What is a corporation? Contrary to wide belief, the corporation is a very ancient social form that arose in diverse world regions and is the heritage of many civilizations. In this course, we explore its history and relation to culture, economics, and law. How has financialization shaped today's major business corporations and theories of corporate social responsibility? How might we improve the corporations of the future?

An introduction to the study of language relationships and linguistic structures.  Topics covered the basic elements of grammatical description; genetic, areal, and typological relationships among languages; a survey of the world's major language groupings and the notable structures and grammatical categories they exhibit; and the issue of language endangerment. Prerequisite: One year of a foreign language or permission of instructor.

Topics include alternative theories of prehistoric culture change, dating methods, excavation and survey techniques, and the reconstruction of the economy, social organization, and religion of prehistoric societies.

This course explores anthropological understandings of culture and the environment, particularly with respect to the ecology of human perception, histories of colonialism and related inequalities, food production, consumerism, nature conservation, the Anthropocene concept, and pervasive environmental logics of globalizing capitalism.

Reviews key findings in the study of language variation. Explores the use of language to express identity and social difference.

Topics to be announced prior to each semester, dealing with linguistics.

This course is an introduction to the prehistory/early history of the Middle East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant and southeast Anatolia) from 10,000 to 4,000 BP.

This course offers an insight into the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services practiced by peoples ignored or unknown to classic Western economics. Its principle focus will open upon the obvious differences between cultural concepts of the self and the very notion of its desire. Such arguments as those which theorize on the "rationality" of the market and the "naturalness" of competition will be debunked.

Ethnographies of Amazonian Peoples and the new anthropological theories about their way of life.

How does the study of society and culture create an intellectual space for any explanation and experience of the Divine? How does anthropology deal specifically with explaining (rather than the explaining away) knowledge and understanding about divinity? Is God an American? If God has a gender and race, what are they? These and many other pertinent questions will be engaged and tackled in this cross-cultural study of the divine.