Anthropology
Overview
Anthropology explores the incredible diversity of cultural and social experience and the complexity of human life, centering inquiries on the distinct perspectives and practices of individuals and groups. As a foundational part of a liberal arts education, anthropology challenges students to think critically about the world and offers tools for understanding how people everywhere both shape and are shaped by complex identities, power hierarchies, global connections, and cross-cultural interactions. Anthropology examines past and contemporary cultures to understand how and why social, economic, ideological, environmental, and political relationships are reproduced or transformed.
Through the subdisciplines of cultural anthropology and archaeology, students develop holistic and empirically based knowledge of local cultural practices and processes of change in regions including Africa, the Arctic and North Atlantic, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. Students deepen their understanding of intersecting relationships of power and inequity (including gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age). They study cultures from various perspectives, considering the social textures of everyday life, long-term processes of adaptation and innovation, and the global circulation of people, ideas, and goods. Throughout the curriculum, students are exposed to the discipline’s concepts, theories, and methods, including field-based qualitative and quantitative research.
Anthropology promotes intellectual curiosity, creative and interdisciplinary thinking, empirical and ethical scholarship, and respect for our common humanity. Our students develop sophisticated understandings of cultural differences and the dynamics of social and historical transformation and become skilled communicators and collaborative and critical thinkers. Graduates mobilize these capacities and in a variety of fields, such as education, medicine and public health, environmental stewardship, research and consulting, international and non-governmental policy, cultural heritage, journalism, law, media and technology, museum administration, public policy, humanitarianism, and social advocacy and justice, as well as in graduate and professional studies.
Learning Goals
- To develop understanding of human cultures and diverse ways of life across time and space
- To gain familiarity with anthropological concepts, methods, theories, and ethical frameworks (within and across the subdisciplines) and to utilize these to understand past and present issues, relationships, and systems
- To develop the skills to collect and analyze various types of information (including material, visual, oral, and textual) and to critically consider their use in ethnographic and archaeological research
- To develop critical perspectives on relations of power and inequality as they manifest in specific cultural contexts, global connections, and historical trajectories
- To communicate effectively using various forms of communication, with emphasis on clear writing
Options for Majoring or Minoring in the Department
Students may elect to major in anthropology or to pursue a coordinate major in anthropology with digital and computational studies, education, or environmental studies. Students pursuing a coordinate major may not normally elect a second major. Many students double major in anthropology and another discipline. Non-majors may elect to minor in anthropology.
Kritsta E. Van Vleet, Department Chair
Monica Gallego, Department Coordinator
Professors: Susan A. Kaplan‡, Krista E. Van Vleet
Associate Professors: William D. Lempert, Bianca Williams (Africana Studies)
Assistant Professors: Karime Castillo, Shreyas Sreenath
Visiting faculty: Jesse Bia, Justin Reamer
Anthropology Major
The major in anthropology consists of ten courses.
| Code | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Required Courses | ||
| Core Courses: | ||
| ANTH 1100 | Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human? | 1 |
| ANTH 2010 | Anthropological Research: Methods and Ethics in Practice a | 1 |
| ANTH 2030 | Anthropological Theory: Concepts in Context | 1 |
| Select an anthropological archaeology course numbered in the 2100s or 3100s | 1 | |
| Select one 3000-level anthropology course. | 1 | |
| Select five anthropology elective courses. b | 5 | |
- a
Students are strongly encouraged to take this course as sophomores or juniors.
- b
Only two 1000-level courses (1000–1999) may be counted toward the major.
Anthropology Minor
The minor in anthropology consists of five courses.
| Code | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Required Courses | ||
| ANTH 1100 | Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human? | 1 |
| Select four anthropology elective courses. c | 4 | |
- c
Three courses must be at the intermediate (2000–2969) or advanced level (3000–3999).
Additional Information and Department Policies
- For a course to fulfill major or minor requirements, a grade of C- or above must be earned in that course.
- Courses that count toward the major or minor must be taken for regular letter grades (not Credit/D/Fail).
- First-year writing seminars count toward the major or minor.
- There is no limit on how many courses a major or minor in anthropology can double-count with another department or program major.
- Eight of the ten courses required for the major must be Bowdoin anthropology courses. Up to two independent study or honors level courses advised by department faculty may be included in the eight Bowdoin courses required for the major.
- With the approval of the department chair or the student’s anthropology major advisor, majors may count up to two elective courses from among off-campus study courses and/or other Bowdoin courses in related disciplines that contribute to the student's specific interests.
- One of the five courses required for the minor, with department approval, may be from off-campus study.
- Only two 1000-level courses (1000–1999) may be counted toward major or minor.
Independent Study
Intermediate or advanced Independent Study courses allow students to pursue interests or passions in anthropology under the guidance of a department faculty member. Up to two semesters of intermediate- or advanced-level independent study (or two semesters of honors) courses may be counted toward the major requirements. One semester of intermediate- or advanced-level independent study may be counted toward the minor requirements. Students most often pursue independent study courses during their junior or senior years.
Departmental Honors
Honors projects enable students who have sustained interests in certain topics to engage in independent research under the guidance of an anthropology faculty member. Students seeking to graduate with honors in anthropology will have successfully completed an honors project in their senior year and distinguished themselves in their coursework in the anthropology major.
To pursue honors, students are encouraged to consult with an anthropology faculty member early in the spring of their junior year about their proposed research project. Many students conduct research during the summer between their junior and senior years. Students submit a written honors project proposal to the department early in the first semester of their senior year. Once the department has approved the honors project and assigned an honors committee, students then prepare an honors project, which ordinarily is a research paper written over the course of two semesters under the mentorship of a faculty advisor and a second faculty reader. Determination of honors is based on grades attained in major courses, an honors project that is approved by the department, and demonstration of the ability to work independently and creatively synthesize theoretical, methodological, archaeological, and/or ethnographic material.
