Staff

Department Head: M. Calkowski, Ph.D.

Associate Professors: M. Calkowski, Ph.D.; C. D. Londono-Sulkin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professors: S. Kuehling, Ph.D; G. Lankauskas, Ph.D.; T. Sperlich, Ph.D.

 

Department Description

The Department of Anthropology offers a number of research possibilities within socio-cultural anthropology and the anthropology of language. The research interests of our faculty literally cover the globe in our attempts to understand cultural variation and change. Particular interests include symbolic and interpretive theory, personhood and morality, religion and ritual, material culture and art, nationalism, and ethnographies of Latin America, the Himalayas, Polynesia, and post-socialist Europe.

The Master's program is available on a special case basis.

Course Descriptions

ANTH 800 Anthropology Seminar (3)
A seminar devoted to the study of special topics and reports of research projects.
Prerequisite: Permission of the department head

ANTH 806 Advanced Anthropology of Art (3)
A cross-cultural and intercultural exploration of aesthetics. This course compares the role of art in our own society to aesthetic expression in other societies. It will also explore connections between anthropology and modern art movements. Various aesthetic forms may be addressed, including, visual and performing arts as well as architecture.

ANTH 808 Advanced Symbolic Anthropology (3)
Advanced study in theories of symbolism and methods of interpretation in anthropology, including debates over language and culture, rationality and relativism, structuralism, metaphor theory, ideology and pragmatism.

ANTH 809 The Anthropology of Selfhood and Morality (3)
This course examines the history, the theories, the debates and the ethnographic sources of the anthropological study of selfhood and morality, with a strong focus on issues of agency, intentionality and sociality. Course work will involve analyses of theoretical writings, ethnographic accounts, films, and pertinent works of literature.

ANTH 810 Advanced Race, Ethnicity and Nation (3)
This course explores notions of race, ethnicity and nation as modern constructions of social difference and identity. It critically examines social processes that naturalize and politicize issues of culture and group membership in nation states and discusses how social scientific theories have been involved in these developments.

ANTH 839 Key Debates in the Anthropology of Amazonia (3)
This course examines key debates in the anthropological study of indigenous Amazonian peoples. It focuses on fertile debates concerning human ecology, social organization and historical population processes in Amazonia, and native understandings of sociality, cosmology, selfhood, morality and emotions. The course also addresses issues in political and economic anthropology.

ANTH 853 Advanced Ethnographic Research (3)
This course explores the various ways that socio-cultural anthropologists conduct ethnographic fieldwork, and the methodological, epistemological and ethical issues that they face in their research.

ANTH 890AA-ZZ Directed Readings (Variable credit 1-3)
Directed readings on selected topics.
Prerequisite: Permission of the department head

ANTH 901 Research (Variable credit 1-15)
Thesis research