lie at the hearts of our everyday lives. We inadvertently generate material culture during our daily activities and interactions. In turn, material culture helps us structure negotiations with one another in our cultured worlds. Archaeology is unique among anthropological endeavors in its reliance on material culture to reconstruct and understand past human behavior. We will learn methodological and theoretical approaches from archaeology and ethnography for understanding material culture. Lecture topics will be explored in hands-on labs. Studying the world of material can help us understand the nature of objects and how humans have interacted with them across time and space. In addition, material culture indicates how humans mobilize objects in their cross-cultural interactions.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Minor
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Wendy Judge Paulson '69 Ecology of Place Living Laboratory course. This course does not satisfy the Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory requirement.
This course serves as an introduction to urban anthropology. It is organized around four particular places on the cityscape that stand as symbolic markers for larger anthropological questions we will examine throughout the course: the market stall, the gated community, the barricade, and the levee. We will explore the rise of global cities, including the role of labor migration, squatter settlements, and institutions of global capitalism, and interrogate the aesthetic practices that inscribe social exclusion onto the urban built environment. We will approach the city as contested space, a stage on which social, economic, and political struggles are waged. And, we will ask how those experiences shape our understanding of contemporary forms of social, political, and economic inequality, and how people “made do” and make claims to their right to the city.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: PEAC 231
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course introduces students to key analytic frameworks through which media and the mediation of culture have been examined. Using an anthropological approach, students will explore how media as representation and as cultural practice have been fundamental to the (trans)formation of modern sensibilities and social relations. We will examine various technologies of mediation-from the Maussian body as “Man's first technical instrument” to print capitalism, radio and cassette cultures, cinematic and televisual publics, war journalism, the digital revolution, and the political milieu of spin and public relations. Themes in this course include: media in the transformation of the senses; media in the production of cultural subjectivities and publics; and the social worlds and cultural logics of media institutions and sites of production.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 232
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course offers an introduction to the anthropological study of human religious experience, with particular emphasis on religious and ritual practice in a comparative perspective. What is the relationship between religion and society? Can categories such as “religion” and “the sacred” be legitimately applied to all cultures? Does religion necessarily imply belief in a God or sacred beings? We will concentrate on a range of small-scale, non-Western, cultures for much of the semester, returning to religious experience in the modern industrial world and the concept of "world religions" at the course’s end.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: REL 233
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Walters
Distribution Requirements: REP - Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy; SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
What happens when we study music and sound from an anthropological framework? Ethnomusicology, or the cultural study of music and sound, seeks to do just that. Through a hands-on approach to music research, this course has three aims: 1) to give students the opportunity of doing ethnographic research in a local community; 2) to explore key concepts pertaining to ethnomusicology and the anthropology of sound; 3) to work together to create a good working atmosphere in which students can share ongoing research with each other. Students will gain experience doing fieldwork as participant observers; taking notes and writing up field journals; recording and transcribing interviews; and conducting secondary research online and in the library. Each student will conduct regular visits to a local music group or community of their choice. Past projects have focused on Senegalese drumming, musical healing circles, and hip-hop dance groups. The semester will culminate in a final presentation and paper (8-10 pages) based on the student’s research.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: ANTH 235
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Goldschmitt
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course explores anthropological, religious, and psychiatric perspectives on mental health and mental illness, with careful attention to varied constructions of "madness", treatment, and healing across human cultures. We begin with comparative questions: are there universal standards of positive mental and emotional functioning? Are there overall commonalities in approaches to psychic and emotional disturbances? What is the role of spirituality? After considering the history of ‘madness’ in the West, we consider early anthropological and religious models of "madness" elsewhere. We next turn to ritualized therapeutic interventions in small-scale indigenous societies and consider a range of case studies from around the world. We conclude with a unit on culture and mental health in the United States and the ‘globalization” of American models of the psyche
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: ANTH 236
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Walters
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis; REP - Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
Anthropology has a fraught and complex history within South Asia. Many of its techniques of knowledge production were honed within the colonial context. In the postcolonial period, these techniques have been taken up by scholars within the region and beyond to update and challenge long-standing understandings of the region. Much historical and recent scholarship grapples with how one ought to understand the unique nature of the region's forms of culture and social organization, and to place them in relation to modernity and the West. South Asia proves an insistently fruitful case for assessing the universality or provincial nature of Western social theory and to consider the connections between knowledge and power. In this course, students will come to comprehend and assess the history of ethnography and anthropology in India, Pakistan, and other parts of South Asia. Through contemporary ethnographic texts, they will also gain insight into the major social and cultural categories and phenomena that have come to define South Asia today such as caste, kinship and gender, class, nationalism, and popular culture. Throughout, we will consider the politics of representation and knowledge production that are particularly fraught in this postcolonial context.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Crosslisted Courses: SAS 237
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Walters
