Courses

Anthropology
Sociology

Anthropology

ANTH-152 Public Culture

This course is an anthropological introduction to public culture in the U.S. It takes public culture to be: a public circulation of sensibilities, identities, dreams, styles, discourses, and forms of power; and a way of life enacted and given form in the practices of everyday life and in institutions, laws, social movements, physical and social spaces, and expressive forms. Students will be introduced to key terms and theories in contemporary anthropology and their application in the study of representation; historical imagination; gender, sexuality, and identity politics; and nationalism, citizenship, and globalization.

ANTH-162 Introduction to Anthropology

This course is an introduction to the field of anthropology. Specifically, the course introduces students to the ways in which anthropologists have thought about and investigated human diversity. We inquire into what it is that makes us human; the unique role culture plays in our humanity; the relationships of culture, language, and biology; and how anthropologists have studied material culture in past and present civilizations using the tools and theoretical paradigms of archaeology. Students explore these questions through the study of ethnographies and a text book.

ANTH-200 Topics in Anthropology

Intermediate study of selected topics. Topics vary and depend on student and instructor interest. Possibilities include the anthropology of modernity, cross-cultural perspectives on gender and sexuality, and drugs and culture.

ANTH-220 Magic, Witchcraft & Religion

Examines anthropological concepts of magic, witchcraft, and religion in a cross-cultural context. Drawing on ethnography, anthropological theory, history, and film, the class explores the nature of magic, witchcraft, and religion; the relations among them; and the ways in which they interact with other social formations, for example gender, politics, and economics. Countries studied have included South Africa, India, Haiti, and the U.S.

ANTH-222 Life During Wartime

This course will explore key understandings and discourses about war and the intersection of anthropology and violent conflict. It will begin with an introduction to anthropological theory and methods, examine the role of anthropology in both understanding and responding to war and violent conflict, and will then turn its attention to literature and materials drawn or arising from current wars and violent conflicts, including texts, journal and magazine articles, documentary and ethnographic films, television and popular films, and newspapers. The course will seek to understand how we understand war and what role it plays in cultural practice.

ANTH-227 Native America North of Mexico

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the histories and cultures of the indigenous peoples north of Mexico. Topics to be considered include cultural diversity, colonial history and federal Indian policy, land use patterns, identity and ethnicity, myth and ritual, contemporary issues, representations of Native Americans in the dominant culture, and the role of cultural revitalization and innovation in the negotiation of contemporary community survival. Course readings represent a variety of perspectives, including historical, ethnographic, ecological, and literary.

ANTH-235 Qualitative Research Methods

This course is designed to develop students' competence as social researchers. We will cover both theoretical issues -like the epistemology and ethics of qualitative research - and practical ones - the nuts and bolts of the research process, from data collection to analysis. The course will focus on the connection between researchers' theoretical goals and the practical resources and constraints of the research process. Students will be trained in some of the common forms of qualitative social research: ethnography, interviews, content analysis, case studies, and the comparative method. Students will also be required to employ qualitative methods to collect and analyze original data, both for (near weekly) short written assignments and a 15-20 page final research paper. Students should have at least sophomore standing and have completed an introductory sociology or anthropology course.

ANTH-237 Museums and Anthropology

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of key interrelationships between museums, anthropology, and the practices of representation. Students will be introduced to the history of museums and will also be given the analytical tools to read museums and exhibitions as cultural texts. The course focuses on the production and meanings of public museums and other exhibitionary spaces. We will pay close attention to issues of representation in anthropological and other arenas, to how museums communicate information about cultural-historical processes and events, and to the formation of ethnographic and other subjects. While anthropology and museum studies are the course's focus, we will not restrict our readings to those disciplines and modes of representation alone but will consider other disciplinary perspectives and offerings.

ANTH-310 National, Transnational Communities

Considers the nature of belonging in the world today. Who is "at home?" Who is displaced/out of place? Begins with theories of the nation and anthropological research on national communities and nation-building, then turns to a consideration of those considered outsiders to the nation-state, i.e., diasporic, transnational, and refugee communities. Addresses culture as it is formed by the globalization of capital, commodities, media, literacy, and international political and religious movements. Topics covered may include Jewish, Palestinian, African, and Chinese diasporas, refugees in Tanzania and in Europe, and Indian intellectuals in the U.S.