Off-Campus Study
Off-campus study may contribute substantially to a major in anthropology, and the department encourages students to consider academic work in another location, cultural context, and/or language. Students are advised to plan study away for their junior year and to complete ANTH 2010 Anthropological Research: Methods and Ethics in Practice—which focuses on research design, methods, and ethics—before studying away. Students must obtain provisional approval for their study-away courses in writing by department faculty before they leave, and then, to receive credit toward their major or minor, students must seek final approval from their advisor upon their return to Bowdoin. With departmental approval, students may count up to two off-campus study courses toward their major requirements and up to one off-campus study course toward their minor requirements.
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate
For information on credit for International Baccalaureate tests, please see the department. No credit is given for Advanced Placement. To receive credit for International Baccalaureate work, students must have their scores officially reported to the Office of the Registrar by the end of their sophomore year at Bowdoin.
Information for Incoming Students
Anthropology explores the incredible diversity and complexity of human life across the globe. It challenges students to think critically about the assumptions we make about the world and the power hierarchies that shape our everyday lives. Anthropology examines past and contemporary cultures to understand how and why social, economic, ideological, environmental, and political relationships are reproduced or transformed. We integrate the specifics of individual experience, local particularities of landscapes and communities, and broad regional and global contexts to better understand human actions and meanings, including relations of power, identity, and inequality. In our courses in cultural anthropology and anthropological archaeology, students learn how to “make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange” through analysis of material, visual, sonic, and textual data.
The anthropology department welcomes first-year students into several of our courses. For fall 2025, first-years may enroll in ANTH 1100 Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human?, ANTH 1024 Anthropology of Relatedness, ANTH 1031 Inscribing Lives: Reading and Writing About Others, ANTH 2100 Archaeology and the Human Experience, ANTH 2110 Anthropology of Place: Culture, Place, and the Built Environment, and ANTH 2221 Global Health: Contemporary Issues, Debates, and Perspectives.
None of these courses assume any prior work in anthropology. All these courses contribute to the major or minor in anthropology, and all but the first-year seminars fulfill some of the college distribution requirements (DPI and/or IP). We encourage students who may want to take 2000-level anthropology courses to take ANTH 1100 Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human? as early as possible.
How, why, and for whom do we imagine the future? Focuses on the future through the lens of indigenous science fiction and off-Earth exploration and settlement. Students engage with indigenous films and science fiction, popular and scholarly literature about space exploration, and the writing of cultural anthropologists to develop skills in analyzing visual and written texts and to reflect on “the future” as created by our individual and collective hopes, fears, and expectations.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester
Archaeology has inspired endless theories and stories about extraterrestrial aliens, lost civilizations, dark conspiracies, apocalyptic predictions, and mysterious technologies. While archaeology, in many ways, tries to solve ancient “mysteries,” and while archaeologists do sometimes crawl around in caves in the desert, archaeology is a discipline grounded in rigorous methodologies, careful accumulation and analysis of data, and scientific method. The course investigates a range of fringe archaeology theories and looks at how they were developed. Topics will include theories about the lost city of Atlantis, purported evidence of extraterrestrial influences on past cultures, and Viking incursions in the Americas. The course explores the many different myths about archaeology and ancient cultures and the stories’ impacts on contemporary society and our understanding of human history.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester
Understanding relatedness, or kinship, illuminates the intimate and hierarchical relationships through which human beings, across time and place, live their lives. Drawing cases from small-scale indigenous societies and industrialized states across Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Oceania, the course challenges assumptions about “natural” relationships and biological givens. Introduces concepts, methods, and ethics in anthropology and encourages students to critically reflect on emergent global issues. Topics may include fosterage and adoption; reproductive governance, rights, and technologies; migration and transnational care networks; intimate violence; aging and personhood; and/or human/non-human relations. Incorporates attention to gender, race, ethnicity, age, and sexuality as dimensions of inequality that intersect with relatedness. Shows how relatedness is vital to understanding our personal dilemmas and relations that structure the global political economy.
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
Our socioeconomic class shapes who we are. At the same time, class is a powerful form of inequality. We use three ethnographic case studies of class (in China, India, and in the U.S.), along with fiction, poetry, and film, to explore the following questions: How is class 'performed' and interpreted in different cultures? How do class identities feed back into systems of inequality? How does class intersect with other forms of identity and inequality, such as gender, race, and caste? Key theorists are also brought into play. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 1048)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
For anthropologists, reading and writing about the lives of others is a fundamental practice. It is a powerful way to understand and challenge our social, political, ethical, and cultural common sense, notions of progress and civilization, and ideas of the good life. Rather than contemplate such questions in isolation, an anthropologist observes and analyzes details of people’s everyday life, as lived in different times and places around the world. This course introduces students to the techniques anthropologists use to study everyday human existence. Students will observe people in various settings, write fieldnotes, craft narratives, and write meaningfully and responsibly about the lived realities of others.
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Investigates cultural differences and connections across time and space to understand our common humanity. Introduces anthropological theories through case studies of past and contemporary cultures. Explores methods used to cultivate holistic understandings of diverse practices, worldviews, and ways of being across cultural and geographic contexts. Students apply anthropological concepts to engage critically with vital current issues. Includes topics such as self and society, personhood and identity, power and inequity, economic and political organization, material culture, circulation of people and ideas, ecology and environment, religion and ritual, and relatedness and kin-making.
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Explores sight and sound as reflections of historical, cultural, political, and social forces, challenging the assumption that seeing and hearing are solely biological processes. Draws on case studies from diverse cultures, places, and historical moments to ask how people see and hear differently and how they interpret the relationship between what their eyes and ears tell them. Introduces students to the interdisciplinary fields of visual studies and sound studies in order to reflect on a wide array of topics which may include aesthetics, the body, performance, power, technology, and media, among others. Asks in particular how anthropologists’ attention to the audiovisual might enrich our understanding of the diverse ways that human beings live in and understand the world and how everyday processes, including our own experiences of seeing and hearing, produce culture. Attends to power hierarchies and social inequalities in diverse cultural contexts. Students engage in hands-on activities to produce audiovisual material as well as developing the skills to collect and analyze various types of audio and visual data.
