Course Descriptions

 This course is an introduction to the principles and the methods of physical anthropology.  Physical anthropology is the study of human beings in a biological context, and seeks to explain our relationship to other primates and to the rest of the natural world.  In other words, who are we? how are we unique? how, why, an when did we come to be the way we are?The study of physical anthropology requires many different types of knowledge.  Throughout the course, we will examine anatomical, behavioral, and genetic similarities and differences among living primates, learn the basic mechanisms of the evolutionary process, and trace a pathway of human evolution as reconstructed from the fossil record.  The main goal of the course is to obtain a clear understanding of our place in nature.

 This course is an introduction to the principles and the methods of physical anthropology.  Physical anthropology is the study of human beings in a biological context, and seeks to explain our relationship to other primates and to the rest of the natural world.  In other words, who are we? how are we unique? how, why, an when did we come to be the way we are?The study of physical anthropology requires many different types of knowledge.  Throughout the course, we will examine anatomical, behavioral, and genetic similarities and differences among living primates, learn the basic mechanisms of the evolutionary process, and trace a pathway of human evolution as reconstructed from the fossil record.  The main goal of the course is to obtain a clear understanding of our place in nature.

 This course is an introduction to the principles and the methods of physical anthropology.  Physical anthropology is the study of human beings in a biological context, and seeks to explain our relationship to other primates and to the rest of the natural world.  In other words, who are we? how are we unique? how, why, an when did we come to be the way we are?The study of physical anthropology requires many different types of knowledge.  Throughout the course, we will examine anatomical, behavioral, and genetic similarities and differences among living primates, learn the basic mechanisms of the evolutionary process, and trace a pathway of human evolution as reconstructed from the fossil record.  The main goal of the course is to obtain a clear understanding of our place in nature.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

An introduction to archaeology as a discipline.  Three major themes that deal with issues of the past will be covered:

1.  A brief history of the discipline, changing theories about various aspects of the past, and the role that the reconstructions of the past play in national and/or group identities.

2.  A survey of the development of human culture from its beginnings to the rise of civilizations and proto-historical cultures in most areas of the world.  Prehistoric cultures, archaeological sites, and areas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe , and the Pacific will be covered.

3.  Archaeological methods of recovery of information about the past.  Scientific procedures involved in excavation, dating, and preservation of the material record.

An introduction to archaeology as a discipline.  Three major themes that deal with issues of the past will be covered:

1.  A brief history of the discipline, changing theories about various aspects of the past, and the role that the reconstructions of the past play in national and/or group identities.

2.  A survey of the development of human culture from its beginnings to the rise of civilizations and proto-historical cultures in most areas of the world.  Prehistoric cultures, archaeological sites, and areas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe , and the Pacific will be covered.

3.  Archaeological methods of recovery of information about the past.  Scientific procedures involved in excavation, dating, and preservation of the material record.

The purpose of this course is to introduce the concept of culture as a crucial dimension of human life. Because we tend to think of thought and action as stemming from individual impulses, we find the notion of a shared, highly variable, but influential force in our lives hard to fathom.  Even if we speak of "society" as a familiar concept, we tend to make of it a uniform, oppressive force, some institution outside ourselves that we individually confront and oppose. Yet only if we can learn to recognize how deeply we share certain assumptions and inclinations with others--but only some others, and to varying degrees--can we appreciate the degree to which culture inheres within us and makes us who we are.

The ability to learn and use language is a quintessentially human characteristic—one that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animal species. Language is simultaneously generated through and generative of social life; the former is a primary resource that we humans use in both the structuring and accomplishment of the latter. These dynamics form the subject of study of linguistic anthropology.

This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology. It is impossible in a single semester to provide a complete overview of all topics that linguistic anthropologists address, so this course covers selected topics, the selection of which is aimed to illustrate how linguistic anthropologists go about doing their work: the range of topics they examine, the kinds of questions they ask, the types of approaches and methods they utilize, and the sorts of conclusions they reach.

The ability to learn and use language is a quintessentially human characteristic—one that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animal species. Language is simultaneously generated through and generative of social life; the former is a primary resource that we humans use in both the structuring and accomplishment of the latter. These dynamics form the subject of study of linguistic anthropology.

