Spring 2017

Undergraduate Courses (Meet Major Area Requirements)

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ANTH 1010 Introduction to Anthropology [Armengol]

MoWe 11:00AM - 11:50AM | This course introduces students to the methods, perspectives, and motivations used by anthropologists to study the range and significance of human existence. Students are challenged to follow the way anthropologists approach a research topic, design a question, collect data, and ultimately discuss results via publication. The course surveys the four sub-fields of anthropology (linguistic anthropology, socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and archaeology) through a combination of texts, multimedia, and guest lectures. The goal of this course is to equip students with an analytical framework which allows the objective appreciation of non-Western languages, social structures, histories and belief systems. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 1050 Anthropology of Globalization [Bashkow]

MoWe 3:30PM - 4:20PM | The Anthropology of Globalization introduces the social and cultural aspects of global integration. While human communities have always been connected to one another in important ways, recent history has seen a quickening of transportation and communication, increasing the circulation of people, objects, and ideas across significant distances. In this course, we will explore the human side of this circulation: how does it shape people's experiences, and how is it shaped in turn by people's understandings of what is possible, desirable, or inevitable. We will read ethnographic studies of people who are engaged in or responding to global forces and processes. How are global connections contributing to the complexity and interdependence of diverse human cultures? What new forms of social, political, economic, and religious networks are emerging? What kinds of disconnection, exclusion, and inequality? Topics addressed in the course will include the early history of global commodities in imperialism, the cultural specificity of economic markets and trade, the cultural roles of big business and NGOs, the experience of workers in global supply chains, the tension between the local and the cosmopolitan in emerging forms of consumer culture and middle class affluence, illegal and informal economies, neoliberalism and financialization, bor migration, totourism and voluntourism, approaches to lessening poverty and marketing to the "bottom of the pyramid," and the global circulation of music, arts, and performed cultural heritage. We will consider how ideas about globalization themselves circulate and how they are diversely framed from different political, economic, and cultural viewpoints. How are ideas of the "global" and "globalization" used to describe the world as well as to change it? How do global processes look when viewed from above and when viewed from below? (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2210 Marriage and the Family [TBA]

MoWeFr 9:00AM - 9:50AM | This course compares domestic groups in Western and non-Western societies. Considers the kinds of sexual unions legitimized in different cultures, patterns of childrearing, causes and effects of divorce, and the changing relations between the family and society. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2270 Race, Gender, and Medical Science [Fraser]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:20PM | Explores the social and cultural dimensions of biomedical practice and experience in the United States. Focuses on practitioner and patient, asking about the ways in which race, gender, and socio-economic status contour professional identity and socialization, how such factors influence the experience, and course of, illness, and how they have shaped the structures and institutions of biomedicine over time. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2280 Medical Anthropology [Douglass]

TuTh 4:00PM - 5:15PM | Medical Anthropology is a growing and important new subfield within general anthropology. Medical Anthropology compares different cultures' ideas about illness and curing. Although disease is a concept referring to a pathological condition of the body in which functioning is disturbed, illness is a cultural concept: a condition marked by deviation from what is considered a normal, healthy state. Treatment of illness in Western industrial societies focuses on curing specific diseased organs or controlling a specific virus. In many so-called "traditional" societies greater emphasis is placed on the social and psychological dimensions of illness. In this course we will learn that different cultures, even in the United States (i.e., Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, African American, etc.), have different ways to talk about illness, and that the American medical community is at times as "culture bound" as anywhere. “Science" does not stand outside culture. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2325 Anthropology of God [Mentore]

TuTh 3:00PM - 4:20PM | How does the study of society and culture create an intellectual space for any explanation and experience of the Divine? How does anthropology deal specifically with explaining (rather than the explaining away) knowledge and understanding about divinity? Is God an American? If God has a gender and race, what are they? These and many other pertinent questions will be engaged and tackled in this cross-cultural study of the divine. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2360 Don Juan and Castaneda [Wagner]

