Anthropology

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
An introduction to an evolutionary and biocultural perspective on evolutionary theory and basic human genetics; evolutionary and comparative biology of humans and our closest living relatives the nonhuman primates; origins of early humans and uniquely human anatomical and cultural development; and modern human variation, health, and adaptation.
Introduction to Biological Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2012, Spring 2006
Prehistory and cultural growth.
Introduction to Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Prehistory and cultural growth. Introduction to the methods, goals, and theoretical concepts of archaeology with attention to the impact archaeology has had on the construction of the histories of diverse communities - Native Americans, Hispanics, and Euro-Americans. It fulfills the requirements for 2.
Introduction to Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2013 10 Week Session, Summer 2013 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2010 First 6 Week Session
The structure and dynamics of human culture and social institutions.
Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
The structure and dynamics of human cultures and social institutions from a comparative perspective with special attention to American cultures and their roots. Case studies will illustrate the principles presented in the course. It fulfills the requirements for 3.
Introduction to Social/Cultural Anthropology (American Cultures): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
Reading and composition courses based on the anthropological literature. These courses provide an introduction to issues distinctive of anthropological texts and introduce students to distinctive forms of anthropological writing, such as ethnography and anthropological prehistory. Readings will be chosen from a variety of texts by authors whose works span the discipline, from bioanthropology to archaeology and sociocultural anthropology. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
Reading and Composition in Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
The course presents a diachronic perspective on human-fire interactions with local ecosystems in California that spans over 10,000 years. The course will provide an historical perspective on human-fire interactions at the landscape scale using a diverse range of data sources drawn from the fields of fire ecology, biology, history, anthropology, and archaeology. An important component includes examining how diverse cultures and ethnicity influenced how people perceived and used fire at the landscape scale in ancient, historical and modern times. The implications of these diverse fire practices and policies will be analyzed and the consequences they have had for transforming habitats and propagating catastrophic fires will be explored.
Fire: Past, Present and Future Interactions with the People and Ecosystems of California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2022
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics may vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
Organized group study on topics selected by lower division students under the sponsorship and direction of a member of the Anthropology Department's faculty.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2005, Summer 2004 10 Week Session, Spring 2004
Individual research by lower division students.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2013 Second 6 Week Session
A consideration of the major groups of primates with an emphasis on the evolution of behavior.
Primate Evolution: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2024
Humans, apes, and selected monkeys are the primates of concern, and among this array patterns and degrees of social behavior vary greatly. Lectures present a general introduction to behavior and its ecological context, the interaction of biology and behavior from an evolutionary perspective, and an examination of the roots of modern human behavior.
Primate Behavior: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
Introduction to comparative vertebrate brain anatomy, neural development, and sensory-motor functions that are relevant to the study of human brain evolution and the evolution of uniquely human mental and behavioral capacities. Emphasis is on understanding the processes of evolution that are responsible for species differences in brain structure and function. Special attention will be given to animal communication, vocalization, neurolinguistics, and theories of language evolution.
Evolution of the Human Brain: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 1998, Spring 1997, Spring 1996
The intersections of mental health, biology, and culture, explored using a variety of anthropological, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives. Uses a variety of theories and methods across anthropology – specifically from the traditions of the biocultural, medical, and psychological sub-fields – to meticulously dissect and critically engage with issues of mental illness, psychiatry, non-Western paradigms of psychological well-being. Considers “mental health” as an amalgamation of diverse and ever-changing subjective experiences, temporally complex social and political processes, and complex interactions between neurobiology, the mind, and pluralistic cosmologies of health, illness, and life.
Cross-cultural Mental Health: Biocultural Perspectives: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 1999, Fall 1997, Fall 1996
This course explores the sophisticated and complex interactions between the brain, hormones, and behavior and their relevance to human development and health – a growing scientific field known as psychoneuroendocrinology. Topics include the multiple psychological and biological systems that make up psychoneuroendocrinological processes; evolutionary and developmental perspectives on the emergence and function of these mechanisms; the social experiences of stress, trauma, nurturance, and support; the psychoneuroendocrinology of physical, mental, and psychosomatic disease; and how historical, societal, and political dynamics of power structure the patterns of intersectional health inequities.