This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology. It is impossible in a single semester to provide a complete overview of all topics that linguistic anthropologists address, so this course covers selected topics, the selection of which is aimed to illustrate how linguistic anthropologists go about doing their work: the range of topics they examine, the kinds of questions they ask, the types of approaches and methods they utilize, and the sorts of conclusions they reach.

While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the black queer diaspora, this seminar examines the distinct socio-cultural, historical and geographical contexts in which same-sex desire and gender variance are embraced or contested in African diasporic communities.

What can we learn about Latin American social worlds when we look at the place of Jews within it? Conversely, what we learn about Jewish social worlds when they unfold in Latin America?  This course examines both of these questions. Specifically, we consider the role of Latin America as both a refuge from and a source of anti-Semitism, a hub of immigration, a site of Zionism, and of Jewish success and philanthropy.  We also address themes of displacement, longing, belonging, marginalization, prejudice, immigration, community, cultural continuity, and memory, while considering Sephardi and Ashkenazi difference, and inter-generational conflict among Jewish Latin Americans. Overall, through reading, writing exercises, independent research and in-class films, the course is designed to provide students with an understanding of how Jews constructed individual lives and vibrant communities in predominantly Hispanic, Catholic countries of Latin America.

With these themes in mind, the course is divided into four units:

1. Historical literacy is a substantive introductory unit, which provides basic context from 1492 until the post-World War II period;
2. Jewish group identities in Latin American features readings on Jewish life and cultural forms in select national contexts (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic and others);
3. Memoir and personal narrative engages students in critical reading of creative non-fiction and quasi-ethnography that focuses on individual lives;
4. Contemporary realities explores current events, contemporary trends and popular culture in Jewish Latin America.

Finally, over the course of the semester, drawing on course motifs, students will produce their own research papers addressing a specific research question in the Latin American national context of their choice.

*Enjoy Latin American breakfast beverages served in class*

Note: This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present.

This course is a comparative survey of the institution of slavery on the American mainland (with some discussion of the Caribbean) from the era of seventeenth-century European colonialism through the antebellum period. We will begin by exploring Portuguese, French, Dutch, British, and Spanish colonizing efforts in the Americas, and their varying roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The class proceeds with discussions of the Middle Passage, and the development of plantation societies. Through historical and archaeological evidence, one begins to understand that there existed on monolithic slave experience.

Too many portrayals of Islamic societies are treated as superficially as the issues involving the hijab and veiling. Among the hip and the fashionable, the religious fronts and political systems in contemporary Muslim societies (particularly in the Middle East and North Africa), a complex and complicated phenomenon has been developing for decades:  the “art of the wall,” namely, graffiti and poster art.

Poster art and graffiti are employed by various groups within the Islamic world to project their ideas through the mediums of photography, video, the film of documentary makers, the paint and ink of professionals, anonymous or amateur designers and artists to record the political and social events within urban areas. Such visual records depicting aspects of everyday life give voice to the people living and working within the Muslim world. An observer can see acts of rebellion as the anonymous young population in Muslim societies experiments with ways to test the limits of freedom. This is done with creativity and often with courage, which may cause concern to the political systems ruling over people whose freedom of speech and action are limited.

In this course, the students are introduced to a common and general principle of Islam, followed by a study of differences in culture and linguistic background of the people in lands of a Muslim majority. The major part of the semester is devoted to analysis and studying graffiti and poster art as it relates to social and political events unfolding. It is expected that the students become interested and learn that the interpretation of today’s Muslim youth through popular culture, expressed in the art and work of talented people manifesting their identities and personal expression about the world around them, provides a valuable access to learning and getting closer to the cultures that may seem strange, illogical, or somewhat hostile to the principles of “Western democracy.” This is an opportunity for us to look at the body and soul of people of ancient civilizations and of a recent troubled history with high hopes for a bright future from the perspective of those from the inside looking out.

