Anthropology (ANTH)

Anthropology, the study of humans and their behavior, examines the richness of human experience from earliest recorded history to the present. In this course, students discover how humans adapt to nature and each other, develop traditions and mythologies, use language to express ideas and identities, and invent and perceive visual culture.

This course provides an introduction to relationships between human language, culture and society. Students examine and explore the properties of human language that make it unique. The course encourages students to address the prominent role of language in cultural models and social organizations.

Visual anthropology addresses complex meanings, symbols, methodology and cultural aspects associated with media and anthropology. Students in this course learn the history of visual anthropology, beginning with the first anthropologists who used images to record cultures, as well as the concerns of those who use film and photography as tools of documentation. Students examine the definition and techniques associated with creating an ethnographic film. They also are exposed to texts that deal with the construction of images, the power of icons and media as an artifact of culture. Students create one short ethnographic film or photo series as an introductory level ethnographic work in the field of visual anthropology.

A study of global cultural theory from structuralism to semiotics to postmodernism forms the foundation of this course. Major theoretical trends reflected in the writings of Marx, Saussure and Weber are analyzed as well as the work of thinkers such as Appadurai, Sennett, Foucault and Zizek.