This course is a hands-on introduction to the design of qualitative ethnographic research and the various practices through which anthropologists gather and analyze empirical data. Students gain skills in collecting information through methods such as participant observation, field notes, interviews, mapping, archival and library research, photography, and/or video. Students also employ various analytical techniques to interpret diverse forms of data (including aural, visual, material, and digital). Additionally, the course explores the use and misuse of various methodological approaches and the craft of ethnographic representation, especially in writing. Ethical practices and the protection of human subjects are highlighted, along with the power dimensions of anthropological research.
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Ethnography occupies a central place in the discipline of cultural anthropology, as a practice of observing and as a medium of expressing cultural reality. Yet, it remains a mysterious genre, drawing from literary and sociological imagination, creative and scholarly impulses, and histories lived in the day-to-day present. Rather than looking at ethnography as a specialized practice of professional anthropologists, we examine it as a radical practice of reading and writing about the reality of human relationships as they take shape in unfamiliar times and places. We read the works of anthropologists alongside postcolonial, environmental, and historical accounts, while cultivating a writing practice that pays close attention to the cultural forms that shape everyday life as we see it. At a time when there is much public disagreement on fundamental ecological, historical, and political realities, a keen ethnographic sensibility is critical in exercising renewed public reason.
This course explores theoretical approaches to the study of culture and society that have emerged from the nineteenth century through the present. Contemporary anthropology defines itself in relation to--and sometimes against--various theoretical traditions and historical influences. Close readings of anthropological texts elucidate some of the underlying assumptions of social theory and the historical contexts in which anthropologists have worked. Understanding how contemporary anthropologists employ, extend, challenge, or reframe earlier concepts and theories illuminates the abiding concerns and transformational possibilities of the discipline.
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Showcases human diversity through time and space and the methods that archaeologists use to study the past. Topics include conflicting theories of human biological evolution, debates over the genetic and cultural bases of human behavior, development of artistic and religious expression, and expansion of human populations into diverse ecosystems around the world. Considers ways that relationships to environments changed as people domesticated plants and animals, and the reasons many groups moved from a nomadic to settled village life are explored, as is the rise of complex societies and the state. Examines how contemporary archaeologists address colonialism, racism, and postcolonial interpretations of the past.
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Focuses on the meaning and significance of artifacts, archaeology sites, monuments, and art from a diversity of perspectives. Students learn about disagreements regarding who owns antiquities and ethnographic objects. They consider the ethical, cultural, and legal considerations of where heritage materials are housed, and whether they should be published and exhibited, and if so, by whom. They examine the impact of politics, conflicts, and war on cultural heritage sites and monuments, and learn about the illegal trafficking in antiquities and art. Students wrestle with museums’ colonial legacies and consider how decolonizing practices are transforming museums and interpretations of the past. Case studies cover a broad array of museums, cultures, and nations. Readings, class discussions, visits by guest speakers, and hands-on work with objects are augmented by visits to the college’s two museums. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Archaeology. (Same as: ARCH 2207)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Archaeology is an effective way to study the past, even more so when integrated with oral and historical sources to understand and interpret cultural heritage from the relatively recent past. It can give voice to underrepresented groups, bringing to light histories that were silenced or forgotten. Case studies drawn from around the world illustrate the use of multiple lines of archaeological, visual, oral, and written evidence to examine issues of culture contact, colonialism, ethnicity, racism, slavery, immigration, and industrialization. Recent theoretical, methodological, and thematic developments in the field of historical archaeology will be explored, including the rise of community or collaborative archaeology and indigenous archaeology as strategies to challenge and decolonize dominant historical narratives.
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester
Adopts a hands-on approach to the study of ancient technologies and craft production to explore how people in the past created, adopted, and used technology to interact with the environment and with one another. Ancient people engaged in ceramic production, flint napping, metallurgy, glassmaking, basketry, and textile production among other technologies. Draws on archaeological and anthropological research to illuminate social, cultural, economic, and functional reasons for the development and adoption of new technologies. Forefronts issues of community, labor, skill development, exploitation of resources, consumption, and waste. Students have opportunities to research and replicate an ancient artifact or technique. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Archaeology. (Same as: ARCH 2108)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
In anthropology, the distinction between place and space has been of much interest over the history of the discipline. In this course, we will focus particularly on how archaeologists have studied place through the study of archaeological landscapes. Students will gain an understanding of different theoretical and methodological approaches to studying archaeological places in the landscape. Using case studies from around the world, we will explore how archaeologists and anthropologists study the ways people interact(ed) with, modify(ied), and experience(d) the landscapes in which they dwell/dwelt. In doing so, students will gain an appreciation for how the study of places can improve our understanding of peoples lived experiences and also understand how the world around us is embedded with significance.
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
Examines the use of geographical information systems (GIS) to organize, analyze, and visualize spatial data within social science and humanities research. Introduces foundational concepts of cartography, database design, spatial data representation, and data visualization. Provides hands-on experience in spatial data collection, three-dimensional modeling, spatial analysis, spatial network analysis, and spatial statistics. The application of GIS to areas of social scientific and humanistic inquiry are explored through examination of case studies, weekly laboratory exercises, and an individual semester project that culminates in a conference-style research poster. Case studies and data sets are drawn from anthropology, archaeology, and related fields, such as sociology, history, and cultural geography. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: URBS 2115)
From time immemorial the North American continent, or Turtle Island as it is called by some, has been the home of diverse Native American peoples and their cultures. This course explores the history and diversity of Native American people in North America through the archaeological record and their own oral histories and traditions, emphasizing the complementary nature of these two records. The course will first discuss the initial migration of Indigenous people to North America and how they survived in a much different climactic period. We will then explore the diversity of Native American peoples and their cultures across time and space, from the Inuit and Inupiaq in the Arctic to the Pueblos of the desert Southwest and the mound-building cities of the Eastern Woodlands. The course also discusses important themes in anthropological archaeology, including gender roles in the past, how Indigenous people interacted with and shaped their environment, the impacts of colonialism and its legacy, and issues surrounding cultural heritage and archaeological ethics.