Texts:

Reader packets TBD

Grading:

TBD

There has been a religious resurgence since the 1970s, and Islam has come to play a significant role in the world. Despite the restrictions placed on women by the religious authorities, the most unexpected effect of this religious renaissance is the overwhelming political participation of many Muslim women at different leves in their respective cultures. While a large number of Muslim women are winning elections in many countries, in general, women's rights are still an issue in the Muslim world. Since the beginning of recorded Islamic history, Muslim women with political influence have held political offices and positions of leadership. At the same time, we know that in some Muslim nations the rights of women are limited, and their participation as public servants is almost impossible. In both of these cases, Islam is given as the key rationale for participation or lack of participation of women in their society. Both Quranic and hadith commentators vary as to whether women's political participation is a correct interpretation of religious imperatives.Debate about the religious legitimacy of Muslim women and their participation in politics ae the themes of this course. We will study and discuss the historical developments and debates about both religious and cultural perspectives that affect hte role of Muslim women in politics. We will study important Muslim women who have held or hold important political positions or influential positions in NGOs or as political activists and grassroot leaders. In addition, we will also study issues on gender, ethnicity, culture, and faith that impact Muslim women's political participation and how Muslim women constitute themselves as social and political actors as a result of their interactions within the structural frameworks and political cutlures.

Texts

Readers packets prepared by the instructor

Grading

Attendance  5%

Active participation 10%

4 quizzes (lowest grade dropped) 30%

Exam 1  25%

Exam 2  30%

Racism preoccupies virtually every aspect of U.S. society: culture, law, politics, economies. Yet U.S.-based scholars have offered surprisingly few comprehensive theories or definitions of what, exactly, racism entails and where it comes from. This course examines the few theories/definitions of racism across several fields: anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, gender/sexuality studies. During the second half of the course, we turn our attention to anti-racist activism, particularly within people of color and immigrant communities. How have these anti-racist efforts measured up to existing scholarly theories of racism? Or do they instead produce new theories and definitions of their own?

This course focuses on various contemporary ethnographies in the field of South Asian Islam. For almost a decade, there has been a consistent growth in the number of ethnographies being conducted in South Asia, most importantly, in India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh. Throughout this course, we focus on various manifestations of practising and living Islam and discuss two major questions: 1. What makes living Islam different than textual Islam? 2. What do we learn from ethnographies of contemporary Islam or Muslim societies?

Texts

1.      Metcalf, Barbara. Islam in South Asia in Practice, Princeton University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0691044200
2.      Frank J.Korom, Hosay Trinidad, University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN-13: 978-0812218251
3.      Flueckiger, Joyce. In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0253218377
4.      Marsdebn, Magnus. Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier, Cambridge University Press  ISBN-13: 978-0521727495

5.      Bigelow, Anna. Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India, Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN-10: 0195368231.

Grading

Weekly responses (500 words) 10%

Book review (800 words) 15%

Midterm paper (2500 words) 15%

Peer-review of the mid-term papers 10%

Final paper (2500 words) 25%

Class presentation: 15 minutes (plus 10 minutes Q&A) 25%

This multi-disciplinary course explores various experiences and theories of sex/intimacy/desire alongside intellectual and artistic engagements with power hierarchies and spirituality across black communities within and beyond the borders of the United States. We will consider the concept of “erotic subjectivity” from various theoretical and methodological angles principally within African Diasporic contexts.

Texts:

Alexander, M. Jacqui

    2005    Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics,

        Memory and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press.

Allen, Jafari

    2011    ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. Durham: Duke

        University Press.

Holland, Sharon P.

    2012    The Erotic Life of Racism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hopkinson, Nalo

    2003    The Salt Roads. New York: Warner Books.

Murphy, Joseph and Mei-Mei Sanford

    2001    Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas.

        Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Tinsley, Omise’eke

    2010    Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature. Durham:

        Duke University Press.

Grading:

Attendance                                                                              10%

Two class discussion facilitations                                                   20%

Five one-pg response papers                                                        30%

2 Quizzes                                                                                10%

Final paper                                                                              30%

How and when do cities burn? The modern US city has seen its share of urban unrest, typified by street protests (both organized and spontaneous), the destruction of private property, looting, and fires. Interpretations of urban unrest are varied: some describe it as aimless rioting, others as political insurrection. Most agree that the matter has something to do with the deepening of racism, poverty and violence. This course takes a closer look at the roots of urban unrest, exploring a range of origins: joblessness, state violence, white flight, the backlash against civil rights gains, new immigration and interracial strife. Urban unrest is often cast as an intractable struggle between black and white, yet this course examines the ways in which multiple racial groups have entered the fray. Beyond race and class, the course will also explore unrest as a mode of pushing the normative boundaries of gender and sexuality in public space. Course material will draw from film, literature, history, geography and anthropology.