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM | Castaneda and Don Juan: "Cracking the Castaneda Code," a hard "second look" at the supposedly "subjective" vistas of the Meso-American power-quest. Objectivity comes to the rescue of what was once thought to be America's worse drug scandal. Nine books; three papers, no final exam. Class attendance mandatory. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2365 Anthropology of Art [Douglass]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM | The course will emphasize art in small-scale (contemporary) societies (sometimes called ethnic art or “primitive art”). It will include a survey of aesthetic productions of major areas throughout the world (Australia, Africa, Oceania, Native America, Meso-America). We will also read about and discuss such issues as art (and architecture) and cultural identity, tourist arts, anonymity, authenticity, the question of universal aesthetic cannons, exhibiting cultures, the difference between the bellas artes and arte popular, and the impact of globalization on these arts. The class will visit the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, the Inuit Study Gallery, the Fralin Museum storage facility on Millmont, and the Object Study Gallery at the UVA Art Museum. (The student should also try and travel to Washington D.C. to visit the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African Art [extra credit possible]. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2430 Language of the World [Dobrin]

MoWe 10:00AM - 10:50AM | This course introduces students to the diversity of human language and the principles of linguistic classification. How many languages are spoken in the world, and how are they related? What features do all languages share, and in what ways may they differ? In surveying the world's languages, we will focus on the structure and social situation of a set of representative languages for each geographic region covered. We will also discuss the global trend of shift from the use of minority languages to large languages of wider communication, and what this means for the future of human diversity. Course work includes problem sets, essays, and a final paper on the linguistic features and social situation of a minor language. Prerequisites: one year of a foreign language or permission of instructor. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2589 Language in Human Evolution [Sicoli]

MoWeFr 9:00AM - 9:50AM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2589-01 Archaeology: Slavery and Indenture [Haines]

MoWeFr 12:00PM - 12:50PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2589-02 Environmental Archaeology [Edwards]

MoWeFr 10:00AM - 10:50AM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2620 Sex, Gender, and Culture [TBA]

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2625 Imagining Africa [Igoe]

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 2820 Emergence of States and Cities [Wattenmaker]

TuTh 3:30PM - 4:20PM | This course explores the archaeology of early states and cities in both the Old (Mesopotamia and Egypt) and New (Teotihuacan, the Aztecs and the Maya) Worlds. We will discuss the ways that archaeologists learn about complex societies through fieldwork, laboratory research (including artifact analyses), texts, and ethnographic studies. Topics discussed include 1) the problematic concept of "civilization", 2) the origins of agriculture and its effects on society, 3) the shift from egalitarian societies to those with social ranking, 4) theories and evidence for the rise of state societies, 5) urbanism, 6) social, religious, political and economic life in early cities, 7) the beginnings of writing and 8) the collapse of complex societies. By highlighting the wide range of variability in pre-industrial societies, the course emphasizes the role of cultural values in shaping the organization of early societies. This course fulfills the Historical Studies requirement. It has been used in the past to satisfy requirements for Midde Eastern Studies and Latin American Studies (please check with the Program Director for approval). (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3020 Using Anthropology [Hantman]

TuTh 2:00PM - 3:15PM | The theoretical, methodological and ethical practice of an engaged anthropology is the subject of this course. We begin with a history of applied anthropology. We then examine case studies that demonstrate the unique practices and challenges of sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological and bioanthropological anthropology in the areas of contemporary policy and community and civic engagement. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3130 Disease, Epidemics, and Soceity [Shepherd]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM | Topics covered in this course will include emerging diseases and leading killers in the twenty-first century, disease ecology, disease history and mortality transitions, the sociology of epidemics, the role of epidemiology in the mobilization of public health resources to confront epidemics, and the social processes by which the groups become stigmatized during disease outbreaks. This is a course that seeks to present a holistic view of global health by drawing on work crossing several disciplines, including anthropological demography, epidemiology, public health, disease history, genomic studies of disease pathogens, and medical anthropology. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3240 Anthropology of Food [Khare]

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM | This course explores comparative local/global cultural and biocultural studies of the following four interdependent “food and food ways” areas: (a) a biocultural and ecological overview of the diverse human food ways; (b) a biocultural, nutritional and moral-religious study of milk and dairy use in US and India; (c) how America eats—now, compared to its past; (d) experiencing and expressing food eating together as a class; and (e) the cultural politics of dietary and health issues in today’s globalizing world. Accordingly, this course will allow us to learn transnationally and cross-culturally as much about “we are what we eat” as what are the looming larger—ecological, biocultural, mass technological and moral-religious—issues and forces surrounding us. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3340 Ecology and Society [Damon]

