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ANTH 1100 - Lost Worlds and Archaeology
An introduction to the archaeological record relating to the development of culture from its stone age origins through the development of village agriculture and the beginnings of urban life.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 1200 - Peoples of the World
A survey of the rich variety and range of non-Western peoples throughout the world, with emphasis on the role of culture in shaping human thought and behavior.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 1500 - Race, Biology, and Culture
This course is an introduction to the anthropological study of human biological variation in modern populations. We will examine from a biocultural perspective how human populations adapt to life in difficult environments (e.g., tropics, high altitude, arctic) and in so doing, we will explore the biological and social meanings of human racial variation.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area VII: Natural Science and Technology: Applications and Implications.
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ANTH 2100 - Introduction to Archaeology
The science of archaeology is explored in terms of the methods and concepts used to discover and interpret past human behavior. Select portions of the Old and New World prehistoric cultural sequences provide the frame of reference.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area V: Social and Behavioral Sciences.
When Offered: Fall, Spring
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ANTH 2400 - Principles of Cultural Anthropology
An introduction to the basic concepts, theoretical approaches, and methodological strategies employed in the study of traditional and contemporary sociocultural systems throughout the world. Attention given to research techniques and the insights derived from detailed case studies and cross-cultural comparisons.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area V: Social and Behavioral Sciences.
When Offered: Fall, Spring
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ANTH 2500 - Introduction to Biological Anthropology
A survey of physical anthropology; evolutionary theory; hominid and primate evolution; the living primates, human osteology, human genetics and population variation.
Credits: 4 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area VI: Natural Science with Laboratory.
When Offered: Fall, Spring
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ANTH 2510 - Forensic Anthropology
This course introduces the fundamentals of forensic anthropology, an applied field of anthropology involved in the recovery, identification, and assessment of human skeletal/dental remains in a medico-legal context. We survey the basics of identifying bones of the human skeleton, forensic science method and theory, and research methods.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area VII: Natural Science and Technology: Applications and Implications.
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ANTH 2600 - Sex, Gender, Culture
Sexual differences around the world are culturally elaborated into gender-specific behaviors, normed relations between gender-coded people and objects, and various ideologies supporting the differences. In this course, biological and cross-cultural data will be used to explore the foundation of this process and the social, cultural, and psychological consequences of gender coding on men and women in different cultural settings.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Satisfies General Education Area III: The United States: Cultures and Issues.
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ANTH 2800 - Language in a Global World
This introductory course in linguistic anthropology presents languages and speech practices around the world as cultural phenomena. The lecture component covers a sampling of topics and approaches to studying language as cultural practice, including cases from U.S. society and from diverse language communities around the world and considering contemporary issues including language rights, language shift, bilingual education, and language revitalization. The lab component allows students to develop an understanding of basic linguistic principles and apply linguistic and discourse analyses to diverse cross-cultural examples.
Credits: 4 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area V: Social and Behavioral Sciences.
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ANTH 3010 - Anthropology through Film
Anthropology through Film is designed to introduce students to the concepts, methods, and practices of cultural anthropology through the viewing and analysis of ethnographic films and the reading of select ethnographic writings. A principal course objective is to learn how to analyze what the filmmaker has done well and what is lacking in the ethnographer’s portrayal of other cultures. Consequently, more general issues of representing other cultures will be considered in relation to the themes of power, the legacy of colonialism, and the world economic system.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3030 - Historical Archaeology
Investigates the role of the material world in the colonial encounter and the development of capitalism. The course will integrate theoretical, methodological and substantive issues with an emphasis, though not exclusive focus, on North America. Prerequisite: ANTH 2100 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3060 - Archaeology of Civilization
The course discusses the forces leading to the rise of the state and the emergence of centers of civilization. It investigates state emergence cross-culturally, examining shared characteristics and innovative pathways, social accomplishments and social costs, New World and Old World, far-flung and more recent past.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3090 - Archaeology of Inequality and Resistance
The course examines the dynamics of historical and archaeologically known forms of control and domination based upon status, class, gender, and ethnicity. The course focuses on the social relation of oppressor and oppressed, the ideologies of control and the forms of social resistance.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3390 - Cultures of Latin America
This course offers an introduction to contemporary life in Latin America from an ethnographic perspective. Readings and class discussions will highlight the intersections of colonialism, nationalism and globalization among selected groups in different areas in the region. By locating contemporary societies within broader contexts this class aims to replace cultural stereotypes with anthropological analysis.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 3400 - Cultures of Asia
This course will provide an introduction to contemporary cultures and societies of Asia. Emphasis will be placed on topics such as education, family, workplaces, gender, popular culture, and identity. By locating contemporary institutions and idioms within a historical context, this class aims to replace cultural stereotypes with anthropological analysis.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 3410 - Global Africa Past and Present
This course offers an introduction to the study of contemporary life in sub-Saharan Africa. Students will engage with issues relating to colonialism, post-colonialism, and globalization as they explore several regions and ethnic groups in depth. A special emphasis will be placed on recognizing and dispelling long-held myths and negative stereotypes about Africa.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 3440 - The First Americans
Examines indigenous or native cultures of North America from the initial peopling of the continent by immigrants from Asia during the Terminal Pleistocene (Ice Ages) into the period of European exploration and colonization. Selected topics illustrating the ingenuity and diversity of human responses to both changing landscapes and social circumstances over time and in space will be presented.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations.