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course begins with the assumption that the human body is a unit upon which collective categories are engraved. These categories can vary from social values, to religious beliefs, to feelings of national belonging, to standards of sexuality and beauty. Readings in this course will concentrate on the classic and recent attempts in the social and historical sciences to develop ways of understanding this phenomenon of "embodiment." We will begin with an overview of what is considered to be the "construction" of the human body in various societies and investigate how the body has been observed, experienced, classified, modified, and sacralized in different social formations.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will provide students with an overview of primatology, with a focus on comparative morphological, behavioral, and ecological aspects of Anthropoid primates. Students will consider the evolutionary relationship among humans and non-human primates and how comparative studies can elucidate shared aspects of social, energetic, and reproductive behaviors, while also pointing to uniquely derived features among these organisms. Readings for the course will focus on primary research derived from a diverse range of primates in addition to theoretical pieces that connect the study of non-human primates to evolutionary understandings of what it means to be human. Students will also be exposed in their assignments to the methods used to understand the behavioral ecology of humans and non-human primates. Finally, the course will introduce students to the complex history of primatology as a field of study situated across anthropology, psychology, and biology, and one in the midst of a shift towards questions of conversation and decolonization.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: ANTH 102 or BISC 111, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: NPS - Natural and Physical Sciences
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
How biological anthropologists have approached their subject of study has changed substantially since the discipline’s inception. Anthropology has its roots in colonial and racist enterprises of the 19th century. The construction of informed consent, the development of a global research community, and changing notions of evolution have all positively reshaped how researchers approach their work. And yet, in spite of these changes, many practices in scientific anthropology continue to make some narratives visible while silencing others. In this course, we will focus on examples drawn from human skeletal and genetic analyses, relying heavily on Indigenous critique of and within the discipline. How do we produce scientific knowledge about human evolutionary past? Who gets to ask and answer the questions? What role do institutions play in privileging some voices and approaches over others?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course explores contemporary issues in Latin America from an anthropological perspective. We will discuss legacies of colonialism and Cold War power struggles, as well as the central role social movements are playing in crafting Latin American futures. We will trace the ways the region is enmeshed in transnational processes and migrations and analyze the intersection of culture, race, gender, and class in shaping urban centers, rural hinterlands, and livelihood strategies within them. In particular, we will discuss how ethnographic research – the long-term fieldwork conducted by anthropologists – can enrich our understanding of hotly debated issues such as statecraft, borders, and shifting meanings of citizenship; in/security, human rights, and democratization; and, illicit economies, extractive industries, and critical approaches to development.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Crosslisted Courses: LAST 245
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
How can the complexities of Cultural Heritage be captured in digital form? Can advanced media visualizations, such as Augmented and Virtual Reality, give new insights on diverse global cultures? Can public dissemination of research using gamification positively impact our lives in the present? What ethical responsibilities do scholars have when digitizing material from ancient and contemporary communities? How can we ensure that our digital cultural achievements last as long as pyramids built in stone? This course will pair readings on the theory, practice, and ethics of visual and public digital humanities cultural heritage projects. Online archival resources for cultural heritage are at the forefront of developing public digital humanities. The digital archive resources used in class will be used to critique current trends in digital data capture and open access resources. The final project will be the creation of a new digital cultural heritage resource, presenting content created by students through a digital platform: an interactive archive, augmented or virtual reality, location-based games, or a combination thereof. Students will be offered a choice of visual and textual cultural heritage archive data from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, UC Berkeley Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and the National Museum of Sudan, or can identify their own open-access cultural heritage archival source of interest.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: MAS 246
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Norton
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 104 and permission of the instructor.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.
Instructor:
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: ANTH 104 and permission of the instructor.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
This course critically examines cancer as a pervasive disease and a metaphor of global modern cultures. Students will be exposed to the ways cancer is perceived as a somatic and social standard within locally constructed cognitive frameworks. They will investigate the scientific and emotional responses to the disease and the ways cancer challenges our faith and spirituality, our ways of life, notions of pollution and cleanliness, and our healing strategies. This approach to cancer is comparative and interdisciplinary and focuses on how specialists in different societies have described the disease, how its victims in different cultures have narrated their experiences, how causality has been perceived, and what interventions (sacred or secular) have been undertaken as therapy and prevention.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
An archaeology field school covering the process of research design, site identification, survey, undertaking excavation, basics of conservation, and digital documentation. The Wellesley College Hall Archaeology Project seeks evidence of daily lives of the Wellesley community, circa 1914. The excavation is in areas containing remnants of the 1914 College Hall Fire, which destroyed the original College building overnight, finding fragments of student belongings, classroom equipment, and architecture over 100 years later. Students will identify research questions about experiences of the Wellesley community (daily life, gender, social class), and build a project addressing issues resonating with students today. Community participatory research includes involving the community through interviews, social media, and public outreach. Please note: the Fall 2023 season will be a study season primarily focused on artifact research, analysis, and publication. There will be limited excavation which includes physical exertion, students with disability concerns are encouraged to contact the instructor and accessible fieldwork tasks will be implemented.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: A 100 or 200 level Anthropology course.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Wendy Judge Paulson '69 Ecology of Place Living Laboratory course. This course does not satisfy the Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory requirement.
