Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

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  • CAS AN 534: Advanced Topics in Human Behavioral Evolution
    Topics in the behavioral evolution of Homo sapiens including social and sexual behavior, tool traditions, diet and hunting, language and intelligence, and locomotion. This course considers (inferred) behavioral traditions that characterized the origin of our genus and of our species.
  • CAS AN 548: Muslim Societies: An Interdisciplinary History (area)
    An introduction to the main themes, states, empires, faiths, and ideologies of the Muslim world.
  • 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. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Scientific Inquiry I.
    • Scientific Inquiry I
  • CAS AN 551: Anthropology and Human Heredity
    What can our genes say about who we are? This course surveys the theory and methods of evolutionary genetics and genomics as applied to human diversity, and their intersection with social issues such as racism, bioethics, and eugenics.
  • 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. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
    • Scientific Inquiry I
    • Critical Thinking
  • CAS AN 553: Human Uniquness
    Language, labor, culture, self-awareness, symboling, and other traits have been called uniquely human. But if these things have no animal antecedents, how could they have evolved? Course participants examine this "continuity paradox" and its proposed solutions from Darwin onward. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Scientific Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Scientific Inquiry I
    • Critical Thinking
  • 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. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Scientific Inquiry II, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Scientific Inquiry II
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • 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. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Scientific Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
    • Scientific Inquiry II
    • Research and Information Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS AN 558: The Evolutionary Biology of Human Sex Differences
    Are sex and gender instantiated in the body? This seminar explores evolutionary approaches to investigating sex differences in human behavior and physiology from phylogenetic, mechanistic, and developmental perspectives. Topics include gender expression, non-binary sex/gender, aggression, mate choice, cognition, and more.
  • CAS AN 559: Evolutionary Endocrinology
    Focuses on current research in the field of evolutionary endocrinology. Hormones circulate systemically to signal diverse cells and tissues, influencing and coordinating nearly all aspects of the phenotype, including behavior, morphology, physiology, and life history. The field of evolutionary endocrinology emphasizes ultimate explanations, such as how hormones act as mediators of a variety of fundamental evolutionary phenomena from circadian rhythms to sexuality. Explores how and why natural selection shaped the "inputs" and "outputs" of the endocrine system. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Scientific Inquiry II, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Scientific Inquiry II
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • CAS AN 563: Public Religion and Politics Across Cultures
    Examines the role of religion, religious movements, and secularism in modern politics, citizenship, and public life. Devotes special attention to the implications of the global religious resurgence for democracy, multicultural tolerance, and gender equality, both in Western liberal democracies and the global south.
  • 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
    Advanced seminar on the study of emotion as culturally and historically specific experience, cognition and symbolic system. Focus on specific emotions including shame, anger, melancholy, hope, hate, and love. Special attention to affect and the politics of emotion.
  • 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.) Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Social Inquiry II.
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Social Inquiry II
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS AN 585: Advanced Readings in African Ethnography (area)
    Explores ecological adaptation, kinship, social organization, religious thought and practice, and creative expression. Special focus is placed on the history of theory, method, and narrative style in the construction of African ethnographies
  • CAS AN 589: The Anthropology of Development Theory & Practice
    Explores the uncomfortable relationship between anthropology and international development. Examines anthropology's sustained and multidimensional critiques of the development enterprise; also considers whether, amidst these critiques, anthropology can imagine an alternative discourse and practice of betterment for historically disenfranchised peoples.
  • CAS AN 590: Theory, Method, and Techniques in Fieldwork
    Traditional and modern methods of ethnographic field research: data collection, research design, and analyses.
  • CAS AN 593: Special Topics in Cultural Anthropology (Fall)
    Selected issues and debates in current anthropology. Two topics are offered Fall 2020. Section A1: Migration, (Im)mobilities & Precarity. Addresses the regulation of human mobility and practices of inclusive exclusion in a globalized era, with an ethnographic focus on undocumented migrants. Explores the interconnections between legal status, economic precarity, cultural marginalization and political mobilization as well as their impact on differentiated citizenship and belonging. Section A2: Desiring Memorials: Afterlives of Mass Violence and the Pursuit of Justice. An exploration of key debates in anthropology on mass violence, genocide, memory, history and justice. Discussion examines the ways that memory and memorials are being mobilized to make human rights arguments. Engagement with works by political and legal theorists, historians, anthropologists and novelists in order to survey and examine the human condition at stake in a course on mass violence and the pursuit of justice.
  • CAS AN 594: Seminar: Topics in Cultural Anthropology
    Selected issues and debates in current anthropology.
  • 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. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning II, Scientific Inquiry II, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Scientific Inquiry II
    • Quantitative Reasoning II
    • Teamwork/Collaboration

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