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ANTH 3450 - Topics in Anthropology
An intensive study of selected topics or emerging fields in anthropology. Topics will vary and be announced each semester. May be repeated for credit with different topics.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3470 - Ethnicity/Multiculturalism
A study of the diverse perspectives of the many different ethnic groups in the United States. In the course we will analyze the social tensions, group dynamics, and consequences resulting from the cultural and ethnic diversity existing here. Some of the discussion will focus on the medical, legal, social, and political institutions that exist in a multicultural environment.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area III: The United States: Cultures and Issues.
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ANTH 3480 - Gender and Plastic Bodies
In U.S. society we tend to assume that there are two sexes - male and female. Even if we have learned that gender roles can change, as in expecting men to be more nurturing while more and more women pursue careers for example, we tend to accept that this is simply social change based on natural sexes. In this course we will focus on the United States with some cross-cultural comparisons in order to question this assumption of “natural” sexes as we explore physiological variations as they are culturally interpreted and understood and cultural interventions of “natural” sex. Thus, based on work in our own society and cross-culturally, we will focus our attention at and beyond the limits of sex and gender, examining: (1) the ways in which human societies interpret physiological variation; (2) transgender experiences and categories as they vary cross-culturally; (3) and the role of technology in (re)shaping the “natural” sexes. Whether we are considering cyborg bodies, virtual bodies, tattooed and pierced bodies, or bodies surgically altered in a stunning variety of ways, we will be asking what is “natural” and “unnatural” about the assumed biological categories of male and female.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area III: The United States: Cultures and Issues.
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ANTH 3510 - Human Osteology
A study of the human skeleton. Emphasis will be on morphological and metrical variation, odontology, palaeopathology, and reconstruction of the individual and the population.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2500 or instructor approval.
Credits: 4 hours
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ANTH 3530 - Bioarchaeology
This course introduces students to the biocultural, interdisciplinary and integrative study of human remains recovered from archaeological contexts. Students will examine the reconstruction of skeletal populations for patterns of subsistence, stress, disease, paleodemography, biological relatedness, occupational indicators, trauma, and warfare. Students will learn how to recognize the manifestations of these patterns on human remains, and will be able to describe and critique the methods used by bioarchaeologists to gather and interpret information from human skeletal data.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: ANTH 2100 or ANTH 2500, or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course is approved as a writing-intensive course which satisfies the baccalaureate-level writing requirement of the student’s curriculum.
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ANTH 3560 - Food and Culture
Are we what we eat or how we eat? How do we determine what is food and is not food? This course will examine food cross-culturally and explore the different ways in which human beings produce, distribute, consume and think about food. Special consideration will be given to issues such as the origins of food surpluses and famines, the emergence of global food commodity chains, and the rise of the organic industry.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 3580 - The African Diaspora: Peoples and Cultures
The African Diaspora in the Americas, product of the transatlantic slave trade, has impacted every society in North America, the Caribbean, and Central and South America and has produced a diverse array of distinctive cultures and communities. And yet, the communities, cultures, and cultural influences of the African Diaspora are often neglected within the usual regional divisions of area studies courses, despite a solid tradition of anthropology dealing with the peoples and cultures of the African Diaspora. This body of research raises many issues at the cutting edge of anthropological thinking about the nature of cultural continuity and change, identity, consciousness and tradition, and the co-construction of race and nation, to list but a few. This course will introduce the work of pioneering anthropologists of the African Diaspora throughout the Americas, situating their work in the context of various intellectual and political currents of the 20th century, and tracing their legacy in contemporary anthropology and related fields, such as cultural studies and ethnohistory. Much of this recent work reconceptualizes an Atlantic World or “Black Atlantic” that is rich with contemporary interconnections and movements of people between points in the Americas, Europe, and Africa that complicate earlier notions of unidirectional influences from Africa to the New World. We will attempt to map a dialogue between anthropological work on African diasporic culture(s) (situated within the predominately white/Euro academy) and the political and social concerns and consciousness of Afro-American people themselves (not just U.S. African-American, but all of the Americas).
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course satisfies General Education Area IV: Other Cultures and Civilizations. Cross-listed with AFS 3580.