How do we account for the many similarities and differences within and between human populations? Axes of human “difference”– sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality – have profound consequences. These differences shape not only group affiliation and identity but have been shaped by colonial and national histories. They shape social structures such as socioeconomic status, professions, work mobility, as well as stereotypes about personal traits and behaviors. The biological sciences have been very important in the history of differences. Scientists have contributed to bolster claims that differences are determined by our biology – such as research on sex and racial differences, notions of the “gay” gene, math abilities, spatial ability etc. Conversely, scientists have also contributed to critiquing claims of difference – challenging the idea that sex, gender, race, sexuality are innate, and immutable. How do we weigh these claims and counterclaims? We will begin with a historical overview of biological studies on “difference” to trace the differing understandings of the “body” and the relationship of the body with identity, behavior and intellectual and social capacity. We will then examine contemporary knowledge on differences of sex, gender, race, class, and sexuality. Using literature from biology, anthropology, feminist studies, history and science studies, we will examine the biological and cultural contexts for our understanding of “difference.” How do we come to describe the human body as we do? What is good data? How do we “know” what we know? The course will give students the tools to analyze scientific studies, to understand the relationship of nature and culture, science and society, biology and politics.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: WGST 254
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Van Arsdale, Subramaniam
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis; NPS - Natural and Physical Sciences
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This class will use archaeological methods to explore the practice of human sacrifice in a range of cultural contexts. The act of killing a human has played significant roles in the development and maintenance of socio-political power from ancient times and into the present day. The goal of this course is to move away from a simple model of sacrifice as a ‘barbaric’ act of violence to an understanding of sacrifice as a ritualized political act within systems of legitimization or social coercion. Case studies will draw from worldwide ancient examples, often in comparison to contemporary cases.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Minor
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
In this course we will consider the historical, social, and political life of nature in its many guises and from an anthropological perspective. What is the relationship between resource control and the consolidation of power? How have social movements and development agencies mobilized ideas of participatory conservation to achieve their goals, and how have these same concepts been used to exclude or to reproduce inequality? We will explore themes such as the relationship between race, nature, and security; intellectual property and bioprospecting; and the lived effects of the many “green,” “sustainable,” and “eco-tourism” projects now attracting foreign travelers around the world. Additionally, the course will introduce students unfamiliar with socio-cultural anthropology to ethnographic research methods, ethical dilemmas, and the craft of ethnographic writing.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Crosslisted Courses: ES 265
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will provide an introduction into the core concepts of population genetics, with special focus on their application to human and nonhuman primate evolution. Population genetics is the branch of evolutionary biology concerned with how genetic variation is patterned within and between populations and how these patterns change over time. Though the theory is applicable to all organisms, specific examples drawn from the human and nonhuman primate literature will be used as case studies. Topics will also include the genetic basis for disease, pedigree analysis, and personal genomics. The course will be structured around lectures and discussion with regular computer labs to provide firsthand experience working with anthropological genetic topics and analyses of genetic data sets.
Note: This course can fulfill the elective course requirement for the BISC major, but does not fulfill the core 200 level course requirement for the major.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: BISC 274
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: NPS - Natural and Physical Sciences
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Do you like to "people watch"? Do you wish you could translate your real-world experiences into narratives that are readable and relatable, and also intellectually rigorous? If so, you probably have an ethnographic writer hiding somewhere inside you, and this class will give them the opportunity to emerge. Ethnography, a “written document of culture,” has long been a key component of a cultural anthropologist’s tool-kit, and scholars in other fields have recently begun to take up this practice. We will read classic and contemporary ethnographies to better understand the theoretical and practical significance of these texts. Students will also have the unique opportunity to be the authors and subjects of original ethnographic accounts, and at various stages in the semester they will act as anthropologists and as informants. Although this course will emphasize an anthropological method, it is appropriate for students from various disciplines who are looking to expand their research skills and develop new ways to engage in scholarly writing.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: ANTH 277
Prerequisites: Fulfillment of the First-Year Writing requirement. Not open to First-Year students.
