Courses

• 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.
• CAS AN 310: Studies in North American Ethnography
  A survey including an appreciation of the traditional background and heritage of native North Americans, and analysis of the history and contact with Europeans and governmental policies, and an examination and evaluation of the contemporary situation.
• CAS AN 312: Peoples and Cultures of Africa (area)
  Survey of the continent with attention to ethnohistory, traditional cultures, and cultural change.
• CAS AN 314: Cultures of Latin America
  From the effects of European colonization to the causes of transnational migration, anthropologists have found Latin America a rich place to study key themes for the discipline. Contemporary ethnography is used to trace the region's contribution to anthropological debates.
• CAS AN 316: Contemporary European Ethnography
  Approaches Europe and European societies through an exploration of significant social shifts: the creation of the European Union, the decline of the national welfare state, the rise of regionalist movements, and the socio-political transformation of post-socialist states.
• CAS AN 317: Power and Society in the Middle East (area)
  Peoples and cultures of the Middle East from Afghanistan to Morocco and from the Caucasus to Yemen. Focuses on social organization, family structure, the relationship between the sexes, and the development and maintenance of authority.
• CAS AN 319: Anthropology of Muslim Cultures and Politics
  Examines Muslim societies' ongoing struggle over the forms and meanings of Muslim culture and politics, as well as its implications for religious authority, gender ideals, and new notions of citizenship, civil society, and democracy.
• CAS AN 320: Women in the Muslim World
  A cross-cultural approach to the diversity and complexity of women's lives in the Muslim world, including the United States. Looks at issues such as gender equality, civil society and democracy, sex segregation and sexual politics, kinship and marriage, and veiling.
• CAS AN 331: Human Origins
  Introduction to human paleontology and methods for reconstructing the ancestry, structure, diet, and behavior of fossil primates and humans. Survey of primate and hominid fossils, primate comparative anatomy, radioactive dating, molecular and structural phylogenies, climactic analyses, and comparative behavioral ecology.
• CAS AN 333: Human Population Biology
  Human population biology and ecological adaptations: human demography, life history patterns, population genetics, and physiological adaptability. Topics: population dynamics of human societies, mortality and fertility schedules, evolution and genetics of human life history traits, physiological adaptability, and ecological correlates.
• CAS AN 335: The Ape Within: Great Apes and the Evolution of Human Behavior
  Introduction to primate social behavior, focusing on the apes. Examines how great ape behavior helps understand what is unique about human behavior and how we evolved. Topics include diet, social relationships, sexual behavior, aggression, culture,and cognition.
• CAS AN 337: Creation and Evolution
  A critical survey of the creation/evolution controversy in its historical, scientific, philosophical, and theological contexts from Augustine down to the intelligent-design movement.
• CAS AN 338: Lucy and Ardi: The Oldest Women
  This course brings to life the 3.2-4.4 million year old fossils Lucy and Ardi. What was life like for our oldest female ancestors and how do we know? How did they move? What did they eat? Could they talk?
• CAS AN 339: Primate Biomechanics
  An introduction to the physical principles and anatomies underlying primate behavior, especially locomotion. Topics include mechanics, skeletal anatomy, primate locomotion, and the primate fossil record. Emphasis on bone biology and human bipedalism.
• CAS AN 344: Modern Japanese Society: Family, School, and Workplace (area)
  Approaches contemporary Japanese society through a focus on family, school, and workplace. The readings and lectures treat these institutions historically and in terms of the contexts they provide for the individual.
• CAS AN 345: Moving Experiences: Cultures of Tourism and Travel
  The movement of people across national boundaries as a cultural, economic, and political phenomenon. Examines voluntary border-crossing in its various cultural and historical meanings as well as in the representations of journals and contemporary accounts.
• CAS AN 347: Afghanistan
  Ethnographic and historical examination of Afghanistan's traditional social and political organization, ecology and economy, and relationship among ethnic groups. Civil wars and foreign interventions over the last thirty years, the current situation in Afghanistan, and prospects for the country's future.

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