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
For the entirety of our history, humans have interacted with, responded to, and shaped our environment. In this course, students will learn about how archaeologists have studied and documented humans’ relationship with the environment across time and space. We will begin with an overview of how archaeologists and anthropologists have theorized about the human-environmental interactions throughout the discipline’s history. The course will then focus on the three subdisciplines of archaeology used to study these interactions: geoarchaeology (geological formations), zooarchaeology animals), and paleoethnobotany (plants). Students will learn about the methods employed in each of these subdisciplines, what they can tell us about past environments, and how people interacted with them, and how this creates of more clear picture of how humans have shaped our environment. Topics will include the domestication of plants and animals, environmental reconstructions, and the symbolic importance of natural materials. We will then see how these methods can be combined to create a powerful picture of past human-environment interactions. Students will have the opportunity to research how archaeologists have used these methodologies to understand past human-environment interactions at an archaeological site of their choosing. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2120)
Introduces students to the struggle for environmental justice in various cultural arenas, with a focus on gender, race, and their intersections. Through readings, films, lectures, and discussions, the course addresses topics such as migration, resource extraction, and food and climate justice. Provides tools for cross-cultural understanding by examining the dynamic interplay among people, places, and non-human species within multiple regions of the world. Explores concepts such as racial capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism and their relationship to environmental change. Evaluates the potential of different feminist and decolonial approaches to achieve environmental justice. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: ENVS 2155, GSWS 2155)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Explores gender politics surrounding the regions of North Africa and the Middle East at multiple scales. Investigates the geopolitics of gender as related to militarism and international development. Considers the emergence and course of feminism in countries of these regions. Delves into masculinity studies and the politics of how masculinity is represented, experienced, and performed. Course themes include modernity, mobility, reproduction, consumption, Islam, social movements, and urban contexts. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Middle Eastern & North African. (Same as: MENA 2621)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Explores the emergence of social complexity and state-level societies through a focus on ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador). Among the diverse peoples and cultures that populated this region prior to the Spanish invasion, the Maya and the Aztec are among the most famous. This course challenges popular misconceptions about these and other societies who occupied this region over the course of 3500 years. Asks how cities rivaling in size those of the old world rose, collapsed, and sometimes disappeared. Considers the political structure and economic systems of these societies, their technologies, and their relationships with the environment. Explores ancient worldviews, belief systems, and political and religious power. Incorporates various types of evidence, including the archaeological material record, art, monumental architecture, and ethnohistorical sources, and the ways archaeologists analyze and interpret that evidence. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: LACL 2478)
Over the last 20,000 years the Earth's environment has changed in both subtle and dramatic ways. Some changes are attributable to natural processes and variation, some have been triggered by human activities. Referring to anthropological and archaeological studies, and research on past and contemporary local, regional, and global environments, examines the complex and diverse relationship between cultures and the Earth's dynamic environment. A previous science course is recommended. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2311)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Explores the legacies of colonialism in modern Latin America and archaeologists’ current efforts to decolonize Eurocentric interpretations and discourses of the colonial past. Focuses on indigenous and community archaeology as a means of reframing our understanding of the past and present. Discussions address the impact of colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, including how contemporary relationships in the region are structured by colonial history. Students work with case studies grounded in archaeological, ethnographic, and historical sources to learn how archaeology can help contest and subvert dominant narratives derived from colonialism. Indigenous resistance and resilience will be addressed along with cultural continuities and change. Topics may include identity and the construction of ethnicity, gender, and race; religion; slavery and diaspora; and art, architecture, and technology. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: LACL 2178)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
This course examines how hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality structure everyday life in Latin America's largest nation, Brazil. Twentieth century elites described Brazil as a racial democracy and a sexual paradise, but this vision is increasingly contested in the twenty-first century by Black, feminist, and LGBT social movements. Reading ethnographic accounts and watching film portrayals of daily life in Brazil across a number of case studies, we will examine how Brazilians encounter social inequality in a variety of intimate settings. Potential topics include: domestic labor, sex work, queer activism, plastic surgery and reproductive rights. Students will complete short response papers during the semester and complete a final research project on a self-selected topic that includes primary or secondary sources on Brazil. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology; Latin American Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2200, LACL 2340)
Seminar. Examines sexual politics of the law, policing, public health, and state surveillance as they intersect with race, gender, class and disability. Explores feminist and queer responses to the relationship between sex and power from a variety of disciplines and traditions. Focuses on two major trends in the regulation of sex in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: (1) how policy making has shifted from defining sexual morality to managing populations, and (2) the reinvigorated politics of the family as governments scale back their social welfare programs. Additional topics may include reproductive rights, sex work, marriage, hate crimes, surveillance, militarism, and prisons. Students learn main trends in the politics of sexuality and conduct guided research on the topic of their choice. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology. (Same as: GSWS 2211)
Amid social movements calling for reparations, ongoing displacement, dispossession, and occupation, and enduring global inequality, understanding how histories of violence and subjugation permeate the present is more urgent than ever. Combines anthropology, literature, historiography, and critical theory to explore how histories of violence morph and find new expressions in the present. Asks how ordinary people live with, experience, and reckon with the afterlives of history in their everyday lives. Draws on scholarly articles and books, films, and other media to ask: In what ways do histories—personal, social, political—stay with us? Are past, present, and future so easily separable? How do people see, know, feel, or touch the past in their present lives? How do people resist the weight of history and carve out different possibilities for the future? Topics vary but include: psychic and structural legacies of colonialism; bodily aftereffects of war, trauma, and dispossession; spatial aftermaths of segregation; and environmental impacts of industry.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Medical anthropology explores health, medicine, and the body as embedded in cultural contexts and shaped by social inequalities. Introduces foundational concepts and approaches that emphasize the meanings and experiences of health, illness, disease, and the body. Considers how and when different medical traditions, practices, and technologies converge and change over time across increasingly interconnected societies incorporating case studies from regions across the world. Develops tools for understanding medical experiences, interactions, and outcomes in relation to space, history, culture, and broader systems of power, which may include inequities of gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, and/or socioeconomic status. Topics may include epidemics, medical authority, rituals of healing, mental health, commodification of the body, diagnosis, stigmatization, disability, and/or well-being. Reflects on the unique theories, methods, and perspectives that anthropologists bring to the field of medicine, along with the role of anthropologists in public debates and dialogues about health.
