Examines the manner in which ideas about sexuality and gender are constructed differently cross-culturally and how these ideas give shape to other social phenomena, relationships, and practices.

Topics to be announced prior to each semester, dealing with linguistics.

The theoretical, methodological and ethical practice of an engaged anthropology is the subject of this course, We begin with a history of applied anthropology. We then examine case studies that demonstrate the unique practices of contemporary sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological and bioanthropological anthropology in the areas of policy and civic engagement.

This course teaches the importance of understanding cultural meanings when curating items, whether material or intangible, drawn from social worlds other than one's own. It provides a general introduction to collection, preservation, and display through study of a specific collection held by the instructor or by a local institution such as the Fralin Museum of Art.

Seminars in topics announced prior to each semester.

Introduces the native languages of North America and the methods that linguists and anthropologists use to record and analyze them. Examines the use of grammars, texts and dictionaries of individual languages and affords insight into the diversity among the languages.

This course explores anthropological understandings of culture and the environment, particularly with respect to the ecology of human perception, histories of colonialism and related inequalities, food production, consumerism, nature conservation, the Anthropocene concept, and pervasive environmental logics of globalizing capitalism.

The course introduces medical anthropology, and contextualizes bodies, suffering, healing and health. It is organized thematically around a critical humanist approach, along with perspectives from political economy and social constructionism. The aim of the course is to provide a broad understanding of the relationship between culture, healing (including and especially the Western form of healing known as biomedicine), health and political power.

There's no debate that human reproduction is a biological universal, but it's also an intensely cultural phenomenon with widely disparate, & often contested, specific cultural routines, symbolic systems, ideas & practices whether focused on mothers, fathers, infants or communities or who is recognized as a birthing expert. Course examines variations in physiological & cultural processes globally & explores both the individual experiences & and systemic patterns associated with the phases of reproduction from pregnancy through to post-partum.

Examines the evolution of our capacity for language along with the development of human ways of cooperating in engaged social interaction. Course integrates cognitive, cultural, social, and biological aspects of language in comparative perspective. How is the familiar shape of language today the result of evolutionary and developmental processes involving the form, function, meaning and use of signs and symbols in social ecologies?