MoWeFr 10:00AM - 10:50AM | Forges a synthesis between culture theory and historical ecology to provide new insights on how human cultures fashion, and are fashioned by, their environment. Prerequisite: At least one Anthropology course, significant/relevant exposure to courses in EVSC, BIOL, CHEM, or HIST (which tie in to concerns of this course), or instructor permission. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3370 Power and the Body [Mentore]

MoWe 11:00AM - 11:50AM | "This course is designed for those students interested in how and why anthropology arrives at its own peculiar paradigms of identity about the Other from its own deeply embedded western cultural understandings of body and Self." (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3395 Mythodology [Wagner]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:45PM | Mythodology: A participatory crash-course in the obviation skill set: how to "solve" a myth or story as if it were a topological mind-puzzle. All the student is required to do is furnish a myth or story of their own choosing, analyze it in class presentation, and prepare a final paper on the subject. Class attendance mandatory. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3455 African Languages [Contini-Morava]

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3470 Language and Culture in the Middle East [Lefkowitz]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:20PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3490 Language and Thought [Danziger]

MoFr 11:00AM - 11:50AM | There is almost always more than one way to think about any problem. But could speaking a particular language make some strategies and solutions seem more natural than others to individuals? Can we learn about alternative ways of approaching the external world by studying other languages? The classic proposal of linguistic relativity as enunciated by Benjamin Lee Whorf is examined in the light of recent cross-cultural psycholinguistic research. This class fulfills the Linguistics requirement for Anthropology and for Cognitive Science majors. It fulfills the Theory requirement for Linguistics majors. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3559 American Utopian Societies [McKinnon]

MoWe 3:30PM - 4:45PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3589 Topics in Archaeology [Plog]

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3630 Chinese Family and Religion [Shepherd]

MoWe 3:00PM - 4:45PM | Prerequisite: Anthro 101 or equivalent social science or China-related course. This course will introduce students to anthropological analysis of the traditional forms of the Chinese family and popular religion, and their modern transformations. Heavy emphasis is on the ethnography from Taiwan where traditional forms have endured and been studied intensively. Topics to be covered include the dynamics of traditional Chinese marriage and domestic life, gender roles, the religious underpinnings of Chinese family life in ancestor worship and the Chinese cult of the dead, marriage rituals, and the cult of filial piety. The forms of temple worship, the interaction of the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian traditions, and the shamanic tradition will also be covered. Finally, attention will be paid to the changing role of the family and religion in twentieth century Chinese life. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 3885 Archaeology of Europe [Laviolette]

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM | This course surveys topics in the archaeology of Europe that cross-cut time periods, regions, and major transformations. We begin with the peopling of Europe and the 'Neanderthal debate'; then move through interpretations of cave art and other early modern cultural achievements; emergence of settled village life and food production; megalithic monuments and motivations and technologies for building them; development of metal technology and the impact of metals on society; emergence of Bronze Age societies and urban centers; societies of Iron Age Europe; Roman relations with Barbarian Europe; and the Vikings. Emphasis will be on cultural and social transformations, and archaeological debates surrounding the construction of narratives about the deep past. This is a lecture class in which I encourage discussion throughout. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 4590 Anthropology of Girlhood [Fraser]

MoWe 3:30PM - 4:20PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 4590-01 Political-Public Anthropology [Khare]

Th 3:30PM - 6:00PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 4591-02 Anthropology in Virginia [Hantman]

MoWe 2:00PM - 3:15PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 4841 Quantitative Analysis II [Neiman]

Tu 3:30PM - 6:00PM | This is a second course in statistical methods useful in many disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, and environmental sciences. The goal is to equip students with statistical skills useful in analyzing empirical variation, deciphering links to the environmental and historical contexts in which that variation occurs, and using the results to advance scientific understanding. Coverage includes probability distributions, basics of maximum-likelihood and Bayesian estimation, linear and generalized-linear models, non-parametric smoothing, multivariate distances, Mantel regression, and ordination methods (principle components, correspondence analysis, and multidimensional scaling). The course emphasizes practical data analysis using SAS and R. Prerequisite: an introductory course in statistical data analysis. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5210 Reconfiguring Kinship Studies [TBA]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5401 Linguistic Field Methods [Contini-Morava]