Instructor: Armstrong
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
What can architecture and design tell anthropologists about culture? This seminar addresses this question using a distinctly anthropological approach that focuses on topics as diverse as the ethnographic analysis of vernacular architecture in rural Newfoundland, how the Danish notion of hygge (coziness) informs a culturally distinct design aesthetic, and the ways in which city planning influences cultural identity in Boston. Students engage in themed discussions and participate in case-based workshops that utilize foundational anthropological practices including participant-observation, visual anthropology, and ethnographic writing to form real-world dialogues about the cultural significance of design and architecture. Core anthropological concepts such as cultural relativity, applied ethnography, globalization, and the anthropology of space and place serve as the central themes for the course as we apply contemporary anthropological theory to cross-cultural understandings of architecture and design.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Armstrong
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Wendy Judge Paulson '69 Ecology of Place Living Laboratory course.This course does not satisfy the Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory requirement.
Why are myths often tied to geography and why are particular locations charged with powerful cultural meaning? This anthropological field course in Iceland explores the diverse ways that humans interact with their surroundings to create culture. This intensive two-week excursion (followed by two weeks of follow-up assignments) examines the cultural and geographic significance of Iceland's unique landscape and settlements. Glacial lakes, bustling cities, remote fishing villages, and eerie lava fields provide the setting for an introduction to the fascinating field of cultural geography. Students gain hands-on experience with methods of cultural anthropology, including participant-observation, interviewing, writing field notes, photography, and critical analysis. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, this course offers students a rare chance to conduct ethnographic research in one of the most stunning places on Earth!
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 8
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Armstrong
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Summer
Notes: Not offered every year. Subject to Provost's Office approval.
This course introduces students to contemporary anthropology by tracing its historical development and its specific application in ethnographic writing. It examines the social context in which each selected model or "paradigm" took hold and the extent of cognitive sharing, by either intellectual borrowing or breakthrough. The development of contemporary theory will be examined both as internal to the discipline and as a response to changing intellectual climates and social milieu. The course will focus on each theory in action, as the theoretical principles and methods apply to ethnographic case studies.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 101 and at least one 200 level ANTH course, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Walters (Fall), Ellison (Spring)
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Fall and Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes:
This seminar will immerse students in current developments in Museum Anthropology through an exploration of the history of museum development, the role of museums in society, and the ethical considerations of preservation and education. Under an anthropological lens, the history of development of museums in the global North can be used to contextualize recent movements to decolonize the collection, curation, and display of ethnographic and archaeological material. After researching up-to-date international exhibitions, students will critically assess museum curation practices and then develop their own outreach projects in small groups. This course will include virtual visits to New England area museums–including the MFA Boston, Harvard Peabody Museum, and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: One 100-level or 200-level Anthropology course.
Instructor: Norton
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This seminar explores ethnographic film as a genre for representing "reality," anthropological knowledge and cultural lives. We will examine how ethnographic film emerged in a particular intellectual and political economic context as well as how subsequent conceptual and formal innovations have shaped the genre. We will also consider social responses to ethnographic film in terms of the contexts for producing and circulating these works; the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation; and the development of indigenous media and other practices in conversation with ethnographic film. Throughout the course, we will situate ethnographic film within the larger project for representing "culture," addressing the status of ethnographic film in relation to other documentary practices, including written ethnography, museum exhibitions, and documentary film.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 30 5
Prerequisites: ANTH 301 or two 200-level units in anthropology, cinema and media studies, economics, history, political science, or sociology or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course aspires to familiarize students with the subtleties of national Balkan rifts and cultural divisions, through international study in the Southern Balkans during Wintersession. The overall theme of the course will center on national majorities and ethnic minorities. The cultural diversity of the area will be examined both as a historical and as contemporary phenomenon. Students will be exposed to the legacy of the classical world, the impact of Christianity and Islam, the role of European commercial empires, the impact of the European Enlightenment in national movements, the emergence of modernization, and the socialist experiments in Macedonia and Bulgaria. The course will also offer a critical overview of the politics of historical continuity and the resurgence of Balkan nationalism during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 217 or ANTH 219, or some familiarity with the area.
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Winter
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Not offered every year. Subject to Provost's Office approval.
