Featured Anthropology Courses

This course will introduce students to the history of social and evolutionary thought in Anthropology and examine the debate between nature culture in the social and natural sciences. It will cover basic concepts and important principles from both the Biological and Cultural sub-disciplines of Anthropology.

Contestations over the primacy of nature or culture in the shaping of human bodies and behaviors drove some of the most heated debates of twentieth century American life. Divisive battles over racial difference, women’s rights, homosexuality and the origins of illness continue to be fought through claims about biological determinism and cultural construction. This course, co-taught by a biological and a cultural anthropologist, investigates the ongoing power of this opposition through an examination of anthropology’s central role in formulating the nature/culture dichotomy itself. We begin with a unit on the very recent historical underpinnings of the nature/culture debate, both within anthropology and in American life more generally, and proceed with three case studies, exploring current biological and cultural approaches to race, sex and disease. Throughout the course, students will be challenged to become conversant with both biological and cultural approaches to human bodies and behavior. Each unit will end with a class-wide conversation. Debate will be a central part of the class experience. Our goal is to teach students how to think, not what to think.

“I am beautiful and I know I’m beautiful,” Crystal LaBeija shouted confidently in the 1968 documentary film The Queen, a pivotal piece of queer cinema. In keeping with these words from LaBeija – an iconic drag performer, trans woman, and instrumental figure in New York City’s Ballroom scene – this course is an exploration of the diversity, tenacity, and resilience of queer communities. Specifically, the course presents a survey of ethnographic studies pertaining to human sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression, and the intersection of these identities with race and class. We will cover sources (written materials, films, visual art, and music) on queer and trans life from the 1960s to the 2020s, based on research within the discipline of anthropology and beyond, based in a variety of contexts across the globe. This course will certainly not be able to cover all queer and trans communities at all times and places, nor explore all pertinent discussions and questions related to these topics. By the course’s conclusion, however, students will have a sense of major debates, theoretical considerations, and methodological protocols within anthropology and related disciplines regarding work with queer and trans communities. 

Broadly, this course is divided into four sections. First, we will trace the development of ethnographic studies of queer populations, in terms of both the triumphs and shortcomings of this research. Who is doing the research? Where is it being done? Who was given attention, who was left out? Second, we will consider intersections within the fields of Black Studies and Queer Studies to explore the ways scholarly engagement with queer communities must take race and other intersecting categories of identity into account. Third, we will focus on the ways in which work with transgender and nonbinary groups has changed and evolved to consider gender identity on its own terms, rather than uncritically folding it into the category of queerness, or conflating gender identity with sexual orientation. Fourth and finally, we will explore the growing field of queer and trans studies in religion to exemplify some of the ways contemporary anthropology and queer life intersect.

This course explores the connections between the discovery of new materials -- such as ceramics, concrete, precious stones and metals, glass, steel, plastics, and semiconductors-- and social transformations worldwide. To see these connections, the course will fuse basic concepts in materials science and engineering with perspectives and methods from anthropological archaeology. This course will explore both how materials shape society and how society shapes material innovations.