Psychoneuroendocrinology: Stress, Disease, and Health Inequalities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
A unitary view of past history and current trends in the field of Physical Anthropology, emphasizing schools of thought, important figures and major areas of research.
Theory and Method in Physical Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024
This course will ask to what extent human behavior in its various individual, group, social, and cultural dimensions can be understood using the relatively small number of basic principles provided by evolutionary biological considerations.
Evolution of Human Behavior: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
Varying topics covering current discoveries, research, theories, fieldwork, etc., in biological anthropology. Topics vary with instructor.
Special Topics in Biological Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
An exploration of the record and human experience of health and disease with specific focus on bioarchaeology, the study of human remains from ancient and recent archaeological contexts, using a biocultural approach. Evaluates how morbidity, prevalence, and mortality in the past are identified using a biocultural lens to analyze and interpret the etiology of disease in the past. Discusses how evolution and adaptation plays a central role in disease emergence and prevalence; how humans are agents in the co-evolution of infectious agents in food webs and ecosystems; and how people define and experience disease, illness, wellness and suffering in different cultural contexts.
The Palaeopathological Perspective: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course will present a history of anthropological thought from the mid-19th century to the present, and will draw upon the major subdisciplines of anthropology. It will focus both upon the integration of the anthropological subdisciplines and upon the relationships between these and other disciplines outside anthropology.
History of Anthropological Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025, Fall 2023
Cultural, psychological, and biological aspects of the definitions, causes, symptoms, and treatment of illness. Comparative study of medical systems, practitioners, and patients.
Introduction to Medical Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Spring 2022
Special topics in cultural, biomedical and applied approaches to medical anthropology.
Special Topics in Medical Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Introduces students to intersections between health, medicine, society,
and environment through medical and environmental anthropology,
political ecology, medical geography, and the social studies of science,
technology and the natural environment. Readings, discussions, and
assignments will explore the sociocultural, political economic, and
environmental aspects of illness, care, disease, biomedicine, and
health (in)equity.
Inequality and the Body: Health, Medicine, Society and Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2003, Summer 2002 10 Week Session, Fall 2000
Formerly 121. Patterns in material culture as it reflects behavioral and psychological aspects of American culture since the 17th century. Topics include architecture, domestic artifacts, mortuary art, foodways, and trash disposal. Euro-American, African American, and Native-American examples are considered.
Historical Archaeology: American Material Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2018
Patterns in material culture as it reflects behavioral and psychological aspects of American culture since the 17th century. Topics include architecture, domestic artifacts, mortuary art, foodways, and trash disposal.
American Material Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Fall 2003, Spring 1997
This course will provide a background in the theoretical and methodological development of American historical archaeology, with particular emphasis on the ways in which archaeologists have approached the integration of archaeological, documentary, oral historical and ethnohistoric data. Emphasis on continuing theoretical developments in the discipline. Politics of historical archaeology, and ways in which historical archaeologists and other public historians make the past relevant to the present.
Historical Archaeology: Theoretical Approaches in American Historical Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2022
Learn to work with historical artifacts from the stage of recovery through the stages of analysis and interpretation. The focus is on the analysis of materials (i.e., ceramic, glass, metal, bone, shell artifacts) recovered from historic sites. Skills acquired include how to identify, date, record, illustrate, photograph, catalog, and interpret historical archaeological materials through a combination of lectures, lab exercises, and a research paper.
Historical Archaeology: Historical Artifact Identification and Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2016
Archaeological understanding of ancestral cultures in North America from the end of the last ice age (ca. 20,000 years before the present) up to the time of sustained European contact (beginning ca. 500 years ago). Emphasis on variability of cultural expression in each region and historical continuities between archaeological materials and contemporary Native American communities. Topics include: earliest sites known to archaeology; development of foraging societies in the far west and far north; origins of agriculture and village life; and the emergence of politically complex societies in the southwest and Eastern Woodlands.
Archaeology of the Americas: Archaeology of North America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2002, Spring 1999
This culture examines the implications of early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, including how indigenous peoples responded to European contact and colonialism, and how the outcomes of these encounters influenced cultural developments in postcolonial contexts. The study employs a holistic approach that integrates evidence from archaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, linguistics, biological anthropology, and native oral traditions. Case studies from the Caribbean, Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Alaska, Hawaii, and California will be included.