Required Texts:

The majority of readings will be available as pdf on Blackboard. Students must acquire the following texts:

Robert F. Williams, Negroes With Guns

Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Dysfunctional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America

Dan Georgakis and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution

Robert Gooding Williams eds. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising

Grading:

Attendance:                                                                                                                                                      

15%

Participation:                                                                                                                                                   

10%

Three Reflection Papers and re-writes [4 pages each] (worth 15% each):

45%

Final [TBD]                                                                                                                                                           

30%

Prehistoric technologies will review various technological developments from earliest prehistoric times into the recent past. The development, process, and methods of stone tool making serves as one example. The control and use of fire, the processes of pottery making, aspects of metallurgy, leatherworking, etc. are all among the topics of lectures and discussions. This course intends to study the development and use of these technologies by hunter-gatherers, early farming communities, as well as the application of these technologies by complex civilizations.

This course explores race/gender/sexuality, violence and everyday life in Brazil. Brazil’s history has been characterized by moments of violent encounter, from colonization, to slavery, to clashes between police and residents across Brazil’s major cities today. These violent encounters have been, in many ways, racialized, gendered and sexualized. This class investigates the race/gender/sexuality aspects of multiple forms of violence in Brazil, and how this violence creates, defines and maintains social hierarchies in the nation. Throughout the course we will think through the question “what is violence?” as we discuss the concept’s physical, structural and symbolic forms. The course pays particular attention to the politics of blackness and the unique relationship black Brazilians have to the nation-state. We will also discuss the politics of writing and theorizing violence when doing social analysis, and the precarious balance between defining and addressing issues of violence, and glorifying it.

Core Texts

~ Nancy ScheperHughes, Death Without Weeping (selected Chapters)

~Theresa Caldeira, City ot VVaiIs (selected chapters)

~ Donna Goldstein, Laughter out of Piace (selected chapters) ~Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality (selected Chapters)

~Caldweli, Kia, Negras in Brazil: Reenvisioning Black Women, Citizenship, And the Politics of identity (selected chapters) ~De Jesus, Carolina Marie et al., The Unedited Diaries oi Caroline Maria de Jesus (seiected Chapters)

Supplemental Texts

~Michael Hanonard ed., Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (selected Chapters)

~Gonzalez, Leila` “The Unified Black Movement: A New State in Black Political Mobilization” in Race, Class and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine

~Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a lQtn-oentury City. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (selected chapters)

~Chevigny, Paul Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (selected chapters)

~Michael Mitchell and Charles VVood, “lronies ot Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil.” Social Forces

~Arendt, Hannah “Reflections on Violence"

Booth, Wayne C, et al. The Craft of Research (guide to writing research papers selected Chapters).

Course Description

In the contemporary world of mass migration movements, our history has much to teach us about the human face of such complex issues as racial and national profiling, religious in-fighting, linguistic and cultural controversies, economic and legal marginalizations, immigrant detention and deportation, and other headlines in our daily news. This course takes a centennial look back in history to explore the “gateway experience” of  hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled the pogroms of the Russian Pale of Settlement in the  early years of the 20th century-- frequently with the aid of governmental and immigrant aid societies--and found themselves on the doorsteps of such unlikely places as Galveston, Texas and a newly Zionist "Palestine." Drawing on primary document research, original oral histories, and secondary texts from each of these sites, this course will elucidate the complex ideological, political, legal, economic and social factors involved in  the  organized migration and settlement of Jews in the US and what is now Israel, primarily, and the lessons learned about the relative “success”  or “failure” of  each of these migration “experiments.”  

