Featured Courses
ANT 124: Religion in Society and Culture
What is the relationship between religion, science and modernity? How did colonialism impact religious ideas and practices in the colonies and the metropole? How are the body and the senses significant for religious life? Can we analyze the relationship between religion and modern/postmodern cityscapes, ecology, and diasporas? What kinds of religious ideas inform utopian imaginations? This course addresses these questions with an emphasis on several world areas and cultures. It will focus on some classic essays in the anthropology of religion as well as ethnographic/historical studies of religion in culture and society. It engages with case-studies and films embracing Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, and other traditions.
ANT 128 A: Kinship & Social Organization: From Clans to Countries
Why can you only marry one person? Why can’t you marry your cousin in 1⁄2 of states? Why can’t you kill your sibling if they’ve committed a crime? Why do people donate money to strangers? Why do culturally-similar neighbors go to war? Why are each of these true in only a few societies? This course will address these, and other, questions about the way societies are organized around kinship and other social bonds. We will use evolutionary tools to understand both human universals and patterns of cultural variation regarding sexual relations, incest, marriage, family structure, inheritance, inequality, intergroup hostility, and cooperation.
ANT 160: Neandertals & Modern Human Origins
Who were Neandertals? When and where did they live? What were their lives like? Did they exchange genes and culture with the ancestors of present-day humans? This course deals with the most up to date answers to these and related questions, as well as how scientists go about trying to answer them.