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ANTH 4040 - Early Technologies
This course deals with the analysis and interpretation of early technologies and technological organization and their relationship to social, political, and economic dimensions of cultural systems.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 4400 - Ethnography
Examines various methods, problems, and issues in ethnographic research and writing, as well as the interaction between ethnographic practice and the development of anthropological theory. This course is approved as a writing-intensive course which may fulfill the baccalaureate-level writing requirement of the student’s curriculum.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2400 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 4500 - Primate Behavior and Ecology
An advanced survey of the primates. Topics include: primate characteristics; taxonomy, constraints of body size on locomotion and diet; and primate social behavior in an ecological context. The behavioral ecology of individual species will be explored through readings, films, and when possible, direct behavior observation at a zoo.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2500 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 4510 - Paleopathology
This course examines disease processes in past human populations using an evolutionary and multidisciplinary perspective. Through studies of archaeological skeletal remains, we explore local and global patterns of disease and response to environmental stresses in ancient times, which are also relevant to today’s health concerns.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2500 (may be taken concurrently), or instructor approval. ANTH 3510 is also recommended.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes:
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ANTH 4750 - Language and Identity
This course explores the links between identity and language. Students will examine how different types of identity get mobilized by different ways of speaking and by judgments about the social value of different speech styles. A semester-long research project comprised of short field research assignments will allow students to apply linguistic anthropology methods to examine the speech differences that surround us.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: This course is approved as a writing-intensive course which satisfies the baccalaureate-level writing requirement of the student’s curriculum.
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ANTH 4800 - Garbage: Humans and their Refuge
What happens when you flush the toilet? Why does that question make Americans squeamish? This course examines the various ways that human societies have categorized polluting substances and the various technologies and symbolic practices they have used to place materials outside the boundaries of acceptable sociality.
Credits: 3 hours
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ANTH 4900 - Archaeological Field School
Archaeological investigation of specific problems relating to the prehistory or history of a particular area (e.g. southwest Michigan, Lower Mississippi Valley). Participants will receive instruction in collecting and evaluating background information, creating a research design and implementing archaeological field-work (i.e., logistics, site location survey, mapping, recovering objects from archaeological contexts), and processing and curating data for analysis and interpretation in the laboratory. May be repeated with permission of instructor, but does not count toward the anthropology major or minor twice.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100 or instructor approval.
Credits: 6 hours
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ANTH 4950 - Topics in Anthropology
The advanced study of selected topics or emerging fields in anthropology. Topics will vary and be announced each semester.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: Junior standing and 12 hours of anthropology, or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: May be repeated for credit with different topics.
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ANTH 4970 - Directed Experiential Learning
Students may contact a faculty member to supervise an individually-designed experiential learning project through field research, laboratory research, an internship, or applied anthropology service in the community. The purpose of the course is to allow students to explore real-world applications of anthropology.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: Junior standing and instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Restrictions: Restricted to majors in Anthropology.
Notes: May be repeated for credit.
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ANTH 4980 - Independent Readings in Anthropology
Students may contact a faculty member to undertake independent readings on a specific topic of interest. The student should have some familiarity with the topic in advance. The purpose of the course is to allow the student to gain a greater depth of knowledge in a topic not offered in a formal course.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing.
Credits: 1 to 3 hours
Restrictions: Restricted to majors or minors in Anthropology.
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ANTH 4990 - Independent Research in Anthropology
Students may contact a faculty member to conduct research under the guidance of the faculty member. Before the initiation of the research a literature search and a written proposal must be prepared. At the conclusion of the research project, a written report will be submitted to the guiding faculty member.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing.
Credits: 1 to 3 hours
Restrictions: Restricted to majors or minors in Anthropology
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ANTH 5000 - Topics in Archaeology
A consideration of the prehistory of a particular geographic area (e.g. the southwestern United States, the Circumpolar) or of selected theoretical problems (e.g. artifact typology, prehistoric ecology). The topic to be studied will be announced each semester.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including either (ANTH 1100 or ANTH 2100) or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: May be repeated for credit under different topics. Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5010 - The Rise of Civilization
The archaeological sequence in one or more of the nuclear centers of prehistoric civilization will be considered in some detail. The course may focus intensively upon one area (e.g. the Near East or Meso-America), or it may give equal emphasis to two or more areas in a comparative framework.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including either (ANTH 1110 or ANTH 2100) or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5030 - Anthropology in the Community
Students in the course apply anthropological methods and understandings to a community based research and/or service project. The focus of the class rotates among different sites and topics depending upon the semester it is offered. The experiential learning component of this course facilitates student understandings about the relevance of anthropology to problems and projects outside of the university setting and strengthens community connections with the university.