Culture Contact in North America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2021, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session
A survey of what archaeology can tell us about the pre-Columbian cultures of Central America: the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and their neighbors.
Archaeology of the Americas: Archaeology of Central America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2014
A survey of the history of development of Maya society and culture in Central American prior to Eurpean contact in the 16th century AD.
Archaeology of the Americas: World of Ancient Maya: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2019
This course covers the archaeology and history of the indigenous societies of the Andean region of South America. The lectures and readings emphasize major political, economic, social, and symbolic processes in the development of the Andean civilizations. Particular attention is paid to the development of the early states along the coast of Peru. The development of major centers in the highlands, and the relationship between the political, economic, and religious systems of the later empires and earlier political structures and social processes, are also emphasized.
Archaeology of the Americas: Andean Archaeology: People of the Andes: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2015, Spring 2012
Prehistory of California Indians; selected archaeological sites and current issues in interpretations.
Archaeology of the Americas: California Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2008, Spring 2006
This course will outline the development of vative cultures in the American Southwest from Paleo-Indian times (ca. 11,500 BC) through early European contact (ca. A.D. 1600). Topics to be covered include the greater environment, early foaging culture, the development of agriculture and village life, the emergence and decline of regional alliances, abandonment, and reorganization, and changes in social organization, external relations and trade. The course is designed as an advanced upper division seminar for students majoring in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology. Can be taught as a distance learning course with another university.
Archaeology of the Americas: Archaeology of the American Southwest: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
This course uses archaeological data from across the United States to think about the role archaeology has played in defining and informing society about Black Americans. African American archaeology uses folklore, anthropology, and history as well as empirical data gleaned from archaeological sites to inform us about Black pasts. This course starts with the first archaeology conducted on Black heritage sites and continues to the present practice of community-based collaborative research.
African American Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2020
This course explores the dramatic developments in human evolution, behavior and culture that accompany the emergence of prehistoric human society, from our earliest Palaeolithic ancestors who first ventured out of Africa over a million years ago to the origins of settled farming economies and the first urban environments. Focusing on the Old World, we trace these interconnected transitions in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The archaeological record forms our dataset, providing a rich record of economic and technological developments, settlement, architecture, burial practices, art, ideology, and social organization.
Old World Prehistory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011
This course provides an overview of the archaeological history of the African continent.Through case studies,it will explore Africa beginning with human evolution and cultural development to later colonial encounters and their impacts. It will also examine how groups and governments have used the past in politics, and the roles heritage plays in contemporary African Societies.
Old World Cultures: Archaeology of Africa: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007, Spring 2006, Spring 2002
Selected topics and research problems in the archaeology of the Pleistocene and/or post-Pleistocene of Europe.
Old World Cultures: Archaeology of Europe: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2015 First 6 Week Session, Spring 1999
Prehistory and early civilizations of the Mediterranean basin and its hinterland.
Old World Cultures: Mediterranean Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2015, Fall 2013
Selected topics and research problems in the archaeology of the southern Pacific from prehistory through to the establishment of complex chiefdoms in many locales. Stress on current issues and interpretations.
Pacific Cultures: Archaeology of the South Pacific: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 1996
Developmental foundations of the 20th-century multicultural society of Hawaii, during the period 1778-1900, explored through an explicitly anthropological perspective. The following ethnic groups are emphasized: Native Hawaiians, British-American whites, Chinese, and Japanese.
Hawaiian Ethnohistory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
Prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology in China, Japan, and Korea.
Archaeology of East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007
Course explores stereotypical images of traditional Japanese culture and people through archaeological analysis. Particular emphasis will be placed on changing lifeways of past residents of the Japanese islands, including commoners, samurai, and nobles. Consideration will be given to the implications of these archaeological studies for our understanding of Japanese identities.
Archaeology and Japanese Identities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Spring 2016
Humans have always been affected by changes in their landscape and, in turn, had an influence on their physical surroundings. The contexts that archaeological material and features are found within yield invaluable clues as to how sites form, what types of activities people performed in them, and what kinds of natural and cultural processes altered the archaeological record from deposition to excavation. This course introduces the methods of studying archaeological remains from an environmental context in order to reconstruct the relationships between people and the environment, drawing on case studies from different areas of the world.
Geoarchaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
An introduction to skeletal biology and anatomy to understand how skeletal remains can be used in reconstructing patterns of adaptation and biocultural evolution in past populations, emphasizing a problem-based approach to bioarchaeological questions.
Bioarchaeology: Introduction to Skeletal Biology and Bioarchaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2013, Summer 2010 First 6 Week Session
This course deals with the skeletal biology of past populations, covering both the theoretical approaches and critical analysis of methods used in the study of skeletal and dental remains, and is considered the continuing course for those that have already taken introduction to skeletal biology, 127A.
Bioarchaeology: Reconstruction of Life in Bioarchaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
Bioarchaeology is the study of archaeological human skeletal remains together with contextual information (archival, historical, material culture) to provide insight on the life of people and communities in the past. In this course you will delve into the formative contemporary literature and get to work with actual archaeological skeletal remains in order to learn bioarchaeological methods, develop your own research questions, and conduct and complete a hands-on research project. You will work with skeletal remains from the stage of identification, inventory, illustration/photography, to the collection of data such as sex, age, stature, and health/growth, pathology, and statistical analysis.
Bioarchaeology Research: Data Collection and Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Current topics in method and theory of archaeological research, varying with instructor.
Special Topics in Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2019
Special topics in archaeology which meet the area requirement for the anthropology major.
Special Topics in Archaeology/Area: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2022, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session
Special topics in archaeology which meet the method requirement for the anthropology major.
Special Topics in Archaeology/Method: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2001, Fall 1997
These courses explore contemporary topics in archaeology that transcend time periods or cultural areas. Courses may be taken in any sequence.
Topical Areas in Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2013, Fall 2006
Draws on study of art in non-literate societies and on archaeology to explore a range of prehistoric arts in cultural contexts; e.g., rock art; Ice Age Arts; prehistoric ceramics. Usses illustrative materials from the Hearst Museum.
Topical Areas in Archaeology: Prehistoric Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025
An overview of the archaeology of African Diaspora sites occupied between the 13th and 20th centuries, including the ways economics, environments, networks, governments, religions and culture coalesced to create vibrant black communities around the
world. An investigation of the roles anthropology and archaeology have played in defining, informing, and promoting images of black people throughout time, and some of the ways archaeology has impacted African diasporic communities.
African Diaspora Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2020, Spring 2018
Course will provide an overview of hunter-gatherer archaeology, focusing on the history of hunter-gatherer archaeology in North America and Britian; long-term changes in hunter-gatherer subsistence, settlement, mortuary/ceremonial practices and crafts/trade; social archaeology of hunter-gatherers including studies of gender, cognition, and cultural landscapes; and discussions of the relevance of hunter-gatherer studies in the context of world archaeology.
Topical Areas in Archaeology: Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
Since the end of the Pleistocene and especially with the development of agriculturally based societies humans have had cumulative and often irreversible impacts on natural landscapes and biotic resources worldwide. Thus "global change" and the biodiversity crisis are not exclusively developments of the industrial and post‐industrial world. This course uses a multi‐disciplinary approach, drawing upon methods and data from archaeology, palynology, geomorphology, paleontology, and historical ecology to unravel the broad trends of human ecodynamics over the past 50,000 years.
Human Palaeoecology: How Humans Changed the Earth: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2015 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2012
This class explores the questions: why study the archaeology of households? How do we define households and how can we identify and study them archaeologically? What research questions, strategies, and methodologies does the archaeological investigation of households entail? How does the study of households contribute to multiscalar approaches for understanding social organization? Why is this important? What are the causes and effects of changing scales of analysis?
Topical Areas in Archaeology: Household Archeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2011
This course explores how archaeologists and bioarchaeologists study human families' and communities' conceptualizations and experiences of health and health care cross-culturally and through time. Students will be exposed to case studies drawing upon skeletal and material cultural evidence.
The Archaeology of Health and Disease: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2007
A critical review of the historical background and philosophical premises of past and present anthropological theory with respect to its concepts of time and change.
