Introduces major historical figures, approaches, and debates in anthropology (sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological), with a focus on understanding the discipline's diverse intellectual history, and its complex involvement with dominant social and intellectual currents in western society.

In anthropology, where identity has become a central concern, language is seen as an important site for the construction of, and negotiation over social identities. In linguistics, reference to categories of social identity helps to explain language structure and change. This seminar explores the overlap between these converging trends by focusing on the notion of discourse as a nexus of cultural and linguistic processes.

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.

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.

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.

This course examines the many ways that people have managed, shared and made claim to water¿the construction of water worlds. It also looks at waterscapes, dam projects, water in cities, and wastewater and sewage systems globally. Importantly, the course addresses conflicting notions of how to value water, including contemporary debates about the sale of water and water rights, and examines the notion that water will be the locus of future wars.

There's no debate that human reproduction is a biological universal, but it's also an intensely cultural phenomenon with widely disparate, & often contested, specific cultural routines, symbolic systems, ideas & practices whether focused on mothers, fathers, infants or communities or who is recognized as a birthing expert. Course examines variations in physiological & cultural processes globally & explores both the individual experiences & and systemic patterns associated with the phases of reproduction from pregnancy through to post-partum.

A workshop for graduates preparing dissertation proposals and writing grant applications. Each student prepares several drafts of a proposal, revising it at each stage in response to the criticisms of classmates and the instructor.

This course engages with ways that historical process are inscribed in landscapes, which are the traditional territories of indigenous communities and have also been shaped by colonialism, extractive enterprise, and nature conservation. It challenges students to examine their assumptions to examine ways in which dominant values and stories are inscribed in landscapes and made to appear natural and how indigenous peoples contest these processes. Prerequisite: Graduate status or instructor permission.

This course explores anthropological writings on development and humanitarianism to better understand the historical context and contemporary practice of these distinct modes of world saving. We will attend to critiques of development and humanitarianism, and will also consider writings by anthropologists who champion the humanitarian project