ANTH-311 Regulating Bodies

What is the proper relation between the state and its citizens? Should states merely ensure the basic safety of citizens, or should they somehow promote their well-being? How should decisions about what constitutes safety or well-being be made? Through a study of regulation, this course considers how economics, politics, ethics, and aesthics inform life in modern liberal democracies. We begin by establishing a theoretical framework for our study and then turn to four instances in which states seek to intervene in or regulate the lives of citizens, namely the economy, drugs, food, and sex. We will examine issues such as the recent financial meltdown, medical marijunana, food safety, and Internet pornography.

ANTH-312 History & Culture of Jewish Cuisines

Using anthropological approaches to the study of food, this course examines the meanings and uses of various Jewish cuisines as they developed in diverse regions and historical periods. We will consider the laws of kashrut and their modern interpretations, the social history of traditional Jewish foods, the literary development of Jewish cookbooks, and literary and cinematic representations of Jewish cuisines and dining. Underlying our study will be questions concerning how class, gender, faith, ethnicity, aesthetics, and politics inform Jewish foodways. Because cooking and eating are frequently done in the company of others, much of our work will be collaborative.

ANTH-322 Visual Anthropology

Explores key interrelationships between image-making and ethnographic discovery and representation. Students will be introduced to the history of ethnographic film and photography, and will also be given the analytical tools to read popular films and photographs as cultural texts. The course focuses on the production, representation and use of images to communicate information about cultural-historical processes, events, and subjects.

ANTH-341 Family and Kinship

A comparative study of family and kinship. Covers the structures and functions of family and kinship in different cultures. Emphasizes historical and contemporary changes in knowledge and practice focused on family, marriage, procreation, and kinship in the US and the consequences of those changes for society.

ANTH-360 Religious Fundamentalisms Modern World

This course examines religious beliefs, practices, and ways of life that have come to be labled "fundamentalist." We will attend in particular to their emergence in the modern world and the ways in which they critically engage secular convictions about morality, aesthetics, and epistemology. We will focus on Protestant Fundamentalism and the Islamic Revival, but, depending on student interest, may also consider ultra-orthodox Judaism or Hindu nationalism.

ANTH-400 History Anthropological Theory

Surveys major anthropological theories (e.g., evolutionism, functionalism, structuralism, symbolism, and post-modernism) and theorists (e.g., Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, L233vi-Strauss, Geertz, and Clifford). Examines how ideas about culture have changed over time. Takes a critical perspective by locating both theories and theorists within national and historical frameworks.

ANTH-413 Race, Ethnicity & Minorities

Focuses on race and ethnic relations in contemporary society, and popular understandings of race and ethnicity in the US. Explores the boundaries and markers for membership in an ethnic, racial, or minority group. Specifically, this course regards race as a social construct that has significance for structural opportunities, experiences, world-views, and conceptions of self and others. Strategies used by dominant groups to maintain their power and privilege, and those used by subordinate groups to create and preserve their cultural identity and to resist their subordination also are examined.

ANTH-500 Seminar

Seminars are offered on selected topics of the instructor's interest.

ANTH-501 Independent Research

Individual work for qualified students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Supervised readings and writings in advanced fields of anthropological study.

ANTH-502 Independent Study

Individual work for qualified students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Supervised readings and writings in advanced fields of anthropological study.

ANTH-510 Internship in Anthropology

Individual student work in an appropriate setting. Open only when positions are available. 1 - 8 SH.

Sociology

SOCI-101 Principles of Sociology

Methods and approaches of scientific analysis applied to contemporary cultures and societies. Includes socialization, individual and group interaction, major social institutions, social organizations, social change, and collective behavior.

SOCI-102 Social Problems

Basic concepts and principles of sociology applied to significant social problems. Examines social disorganization, cultural conflicts, and personal deviations associated with the stress of industrialization, urban life, and bureaucracy.

SOCI-202 Black Feminism I

Black feminisim is the study of how gender, race, and class issues are inextricably linked to oppression. Black feminisim goes beyond mainstream feminism and sees itself as a collective social movement. This course is primarily an activist response to intersecting oppressions that subordinate black women and others in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and the need for autonomy in the face of the privileged. Politics not only concerns personal experiences, however challenging and courageous, but must address larger agendas that go beyond individual temperament, choices, and placement. There are no formal prerequisites for this course.