History and Theory of Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Summer 2011 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2008
Discussion of and laboratory instruction in methods of analysis of ceramics used by archaeologists to establish a time scale, to document interconnections between different areas, sites, or groups of people, to suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites, and to understand the organization of ceramic production itself.
Analysis of Archaeological Materials: Ceramics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Guidance in the preparation of excavated materials for publication, including sampling and analysis strategy, drawing, photography and write-up.
Analysis of the Archaeological Record: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
Practical experience in the field study of archaeological sites and materials. Coverage may include reconnaissance, mapping, recording, and excavation.
Field Course in Archaeological Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
An introduction to the basic approaches and techniques in archaeobotanical analysis. A series of different data types and their unique approaches will be discussed, including phytoliths, pollen, and DNA, with an emphasis on macrofloral remains. Laboratory study will include the major classes of plant remains likely to be encountered in archaeological sites. Discussion will emphasize the use of plant remains to answer archaeological questions, rather than study the plant remains for their own sake. Microscope work and computing will be included.
Paleoethnobotany: Archaeological Methods and Laboratory Techniques: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
The major issues, research objectives, databases, and techniques involved in the study of past society's relationship and interaction with the natural environment. Particularly methods that use "noncultural" information in archaeological research, but with a cultural orientation. Major subjects addressed will be paleoenvironmental reconstruction; human-environment interaction, impact, and environmental degradation; paleodiet and domestication; land-use and social environments; with an emphasis on ecofactual analysis.
Environmental Archaeology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2017, Fall 2011
A practical introduction to contemporary museum approaches to exhibition design, with particular application to the design of exhibits that present cultural heritage in anthropology, art, and natural history museums. Both the theory of museum exhibit desing and practice will be covered, including critiques of representation; issues of cultural heritage; conversation, education, and installation standards; and incorporation of interactivity, including through digital media.
Museum Exhibit Curation and Design: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session
This course will introduce participants to the fundamentals of contemporary museum practices. It is intended for two groups of students: individuals who may be thinking of conducting research in museums, and may benefit from an understanding of the way these institutions work; and individuals who may be thinking of museum work as a post-graduate career. The course will include both discussion of museum concepts and practical application of these concepts through real-world exercises. While the course fulfills the method requirement, it covers practices of art, natural history, and science museums as well.
Introduction to Museum Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
This course provides an overview of the origins, history, and execution of heritage conservation with an emphasis on the United States. You will discuss and ponder the motivations for historic preservation regulations in the United States, the role they play in community development, and how these regulations articulate with the wider field of heritage conservation.
Introduction to Heritage Conservation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016
This course will engage students in critical reading of popular media, both in print and digital form, that present to different public audiences the kinds of objects and sites understood as "cultural heritage". Starting with controversies that have been widely covered by mainstream newspapers, popular science magazines (including in online posts), and also commented on by bloggers and microbloggers, students will explore how scholarly information enters into popular circulation, including for general readers, policy makers, and specialized audiences.
Cultural Heritage in the Popular Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2016
This course frames museums within issues of cultural heritage (repatriation, the international traffic in antiquities, intangible cultural heritage) and cultural diplomacy (implementation of the UNESCO Convention, development and circulation of collaborative international exhibitions). Students will gain a basic understanding of the structure of western museums; the history of the universal museum; relationships between cultural property and national identity; and contemporary cultural policy issues.
Cultural Policy: Cultural Heritage and Cultural Diplomacy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
This course will consider the human dimensions of particular energy production and consumption patterns. It will examine the influence of culture and social organization on energy use, energy policy, and quality of life issues in both the domestic and international setting. Specific treatment will be given to mind-sets, ideas of progress, cultural variation in time perspectives and resource use, equity issues, and the role of power holders in energy related questions.
Energy, Culture and Social Organization: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
The course will trace the development of ethnographic film from its beginnings at the turn of the century to the present. In addition to looking at seminal works in the field, more recent and innovative productions will be viewed and analyzed. Topics of interest include the role of visual media in ethnography, ethics in filmmaking, and the problematic relationship between seeing and believing. Requirements include film critiques, a film proposal, and a final exam.
