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 379: China: Tradition and Transformation (area)
    Examines daily life in China and Taiwan, tracing how opposed economic and political paths transformed a common tradition. Topics include capitalism and socialism; politics and social control; dissidence; gender relations; religion, arts, and literature; and pollution. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy.
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Social Inquiry II
    • Research and Information Literacy
  • CAS AN 384: Anthropology of Religion
    Introduction to the anthropological study of myth, ritual, and religious experience across cultures. Special attention to the problem of religious symbolism and meaning, religious conversion and revitalization, contrasts between traditional and world religions, and the relation of religious knowledge to science, magic, and ideology. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Social Inquiry I
  • CAS AN 397: Anthropology and Film: Ways of Seeing
    Considers the history and development of anthropological, ethnographic, and transcultural filmmaking. In-depth examination of important anthropological films in terms of methodologies, techniques, and strategies of expression; story, editing, narration, themes, style, content, art, and aesthetics. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS AN 401: Senior Independent Work
    Directed studies for seniors doing honors thesis work.
  • CAS AN 402: Senior Independent Work
    Directed studies for seniors doing honors thesis work.
  • CAS AN 461: Ethnography and Anthropological Theory 1
    Examines foundational social scientific and anthropological theories and methods from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. Discussion focuses on historical materialist, evolutionist, functionalist, structuralist, symbolic, and culture-and-personality approaches and their relation to contemporary anthropological thought. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • CAS AN 462: Ethnography and Anthropological Theory 2
    Required of majors. Examines current anthropological theory and method. Discussion focuses on recent ethnographies and the anthropological debates they have provoked. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Writing-Intensive Course.
    • Social Inquiry II
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS AN 491: Directed Study in Anthropology
    Individual instruction and directed research in anthropology.
  • CAS AN 492: Directed Study in Anthropology
    Individual instruction and directed research in anthropology.
  • CAS AN 505: Women and Social Change in Asia (area)
    Examines how women have affected andbeen affected by economic and cultural changes in China, Japan, and India. Particular attention paid to women's education, health, child rearing, and labor force participation. (Counts towards the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies minor and the Asian Studies minor.)
  • CAS AN 510: Proposal Writing for Social Science Research
    Intended for PhD students in the social sciences or humanites and undergraduates already admitted to the Anthropology Honors Program. Workshop-based course designed to turn students' intellectual interests into answerable, field-based research questions. Goal is the production of an honors or doctoral level research project proposal and/or dissertation prospectus.
  • 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.
  • 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 530: Global Intimacies: Sex, Gender, and Contemporary Sexualities
    Explores theoretical and ethnographic approaches to gender, sex, and sexuality as linked to globalizing discourses and transnational mobilities. Readings and discussion emphasize intersections of sex, gender, labor, love, and marriage in a globalized world.
  • CAS AN 532: Literacy and Islam in Africa
    Examines the Islamization of Africa and literary traditions. Students learn about African texts written in the Arabic script (Ajami) and the spread of Islam and its Africanization throughout the continent. Texts written by enslaved Africans in the Americas are examined.
  • CAS AN 533: Exploring Ethnographic Genres: The Poetics and Politics of Writing Culture
    This course offers close readings of classic and recent ethnographic texts to ask: what distinguishes ethnography from other disciplinary traditions of writing about culture and human behavior? How do we see changes in anthropology's theoretical interests reflected (or not) in ethnographic writing? What are the different structural conventions, rhetorical tropes, allegorical patterns, and stylistic strategies used by authors considered to be master ethnographers? Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Social Inquiry II.
    • Social Inquiry II
  • 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.

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