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Examines effects of our increasingly interconnected world on health, engaging directly with key issues, debates, and narratives in contemporary sociomedical discourse. Utilizing interdisciplinary perspectives, the course investigates the intersection of public health and globalization, focusing on health impacts for both communities and individuals. Through discussions, in-class simulations, and short essays, students are introduced to critical issues at the forefront of global health, such as the spread of infectious and chronic diseases, food and water insecurity, mental health, biotechnological development, medical tourism, disaster management, war/violence, digital networks, and medical infrastructure. Case studies will be drawn from a wide selection of cultures and societies around the world.
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
An “ethnography” is a written account of findings, analyses, and insights gathered from anthropological fieldwork. Written ethnography has long been the standard format for presenting such information within anthropological discourse. This course explores anthropological writing that breaks the norms of traditional ethnography, investigating when, how, and why anthropologists apply different imaginative stylistic approaches to ethnographic writing. Students will analyze the utility, efficacy, and value of destabilizing typical rules pertaining to narrative, syntax, perspective, and objective which govern traditional ethnography. Students will assess the advantages of employing creative formats to convey anthropological evidence, addressing issues such as identity, agency, reflexivity, and representation in an increasingly-interconnected world. Formats studied include autoethnography; ethnographic fiction; travelogue; digital ethnography; fictional ethnography; dialogues/interviews; ethnographic poetry; lexicography, and more. Case studies will be drawn from a wide-selection of cultures and societies around the world. The course will challenge students to consider what written ethnography is, and what it can be.
Focuses on the ways black people have experienced twentieth-century events. Examines social, economic, and political catalysts for processes of protest music production across genres including gospel, blues, folk, soul, funk, rock, reggae, and rap. Analysis of musical and extra- musical elements includes style, form, production, lyrics, intent, reception, commodification, mass-media, and the Internet. Explores ways in which people experience, identify, and propose solutions to poverty, segregation, oppressive working conditions, incarceration, sexual exploitation, violence, and war. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology; Music. (Same as: AFRS 2228, MUS 2292)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
As human beings, we are profoundly social. Most of our lives are spent interacting, directly or indirectly, with others. Language is central to this process. Through language people create, maintain, and transform personal identities, senses of belonging, and social differences, including those tied to inequity and privilege. Draws on cultural and linguistic anthropology to explore language as a social activity and resource intertwined with relationships of power. Analyzes the co-production of language and inequality (especially gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, class, dis/ability) at various scales, from face-to-face conversations to governmental policies. Encourages students' critical reflection on a wide array of ethnographic contexts (e.g., indigenous North and South America, Israel, Japan, Kenya, United States), our own linguistic experiences, and the seeming neutrality of our everyday lives through readings, assignments, and activities.
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Introduction to the historical and ethnographic study of the politics of science, technology, and medicine in African contexts. Offers opportunities to learn about African experiences of science, technology, and medicine. Reconsiders common definitions of science and technology from the perspective of African cultures of expertise. Topics considered include the spiritual and religious dimensions of expert knowledge, environmental management, conservation, archaeology, hunting, metallurgy, healing, genetically modified organisms, pharmaceutical development, epidemiology, and information technology. Science and technology will be considered in relation to precolonial social formations, colonialism, independence struggles, and the postcolonial state. Course materials include historical and ethnographic writing as well as speculative fiction. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2753)
Interrogates the relation between the imagined and the everyday through a focus on South Asia, the most densely populated region in the world. Discusses how South Asia is imagined as a site of (post)colonial desires, despairs, and revolts as well as through civilizational or national tropes. Explores how these imagined South Asias are reshaped and disrupted by the everyday habitations of various political communities within the region and in diaspora. May include discussion of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Through ethnography, fiction, poetry, film, and music aims to cultivate a distinctly postcolonial sensitivity to thinking about caste, gender, spirituality, ecology, language, militancy, and politics in the region. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 2571)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Care shapes the relationships of children, adults, and elders within families, but care also extends far beyond the boundaries of households, incorporating domestic workers, medical professionals, missionaries, volunteers, NGOs, and governments. This course explores care as a form of intimate labor and an array of social practices that are embedded in local cultural contexts and shaped by global political economic relationships. Gender, race and ethnicity, class, nationality, (dis)ability, and age shape the configurations of caring by and caring for others. Incorporates attention to feminist, decolonial, and poststructuralist theories of power as operating on bodies, selves, and intimate relationships. Course texts include ethnographies, scholarly articles, and other materials. Draws on a wide array of contemporary contexts around the world for ethnographic case studies and challenges students to critically reflect on hierarchies of care in their own lives. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2246)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
This anthropology course investigates overlaps in social understanding of media and technology. Investigates contemporary shifts in media landscapes where new media have come to dominate popular ideas about what qualifies as technology. Examines implications of mediation as an ever-present feature of daily life. Critically interrogates how technology and media have been differently classified depending on intended users. Additionally, the course explores how low-tech technologies, artful craft, and inclusive design could lead to more accessible, beneficial technology. Incorporates discovery of maker spaces, multimedia, and readings in anthropology, science studies, media studies, gender studies, and race and ethnicity studies. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Digital and Computational St. (Same as: DCS 2651)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Human beings confront a paradox as we become aware of anthropogenic climate change. On the one hand, we are geological agents powerful enough to irreparably transform life on earth. On the other, we face collective despair and powerlessness in our attempts to avert certain ecological collapse. This course draws on contemporary anthropology and other approaches in the social sciences and humanities to explore how cultivating diverse ‘arts of living’ addresses this double-bind. Dominant environmental paradigms that emphasize 'natural conservation' are examined in relation to the re-emergence of patriarchy, racism, xenophobia, and class conflict in various socio-cultural contexts. Through course readings, activities, and assignments students re-imagine ecology from the starting point of repair rather than conservation in order to develop a more conducive ethics of life on an already damaged planet. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2356)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester
Explores how anthropologists understand gestures across cultures. Engages meaningful movement within speech, formal sign languages, hand and body signs, and dance. Emphasizes indigenous, international, and subversive gesture systems by historically marginalized groups. Includes a diversity of content, from Aboriginal Australian hand signs to the body language of Fascist dictators. Students engage gesture through anthropological scholarship, video examples, and kinesthetic activities to develop skills in analyzing written and visual texts. This course is taught in association with DANC 2506 and we will have a shared gesture lab. It is encouraged, though not required, that you take both courses simultaneously.