This course will be "team taught"--using a video conferencing system--by two migration scholars of the Jewish immigrant experience: Dr. Suzanne Seriff at UT, and Dr. Gur ALroey at Haifa University in Israel. We will combine our classes for the middle portion of the semester, so that students at UT and students at Haifa University will have the benefit of learning from each other, dialoguing about timely issues of immigration, both past and present, and having the privilege of meeting immigrant descendants, writers, and artists from this unique moment in each of our histories. Drawing on primary document material, we will lead our students in a comparison between   those who came to Palestine in the early  20th century and those who landed in Galveston’s port in the same period of time.  The aim of this course is threefold: first, a focus on the migration policies  which characterize the immigration to Palestine and Galveston; second, an  exploration of the demographic composition of the Jewish immigrants who debarked  in Galveston between 1907 and 1914 compared to the composition of immigration to  Palestine during the same years; third, since both cases — the Zionist and the  “Galvestonian” — involved attempts to deliver a productive population of  immigrants capable of self-sufficiency to the destination countries, a  determination about which of the two was more "successful." In so doing, the course will compare and contrast the  attitudes toward “alien foreigners” in both countries, exploring the particular interrogation procedures at each port of entry which were designed either to encourage newcomers, or  restrict entry of those thought to be “undesirable” and  "un-assimilatable".

List of Proposed Texts

Gur Alroey, Bread to Eat and Clothes to Wear: Letters from Jewish Migrants in the Twentieth Century.

Bernard Marinbach, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West

Bryan Stone: The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas

Eric Goldsten: The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity

Gur Alroey: The Quiet Revolution: Jewish Emigration from the Russian Empire, 1875-1924

Boas Neumann, Land and Desire in Early Zionism

Eithne Luibheid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border

Proposed Grading Policy

Students will be graded on a plus/minus grading system, based on two 5 page papers and a final research project/presentation which will involve original primary or secondary document research or ethnographic fieldwork with immigrant descendants from this time period.

Israel has the highest proportion of migrants of any country in the world. The notion of absorption—the social and economic integration of Jewish immigrants—has remained an explicit ideal since the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Yet absorption is also an ideological tool that often runs counter to the contemporary lived experience of citizenship, participation, nation building, minority rights, and the conflicting interests of today’s multicultural publics. Taking these tensions as a starting point, this course explores the complex social fabric that comprises contemporary Israeli society, and that shapes Israeli identity, practice and politics. We will focus on the lived experience of Israel’s increasingly diverse population. This includes populations associated with the majority: veteran Ashkenazim and Mizrahim; more recent Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Latin America and France; religious communities such Haredim and modern-Orthodox. It also includes ethnic and religious minorities such as Arab-Israelis/Palestinians, Bedouins, Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Black Hebrews, as well as laborers from all over the globe who migrate to Israel for work. How fluid are boundaries between these groups? How different are their interests, tastes and desires? How committed are various publics to a coherent nation-building project and to contemporary Zionism? To explore the breadth of multicultural Israel without sacrificing cultural specificity and theoretical depth, the course is organized into three integrated units: a) historical background of Israel and its populations; b) Israel’s citizen-state relationships, identity and belonging, and c) ethnographic case studies of Israel-specific multicultural issues, and general contemporary multicultural theory.                   

Note: This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present. 

Description  

This course is an upper division introduction to topics in linguistic anthropology.  Languages, like other communication systems, are adapted to new and different environments in which they are spoken, creating and maintaining social realities, reproducing cultural traditions, and conveying messages in a complex interplay of new and old information, sometimes necessary and sometimes frivolous, packaging meaning in various ways that generally conform to standards that can be articulated,  As speech is an important mode of human communication, we start by outlining basic concepts allowing for the description of linguistic form,  In the end we will focus as much on language use as on language structure, and in the process we will examine various expressive speech genres, metaphors that we live by, the power of language, gender preferences in communication, language learning, proverbs, jokes, and multilingualism, among other topics. We will examine these forms, processes, and contexts in an effort to deliver the tools necessary for describing and understanding the multiple ways in which language, culture, and society interact.

Goals

The goals of this course are to introduce students to the study of language use from a sociocultural perspective and to develop skills (through fieldwork and data analysis) in analyzing the role that language plays in the structure and interpretation of human interaction. Students will collect language data from a "speech community" in a setting of their choice, and will use this data: 1) collectively as a basis for examining and questioning concepts discussed in lectures and readings such as ethnicity, identity, power, and gender as they are constructed through language, and 2) individually as a basis from which to generate an analytical paper, which shows an understanding of the major ideas covered in the course but which is specific to student interests.