Mo 5:00PM - 7:30PM | In this course we will work with a native speaker of an "exotic" language (i.e., a language that is not commonly taught in the U.S., hence likely not to be familiar to any of the students in the class). We try to figure out the phonological and grammatical structure of the language based on data collected from the native speaker consultant in class. Attendance is therefore mandatory. Assignments include one paper on phonology, one on morphology, and one on syntax (the nature of the assignment may vary depending on the particular language being studied). (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5360 World Mental Health [Merkel]

We 6:30PM - 9:00PM | This course will examine mental health issues from the perspectives of biomedicine and anthropology, emphasizing local traditions of illness and healing as well as evidence from epidemiology and neurobiology. Included topics will be psychosis, depression, PTSD, Culture Bound Syndromes, and suicide. We will also examine the role of pharmaceutical companies in the spread of western based mental health care and culturally sensitive treatment. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5401 Linguistic Field Methods [Contini-Morava]

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ANTH 5410 Phonology [Dobrin]

Tu 4:30PM - 7:00PM | Phonology is concerned with the way speech sounds are organized as systems. Which sounds occur in a given language? What are the rules for their combination? How are they realized in different positions of a word or phrase? In order to answer these kinds of questions, we look not only at the patterning of segments, but also at the way that patterning is explained in terms of more basic properties, features. We look at higher level prosodic structures like syllables that group sounds into larger units. We also study aspects of the speech signal that are in principle independent of the segment, like stress, tone, and rhythm. In this course students gain experience analyzing phonological systems in a theoretically informed way. They learn to appreciate what kinds of problems the field of phonology aims to account for, to argue for solutions to such problems, and to understand the significance of their analyses in terms of the broader concerns of phonological theory. Coursework involves reading, class discussion, and solving homework problems. Prerequisite: LNGS 3250 or permission of instructor. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5541 Topics in Linguistics [Lefkowitz]

Mo 2:00PM - 4:30PM | Nouns as a grammatical category are often described as a linguistic universal, but what does it mean to claim this? Of course it is possible to name things and to describe who is doing what in any language, but is that the same thing as having “noun” as a grammatical category? This seminar will explore the criteria for answering this question, and for languages that appear to have the category “noun”, we will also look at other categories often associated with nouns, like number, gender/noun class, case, determiners, and relative clauses, and at the grammatical phenomenon of nominalization. Each student will choose a particular language to focus on for the course, reporting on that language for a series of assignments. Prerequisite: a course in linguistics. This course will count toward the Theory requirement for the linguistics major and MA program. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5559-01 Language Contact [Sicoli]

We 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5559-02 Affect Emotion Embodiment [Scherz]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5590 Care and Abandonment [Scherz]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5870 Archaeozoology [Wattenmaker]

We 3:00PM - 4:30PM | This laboratory course provides students with the background and skills needed to analyze animal bones from archaeological sites. Emphasis will be placed on the potential of faunal analysis for contributing to anthropological issues, such as the domestication of animals, political economy, the origins of the state, and the organization of urban economies. Class sessions will include lectures and laboratory work. Lectures will include a critical survey of the methodological approaches and techniques used to address anthropological questions through the analysis of faunal remains. Topics such as research design, strategies of field collection of faunal remains, and data analysis and interpretation will be covered. In the laboratory, students will learn to identify faunal remains to species, to determine age and sex of species, to distinguish between wild and domestic animals, to recognize bone pathologies, and to observe cultural modification of bones, such as butchering marks. The course requirements include a series of short papers based on laboratory analysis of archaeological faunal remains, and a final paper. The final paper will involve the analysis of a small archaeological collection of faunal remains from the ancient city of Kazane (Turkey), focusing on a particular time period (e.g. prehistoric, early historic) and part of the site (e.g. house, palace). Each student will share his or her findings with the rest of the class. We will compare and contrast results, and discuss implications of findings. Cooperation and discussion between students is strongly encouraged. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5885 Archaeology of Colonial Expansions [Laviolette]