History and Theory of Ethnographic Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2018
This course is devoted to training students in methods of ethnographic field film production. Based on the previous coursework in Anthro 138A, students will work toward the production of an ethnographic video from elected project proposals. In addition to weekly discussions of student projects, guest consultants and lecturers will lend their expertise on aspects of production as well as editing.
Field Production of Ethnographic Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2019
This course examines the place of food in society and includes discussions of identity, taste, taboos, ritual, traditions, nationalism, health, alcohol use, civilizing society, globalism, and the global politics of food.
The Anthropology of Food: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024
Theories of social structure, functional interrelationships of social institutions. Primary emphasis on non-Western societies.
Comparative Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2009, Spring 1975
This course is intended to be an introduction for students interested in the critical study of climate change. It does so by pursuing questions about the psychic and social forms of life shaped by technologies used to understand, represent, and manage climate change. Of primary concern is what these technologies tell us about the formation of subjectivity and how people sense changes in weather and climate over time. We will explore a variety of cultural and historical locations, and a diverse set of ideas related to climate change such as catastrophe, uncertainty, the Anthropocene, and vulnerability.
Climate Change and the Senses: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021
Examines urbanization of cities in the Global South resulting from the intersection of projects articulated globally and locally by agents of development (nation-states, corporations, real estate developers, elite investors, municipalities, world agencies, NGOs) and insurgent practices of urban poor, middle classes, immigrants, youth, street dwellers, under-employed laborers, and “marginals” who build cities and transform, derail, and reconstitute development projects in work and residence.
Cities of the Global South: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2000, Fall 1999
The course explores major developments within feminist theory in the 20th century within an international context, with special attention to issues of class, culture, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.
Anthropology of Gender: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Fall 2004, Spring 2004
This seminar engages in a broad reading of classic and contemporary ethnographies of non-mainstream genders and sexualities. Our emphasis will be on understanding anthropology's contribution to and relationship with gay and lesbian studies and queer theory. Over the course of the semester, we will be reading and talking about what constitutes a queer ethnography and the history and future of an anthropology of sexuality.
Queer Ethnographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2019
An introduction to social theory and ethnographic methodology in the cross-cultural study of sexuality, particularly sexual orientation and gender identity. The course will stress the relationships between culture, international and local political economy, and the representation and experience of what we will provisionally call homosexual and transgendered desires or identities.
Sexuality, Culture, and Colonialism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2014 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2013, Spring 2004
Surveys anthropological perspectives on the environment and examines differing cultural constructions of nature. Coverage includes theory, method, and case materials extending from third world agrarian contexts to urban North America. Topics may include cultural ecology, political ecology, cultural politics of nature, and environmental imaginaries.
Anthropology of the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
In the contemporary world, different systems of knowledge, philosophies, and techniques of the self, understandings of normality and pathology, illness and healing, are increasingly engaged in a dialogue with each other in the lives, on the bodies, and in the imagination of people. The terms of this dialogue are often unequal and painful, yet they are also productive of new subjectivities and new voices. It is the task of a renewed psychological anthropology to study and reflect on these processes. Topics to be covered in this class include new forms of the subject and ethics at the intersection of psychical/psychiatric, political, and religious processes and discources; ethno-psychiatry, psychoanalysis, the psychology of colonization and racism; anthropological approaches to possession and altered states, emotion, culture, and the imagination, madness and mental illness. The specific stress will be on the stakes of anthropology of the psyche today, for an understanding of power and subjugation, delusion and the imagination, violence, and the possibility of new forms of life.
Psychological Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
Modern times have been dominated by utopian visions of how to achieve a happy future society. Artists in competing social systems played a central role in the development of these visions. But artistic experiments were filled with paradoxes, contributing to the creation not only of the most liberating and progressive ideals and values but also to the most oppressive regimes and ideologies. The course questions: what is art, what can it achieve and destroy, what is beauty, artistic freedom, and the relationship between esthetics, ethics, and power?
Utopia: Art and Power in Modern Times: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2005, Fall 2002, Spring 2001
Disability is a cultural construct. This does not mean that physical and mental impairments are not real, but that our conceptions of the body and its possibilities and impossibilities are constantly mediated through social norms and mores. The built environments and social institutions we navigate are based around these concepts of the “normal.” Using ethnographic examples drawn from various countries around the world, and various disability categories, we examine the contingency of the categories of disability and normality from social, legal, and personal perspectives.