Surveys Indigenous-produced film from around the globe, with an emphasis on contemporary Native North American and Aboriginal Australian cinema. Engages recent technological innovations in filmmaking. Analyzes film through discussion and writing, pairing screenings with readings of anthropological and Indigenous scholarship. Considers film in relation to the social, historical, and cultural contexts and broader global processes of indigenous media production and circulation. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2832)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
Centers the process of making ethnographic media through the overarching framework of doubles. Described by Jean Rouch as “the art of the double,” cinema unites the real and the imagined through symbolic layering and technological reproduction. Engages scholarship in anthropology and cinema studies, as well as media ranging from early ethnographic film to the contemporary avant-garde. Includes topics such as ethical co-creation, representational othering, ethno-fiction, sensory ethnography, sonic curation, and the social life of cinema. Students develop practical production skills including planning, recording, shooting, and editing. Emphasizes the power of learning through doing, with students crafting audio and visual media projects at the intersection of course themes and their own lives. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2833)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Explores research on children as a window into issues of individual agency and social, political, and economic inequality in the contemporary world. Children move between families, communities, and nations; claim belonging to divergent communities; create distinct identities; and navigate hierarchies. Highlights the circulation of children as structured by broad relationships of power. Forefronts youth as social actors. Considers culturally specific notions of childhood and methodological and ethical implications of research with children. Topics include adoption, migration, human trafficking, child labor, tourism, and social movements in the Americas, Asia, Oceania, and/or Africa. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 2771)
Explores science and technology as institutions and cultural forces that are culturally and historically situated. Introduces key theoretical approaches and concepts, focusing on anthropological research. Considers how scientific knowledge is produced in places such as laboratories, hospitals, clinical research sites, conservation areas, the military, and/or computing projects in diverse societies. Asks how power is ascribed to this way of knowing in everyday life. Compares western science with indigenous and traditional knowledge systems. Examines the role of science and technology in the social construction of race in colonial and postcolonial political projects. Takes a global perspective, juxtaposing cases from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and/or Oceania. Addresses differing definitions of science and technology, standards of objectivity, and the politics of technoscience.
The need to consume food on a daily basis is one of the few truly universal aspects of the human experience. As stated by the anthropologist Audrey Richards (1932), “Nutrition as a biological process is more fundamental than sex.” However, while food serves to nourish our bodies, diet and food choices are deeply embedded in and influenced by the cultures in which we live. This course explores how humans have fulfilled our biological need to eat across time and space. Beyond just our biological needs, this course discusses how cultural norms and practices shape our food preferences. Students will learn about the basics of human nutrition, how our diet has evolved from our first primate ancestors to now, how our foodways have been impacted and changed by cultural, biological, ecological, and historical pressures and inequities, and the broader impacts of modern fad diets, “super-foods,” and food production systems. The course will also discuss inequities in modern food distribution and production systems, such as food deserts, the impacts of the Green Revolution, and the globalization of food.
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Explores the universe of sickness and healing from the perspectives of people living in South Asia—India and surrounding countries—and addresses several related topics: how people in South Asia have conceived of the body, health, and illness; how local and global cultural, political, and economic factors influence health, illness, and healing; and how people in South Asia understand and experience illness and seek healing through biomedicine, indigenous medical systems, ritual, and religious healing. Readings include ethnographic, historical, and theoretical texts from cultural and medical anthropology. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 2569)
Darwin was not the first to propose that humans originated through a process of evolution, but his book On the Origin of Species sparked a conflict that continues today. Surveys suggest that the American public is roughly split on the question of whether humans evolved or were created. This course draws on anthropological studies of science and of religion to situate the “culture wars” over evolution and creation in cultural and historical perspective. Introduces the science of evolution and multiple views on human origins from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Considers origin stories from around the world to develop a framework for understanding how such stories provide powerful explanations of “where we come from” and “who we are.” Considers contentious debates over teaching evolution, and why it matters. Incorporates primary texts from a variety of perspectives with scholarship in anthropology.
Introduces the religious beliefs and practices of African peoples and their descendants in the Americas. Topics will include historical spiritual links between Africa and the African diaspora, spirits and divinities from an Afro-Atlantic perspective, and religious contact and mixture in Africa and the Americas. The contributions of Afro-Atlantic peoples to global Christianity, Islam, and other world religions will be explored. After a brief historical and cultural grounding, the course pursues these issues thematically, considering various Afro-Atlantic religious technologies in turn, from divination and spirit possession to computers and mass media. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Religion. (Same as: AFRS 2382, REL 2470)
Explores perspectives on the origins and causes of war, the consequences of war on human society, the role of conflict in state formation and imperial expansion, and the relationship between war and the potential for peace. Mobilizes theories and analytical perspectives employed in archaeology and cultural anthropology to examine the material evidence for conflict, including traumatic injuries on human remains, fortifications, settlement patterns, weapons, and iconography. Investigates a range of case studies about prehistoric cultures in the New World (North and South America) as well as Africa, Asia, and the Pacific and considers implications for the contemporary world.
