Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue
Documenting the African City (ANTH-UA 9087)
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
How do media representations reflect and affect communities? How do people exploit old and new forms of communication? How do technological mediation channel and reshape social relations? This course reviews ethnographic literature on a wide range of media including print, photography, film, television, radio, cell phones, and internet-based social networks. Each week, we explore how media use redefines a central anthropological concern, such as kinship, colonialism, mobility, religion, or violence. We continuously interrogate the diverse effects of technology, infrastructure, reception, sensation, and interaction. Engaging with both “live” and “virtual” communities, we revisit the methods and ethics of studying mediated relations. Students deliver an initial critical auto-ethnography of their own media consumption, a detailed assessment of a debate in the field, and a final project investigating a specific media community using original ethnographic research. Throughout the course, we collaboratively develop our own experimental virtual community based on the priorities and interests of the class participants. Innovative integrations of art and interactivity will be encouraged.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal husbandry is often called the Agricultural Revolution. This change in human subsistence strategies led to changes in many other aspects of human life, including settlement patterns, demography, social organization, and religious practices. It also provided the economic basis for the development of complex urban societies in many regions of the world. Examines the archaeological evidence for the transition from foraging to farming on a worldwide basis.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 608-000 (18677)09/02/2020 – 12/13/2020 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Crabtree, Pam
Examines the global prevalence of gender violence and the varied meanings of violence against women and changes in terminology over time. Examines ways of theorizing gender and violence including performative ideas of gender. The creation of gender violence as a social problem is a product of social movements in the United States, Europe, India, and many other parts of the world. It is now understood globally as an important human rights violation. Also examines the forms of intervention that have been developed in the United States and globally for diminishing violence against women, including policing, prosecution, and punishment.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
This course introduces the long-standing and complex connection between religious practices and various media. We’ll analyze how human hearing, vision, and the performing body have been used historically to express and maintain religious life through music, voice, images, words, and rituals. Time will then be spent on more recent electronic media such as radio, film, television, video, and the Internet. An anthropological/ historical perspective on studying religion is pursued.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 220-000 (20043)01/27/2020 – 05/11/2020 Tue,Thu11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Zito, Angela · Momin, Shayan
Although they are no longer the dominant form of human sociality or adaptation, hunter-gatherers continue to play a pivotal role in anthropological theory. But who are hunter-gatherers? Some argue that the problem with trying to pigeon-hole hunter-gatherers is that this taxonomic unit holds little practical or evolutionary legitimacy. Others contend that people have evidently lived off the land without agriculture or animal husbandry, so at some level, hunter-gatherer is a meaningful category. Yet, few of the qualities assigned to hunter-gatherers hold up to detailed cross-cultural investigation. For example, hunter-gatherer subsistence is not inherently linked to peaceful coexistence, affluence, small group sizes or settlement mobility. Moreover, hunter-gatherer populations commonly thought to be deeply entrenched in evolutionary time are now known to result from complex historical processes of globalization and colonial expansion. This course will explore the diversity of lifeways subsumed under the banner of the hunter-gatherer. Drawing on a wide range of cross-cultural datasets, the course will unpack hunter-gatherer behavioral variability across broad topics, not paradigms. We will examine variations in hunter-gatherer subsistence, mobility, social organization, belief systems, landscape use, and material culture. Finally, we will ask to what degree the concept of the hunter-gatherer and the study of modern hunter-gatherers can help anthropologists understand and explore human behavior in the deeper past.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
ANTH-UA 210-000 (19127)09/03/2019 – 12/13/2019 Mon,Wed9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Pargeter, Justin
This course examines the social and political life of media and how it makes a difference in the daily lives of people as a practice – in production, reception, or circulation. It is organized around the following key questions: What is media? What role do media play in producing or shaping our sense of reality? What is the relationship between media and culture? How are media implicated in social change? It provides an overview of the increasing theoretical attention paid to the mass media by anthropologists, and focuses on concrete ethnographic examples.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
ANTH-UA 123-000 (19130)09/03/2019 – 12/13/2019 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Ganti, Tejaswini
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 216-000 (18731)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Thu2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by
Only open to majors in anthropology who have the permission of the director of undergraduate studies or the instructor. This seminar explores, theoretically and methodologically, selected key current issues and problems in biological anthropology. See the department?s internal catalog.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 511-000 (18726)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by
Introduces contemporary archaeology, its theories, practices, and early societies and cultures. Examines current methodological and theoretical viewpoints of archaeological scholarship within the discipline of anthropology. Focuses on key transformations in cultural evolution, such as the origins of modern humans, the emergence of food production, and the development of complex societies, urbanism, and early states. Explores gender roles, landscapes and settlements, technologies, art, cognitive systems, urbanism, and state formation.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 3-000 (7811)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Mon,Wed11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by
ANTH-UA 3-000 (7812)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by
ANTH-UA 3-000 (7813)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Thu11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by
This course seeks to assess the degree to which variations in human biology and culture can be understood as adaptations to varying external conditions. We examine the relationship of human systems of action and the natural world in order to understand the various forms of human adaptation. Case studies of several living peoples, contemporary and past biological communities, and prehistoric cultures provide the material for interpretation and evaluation of theoretical positions.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 90-000 (22566)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Tue,Thu3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by