Th 5:00PM - 7:30PM | This seminar explores the comparative archaeology of colonialism in its changing theoretical landscape, examining the structural similarities and differences between European colonialism and many other archaeologically known examples, as well as the task of representing the human experience of being colonized. When we think about colonialism we typically focus on Western European expansions from the 15th century onwards, especially in the context of competitive mercantile economies that fueled the power of the colonizers, and we will certainly study them here. But archaeological and historical examples go well beyond these contexts; they are available, for example, in ancient Mesopotamia, the Andes, in Iron Age sub-Saharan Africa, and of course in the Classical Mediterranean. My goal is to expose you to multiple theoretical paradigms that archaeologists have developed to understand colonial expansions, and a wide range of case studies employing these paradigms that illustrate the broad commonalities underlying the colonial process—including the exercise of power and responses to it—without losing the historical/archaeological particulars or the human experience. (3.0 Units)

Course Number Index

Courses that meet Major Area Requirements:

Prin. of Social AnalysisArchaeologyLinguistics

1050,2270,2280,2325,2360,2365,2375,2625,3130,3240,3340,3370,3395,3559,3630,4590-01,4591-02,5210,559

2820,3589,3885,5870,5589

2430,2559,3455,3470,3490,5401,5410,
5541,5559

Major Requirements
1010, 3020, 4591-01, 4591-02

Beyond the West
(for the major: note that some of these courses do not meet the College's Nonwestern requirement)

2360,2375,2365,2625,3340,3630,2820,3590,2430,3455,3470,4590

Senior Seminars

4591-01, 4591-02

Graduate Courses

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ANTH 5210 Reconfiguring Kinship Studies [TBA]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30 PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5360 World Mental Health [Merkel]

We 6:30PM - 9:00 PM | This course will examine mental health issues from the perspectives of biomedicine and anthropology, emphasizing local traditions of illness and healing as well as evidence from epidemiology and neurobiology. Included topics will be psychosis, depression, PTSD, Culture Bound Syndromes, and suicide. We will also examine the role of pharmaceutical companies in the spread of western based mental health care and culturally sensitive treatment. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5401 Linguistic Field Methods [Contini-Morava]

Mo 5:00 - 7:30 PM | In this course we will work with a native speaker of an "exotic" language (i.e., a language that is not commonly taught in the U.S., hence likely not to be familiar to any of the students in the class). We try to figure out the phonological and grammatical structure of the language based on data collected from the native speaker consultant in class. Attendance is therefore mandatory. Assignments include one paper on phonology, one on morphology, and one on syntax (the nature of the assignment may vary depending on the particular language being studied). (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5410 Phonology [Dobrin]

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ANTH 5541 Topics in Linguistics [Lefkowitz]

Mo 2:00PM - 4:30PM | Nouns as a grammatical category are often described as a linguistic universal, but what does it mean to claim this? Of course it is possible to name things and to describe who is doing what in any language, but is that the same thing as having "noun" as a grammatical category? This seminar will explore the criteria for answering this question, and for languages that appear to have the category "noun", we will also look at other categories often associated with nouns, like number, gender/noun class, case, determiners, and relative clauses, and at the grammatical phenomenon of nominalization. Each student will choose a particular language to focus on for the course, reporting on that language for a series of assignments. Prerequisite: a course in linguistics. This course will count toward the Theory requirement for the linguistics major and MA program. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5559-01 Language Contact [Sicoli]

We 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5559-02 Affect Emotion Embodiment [Scherz]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5590 Care and Abandonment [Scherz]

Tu 2:00PM - 4:30PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 5870 Archaeozoology [Wattenmaker]

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ANTH 5885 Archaeology of Colonial Expansions [Laviolette]

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ANTH 7020 History of Anthropological Theory II [Damon]

We 5:00PM - 7:30PM | Analyzes the main schools of anthropological thought since World War II, a half century during which separate English, French, and American traditions have influenced each other to produce a broad and subtle international discipline. (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 7050 Ethnographic Writing and Representation [Bashkow]

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 7130 Disease, Epidemics, and Society [Shepherd]

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ANTH 7470 Language and Culture in the Middle East [Lefkowitz]

TuTh 12:30PM - 1:20PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 7589-01 Archaeology of Europe [Laviolette]

TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 7589-02 Rec Research Pueblo Prehistory [Plog]

TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM | TBA (3.0 Units)

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ANTH 7589-03 Chinese Family and Religion [Shepherd]

MoWe 3:30PM - 4:45PM | TBA (3.0 Units)