Introduction to the traditional patterns of livelihood and social institutions of African peoples. Following a brief overview of African geography, habitat, and cultural history, lectures and readings cover a representative range of types of economy, polity, and social organization, from the smallest hunting and gathering societies to the most complex states and empires. Emphasis upon understanding the nature of traditional social forms. Changes in African societies in the colonial and post-colonial periods examined, but are not the principal focus. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2233)
Bowdoin faculty and students have been traveling to the Arctic since 1860 studying northern environments and cultures and exploring unmapped regions. Their work is part of a longer history involving Westerners who have been exploring the Arctic for centuries, drawn by a desire to map the geography of the earth, claim lands and their resources, find new shipping routes, understand Arctic environments, and develop insights into the lifeways of northern indigenous peoples. Examines some of the social, economic, political, and scientific factors shaping Arctic exploration. The ways in which expeditions and specific explorers affected and continue to affect northern peoples, the general public, and the contemporary geopolitical landscape are examined. Students read published accounts and unpublished journals and papers, and study archival photographs and motion picture films. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2310)
Intermediate seminar. This course examines past and present social movements through the lens of global Black feminist writing and media. By reading and engaging key texts of activist groups and leaders (such as the Combahee River Collective, The Black Panther Party, and the Movement for Black Lives), students will learn about the principles, philosophies, and organizing praxis of Black feminist activists. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: AFRS 2566, GSWS 2566)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Throughout the Arctic, northern peoples face major environmental changes and cultural and economic challenges. Landscapes, icescapes, and seascapes on which communities rely are being transformed, and arctic plants and animals are being affected. Many indigenous groups see these dramatic changes as endangering their health and cultural way of life. Others see a warming Arctic as an opportunity for industrial development. Addressing contemporary issues that concern northern peoples in general and Inuit in particular involves understanding connections between leadership, global environmental change, human rights, indigenous cultures, and foreign policies, and being able to work on both a global and local level. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2312)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Explores the historical and cultural connections between anti-racist struggles in Urban America and anti-caste struggles in urban India. Examines how 'liberation' is imagined by their participants, through writing, scholarship, artistic production, spiritual practice, political participation, and direct action. Engages with the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman alongside B.R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Namdeo Dhasal, and Du Saraswathi. Delves into historical and ethnographic studies of liberation movements in American and Indian cities. This course originates in Anthropology and is cross-listed with: Africana Studies; Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2460, ASNS 2600, URBS 2600)
This course investigates societal transformations and ongoing sociocultural conditions in Japan, covering the Heisei Era (1989—2019) into the current Reiwa Era (2019—the present). Often referred to as “The Lost Decades,” the Heisei Era is frequently depicted as a period of societal stagnation and decline. While considering the impetus for the “lost decades” label, we will challenge that portrayal utilizing anthropological analyses, social theory, and narratives to examine this dynamic period of change across Japanese society. Topics will include the rapidly aging and decreasing population; shifting family dynamics, experiences of marginalized communities, gender norms and reforms, innovation and bioethics, reckoning with historical events, and the consequences of natural disasters. Depictions of these issues in popular culture mediums will also be studied. Case studies will be drawn from a variety of source material formats, with an emphasis on Japanese ethnography and theory in English translation. Engages directly with critical sociocultural issues and topics in contemporary Japan, and forefronts anthropological perspectives and methodologies. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 2652)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Religious beliefs and practices intersect with processes of social change at various historical moments, illuminating the power dynamics of (trans)cultural encounters. Using cases from the Andean and Amazonian regions of South America, explores local indigenous cosmologies, rituals, and concepts of the sacred in relation to expansive regional and global religions, including Catholicism and Protestantism. Focuses on twentieth– and twenty-first-century social issues. Includes examples from pre-Columbian, Inca, and Spanish colonial periods to highlight the continuities and transformations in local and global institutions. Forefronts religion, as a facet of identity and inequality, intersecting with gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Scholarly and popular texts introduce topics like religious syncretism; sacred landscapes; human-supernatural relations; religious violence and ritual protest; global capitalism and citizenship; everyday moralities, embodiment, and faith-based humanitarianism. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 2724)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Explores the anthropology and history of the Andes, focusing on questions of cultural transformation and continuity among Native Andeans. Examines ethnography, popular culture, and current events of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Topics include the Inca state and Spanish colonization; Native Andean family and community life; subsistence economies; gender, class, and ethnic inequalities and social movements; domestic and state violence; religion; tourism; coca and cocaine production; and migration. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 2738)
Explores the multifarious ways that families are created, maintained, and reconfigured in cultures throughout the diverse region of Latin America. Drawing on anthropological perspectives on kinship, gender, and relatedness, the course reframes how intimacy, affect, and inequity are produced and performed by individuals in their everyday social lives. Incorporates the broader social, political, and economic contexts and contemporary issues circulating in the region. Using a comparative perspective, asks how kinship practices and discourses--from companionate marriage to compadrazgo ('spiritual kinship') to sumaq kawsay ('living well')--may shape power hierarchies in local cultural worlds, and offer possibilities for transformation. Incorporates attention to the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, and age through a variety of sources including ethnography, film, fiction, essay, and narrative. Topics may include indigenous and Hispanic family forms; state and intimate violence; sexual and reproductive justice; new reproductive technologies; machismo and masculinity; religion and spirituality; LGBTQ+ and chosen families; migration, labor, and transnational families; marriage. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2237, LACL 2737)
Explores contemporary Native American issues within and beyond tribal nations. Topics may include sovereignty and decolonization, federal policy, cultural appropriation, gaming and casinos, blood quantum, the repatriation of human remains and objects, language revitalization, comedy, and the little-known history of Native Americans' influence on rock and roll. Throughout, we emphasize Indigenous-produced scholarship and media. Brings attention to tribal nations in Maine as well as the significance of recent political mobilizations in relation to the long history of Native activism.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Surveys the contemporary social, economic, and political issues facing native peoples of Australia and New Zealand. Explores a range of indigenous Australian and Maori forms of social being historically, geographically, and methodologically. Through an examination of diverse source materials--such as ethnographic texts, art, novels, autobiographies, films, television, new media, and museum exhibitions--considers the ways that native identity has been constructed and challenged since the eighteenth century. Investigates the relationships between indigenous sovereignty, the nation state, and cultural production.
While often relegated to the margins, Oceania encompasses more than one-third of the globe, including a continent, thousands of islands, and the world’s largest ocean. Engages Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia thematically through the framework of Indigenous sovereignty and ongoing legacies of colonization. Traces unbroken lineages of traditional knowledge and contemporary practice through topics such as tattoo, surfing, and navigational wayfinding. Highlights Indigenous scholarship, media, and political movements that assert cultural and political self-determination. Challenges students to confront existential threats, including nuclear testing and rising sea levels, in the process of imagining hopeful and sovereign Oceanic futures.
