ANTH 3020

Hantman is my advisor, so I was a little nervous taking a class with him. In advising, he is quiet. In lecture, he fills the room with his passion for anthropology and quirky sense of humor. I thought the class structure was a little disorganized, since his lectures would deviate from what he wanted to discuss. He got better at consolidating current readings and topics as the semester progressed. Sheena, the TA, was very good at bringing him back to task. I gave him some grace, because he is used to lecturing 75 minutes, until the class got so big that the school had to include a discussion, leaving him only 50 minutes to lecture this past semester. My one major complaint is that some of his essay prompts were not very clear. In one of them, I was honestly confused by what he was asking for. Don't be afraid to go to him for office hours and emailing him questions. Overall, I appreciate the fact that the anthropology department wants its students to be proud of their major and what they can accomplish with their degree. Even though I am premed, Hantman still managed to tie medicine, health care, and the natural sciences into anthropology. He loves to share about his archaeological research in Native American tribes. If you need an extension on an assignment, he is more than willing to accommodate for you. There are four essay-exams that make up the majority of your final grade. The rest is participation in discussion. You will start with the history of anthropological study (Lewis Henry Morgan, Franz Boaz) and move on the other topics of anthropological discipline. My favorite topic was on Jason De Leon's book. I honestly did not do all the readings, but I did at least read the abstracts and conclusions. For the books, I referred to the indices, especially for writing essays.