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Department of Anthropology
Professor: Kohl (Chair)
Associate Professor: Karakasidou
Assistant Professor: Van Arsdale
Lecturer: TBA
Visiting Lecturer: TBA
The study of anthropology provides a broad perspective on human cultural and biological variation across time and space. This includes a natural historical perspective on the history of humanity that documents the evolution and contemporary biological diversity of Homo sapiens from its origins in Africa to its current position as the dominant species on earth. It also traces the cultural and technological changes that have accompanied human development for millennia through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages to the emergence of early complex civilizations in both the Old and New Worlds. Anthropologists study cultures throughout the world at various levels of cultural and technological development from mobile hunting and foraging bands to highly stratified agrarian societies and contemporary ethnically diverse nation states. Western and non-western cultures are appreciated in terms of their own values and unique historical trajectories. The perspective of anthropology is inherently multicultural and multidisciplinary, and, as such, students are ‘led out’ ( educo ) of their own personal backgrounds to appreciate the incredible cultural diversity of humanity, receiving an exceptionally broad liberal arts educa tion.
Goals for the Major
- An understanding of cultural diversity throughout the world that evaluates cultures at different levels of economic and social development on their own terms
- A familiarity with the vast ways in which human cultures vary in their social institutions and practices from small bands of egalitarian hunter-foragers to sharply stratified states
- An understanding of how diverse cultures have traditionally adapted to and interacted with their environment and how today they are responding to and confronting the challenges of globalization
- An awareness of how humans have evolved as a species and how and why they exhibit patterned physical variation today, including a critical social and biological understanding of ‘racial’ diversity
- A familiarity with basic features of world prehistory and human cultural evolution from the Old Stone Age to the emergence of early civilizations
- Critical knowledge of methods used in anthropological field research, including the excavation of paleo- anthropological and archaeological sites and the construction of ethnographies based upon personal interaction with local cultures
- An appreciation for the different theoretical approaches used to understand human variation in its myriad of forms
ANTH 104 Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology Karakasidou A comparative approach to the concept of culture and an analysis of how culture structures the worlds we live in. The course examines human societies from their tribal beginnings to the postindustrial age. We will consider the development of various types of social organization and their significance based on family and kinship, economics, politics, and religion. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 110 The Anthropology of Food Van Arsdale This course will provide an introduction to the discipline of anthropology through the exploration of food. What we eat and how we eat reveals a lot about our evolutionary origins and the structures that support social institutions. This course will explore both the history of human cuisine and the how contemporary diets informs areas such as gender, power, labor and health. The course will be structured around a series of “meals” and will include an ethnographic project, archival research into prehistoric food culture, and a computer based exploration of your diet at Wellesley. As such, the course offers not just an introduction to anthropology through food, but also an introduction to Wellesley through food. Prerequisite: None. Open only to first-year students. Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Fall Unit: 1.
ANTH 203 Indigenous People, Global Development, and Human Rights
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. The course focuses on the processes and consequences of the encroachment of Western societies on indigenous peoples. We will examine issues raised by colonial enterprises that continue to be crucial to the current situations of indigenous societies vis-à-vis nation-states: political power, economic development, cultural difference, gender relations, health, education and religion. We will study ethnographic cases drawn from different parts of the world and analyze these topics from a historical and comparative perspective. Special attention will be given to indigenous peoples and ongoing struggles in Latin America. Key to this course will be issues of indigenous autonomy, development, and rights within human rights movements, international law, and global politics.
Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 204 Physical Anthropology Van Arsdale This course will examine the evolutionary foundations of human variability. This theme is approached broadly from the perspectives of anatomy, paleontology, genetics, primatology, and ecology. For this purpose, the course will address the principles of human evolution, fossil evidence, behavior, and morphological characteristics of human and non-human primates. Explanation of the interrelationship between biological and sociobehavioral aspects of human evolution, such as the changing social role of sex, are discussed. In addition, human inter-population differences and environmental factors that account for these differences will be evaluated.
Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 206 Archaeology Kohl A survey of the development of archaeology. The methods and techniques of archaeology are presented through an analysis of excavations and prehistoric remains. Materials studied range from early hominid sites in Africa to the Bronze Age civilizations of the Old World and the Aztec and Inca empires of the New World. Students are introduced to techniques for reconstructing the past from material remains. The course includes a field trip to a neighboring archaeological site. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Fall Unit: 1.
ANTH 207 Hominid Evolution Van Arsdale NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. The hominid fossil record provides direct evidence for the evolution of humans and our ancestors through the past 5-7 million years. This will provide an overview of human evolutionary history from the time of our last common ancestor with the living great apes up through the emergence of “modern” humans. Emphasis is placed on evolutionary mechanisms, and context is provided through an understanding of the pre- human primates. The human story begins with origins and the appearance of unique human features such as bipedality, the loss of cutting canines, the appearance of continual sexual receptivity, births requiring midwifery, and the development of complex social interactions. An early adaptive shift sets the stage for the subsequent evolution of intelligence, technology, and the changes in physical form that are the consequences of the unique feedback system involving cultural and biological change.
Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 209 Forensic Anthropology Van Arsdale The identification of human remains for criminological and political purposes is widespread. This course explores issues in the identification and interpretation of human bones including methods for determining sex, age, stature, and ancestry as well as for identifying pathologies and anomalies. The course will pay particular attention to those anatomical elements, both soft tissue and bones, that aid in the reconstruction of individuals and their lifestyles. In addition, the course explores search and recovery techniques, crime scene analysis, the use of DNA in solving crimes, and the role of forensic anthropology in the investigation of mass fatalities from both accidents and human rights violations. It also addresses ballistics and the use of photography in forensic investigation. The course will include a weekly lab component focused on human osteology and skeletal analysis. Prerequisite: None
and nationalism, racialization and racism, state governmentality, economic restructuring, transnationalism and other social processes. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 223 Contemporary Chinese Society
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course draws from anthropological and cultural-historical frameworks to explore the contemporary terrain of China in relation to an emergent “New World (Dis)Order.” While introducing students to key concepts and major historical developments in twentieth-century China, the course will focus largely on ethnographic studies of social change and everyday life betwixt and between the Mao (1949–1978) and Post-Mao (1978–present) eras. Topics examined include nation-building, Chinese modernities, capitalist development, gendered desires, class inequalities, religious revivalism and cosmopolitan identities. Students will be asked to critically and creatively think about change and continuity in contemporary China not only in terms of the organization of Chinese political institutions, but also in relation to the role of Chinese diasporic populations and other transnational and globalizing forces in producing spatial-temporal imaginaries.
Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 224 Ancient China: From the Neolithic to Imperial Unification
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course explores the development of social, economic, political and cultural systems in ancient China, from the Neolithic period through the Han dynasty. Drawing on archaeological data and historical texts, we will examine the emergence of state-level polities and their subsequent unification under imperial authority. Special attention will be devoted to political economy, social organization, ritual exchange, and notions of power and ruler-ship expressed in philosophical thought. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 232 Anthropology of the Media
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course introduces students to key analytic frameworks through which media and the mediation of culture have been examined. Using an anthropological approach, students will explore how media as representation and as cultural practice have been fundamental to the (trans)formation of modern sensibilities and social relations. We will examine various technologies of mediation—from the Maussian body as “Man’s first technical instrument” to print capitalism, radio and cassette cultures, cinematic and televisual publics, war journalism, the digital revolution and the political milieu of spin and public relations. Themes in this course include
- media in the transformation of the senses, 2) media in the production of cultural subjectivities and publics, and
- the social worlds and cultural logics of media institutions and sites of production. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 233 Language and Culture
