This course introduces the principal ideas and methods of cultural anthropology, the comparative study of human societies in all their complexity and diversity. Throughout the semester, students are introduced to the key concepts of cultural analysis, fieldwork (how anthropologists gather data), and ethnography (the written account of the systematic study of a social setting) and learn about what anthropologists do and where they work. The course texts show the way people in diverse contexts make sense of the world around them and the assignments are oriented towards developing skills in qualitative research.

This course teaches graduate students how anthropologists use and generate theory. Rather than a survey of anthropological theories, this course helps students find the theoretical frameworks most useful to them, and to help students engage with these frameworks in their writing, research, teaching and other professional endeavors. Course readings are primarily ethnographies written in the past decade that cover a range of themes and theoretical approaches. The course shows how anthropologists are making sense of data using the theoretical frameworks that matter now, as well as how they nuance or challenge those frameworks through original research. Moreover, reading contemporary ethnographies allows students to go beyond what has been canonized in order to explore some fundamental questions such as: what counts as theory? Who gets to be considered theoretical? And, what insights and ways of understanding the world does the ethnographic form itself offer?

This course enables students to see cities and urban spaces in a new way. This is an interdisciplinary class, meaning the course focuses on the lived experience, history, politics and contemporary design of cities. By reading and analyzing sources by authors representing a variety of fields and backgrounds (anthropology, urban design, geography, critical cartography, as well as writings by journalists, novelists, activists and community organizers) students gain a deep understanding the most important issues facing cities today. Those issues include: designing streets to promote sustainable transportation, racism and racial inequality, community participation in planning and housing. An important component of this course is to understand the many creative possibilities for representing urban life. By the end of the semester you will gain an in-depth understanding of urban planning, mapping, “urban renewal”, redlining, informal housing in the Global South, and car-oriented development, as well as the ability to research and represent these topics in writing and by using innovative online tools.

In this course, students learn how to do ethnographic research and writing in applied contexts. Students will learn about the life of anthropological research outside of academia, develop advanced ethnographic and qualitative research methods geared towards solving problems and learn how the skills and theory of anthropology and related disciplines are translated to a variety of professional contexts (including libraries, industry, medical/public health contexts and city government).

This course is about using anthropology to study and solve problems. This course emphasizes practical, hands-on ethnographic work and collaboration. Students will learn how anthropological research and approaches are used to address issues related to the environment, urban planning, government services, healthcare and user experience. The course gives students the skills in using anthropological concepts and theories in a variety of settings, an understanding of the ethics of applied qualitative research and hands-on experience doing ethnographic research oriented towards solving problems.

This course offers students a study of sports around the world from an anthropological perspective. In this class, sports are understood neither as an escape from everyday life and its problems nor as a straightforward reflection of their surrounding social world. Instead, sports will be explored as productive of society, politics and ways of being in the world. Throughout the semester, we will focus on topics such as the relationship of sports to colonialism, nationalism, modernity and industrialization, as well as the relationship of sports to changing gender norms, body cultures and ideas about race. Furthermore, we will also examine controversies surrounding sex-testing in professional sports and the uses of performance enhancing drugs to explore how our concepts of the body and the human are changing. This class enables students explore sports and body cultures from multiple theoretical perspectives. Throughout the semester, students will research, write about and film a local sports culture in order to gain skills in doing original ethnographic research.