Credits: 4 hours
Notes: May be repeated for credit. Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5040 - Archaeological Research Methods
An in-depth exploration of archaeological research methods, emphasizing how archaeologists analyze and interpret the material record. Students learn the complexity of archaeological methods through a practice oriented approach to topics such as research design, sampling, typology, classification, database management, lithic, ceramic, faunal and floral analytical techniques, archaeological illustrations, writing, curation, and collections management.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5060 - The Archaeology of Gender
Gender constructs, a critical organizing principle for human interaction, are becoming an important focus for archaeological investigation. This course will explore the multiple ways archaeologists have attempted to use gender relations as a means to gain insights into individual societies. We will follow gender as an archaeological concept historically and conceptually. Participants will explore the attempts and successes of a gendered understanding of the archaeological record.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including ANTH 2100.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5090 - Cultural Resource Management Archaeology
Cultural Resource Management is an important aspect of modern American archaeology; it is in this context that most sites are excavated, archaeological data is collected, and where most archaeologists work. The goal of this course is to consider larger issues of Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource Management in archaeology by focusing on topics including the history, politics, and legal structure of preservation, the structure and practical realities of the CRM industry, looting, public presentation and outreach, global heritage, and heritage tourism.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5220 - Poverty, Power, and Privilege
This course critically explores anthropological approaches to understanding poverty as well as racial, class, and sexual inequalities. The course emphasizes inequalities within the contemporary United States, but situates those dynamics within an analysis of global processes and conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on analyzing ways that everyday practices, neoliberal social policies, economic restructuring, resistance efforts, and institutional practices play in producing, challenging, and maintaining structural violence. Feminist, post-structuralist, Marxist, cultural studies, and hegemony studies approaches are covered. Both ethnographic case studies and theoretical analysis are explored to inform collaborative required applied community based anthropological research on power, race, and class relations within the Kalamazoo region.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including either (ANTH 1200 or ANTH 2400).
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5250 - Spirits and Medicine
This course explores how healing is linked to belief and in turn how beliefs about well-being, illness, and treatment are culturally prefigured. Students will examine healing practices in the United States and cross-culturally as they related to belief and consciousness, including western medicine and alternatives, spirit possession and trance, and methods of divination.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior status and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including ANTH 2400.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5300 - Research Methods
An in depth consideration of the research methods and tools of the modern anthropologist. An emphasis on methods and techniques of data collection, statistical analysis, and graphic presentation of a wide variety of anthropological data.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5330 - Museums and Material Culture
This course comprises: a critical consideration of museum practices, including processes of collection, archives, and exhibition; and critical approaches to material culture more broadly. It is also meant to be an exploratory course, dependent on full engagement between participants – instructor as well as students. We will be actively engaged in a process of discovery in terms of how to understand objects in cultural and historical context, how to critically interrogate a variety of anthropological approaches to objects over time, and how to understand anthropology’s responsibility to the public through museum practices.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: ANTH 2100
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5400 - Ethnographic Research Methods
An exploration of the complexity of ethnographic research methods through a practice oriented approach to training in ethnographic approaches. Students learn a range of qualitative research methods as well as the political, ethical, methodological, and theoretical dilemmas of anthropological fieldwork and writing through supervised fieldwork projects as well as classroom assignments.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5450 - Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology
An intensive study of the cultures of an area of the world or selected problems. Topics will be announced each semester.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including ANTH 2400 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: May be repeated for credit. Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5500 - Human Evolution
This course is designed to provide students with an intensive examination of the human fossil record from the initial divergence of the hominid lineage to the origin of modern homo sapiens . Emphasized in this course will be paleontological theory, issues relating to species definition and recognition, functional anatomical complexes, adaptive processes, and human morphological variation.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisite: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including ANTH 2500.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5550 - Topics in Biological Anthropology
A consideration of the biological relationships of specific population groups or general problems in human biology (e.g. human genetics, human growth and constitution, palaeopathology, dental anthropology). Topic will be announced each semester.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of course work in anthropology, including ANTH 2500 or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: May be repeated for credit. Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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ANTH 5900 - Anthropology as a Profession
The course provides a survival guide for the world of professional anthropology. Students will develop the core skills needed to work in academia or applied fields. These skills include creating and maintaining a CV and resume; grant-writing; developing research designs; literature reviews; thesis research; writing proposals; oral and written presentations of research; publication of books; articles and reports; negotiating with ethics boards and other bureaucracies; teaching pedagogy; and course development. The goal of this course is to prepare students to use their anthropological training in whatever career trajectory they hope to pursue; university settings or applied fields such as museums, Cultural Resource Management firms, forensics laboratories, non-profit organizations, etc.
Prerequisites & Corequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing and 12 hours of coursework in Anthropology or instructor approval.
Credits: 3 hours
Notes: Open to upperclass and graduate students.
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