What is culture and how does it affect our understanding of the world and the ways we behave? How do cultural anthropologists approach the study of human societies and what methods do they use to do research? These are some of the questions that we will examine in this class. The course introduces students to ethnographic methods and theories of cultural anthropology. The aim is to enhance our knowledge of our own culture and of other cultures around the world. All majors are welcome.

People in all societies experience illness, but their understandings of the causes of disease and approaches for restoring health differ greatly. This course examines the social and cultural dimensions of health, illness, and healing. Through a variety of case studies, we will learn about the ways medical anthropologists study explanations of disease, experiences of suffering, and the social organization of health care.  Western medicine, also called “biomedicine,” will also be an object of our analysis. We will discuss how the delivery of biomedical health care involves particular understandings of the body and appropriate social relationships. Emphasis will also be placed on how the stories that individuals and institutions circulate about human agency in suffering shape people’s convictions about how to care, and for whom to care. The course aims to teach students to think about health, disease, and medicine in national, cross-cultural and global terms.

UB Areas: Civilization and History, Humanities, Social Sciences

Examines the romantic element in archaeology in the great sites of the world, such as Troy, Olduvai Gorge, Stonehenge, and so forth, and their discoverers and excavators, including the archaeologists Schielmann, Leakey, and Kenyon.

UB Areas: Civilization and History, Humanities, Social Sciences

This class is a general introduction to the field of anthropology, the study of humanity. It is designed to pique your interest in the broad diversity of human behavior and lifestyles across the world and throughout time. This course will take a look at our four major subfields - archaeology, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology - and include discussions on our "youngest" subfield, applied anthropology. The goal of this class is to understand the wide range of issues covered by the fields of anthropology, the ways in which these issues are studied by specialists in the field, and the practical effects of the questions covered by anthropological study.

UB Areas: Civilization and History, Humanities, Social Sciences

What is culture and how does it affect our understanding of the world and the ways we behave? How do cultural anthropologists approach the study of human societies and what methods do they use to do research? These are some of the questions that we will examine in this class. The course introduces students to ethnographic methods and theories of cultural anthropology. The aim is to enhance our knowledge of our own culture and of other cultures around the world. All majors are welcome.

UB Areas: Social Sciences

For centuries preceding modern times, our uniqueness as a species was taken as a sign of special creation; we were not seen to be a part of nature. But as knowledge of human evolution, our closeness to other primates, and our adaptations to specific environments emerged, we have taken our place in the animal kingdom. Here, we learn how those insights developed, and about current methods of understanding human origins and the natural forces that have shaped us.

UB Areas: Social Sciences

Archaeology is the study of the human past through its material remains.  So much evidence of human activity on earth exists outside the realm of written records that archaeology is of primary importance in reconstructing past human life ways.  Bridging the gap between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, archaeologists integrate many types of evidence in order to shed light on the origins of our species, Homo sapiens sapiens and development through time of so many different cultural manifestations.  Introduction to Archaeology provides an overview of the methods, theories and models used by archaeologists to better understand past human societies, from the formulation of a research question, through the processes of survey and excavation, to the analysis of data, and the interpretation of the results.

UB Areas: Civilization and History, Social Sciences, The Arts

This course explores musical cultures throughout the world with special attention given to social, political, and historical contexts of musical performance practices. Lectures will involve focused listening and discussions of an array of musical traditions as they relate to place, ethnic identity, politics, industry, conflict, and technology. No formal musical training is required though students will be expected to develop critical listening skills.

UB Areas: Social Sciences

Archaeology of the prehistoric Near and Middle East from the peopling of the region through the emergence of the first villages and the domestication of plants and animals to the emergence of city-states in the 3rd millennium BC.

A century and a half of archaeological work in the Middle East has resulted in a wealth of evidence appropriate for tracing the prehistoric and historic traditions in this area of the world. This course offers an overview of the archaeology of the prehistoric and early historic Near and Middle East from the peopling of the region in the Palaeolithic through the emergence of city-states and imperial formations in the 3^rd millennium BC., paying close attention to the questions and debates that underpin research in various times and places. At the same time, no such narrative is independent of the interests and agendas of the scholars who have worked to compose it, and we will emphasize a critical approach to the questions and perspectives that have structured research in the region. The course will also include a brief introduction to the history and scope of archaeology and an overview of archaeological method and theory and of current movements and themes in archaeology.

UB Areas: Social Sciences

This course will focus on the healing traditions of Native South American people as an important part of our contemporary experience. We will examine the images, forms, and meanings that are common to the healing experience of many Native South Americans: concepts of order, time, space, power, destruction, and renewal which allow us to group them together despite their geographical and sociopolitical diversity. We will also analyze some specific ethnographic examples of how they are manifested through funerary cannibalism, shamanism, sorcery, animal spirits and metaphors, the use of tobacco, narcotics and hallucinogens, and rituals for healing, fertility and collective well-being.