Grading and Requirement:

Two midterm exams 25% each

10 page analytical paper based on fieldwork due on the last class day 25%

Comprehensive final exam 25%

No penalty for one unexcused absence, but further such absences can lower one’s course grade by two and a half percentage points for each instance.  Exams include information from lectures,readings, and films.

Texts:    

Susan Blum    2009.  (ed.)  Making sense of Language.  Oxford  

Life on the Plains has never been easy. The ecological characteristics of the Plains enabled varied human populations to adapt and change in response to environmental and historical circumstances. This course explores the evidence of human activities on the Great Plains, with a primary focus on the central and southern plains from prehistoric to historic times (ca. 11.000 BP to ca. AD 1850). We will review, critically, the principal environmental concepts used to define the plains, discuss the impact of specific resources such as the bison, and examine a number of archaeological sites as well as some relevant historical records. 

"Cultures in Contact" is a multi-disciplinary course which combines Historical, Anthropological, Geographical and Literary analyses of the continuing "contact period" in the New World.  The issues addressed span the last 500+ years of cultural interaction in the Americas, looking especially at the processes of cultural interaction, competition, cooperation, and synthesis that have taken place among people from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

This course focuses on the study of primate social behavior. It explores the basic theoretical principles that guide primatologists.

Topics covered include: evolutionary theory, primate diversity, social and mating systems, sexual selection, life history, cooperation, competition, intelligence, communication, and human behavior.

Comparative Primate Ecology will explore the following topics with respect to primates: population ecology, community ecology, feeding adaptations, foraging strategies, ranging behavior, and life history strategies.

This course surveys the theory and practices of conservation

biology, as applied specifically to primates. Topics will include species and community

characteristics influencing extinction risk, current threats to primates, and potential

conservation strategies.

This is an upper division course. Prior background in physical

anthropology or ecology is recommended, but not required. Ability to perform basic

algebra is necessary.

This course surveys the patterns of biological variation within and between human populations.  We will examine physical, genetic, and behavioral traits, and consider both the microevolutionary and cultural processes that influence those traits.  We will also discuss how studies of human variation have impacted society in the past and present.  Topics include:  an overview of the principles of genetics and evolution, race, sex differences, human variability in behavior, eugenics and contemporary genetic issues, human plasticity, and disease.

This course explores the intersection of genetics and anthropology.  We will cover the basic principles of molecular genetics and population genetics as relates to the study of humans and other primates.  We will examine the ways in which genetics can contribute to the field of anthropology, as well as how anthropological knowledge can illuminate genetic findings.  Students will gain hands-on experience in genetic analysis, and will learn to understand and evaluate molecular anthropology research.  Topics to be covered include: human genetic diversity, human evolution and migration, ancient DNA, primate evolution and behavior, genetic ancestry and identity, genetic essentialism, admixture, eugenics, and the ethical, legal, and social implications of human genetics research.

The purpose of this course to provide you (the course participants) with a background to “the kinds” of archaeological analyses that often occur, “what” is involved in archaeological analysis, and “how” archaeological analysis may be approached. This means learning what questions to ask about a field or laboratory project and the steps needed to understand the type of analysis required. From this course you should also become aware of “how to do” an analysis from start (first learning about certain material culture) to completion (doing the analysis and the report writing).

Prerequisite: Anthropology 304 or Archaeology 301.

This course introduces the student to an in-depth study of the human skeleton. Class sessions combine lecture and laboratory sessions and cover topics including developmental biology, functional morphology, and skeletal identification, with a special focus on the latter skill as it relates to forensics and archaeological studies. Students will also be introduced to new 3D imaging techniques for studying the skeleton. 

This class requires both intensive in-class and out-of-class preparation. Participants must be prepared to handle actual human osteological specimens and have a professional approach to this subject and the human remains. An interest in human skeletal identification is especially applicable to the fields of archeology, physical anthropology, health sciences, law, and law enforcement.