SOCI-206 Gendered Bodies and Social Control

Gendered roled are delineated by the norms and behviors that an individual is expected to perform in society. Such roles change over time. This course combines the social construction of gender, the mechanisms through which society controls "gendered" bodies, and how gender intersects with race, ethnicity, class, disability, sexuality, age, and other dimensions of identity. Normative behavior and performance, group sexual misconduct, sexual politics, and living with apparant contradiction in regards to gender are key topics.

SOCI-210 Caribbean Culture and Society

This course considers the history, politics, economics, and culture of the people of the Caribbean area. It focuses on issues of self-identity and expression within the context of hegemonic European values and institutions.

SOCI-220 Research Methods

This course introduces students to research designs and qualitative and quantitative techniques for social sciences. Topics include the relationship between theory and research, techniques of literature review, survey research, questionnaire design, interviewing techniques, observations, content analysis, case studies, and experimental designs.

SOCI-235 Qualitative Research Methods

SOCI-245 Quantitative Research Methods

This course is intended to introduce students to common methods used in quantitative social science research. It is intended to help us conceptualize a research problem and how to collect evidence to address that research problem. Students will learn how to conduct basic quantitative social science research, evaluate relevant evidence, and determine the best method to be used based on theoretical and practical considerations. The course would also focus attention on such issues such as the time dimension, sampling design and ethical issues when conducting quantitative social research. Finally we would use SPSS and series of datasets to test and demonstrate our knowledge of the respective statistical procedures. Upon completion of this course, students should be better able to critically evaluate the quantitative research they encounter in their social science coursework and in the mass media, as well as being able to design a basic quantitative research project. Students should be at least sophomore standing and have completed their statistics requirement.

SOCI-255 Crime and Justice

This course explores the dimensions, causes, costs, and correlates of the crime problem in the U.S. and considers the uses and limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with it. To do this, the course is organized around three interdisciplinary literatures: criminology, law and society, and criminal justice studies. Focusing on issues of lawmaking, law breaking, and state response to crime, students will review and critique classical and contemporary approaches to the study of these phenomena; identify a range of theoretical approaches and empirical findings in the literatures identified above; and assess the strengths and limitations of contemporary crime control policies in light of accumulated empirical evidence.

SOCI-300 Black Feminism II

Black Feminism II is an advanced-level interrogation of black feminism -- its theory, discourse, and practical application. It is the continued study of how gender, race, and class issues are inextricably linked to oppression, power, and privilege. The course focuses on individual, institutional, and activist responses to intersecting oppressions that subordinate black women and others in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and self-definitions.

SOCI-301 Topics in Sociology

Intermediate study of selected topics. Topics vary and depend on student and instructor interest. Possibilities include social policy analysis, sociology of dissent, juvenile delinquency, and sex roles. Prerequisite: SOCI-101, ANTH-162, or permission of the instructor.

SOCI-302 Sociology of Food

This course aims to introduce students to food as a sociological object. Food is a major determinant of survival and well being, and an important indicator of social inequality. It is also a commodity: a source of profit and object of exchange embedded in market relations among consumers, retailers, processors, seed companies, and farmers. Food is an art form - a kind of artistic expression and object - shaped and refined by a community of chefs and critics. More broadly, food reflects cultural values and functions as a signal of social position. Finally, it is a site and subject of politics: debate and struggle over modes of production, governance, trade, control, and consumption. We will examine food through these five lenses, covering major debates within food politics and food studies on topics ranging from the cultural construction of "gourmet" food to obesity, hunger, factory farming, food safety, farm labor, the alternative food movement, and the politics of food labels. In addition to academic texts, students will become familiar with the lively world of the food blogosphere, joining in themselves via a weekly blogging requirement. The course will conclude with research projects that will allow students to pursue a topic or question of deep personal interest.

SOCI-311 Sociological Theory

Western social theory from Comte to the present with emphasis on recent developments. Considers major schools, including positivism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, functionalism, social exchange theory, critical theory, phenomenological theory, and postmodernism.

SOCI-315 Social Stratification

This course examines factors that contribute to social stratification in contemporary society. Specifically, the course looks at three dimensions of social stratification, namely the economic, political, and ideological dimensions and interaction of race, class, and gender in this process. Topics include theories of social stratification, occupational prestige and mobility, segregation, corporate welfare, social welfare, and the ideology of legitimization.

