Courses

• CAS AN 510: Proposal Writing for Social Science Research
  The purpose of this course is to turn students' intellectual interests into answerable, field-based research questions. The goal is the production of a project proposal for future research. Also offered as CAS AR 510.
• CAS AN 521: Sociolinguistics
  Introduction to language in its social context. Methodological and theoretical approaches to sociolinguistics. Linguistic variation in relation to situation, gender, socioeconomic class, linguistic context, and ethnicity. Integrating micro- and macro-analysis from conversation to societal language planning. Also offered as CAS LX 341 and GRS LX 641.
• CAS AN 524: Seminar: Language and Culture Contacts in Contemporary Africa
  Focuses on language variation and change in Africa. Provides students with a foundation in the scholarship on contact linguistics, language variation and change, and the relationships between language variation and gender, ethnicity, religion, and youth culture.
• CAS AN 525: Ritual and Political Identity
  Provides a conceptual foundation for interpreting and understanding ritual and its role in shaping political and social identity and worldview. Focus on cases drawn from the contemporary Muslim world.
• CAS AN 532: Literacy and Islam in Africa
  Examines the Islamization of Africa and the development of local literary traditions. Students learn about the sources of knowledge called Ajami (African texts written in the Arabic script) and gain a deeper understanding of the spread of Islam and its Africanization throughout the continent. Selected texts written by enslaved Africans in the Americas are also examined.
• CAS AN 548: Muslim Societies: An Interdisciplinary History (area)
  Examines the states, empires, faiths, and ideologies of the Muslim world over a 1500-year period, including states from North and West Africa, through the Middle East, to Turkey, Iran, and then to Central and Southeast Asia. Also offered as CAS AH 539, HI 596, IR 515, and RN 563.
• 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 558: Human Sex Differences: Behavior, Biology, and Ecology
  Why are men and women different? Adopts an evolutionary, adaptive approach to investigate sex differences in human behavior, physiology, and cognition from developmental, mechanistic, and phylogenetic perspectives. Topics include sex differences in aggression, mate choice, parenting, affiliation, and cognition.
• 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 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.

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