Featured Spring 2023 Courses

We deny the fact of death by trying to forget about it. “The natural processes of corruption and decay have become as disgusting as the natural processes of birth and copulation were a century ago,” argues Geoffrey Gorer. In those moments when we actually contemplate it, death generally invokes dread...

Highlights Spend your Maymester in Indonesia studying the incredible cultural diversity of a country that consists of more than 16,000 islands! Learn from the Mentawai people in Sumatra and about Hindu-Buddhism and religious politics in Bali. Marvel at vibrant and global urban centers in a predominantly Muslim country. This program...

Highlights Study in a spectacular, peaceful African country famous for being the site of the largest wildlife migration on earth and home to Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa (19,000 feet). Experience one of the most beautiful and biologically-important regions of the world to learn more about indigenous peoples and...

Highlights Visit archaeological sites including the ancient mountaintop city of Monte Albán, the tombs of Mitla, the hilltop fortress at Yagul, and the Queen’s palace of Teposcolula. Experience an ongoing archaeological field project and get to see the excavations of a 1200-year old city and hear about the research from...

In this class, we study disasters from a broad anthropological perspective questions the false dichotomy between nature and society, and has put front and center the role of human agency in the creation of disasters. This perspective argues that disasters occur within the context of archaeologically/historically created patterns of vulnerability...

What does it mean to think anthropologically? This course will provide an overview of the history and foundations of anthropological thought, with a special focus on the key method of anthropology: ethnography. Drawing on both classical and contemporary anthropological texts from a broad range of international settings, we will analyze...

Where did human beings come from? How did we come to inhabit the world? Why don’t we eat wild foods anymore? How did complex urban societies rise and fall? All this and more….. Professor Douglas Bamforth See the University Catalog for specifics, recommendations, and prerequisites.

Archaeozoology will give students practical and analytical skills in the identification and analysis of animal bones from archaeological sites. Students in the course will engage with current methodological and theoretical issues in the discipline, and develop a basic familiarity with the vertebrate skeleton using museum specimens, reference collections, and archaeological...