Courses

• CAS AN 549: Savagery Fact, Fiction, and Factual Fiction
  Imaginings about animalistic humans, much changed over time, are compared against real cultures and societies. Looking beyond "savagery within civilization" and vice versa, an examination of episodes of romantic stereotyping and of "barbaric" interaction, for motives and for strategies of resolution.
• CAS AN 550: Human Skeleton
  Function, development, variation, and pathologies of the human musculoskeletal system, emphasizing issues of human evolution. Basic processes of bone biology and how they are affected by use, age, sex, diet, and disease. Meetings are predominantly lab oriented.
• CAS AN 552: Primate Evolution and Anatomy
  The evolutionary history of the primate radiation--particularly that of monkeys, apes, and humans--is examined through investigation of the musculoskeletal anatomy of living and fossil primates. Comparative and biomechanical approaches are used to reconstruct the behavior of extinct species.
• CAS AN 555: Evolutionary Medicine
  Why do we get sick? Evolutionary medicine seeks to answer this question by applying modern evolutionary theory to understanding health and disease among contemporary human populations. Topics include chronic and infectious disease, mental illness, allergies, autoimmunity, and drug addiction.
• CAS AN 556: The Evolution of the Human Diet
  An investigation of human dietary evolution including primate and human dietary adaptations, nutritional requirements, optimal foraging, digestive physiology, maternal and infant nutrition, hunting and cooking in human evolution, and impacts of food processing and agriculture on modern diets and health.
• CAS AN 557: Anthropology of Mental Health
  Considers mental illness from an anthropological point of view, including cultural, biological, and evolutionary perspectives. Focuses on the interaction of biology and culture in major mental disorders. Consideration is given to ethnomedical practices of healing mental illness.
• CAS AN 563: Public Religion and Politics Across Cultures
  The contested role of religion in modern politics and its implications for civil life. Begins with the West and includes Islam in the Middle East and SE Asia. Evangelicalism in Latin American and Africa, Hindu nationalism, and Buddhism in China. Also offered as CAS IR 563.
• CAS AN 568: Symbol, Myth, and Rite
  Historical overview of ritual behavior, the role of symbolism in the study of culture, and the narrative quality of worldview and belief. Emphasis on verbal performance and public display events in specific cultural contexts.
• CAS AN 571: Anthropology of Emotion
  Outlines multidisciplinary conceptual frameworks for the study of emotion. Focus is on how cultural anthropology has understood emotion as experience, as cognition, or as a symbolic system.
• CAS AN 573: The Ethnography of China and Taiwan (area)
  Reading of major ethnographies and modern histories as a basis for examining changing Taiwanese and Chinese culture and society. Attention to ethnography as a genre, as well as to the dramatic changes of the past century. (Counts towards the East Asian Studies minor.)
• CAS AN 585: Seminar: Advanced Readings in African Ethnography (area)
  Detailed examination of classic and contemporary anthropological writings about Africa. Explores ecological adaptation, kinship, social organization, religious thought and practice, and creative expression. Focus on the history of theory, method, and narrative style in the construction of ethnographies about Africa.
• CAS AN 589: The Anthropology of Development Theory & Practice
  Explores anthropological texts that grapple with, make sense of, and ultimately challenge the international development enterprise. Considers whether, amidst these critiques, anthropology can imagine an alternative discourse and practice of betterment.
• CAS AN 590: Seminar: Theory, Method, and Techniques in Fieldwork
  Traditional and modern methods of ethnographic field research: data collection, research design, and analyses.
• CAS AN 594: Seminar: Topics in Cultural Anthropology
  Selected issues and debates in current anthropology. Three topics are offered during the Spring 2008 semester. Students may take one, two or three for credit. Section A1: Humans Among Animals. Section B1: Social Movements. Section C1: Culture and Emotions. Considers how anthropology has contributed to the understanding of emotions in humans and where its contributions fit in an interdisciplinary field increasingly dominated by neuroscience.
• CAS AN 595: Methods in Biological Anthropology
  An exploration of field and laboratory methods used in biological anthropology, with students participating in hands-on exercises. Topics include health assessment, body composition, diet, energetics, morphological adaptations, reproductive status, habitat composition, spatial movements, and conservation. Professional skills are also developed.
• CAS AN 596: Anthropology and History
  Examines the use of ethnographic materials and models of alternative social or economic organization to interpret historical materials as well as the use of history to provide dynamic models of change in anthropological analysis.
• CAS AN 597: Seminar: Special Topics in Biological Anthropology
  Special issues and debates in current biological anthropology. Topic for Fall 2014: Human Grown and Development. An analysis of human growth and development from an evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective. Other topics include brain evolution, fetal programming, sexual dimorphism, senescence, immunity, and obesity.
• CAS AN 598: Seminar: Special Issues in Biological Anthropology
  Special issues and debates in current biological anthropology.
• CAS AR 100: Great Discoveries in Archaeology
  Illustrated lectures focus on the important discoveries of the discipline of archaeology. Course covers the whole of human prehistory and history around the world. Archaeological methods are described, along with the great ancient sites: Olduvai, Lascaux, Stonehenge, Egyptian pyramids, Machu Picchu, etc. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AR 101: Introduction to Archaeology
  Theory, methods, and aims of prehistoric and historical archaeology in the Old and New Worlds. Excavation and recovery of archaeological data; dating techniques; interpretation of finds; relation of archaeology to history and other disciplines. Examination of several Old and New World cultures. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.

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