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.

Studying the cultural representations and interpretations of the body in society. Prerequisite: ANTH 1010 or permission of the instructor.

Provides an anthropological perspective of modern American society. Traces the development of individualism through American historical and institutional development, using as primary sources of data religious movements, mythology as conveyed in historical writings, novels, and the cinema, and the creation of modern American urban life. Prerequisite: ANTH 1010 or instructor permission.

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

Studies the physical and cultural evolution of humans from the initial appearance of hominids to the development of animal and plant domestication in different areas of the world. Topics include the development of biological capabilities such as bipedal walking and speech, the evolution of characteristics of human cultural systems such as economic organization and technology, and explanations for the development of domestication.

Culture is the central concept that anthropologists use to understand the striking differences among human societies and how people organize the meaningful parts of their lives. In this course we explore this diversity, examine its basis in neuroplasticity and human development, and consider its implications for human nature, cognition, creativity, and identity. By learning about other cultures, we gain new understanding of ourselves.

The course introduces medical anthropology, and contextualizes bodies, suffering, healing and health. It is organized thematically around a critical humanist approach, along with perspectives from political economy and social constructionism. The aim of the course is to provide a broad understanding of the relationship between culture, healing (including and especially the Western form of healing known as biomedicine), health and political power.

Introduces the native languages of North America and the methods that linguists and anthropologists use to record and analyze them. Examines the use of grammars, texts and dictionaries of individual languages and affords insight into the diversity among the languages.

An introduction to the theory and analysis of linguistic sound systems. Covers the essential units of speech sound that lexical and grammatical elements are composed of, how those units are organized at multiple levels of representation, and the principles governing the relation between levels.     

Africa is commonly imagined in the West as an unproblematically bounded and undifferentiated entity. This course engages and moves beyond western traditions of story telling about Africa to explore diverse systems of imagining Africa's multi-diasporic realities. Imagining Africa is never a matter of pure abstraction, but entangled in material struggles and collective memory, and taking place at diverse and interconnected scales and locales. Prerequisite: ANTH 1010