This course explores money as an ethnographic object.  It focuses on anthropological writing about the everyday uses of money from “exotic” fields to places much closer to “home,"  from colonial encounters to household budgeting and the world of finance, for example. Anthropology has long been interested in the diverse ways in which people attach meanings, desires, and value to the idea that is money.

A general survey of writings that have played a leading role in shaping the modern fields of cultural and social anthropology. Beginning with a discussion of the impact of Darwin and the discoveries at Brixham Cave on mid-nineteenth century anthropology, the course surveys the theories of the late-nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists. It then turns to the role played by Franz Boas and his students and others in the advent and later development of cultural anthropology in the U.S.

(Offered as ANTH 318 and ASLC 318 [C])  This course examines Chinese childrearing, focusing primarily on childrearing in mainland China. We will look at differences as well as similarities between childrearing in Chinese families of different socioeconomic status within China, as well as between childrearing in mainland China and in childrearing in Chinese and non-Chinese families worldwide.

In this course we will consider and examine the photograph as a specific type of social actor. We will explore the ways in which the photograph is a unique representational type, a potent tool for memory making, and a powerful medium to navigate, question and shape social constructs and assumptions. Additionally, we will investigate how the photograph has been deployed as evidence, from its earliest use in scientific projects to its current use in myriad industries and media platforms.

This class will examine how and why education differs in different countries and communities. Students will learn how to compare how and why various kinds of people experience and make decisions about education. We will look at various levels of education, including preschool, kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, and college.

Limited to 19 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Professor Fong. 

This course explores the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of anti-Muslim discrimination in the United State and Europe. What, in short, accounts for the anxious fear of Islam and the ascendance of “the Muslim” as the defining racial and religious “other” of our time? The course frames Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism, challenging the idea that Islamophobia is merely a problem of individual bias and that “knowing more” about Islam will necessarily lead to a decrease in anti-Muslim racism.

(Offered as ANTH 238 and SWAG 238) This course concerns the reproductive health experiences, including those focused on sexuality, birth, and motherhood, of women in the United States. It explores the relationship between these experiences and the fact of having a black female body (as was first constructed under slavery). It also explores the complex relationship between women’s reproductive experiences and their contemporary racial and socioeconomic locations in American society.

This course begins with an examination of the relationships between social justice, activism, and academic anthropology.  As a discipline, Anthropology once deprecated what was called “applied anthropology” as lesser than “pure” practice. However, over the past 50 years, anthropologists have challenged this hierarchy, and the course will consider why and how those at the forefront of effecting this change made it happen.

This course focuses on the theoretical foundations of archaeological research, the variety of methods available to analyze material culture, the interpretation of results, and ethical considerations of practicing archaeology in the United States and abroad.  Course provides students with a solid foundation for evaluating and contextualizing current methodological and theoretical trends within archaeology.  Case studies illustrate the diversity of archaeological thought, interdisciplinary approaches to studying material culture, and innovative directions in the field of anthropolog

This seminar course explores the cultural, social, and political relationships between humans and animals. Drawing from cross-cultural anthropological work, starting from histories of domestication, we will consider the participation of animals in different contemporary societies: as spirits, workers, food, commodities, symbols, domestic pets, unwanted pests, wildlife, friendly companions, and scientific objects.