Disability and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2013
This upper division course presents episodes in the understanding of anthropos (man, humanity, civilization, etc.) in its modern figuration. The course will juxtapose the conceptual repertoire of key thinkers about modernity, and will examine episodes in the history of the arts and/or sciences.
Modernity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2012
This course is an introduction to the conceptual field of "the contemporary," a stylization of both old and new elements that stands in contrast to "modernity", and "post modernity", and which opens up inquiries into the actual state of things, particulary for anthropology. Anthropology 155, while not required, is highly recommended as a prerequisite.
Anthropology of the Contemporary: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
Anthropological concepts relevant to the comparative analysis of political ethnography and socio-political change. Particular attention will be given to the interrelations of culture and politics.
Politics and Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2007, Fall 2002
The course examines how representations are situated within fields of power and, in turn, how political considerations are translated into cultural forms. Topics include: philosophy and history of social science, power/knowledge, the social, difference and power, social science and ethics.
Culture and Power: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Comparative survey of the ethnography of law; methods and concepts relevant to the comparative analysis of the forms and functions of law.
Anthropology of Law: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
A consideration of the interplay between religious beliefs and institutions and other aspects of culture.
Religion and Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023
This course examines the relationships among colonialism, anthropological research, Indigenous people, and the work of Indigenous anthropologists. It examines the role of anthropology in furthering colonial agendas and critiques of colonialism by Indigenous scholars, and surveys the work of contemporary Indigenous anthropologists. It focuses particular attention on the ongoing impact of anthropological research on Indigenous people, and the different ways in which Indigenous anthropologists use anthropology to speak back to, and against the Western anthropological tradition and canon.
Indigenous Perspectives in Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
A world-wide survey of the major and minor forms of folklore with special emphasis upon proverbs, riddles, superstitions, games, songs, and narratives.
Forms of Folklore: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session
This course explores vernacular art, music, religion, and folklore from the overlapping regions of the Gulf of Mexico and Greater Caribbean. Students will learn about syncretic traditions that were forged under colonialism and the slave trade in places including Cuba, Haiti, and Louisiana. Students will engage modes of expression ranging from décima poetry to carnical masking, from funeral rituals to blues improvisation, with an eye to understanding how creole traditions are sustained through networks of migration, exchange, and struggle.
Creole Tradition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2021
Special topics in folklore or ethno-musicology.
Topics in Folklore: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
This course examines the complex relationships between language, culture, and society. The materials in the course draw on the fields of linguistic anthropology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy of language, discourse analysis, and literary criticism to explore theories about how language is shaped by, and in turn shapes, our understandings about the world, social relations, identities, power, aesthetics, etc.
Language, Culture, and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
This course provides an advanced introduction to key conceptual work in the anthropology of science, technology, and knowledge production. The course examines how truth-effects are produced in the world, and how people know what we know. It explores the social and political arrangements “built into” or materialized through the infrastructures and objects that help structure lives in the U.S. and globally. It asks how new information technology, media platforms, and data-rich practices change the questions of knowledge and truth. It examines such things as life by algorithm, data mining, the self-tracking movement (especially vis-à-vis health), and the infrastructures of “the cloud”.
Anthropology of Science, Technology and Data: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010
This course capitalizes on a successful approach of using definitional formulas to emphasize concepts of statistics, rather than rote memorization in both qualitative and quantitative anthropology. This conceptual approach constantly reminds the students of the logic behind what they are learning. Procedures are taught verbally, numerically, and visually, to reach students with different learning styles.
Data Analysis and Computational Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Introduction to research problems and research design techniques. Will involve local field research on the collection, analysis, and presentation of data. This course requires 15 hours of work per week including class time, outside work and preparation. One section meeting per week will be required.
Research Theory and Methods in Socio-Cultural Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021
This course provides an introduction to selected theories and methods in Linguistic Anthropology, with a focus on topics of relevance to ethnographic fieldwork. Readings and lectures are organized into three modules: Linguistic categories and their consequences for thought, the effects of social context on meaning, and the empirical basis of research on language.