Advances in genetic sequencing technology have dramatically reduced the cost of obtaining genomic data. As a result, personal genomic information is now available and utilized at an ever-increasing pace. As an anthropologist, the arrival of the “genomic age” raises important questions about how we approach and understand the topic of what it means to be human. Never before have individuals had such direct access to the raw data at the core of their own biology. This class will examine personal genomics from a biocultural anthropology perspective, simultaneously dealing with the question of what personal genomics has to offer and what consequences arise given the availability of genomic information. The important distinction between information and knowledge, uncertainty and determinism, and the ethical and legal apparatus around genomics will be examined through the use of genomic case studies focused on issues of health and ancestry.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 102 or ANTH 214, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Van Arsdale
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This seminar critically examines the use of prehistory and antiquity for the construction of accounts of national origins, historical claims to specific territories, or the biased assessment of specific peoples. The course begins with an examination of the phenomenon of nationalism and the historically recent emergence of contemporary nation-states. It then proceeds comparatively, selectively examining politically motivated appropriations of the remote past that either were popular earlier in this century or have ongoing relevance for some of the ethnic conflicts raging throughout the world today. The course will attempt to develop criteria for distinguishing credible and acceptable reconstructions of the past from those that are unbelievable and/or dangerous.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: One 200-level unit in anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: HS - Historical Studies; SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
People’s senses—their capabilities to apprehend the world through touch, smell, taste, feeling, and hearing—seem to define human experiences, uniting us in one great common condition. At the same time, many have argued that the senses are understood—and indeed experienced—differently across disparate contexts. What does it mean to consider that what we take to be among the most foundational and universal aspects of human engagement with the world might be culturally, historically and socially constituted? This course introduces students to the scholarship of sensory experience—an interdisciplinary field that we will center on anthropology, but that also involves performance studies, arts and media studies. It explores the basic question of how to produce scholarly knowledge about embodied sensory experience that in many ways seems to defy the descriptive capacities of the written word.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 101 and two 200-level courses in anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
From giant, immovable stone currency on the Pacific island of Yap to accumulating 'likes' on social media, we occupy a world of exchange where our everyday lives are mediated through the transfer of objects, ideas, and various forms of capital. This seminar examines the cross-cultural understanding of exchange from an anthropological perspective with particular attention paid to gift-giving, social and cultural capital, money, and the transmission of knowledge across space and time. Drawing on the work of Malinowski, Bourdieu, Marx, Mauss, Derrida and many other anthropologists and philosophers, we will unpack the hidden dimensions of taking, keeping and giving as key elements of culture.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ANTH 101, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Armstrong
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This seminar examines the comparative politics and lived experiences of indigeneity and centers the work of Indigenous scholars, activists, and artists. We cover topics ranging from Spanish reducciones and ideologies of mestizaje in the Americas to debates over the limits of legal recognition under “neoliberal multiculturalism” in Australia and Indonesia, and from Indigenous sovereignty in the U.S. to the rise of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and his efforts to put a Pro-Pachamama (a vital force often glossed as Mother Earth) platform on the global stage. Further, we will study Indigenous efforts to decolonize knowledge production, including the discipline of anthropology itself. In the process, we will address settler colonialism, struggles over authenticity, political recognition, and citizenship, efforts to decolonize gender and sexuality, and the antecedents of contemporary language revitalization and political movements.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Two 200-level units in anthropology, economics, history, political science, or sociology, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
What happens when we study music and sound from an anthropological framework? Ethnomusicology, or the cultural study of music and sound, seeks to do just that. Through a hands-on approach to music research, this course has three aims: 1) to give students the opportunity of doing ethnographic research in a local community; 2) to explore key concepts pertaining to ethnomusicology and the anthropology of sound; 3) to work together to create a good working atmosphere in which students can share ongoing research with each other. Students will gain experience doing fieldwork as participant observers; taking notes and writing up field journals; recording and transcribing interviews; and conducting secondary research online and in the library. Each student will conduct regular visits to a local music group or community of their choice. Past projects have focused on Senegalese drumming, musical healing circles, and hip-hop dance groups. The semester will culminate in a final presentation and paper (15 pages) based on the student’s research.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: ANTH 345
Prerequisites: MUS 100 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Goldschmitt
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
From de-mining countries to rehabilitating child soldiers, from channeling donations for AIDS orphans to coordinating relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are ubiquitous. They provide essential services once thought to be the purview of the state, and increasingly champion entrepreneurial approaches to poverty reduction. NGOs are also subject to heated debate and increased surveillance within the countries where they operate. This seminar brings a critical anthropological lens to bear on the work of NGOs, connecting global trends, donor platforms, and aid workers to the everyday experiences of people targeted by NGO projects.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: One 200-level unit in anthropology, economics, history, political science, or sociology, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ellison
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the department.
Instructor:
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: ANTH 360 and permission of the department.
Instructor:
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.