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. An introduction to linguistic anthropology. We will explore the interaction of language and culture, learning how anthropology adds to our understandings of language, and how linguistic tools and concepts likewise help us understand culture. Topics to be examined include the nature, origin, and history of language; folk understandings of language; orality vs. literacy; how culture mediates communication, cognition, and meaning; the ethnography of speaking; language’s mediation of gender and ethnic/racial/national identity; the politics of bilingualism; and the power of language. Case studies will deal with languages from around the world, with emphasis on the Americas. Assignments (including basic fieldwork) will offer training in linguistic- anthropological methodologies. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 234/ES 234 Cultural Ecology
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course explores theoretical and methodological issues in the study of human culture and social activity in relation to ecological systems and the environment. Readings include both classic studies as well as contemporary research, with particular emphasis placed on the various dimensions and scales of social organization and activity, and on the role of cultural, religious, and political institutions in shaping
ecological relationships as well as economic behavior. Students may register for either ANTH 234 or ES 234 and credit will be granted accordingly. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 238 The Vulnerable Body: Anthropological Understandings
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course begins with the assumption that the human body is a unit upon which collective categories are engraved. These categories can vary from social values, to religious beliefs, to feelings of national belonging, to standards of sexuality and beauty. Readings in this course will concentrate around the classic and recent attempts in the social and historical sciences to develop ways of understanding this phenomenon of “embodiment.” We will begin with an overview of what is considered to be the “construction” of the human body in various societies and investigate how the body has been observed, experienced, classified, modified, and sacralized in different social formations. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 242 “Civilization” and “Barbarism” during the Bronze Age, 3500–2000 B.C.E. Kohl A review of the earliest emergence of state-stratified societies in the Old World (Pharaonic Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Shang China) and their integration through trade, conflict, migrations, and diffusions of technologies, particularly metalworking, with neighboring illiterate societies on their peripheries. The course concludes with a comparison with core-periphery relations in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Peru.
Prerequisite: None Distribution: Historical Studies or Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 247 Societies and Cultures of Eurasia Kohl A survey of the non-Russian, largely non-European peoples of the former Soviet Union (particularly ethnic groups in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Siberia). The course will review how traditional cultures in these areas changed during the years of Soviet rule and will examine the problems they face today with newly gained independence or greatly increased autonomy. Nationality policies of the former Soviet Union will be discussed with a particular emphasis on how they affect the current territorial disputes and conflicts among different ethnic groups (e.g., the undeclared war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh).
Prerequisite: One unit in anthropology, economics, history, political science, or sociology. Distribution: Historical Studies or Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 250 Research or Individual Study Prerequisite: 104 and permission of the instructor. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 250H Research or Individual Study Prerequisite: 104 and permission of the instructor. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 0.
ANTH 251 Cultures of Cancer
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course critically examines cancer as a pervasive disease and a metaphor of global modern cultures. Students will be exposed to the ways cancer is perceived as a somatic and social standard within locally constructed cognitive frameworks. They will investigate the scientific and emotional responses to the disease and the ways cancer challenges our faith and spirituality, our ways of life, notions of pollution and cleanliness and our healing strategies. This approach to cancer is comparative and interdisciplinary and focuses on how specialists in different societies have described the disease, how its victims in different cultures have narrated their experiences, how causality has been perceived, and what interventions (sacred or secular) have been undertaken as therapy and prevention. Prerequisites: None Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis
knowledge in a fieldwork project of their own design. Prerequisite: 301 or two 200-level units in anthropology, economics, history, political science, or sociology, or permission of the instructor. Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 301 History and Theory in Anthropology Karakasidou This course introduces students to contemporary anthropology by tracing its historical development and its specific application in ethnographic writing. It examines the social context in which each selected model or “paradigm” took hold and the extent of cognitive sharing, by either intellectual borrowing or breakthrough. The development of contemporary theory will be examined both as internal to the discipline and as a response to changing intellectual climates and social milieu. The course will focus on each theory in action, as the theoretical principles and methods apply to ethnographic case studies. Prerequisite: Two 200-level units in anthropology, economics, history, political science, or sociology, or permission of the instructor. Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Fall Unit: 1.
ANTH 305 Ethnographic Film
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This seminar explores ethnographic film as a genre for representing “reality,” anthropological knowledge and cultural lives. We will examine how ethnographic film emerged in a particular intellectual and political economic context as well as how subsequent conceptual and formal innovations have shaped the genre. We will also consider social responses to ethnographic film in terms of 1) the contexts for producing and circulating these works, 2) the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation and 3) the development of indigenous media and other practices in conversation with ethnographic film. Throughout the course, we will situate ethnographic film within the larger project for representing “culture,” addressing the status of ethnographic film in relation to other documentary practices including written ethnography, museum exhibitions and documentary film. Prerequisite: 301 or two 200-level units in anthropology, cinema and media studies, economics, history, political science, or sociology or permission of the instructor. Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 314 Human Biology and Society Van Arsdale NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This seminar will provide an anthropological perspective on the intersection between human biology and society in three related topics. The first unit will focus on human genetic diversity and the increasing use of genetic information in society. Included in this unit will be discussions of genetic ancestry testing and the construction of identity. The second unit will examine in more detail the genetic basis of phenotypic traits and disease, exploring what our genes can reveal about us while also considering the problems of biological determinism. The final unit will extend the understanding of human biological variation by looking at the relationship between humans and our environment, how our environment changed throughout prehistory and contemporary times, and what role the environment plays in shaping human variation.
Prerequisite: ANTH 204, ANTH 214, or permission of the instructor Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 319 Nationalism, Politics, and the Use of the Remote Past Kohl This seminar critically examines the use of prehistory and antiquity for the construction of accounts of national origins, historical claims to specific territories, or the biased assessment of specific peoples. The course begins with an examination of the phenomenon of nationalism and the historically recent emergence of contemporary nation-states. It then proceeds comparatively, selectively examining politically motivated appropriations of the remote past that either were popular earlier in this century or have ongoing relevance for some of the ethnic conflicts raging throughout the world today. The course will attempt to develop criteria for distinguishing credible and acceptable reconstructions of the past from those that are unbelievable and/or dangerous.
Prerequisite: One 200-level unit in anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, or permission of the instructor. Distribution: Historical Studies or Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: Fall Unit: 1.
ANTH 344 The Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives
NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10. This course discusses traditional subsistence economies (e.g., irrigation agriculture, pastoral nomadism) and tribal forms of social organization and analyzes their transform with the emergence of
independent territorial nation-states and the advent of oil wealth during the twentieth century. The course considers different sects and expressions of Islam in specific countries and discusses kinship structures and family relationships, including the varying roles of women in specific societies. Contemporary political and economic issues and conflicts in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine will be studied from an anthropologically-informed perspective of cultural continuity and change and the continuous refashioning of religious, ethnic, and national identities over time. Prerequisite: Normally open to students who have taken a grade II unit in anthropology and/or a grade II unit in a relevant area/subject matter. Not open to students who have taken [ANTH 244]. Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis Semester: N/O Unit: 1.
ANTH 350 Research or Individual Study
Prerequisite: Open by permission of the instructor to juniors and seniors. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 350H Research or Individual Study Prerequisite: Open by permission of the instructor to juniors and seniors. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 0.
ANTH 360 Senior Thesis Research Prerequisite: By permission of department. See Academic Distinctions. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.
ANTH 370 Senior Thesis
Prerequisite: 360 and permission of department. Distribution: None Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.
Related Courses
For Credit Toward the Major
AFR 235 Societies and Cultures of Africa
AFR 297 Medical Anthropology: Comparative Healing Systems
LING 114 Introduction to Linguistics
MIT 3.985 Archaeological Sciences
PEAC 259 Peace and Conflict Resolution
WGST 205 Love and Intimacy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
WGST 209 Framing the Body through Feminist Theory
Attention Called
AFR 226 Environmental Justice, Race, and Sustainable Development
ARTH 236 Art, Architecture, and Culture in the Ancient Americas
Requirements for the Major
For students entering in the fall of 2007 and later, a major in anthropology consists of a minimum of nine units (which may include courses from MIT’s anthropology offerings), of which 104, either 204 or 206, 300 and 301 are required. For students who entered prior to fall of 2007, a major in anthropology consists of a minimum of eight units (which may include courses from MIT’s anthropology offerings), of which 104, 300 and 301 are required. Students may also elect other relevant statistics or calculus courses, depending on the particular need and interest of the student. Majors are encouraged to take other courses that have a cultural or multicultural focus.
Requirements for the Minor
A minor in anthropology consists of five units: 104, two 200-level courses, and two 300-level courses. Students
