A year-long course that introduces the basics of Modern Standard Arabic, this course concentrates on all four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Beginning with the study of Arabic script and sound, students will complete the Georgetown text Alif Baa and finish Chapter 15 in Al Kitaab Book I by the end of the academic year. Students will acquire vocabulary and usage for everyday interactions as well as skills that will allow them to read and analyze a range of texts.

A year-long course that introduces the basics of Modern Standard Arabic, this course concentrates on all four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Beginning with the study of Arabic script and sound, students will complete the Georgetown text Alif Baa and finish Chapter 15 in Al Kitaab Book I by the end of the academic year. Students will acquire vocabulary and usage for everyday interactions as well as skills that will allow them to read and analyze a range of texts.

This is a full-year course.

By permission of the department, for junior and senior majors. 2 to 4 credits.

Topics course. Anthropology has a long history of studying drug use, from mind-altering substances employed in healing rituals to the global activities of the pharmaceutical industry. The seminar will sample such issues as: New Age spiritual engagement with shamanic healers, the cultures of addiction, professional guinea pigs in clinical trials, orphan drugs and the politics of global health, nuero-enhancing drugs in the academy and the drug management of normal human experiences.

Topics course. This course examines the universal and science based frameworks in which notions of risk are identified. From a cross-cultural perspective, we will consider how social and cultural forces also drive identification of risk and anticipation of danger. Cases from public health, medicine, environmental and development studies will be used to examine the contingency of risk theory in practice.

What can anthropologists teach us about religion as a social phenomenon? This course traces significant anthropological approaches to the study of religion, asking what these approaches contribute to our understanding of religion in the contemporary world. Topics include: religious experience and rationality, myth, ritual, and magic, rites of passage, function and meaning, power and alienation, religion and politics. Readings are drawn from important texts in the history of anthropology and from contemporary ethnographies of religion.

This course introduces students to the culture, politics and everyday life of South Asia. Topics covered will include religion, community, nation, caste, gender and development, as well as some of the key conceptual problems in the study of South Asia, such as the colonial construction of social scientific knowledge, and debates over "tradition" and "modernity." In this way, we will address both the varieties in lived experience in the subcontinent, and the key scholarly, popular and political debates that have constituted the terms through which we understand South Asian culture.

Archaeology and ethnography are combined to survey the history and cultures of indigenous South America, from the earliest settlements to contemporary communities. Topics include: early migration, cultural classifications, pre-Hispanic socio-political patterns, native cosmologies and ecological adaptations, challenges to cultural survival and indigenous mobilizations.

This course looks at peoples and cultures of Africa with a focus on population, health, and environmental issues on the African continent. The course discusses the origin and growth of human populations, distribution and spread of language and ethnic groups, the variety in food production systems (foraging, fishing, pastoralism, agriculture, industrialism), demographic, health, environmental consequences of slavery, colonialism, and economic globalization, and contemporary problems of drought, famine, and AIDS in Africa. Enrollment limited to 30.