Research Theory and Methods in Linguistic Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021
Chinese culture and society with an emphasis on the village level.
China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
This course offers an introductory survey of Japan from a four-field anthropological perspective. It is open without prerequisite to anyone with a curiosity about what is arguably the most important non-Western society of the last 100 years, and to anyone concerned about the diverse conditions of modern life. We will range over many aspects of contemporary Japan, and draw on scholarship in history, literature, religion, and the various social sciences.
Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2017, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session
Combining historical archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography, this course will take account of ethnic groups and their interaction in early colonial California; Native Americans; mission, presidio, pueblo, and rancho communities of Spanish/Mexican California; Russian frontier society at Fort Ross; and American expansion into California, especially the Gold Rush. The course will also examine how the colonial past affects ethnic relations and cultural identity among contemporary California Indians.
California Historical Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
An introduction to the anthropological study of Maya people in Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The course focuses on certain parts of the Maya region, emphasizing selected themes and problems. We will explore regional history through the development of Maya studies and the historical transformations of Maya societies. These themes will be traced through studies of the Classic Maya, the Spanish conquest and colonization, indigenous resistance and rebellion, and recent pan-Maya activism.
Ethnography of the Maya: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2014, Spring 2013
Representative groups in historical and modern perspective. Rural-urban relationships and the dynamics of change.
European Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2022, Fall 2018
Cultures of the contemporary Near East, with special emphasis upon Arab populations.
Themes in the Anthropology of the Middle East and Islam: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session
The course will focus on African societies and cultures, as well as on issues relating to the history of Africanist anthropology. Images and constructs of Africa or Africans will thus be contextualized in relation to prevailing anthropological theories at different times, and in different regions of the continent.
Topics in the Anthropological Study of Africa: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2016, Fall 2014
Cultural traditions, social organization, and social change, with an emphasis on India and Pakistan.
South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2000
This course highlights Southeast Asia as an important region for the study of politics and power from an anthropological perspective. It sheds light on how notions of “power” stemming from the unique political histories of Southeast Asia might help us rethink its role in governmentality, knowledge-producing practices, and in creating the conditions for political legitimacy. We will examine how various forces shaped what power came to be in time and place. We will examine how this legacy continues in terms of patron-client networks, the meaning of political legitimacy, and ways of seeing sex and gender.
Power and Politics in Southeast Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Various topics covering current research theory, method; issues of social and cultural concern; culture change, conflict, and adaptation. May combine more than one subdiscipline of Anthropology.
Special Topics in Social/Cultural Anthropology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Spring 2016
Special topics in cultural anthropology which meet the area requirement for the major.
Special Topics in Cultural Anthropology/Area: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2017, Spring 2017
Systematic readings in history and modern theory, collection and analysis of research materials, and the preparation of an honors thesis. Group or individual tutorials.
Senior Honors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Systematic readings in history and modern theory, collection and analysis of research materials, and the preparation of an honors thesis. Group or individual tutorials.
Senior Honors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Seminar for the advanced study of the subject matter of a previously given upper division course, emphasizing reading and discussion.
Undergraduate Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Individual field experience sponsored by a faculty member; written reports required.
Fieldwork: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
Undergraduate research by small groups.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
Supervised independent study and research.
Supervised Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Spring 2006
This course examines a broad range of theories that elucidate the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion; imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. It focuses on narratives at work, on the move, in action as they emerge from the matrix of the everyday preeminently, storytelling in conversation--as key to folk genres--the folktale, the legend, the epic, the myth.
Theories of Narrative: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.
Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.
Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
Studies in vernacular art and expression. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
Vernacular Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Collaboration in ethnographic praxis on a local and global scale in folkloristics, sociocultural, linguistic, media, and medical anthropology, producing projects grounded in meaningful engagement with communities. Graduate students, working with lay mentors and faculty, will design and begin implementation of projects that break through infrastructures of theory, research, pedagogy, and practice that reproduce racial hierarchies and that erase anti-racist alternatives.

Experiments in Collaboration and Reciprocal Transformation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023

Readings in Folklore: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023

Directed Research: Read More [+]