AN 530 – Global Intimacies: Sex, Gender, and Contemporary Sexualities (Sociocultural)

Smith-Hefner: F 3:30 – 6:15 pm

Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior or senior standing or consent of instructor. – 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.

AN 532 – Literacy and Islam in Africa (Sociocultural)

Ngom: TR 2 – 3:15 pm

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. Effective Fall 2024 fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.

AN 533 – Exploring Ethnographic Genres: The Politics and Poetics of Writing Culture (Sociocultural)

Davidson: TR 9:30 – 10:45

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.

AN 550 – Human Osteology (Biological)

Cunningham: TR 3:30 – 4:45 pm

Undergraduate Prerequisites: CASAN 102 or CASAN 331 or consent of instructor. – Development and structure of the human skeleton in anthropological and archaeological contexts. Basic processes of bone biology and how they are affected by lived experience. Meetings are lab-oriented and develop skill in whole and fragmentary skeletal identification. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Scientific Inquiry I. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Scientific Inquiry I.

AN 559 – Evolutionary Endocrinology (Biological)

Hodges-Simeon: TR 3:30 – 4:45 pm

Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASAN102) or equivalent. – Focuses on current research in the field of evolutionary endocrinology. Examines 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.

AN 716 – Contemporary European Ethnography (Sociocultural)

Arkin: MWF 11:15 – 12:05 pm

What and where is Europe? Who is European? As authoritarianism rises, this class asks what is happening to belonging across Europe? Are old forms of racism and xenophobia returning? Or are new modes of exclusion appearing?

AN 718 – Southeast Asia: Tradition and Modernity (Area)

Hefner: TR 11 – 12:15 pm

Examines the dynamics of politics, religion, class, and gender across Southeast Asia today. Using both literature and film media, pays particular attention to the forces that have made Southeast Asia one of the most dynamic regions in the world today. 

AN 735 – The Ape Within: Great Apes and the Evolution of Human Behavior (Biological)

Knott: MWF 1:25 – 2:15pm

Introduction to primate social behavior, focusing on the apes. Examines how great ape behavior helps us understand what is unique about human behavior and how we evolved. Topics include diet, juvenile development, social relationships, sexual behavior, aggression, culture, and cognition. 

AN 739 – Primate Biomechanics (Biological)

Garrett: TR 2 – 3:15 pm

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. 

AN 747 – Afghanistan (Area)

Barfield: TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Ethnographic and historical examination of Afghanistan’s traditional social, political and economic organization as a basis for understanding an era of political turmoil, civil wars and foreign interventions in that country over the past 50 years and the country’s future. 

AN 784 – Anthropology of Religion (Sociocultural)

Hefner: TR 3:30 – 4:45 pm

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.