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Close readings of recent ethnographies and other materials are used to examine current theoretical and methodological developments and concerns in anthropology.
Reading the relationship between Blackness and Americanness through texts from the African diaspora, this course takes W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double-consciousness and places it into a global conversation about Black experiences. “Black” and “American” are frequently viewed as “warring ideals,” implying that they are separate entities. However, they are also simultaneously lived and discussed as interwoven subjectivities that mutually shape and define the complex experience of being Black American. Using ethnographic, biographical, and fictional texts and media from the US, Caribbean, and Africa, the course explores how these broad concepts are defined, represented, and deconstructed. This multi-sited, multi-genre analysis pays close attention to the diversity of lived experiences, cultural representations, and political ideologies that fit under the umbrella of “American Blackness(es),” highlighting the ways the concept is defined from both inside and outside the US. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology. (Same as: AFRS 3018)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Explores the variety of practices, performances, and ideologies of sexuality through a cross-cultural perspective. Focusing on contemporary anthropological scholarship on sexuality and gender, asks how Western conceptions of sexuality, sex, and gender help (or hinder) understanding of the lives and desires of people in other social and cultural contexts. Topics may include third gendered individuals; intersexuality and the naturalization of sex; language and the performance of sexuality; drag; global media and the construction of identity; lesbian and gay families; sex work; AIDS and HIV and health policy; migration, asylum, and human rights issues; ethical issues and activism. Ethnographic examples are drawn from United States, Latin America (Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba); Asia (India, Japan, Indonesia) and Oceania (Papua New Guinea); and Africa (Nigeria, South Africa). Presents issues of contemporary significance along with key theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches used by anthropologists. Integrates perspectives on globalization and the intersection of multiple social differences (including class, race, and ethnicity) with discussion of sexuality and gender. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: GSWS 3100, LACL 3711)
During the Age of Exploration, Europe looked for new routes to India, Asia, and the Americas. In the 1500s Ferdinand Magellan discovered a route that enabled a robust trans-Pacific trade. For over 200 years, a Spanish ship known as the Manila Galleon, traversed the Pacific Ocean linking the Philippines and colonial Mexico, moving people, goods, and ideas along trade routes. This course explores globalization through the emergence of this early transoceanic trade, integrating the study of archaeological remains, material culture, and historical sources connected with the Manila Galleon. While treasure and pirates are part of the story, more mundane shifts in daily life also occurred in these dispersed locations which are evident in luxury goods, objects of daily use, and art. Many of the ideas and practices that emerged in this period still reverberate today. Through discussion of the circulation of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, Asia, and the Americas, students will gain deeper understanding of early globalization and the impact of transoceanic trade on daily life in the Americas, Asia, and Spain. Students will reflect on how globalization and consumerism have shaped our world and how they connect to issues such as colonialism, diaspora, capitalism, extractive economies, and inequality.
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
Cultures around the world maintain different stances about non-human animals. People eat meat or avoid doing so. Religions advocate veneration, fear, or loathing of certain animals. Domesticated animals provide us company, labor, and food. Wild animals are protected, studied, photographed, captured, and hunted. Animals inhabit novels, are featured in art, and adorn merchandise. Students read ethnographies, articles, animal rights literature, and children’s books; study museum collections; and examine animal themes in films and on the Web. Employing anthropological perspectives, students consider what distinguishes humans from other animals, how cultures are defined by people’s attitudes about animals, and what might be our moral and ethical responsibilities to other creatures. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 3920)
Examines the relationship between toxicity and human habitation, focusing on how toxic environments compel us to live in, attend to, and craft otherwise worlds. Delves into anthropological theories and ethnographies of disorder, contamination, waste, material entanglement, and more-than-human embodiment. Explores the uneven distribution of toxic burdens in local, national, and global contexts and traces toxic flows to illuminate capitalist, colonial, racial, gendered and caste logics. Engages with emergent popular politics that rewrite contamination as collaboration. Encourages students to consider possibilities of life otherwise, amid toxic realms that exceed purely human instrumentalities yet archive all too human histories of social power.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Considers how extraterrestrial imaginings provide a cultural mirror for the treatment of beings and spaces here on Earth. Recontextualizes core anthropological concepts such as kinship, religion, and social structure by extending them beyond our home planet. Explores diverse perspectives, including Indigenous cosmologies, that understand the celestial as neither alien nor outer. Examines parallels between historical imperialism, contemporary space projects, and speculative non-Earthling human societies. Integrates scholarly, multimedia, and science fiction materials to engage topics such as subversive science communities, defining life and intelligence, body and labor relations, treaties and boundaries, extractive and settler colonialisms, climate change and escapism, and utopianism and immortality.
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Explores research on youth as a window onto broader questions of identity, agency, inequity, and social transformation in the contemporary world. Youth and children move between families and nations; claim belonging to divergent communities; create and transform senses of self; and navigate power hierarchies related to age, race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and citizenship. Highlights the experiences of young people in contexts of insecurity shaped by globalization and neoliberal capitalism. Attends to culturally specific meanings of youth and childhood. Draws on theoretical approaches to agency, subjectivity, and power in anthropology and discusses methodological and ethical issues in ethnographic research with youth. Topics may include self and personhood; labor and waithood; migration, family, and citizenship; gender, sexuality, and romance; media and activism; creativity and (re)making worlds in diverse cultural contexts including Latin America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 3720)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Considers how embodiment—the lived experience of inhabiting a body—offers unique insight into a variety of social and political issues. Explores the body as a layered terrain of social, moral, political, biocultural, and historical forces. Examines the body as a site of power; as cultivated through techniques and discipline; as constitutive of personhood and identity; as a material, biological, and organic entity; and as a locus of experience, wisdom, and subjectivity. Topics vary but include: racialized, gendered, and classed dimensions of embodiment; critical disability studies; technological and biomedical enhancement; pain and pleasure; mindfulness, somatic therapy, and psychosomatic experience; sex and sexuality; affect and the sensorium; religious discipline and piety; self-expression and performance; and body/non-human/environment relations.
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester