Courses

• CAS AM 492: Directed Study
  
• CAS AM 501: Special Topics in American Studies
  Topic for Fall 2010: American Culture in the Sixties. A survey of American art, literature, film, and visual culture of the 1960s.
• CAS AM 502: Special Topics in American Studies
  Two topics are offered Spring 2011. Students may take one or both for credit. Topic for Section A1: American Landscapes. An interdisciplinary exploration of the meanings of landscapes in American culture. Uses art history, literature, history, archaeology, and cultural landscape studies to examine how we shape the land and use it to define ourselves. Topic for Section B1: Buildings Archaeology: New Approaches to the Study of Early American Architecture. New research and rigorous methods challenge long-held assumptions and uncover intriguing histories and meanings of early American buildings and landscapes.
• CAS AM 524: New England Cultural Landscapes
  This seminar examines the historic forces that have shaped distinctive regional landscapes of New England. Focuses primarily on rural, small-town, and residential neighborhood landscapes in towns and cities over four centuries.
• CAS AM 546: Historic Preservation
  An introduction to the American preservation movement, including current issues and modern practice. Considers key aspects of the history, theory, and philosophy of historic preservation, and introduces students to key figures in preservation agencies and organizations in this region.
• CAS AM 553: Documenting Historic Buildings and Landscapes
  Seminar in architectural and landscape recording techniques involving readings, fieldwork, and writing; projects include research on individual buildings as well as groups of resources. Emphasis on research design and evaluation of evidence.
• CAS AN 101: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
  An introduction to the basic concepts, principles, and problems of cultural anthropology, emphasizing study of both traditional and complex societies. Special attention to the evolution of human societies and culture; the changing organization and meaning of religion, economic life, kinship, and political order; and the problem of cultural variation in the modern world. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AN 102: Human Biology, Behavior, and Evolution
  Biology relevant to the behavioral sciences. Introduces basic principles of evolutionary biology, animal social behavior, primate adaptions, human origins, genetic/hormonal/neural bases of behavior, and issues of human socioecology and adaptions. Discussions highlight nature-vs-nurture issues. Carries natural science divisional credit (without lab) in CAS.
• CAS AN 210: Medical Anthropology
  Examines the influence of culture on health care beliefs, practices, and institutions. Special topics include cross-cultural approaches to birth, aging, and death; drug use and abuse; health care in developing countries; and socialist models of health-care service.
• CAS AN 220: Urban Anthropology
  Survey of urban phenomena in evolutionary perspective using illustrative materials from records of the past and from current description in all world areas; contrasting social processes under different historical, geographical, political, and economic circumstances.
• CAS AN 240: Legal Anthropology
  An introduction to the anthropologist's approaches to law. Investigation of the relationship among society, culture, and law focuses on how different societies generate and structure competition and conflict. Examines the range of social and symbolic mechanisms for regulating dispute. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AN 243: Shamans and Shamanism
  Shamans in global and theoretical perspectives. The origins and construction of the category of shamanism. Modern theories and debates about the category and the appropriateness of applying it cross-culturally. Also offered as CAS RN 243.
• CAS AN 250: Understanding Folklore and Folklife
  The ways individuals, families, and communities express themselves, their beliefs, and their values within their own culture. Emphasis on meaning carried by oral literature, folk arts and crafts, social customs and festivals, and family folklore.
• CAS AN 252: Ethnicity and Identity
  Political and cultural factors underlying ethnic and nationalist sentiments examined through case studies drawn from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Discusses factors underlying ethnic boundaries, as well as such boundary-transcending influences as the media. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AN 260: Sex and Gender in Anthropological Perspective
  Cross-cultural examination of changing gender roles, expectations, and activities. Focuses on economic, social, political, and ideological determinants that structure the hierarchy of power and privileges accorded the thoughts, activities, and experiences of women and men in various societies. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AN 263: The Behavioral Biology of Women
  An exploration of female behavioral biology focusing on evolutionary, physiological, and biosocial aspects of women's lives from puberty through pregnancy, birth, lactation, menopause, and aging. Examples are drawn from traditional and industrialized societies, and data from nonhuman primates are considered.
• CAS AN 285: Coping with Crisis in Contemporary Africa (area)
  Explores the ways ordinary Africans are coping with problems of security, environmental degradation, forced migration, economic decline, and disease. Readings and lectures contrast outsiders' interpretations of these "crises" with the way they are experienced by those they affect.
• CAS AN 290: Children and Culture
  Explores the way various cultures shape the lives and social development of children. Topics include cultural concepts of childhood; the acquisition of culture; socialization and moral development; cognition, emotion, and behavior in childhood; children's language and play; and the cultural shaping of personality.
• CAS AN 307: Turkey and Middle East in Comparative Perspective (area)
  Social and cultural diversity of the modern Middle East with particular attention to Turkey. Focus on the interplay of tradition and socio-economic changes that have occured during the twentieth century and their implications for the future.
• CAS AN 308: Food, Culture, and Society
  Study of foodways, culinary social history, and diet and food ecology with special attention to Asian societies and Boston's food culture. Examines the use of food and cuisine as a focus for identity, national development, and social change.

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