SOCI-316 Social Justice

Social Justice is a team-taught course that recognizes that oppression occurs in multiple forms in any given society. The distribution of advantages and disadvantages can be affected by capitalistic systems, greed, personal intention, social and/or political agendas, and even compromise. We will study the changing dynamics of oppression, earned and unearned privileges, and competing theories of social justice that are influenced by race, ethnicity, nationality, ability, gender, class, and sexuality. Students will engage in social justice projects that engage them and others in understanding startegies for social transformation in areas as diverse as access to technology, globalization, and ethics.

SOCI-331 Social Control and Deviance

Processes, agencies, and methods that influence members of groups to conform to social norms. Includes factors producing deviant behavior patterns. Covers individual socialization and institutional and personality patterns affecting internal and external control processes. Examines power, class and status, formal and informal group sanctions, and ideological forces of social control.

SOCI-333 Development, Globalization & Society

A study of the relationship between economic development paradigms, institutions, and groups in society. It focuses on international economic relationships, world order, and the resultant social and political conflict. More specifically, this course examines how global economic development policy since the 1960s has influenced relations between states, major institutions, organizations, and social groupings both in the developed and developing world.

SOCI-341 Family and Kinship

A comparative study of the family as a universal human group. Covers the structures and functions of families in different cultures. Emphasizes historical and contemporary changes in the American family and the consequences of those changes for society.

SOCI-350 Punishment and Society

This course develops students' ability to understand and critique modern penal practices and to interrogate the relationship of punishment to criminal behavior, the rendering of justice, the promotion of public safety, and the management of risk. In addition to examining the structure, practices, and legal foundation of corrections in the United States, students will be exposed to a range of scholarship examining the social, moral, economic, political, ideological and historical contexts of punishment in the West, with an eye toward understanding how penal practices came to be as they are, their social implications, and cultural meanings. Review and discussion of these materials will develop students? appreciation for the depth and complexity of the topic, as well as their ability to link punishment practices with broader socio-cultural conditions and worldviews. SOCI-311 recommended but not required.

SOCI-374 Social Work

Introduces and exposes students to the various aspects of social work and social welfare. Includes examples of casework, group work, community organizations, and a combination of current practices. Explores how society provides services to meet human needs through public, voluntary and combined efforts.

SOCI-405 Law and Society

This is an introduction to the sociology of law. Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to understand the manner in which sociologists study law and empirically analyze relevant dynamics of law and law-related phenomena in a variety of social settings. Successive sections of this course will focus on classical theortical contributions to the sociology of law; selected modern approaches to the sociology of law; and an array of empirical themes of law and law-based processes and structures to which the sociological theories will be applied. Empirical topics include but are not necessarily limited to law and social structure; law and culture; notions of legality, legitimacy, and legal consciousness; the legal profession; law, identity, and inequalities; international and human rights law; and the impact of globalization on concepts and practices of law and legal change.

SOCI-410 Economic Sociology

This course provides an introduction to sociological analyses of the economy, economic processes, and economic institutions. The central goal of this course is to understand how economic activities are both enabled and constrained by social relations and social institutions including politics and culture. The course will focus on key theories and concepts developed in the subfield of "economic" sociology" as well as empirical applications of these ideas to real-world economic phenomena.

SOCI-413 Race, Ethnicity & Minorities

Focuses on race and ethnic relations in contemporary society. Explores the boundaries and markers for being a member of an ethnic, racial, or minority group. Specifically, this course regards race as a social construct that has significance for structural opportunities, experiences, world-views, and conceptions of self and others. Strategies used by dominant groups to maintain their power and privilege, and those used by subordinate groups to create and preserve their cultural identity and to resist their subordination also are examined.

SOCI-500 Seminar

One or more seminars are offered annually on selected topics of the instructor's interest.

SOCI-501 Independent Study

Individual work for qualified students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Supervised readings and writings in advanced fields of sociological study.

SOCI-510 Internship in Sociology

Individual student work in an appropriate setting. Open only when positions are available.

SOCI-570 Practicum

Supervised field work in selected social work agencies. Students will keep a log, meet with a faculty member to discuss work, and write a paper.

SOCI-571 Practicum