The Chinese word for ?religion? means ?teaching.? Explores what Chinese people ?taught? themselves about the person, society, and the natural world and thus how social life was constructed and maintained. Examines in historical perspective the classic texts of the Taoist and Confucian canon and their synthesis; Buddhist, especially Ch?an (Zen). Discusses the practices of filiality in Buddhism, Confucian orthodoxy, and in folk religion.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Examines human health and disease within an ecological framework, exploring the interactions of environmental, genetic, physiological, and cultural factors in the expression and distribution of human diseases. Develops pathology profiles for nonhuman primates; prehistoric human populations; and hunting and gathering, agricultural, and industrial groups, with emphasis on the expression of infectious disease in human history and newly (re-) emerging diseases.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 55-000 (23015)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Fri11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by DeCasien, Alex · Hernandez Burgos, Saine
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 6 Weeks
Between the end of the Ice Age and the expansion of the Roman Empire, temperate Europe witnessed a series of social and economic transformations that represented a transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to urban chiefdoms. Along the way, these hunter-gatherers became agriculturalists and stockherders, learned to use metals, and developed social structures as complex as any found in Old World civilizations. Examines changes in later prehistoric Europe from about 8000 B.C. to the arrival of the Romans.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 217-000 (20428)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Mon,Wed12:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Crabtree, Pam
Analyzes medical beliefs and practices in African, Asian, and Latin American societies. Studies the coexistence of different kinds of medical specialists (e.g., shamans, herbalists, bonesetters, midwives, physicians trained in indigenous and cosmopolitan medicine), with particular reference to the structures of health resources available to laymen and problems of improving health care.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Humans are the most wide-ranging of all of the species on earth. Our evolutionary history and our ability to adapt to such a broad range of environments is dependent on the results in the patterns of human variability we see today. New techniques have been developed that allow us to explore the different levels of human variation. This course focuses on new data and methodologies, including molecular genetic techniques, and the hypotheses and controversies generated by these new perspectives.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Why do some primates live in large social groups while others are solitary and yet others live in pairs or cooperatively breeding families? Why are strong social hierarchies seen in some primate taxa but not in others? How do multiple species of primates often manage to coexist in the same habitat? Why are social relationships in some primate species characterized by strong bonds among females while such bonds are absent in other primates societies? Why do some species of primates show marked geographic variability in behavior and social structure? The answers to these and other questions lie in understanding the relationships between each species and its ecological and social setting and in understanding each species? phylogenetic history. In this course, students explore the diversity of primate social systems and the evolutionary relationships among the primates, and we discuss many of the general ecological laws that have been proposed by evolutionary biologists as the keys to understanding important features of primate behavior and ecology.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Explores the role of language in culture and society by focusing on gender, ethnicity, social class, verbal genres, literacy, and worldview.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 17-000 (7778)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Mon,Wed9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Das, Sonia
ANTH-UA 17-000 (9543)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Wed12:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Li, Shuting
ANTH-UA 17-000 (7779)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Wed3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Li, Shuting
ANTH-UA 17-000 (24440)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Fri2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Franco, Pedro
In this course, New York City is our archaeological site. The archaeology of New York City extends back some 10,000 years, from Native American societies, to the colonial encounter, into the industrial era, and through to the present day. In this course we will study the archaeological investigations that have taken place throughout the five boroughs of New York City. In doing so we will see how the city became a locus of global trade, in people, goods, and ideas. We will investigate how, as a nodal point in this global system, it came to develop its own cultures and ideologies. We will also learn about the federal, state, and local laws that mandate when and how archaeology is conducted in advance of construction activities and the extent to which Native American Tribes and local communities are involved in this process.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Surveys the mutual shaping of culture and biology in diverse contexts around the world. Starts with sociocultural theories of biocultural process and ends with ethnographies of disability, drugs, food, place, pain, and biotechnology. Examines the relationship between larger political economic structures and individual subjectivities, and examines biological experience as simultaneously material and socioculturally plastic.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
This course examines the social and cultural forces that shape the construction of sex, gender, and sexuality. It takes these categories as nonbinary and fluid. Using an intersectional approach, it considers how various subject positions including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, religion, and ability impact gender and sex roles. It traces historical trajectories of foundational feminist anthropology, while also exploring queer theories and performativity. It seeks to interrogate social hierarchies based on sex, gender, and sexuality, exploring who has been traditionally excluded from positions of power and privilege. Topics such as race and porn, BDSM, asexuality, heteronormativity, transgender identities, queer coming out narratives, down-low sexual practices, polyamory, sex work, and queer kinship will be explored in order to challenge normative frameworks of sex and gender.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Biological anthropology examines the evolutionary history and adaptability of humans and our ancestors. Forensic anthropology is an applied subfield of biological anthropology that provides expert analysis of the skeleton in a medicolegal setting by utilizing methods developed in skeletal biology, archaeology, and the forensic sciences. Forensic anthropologists play critical roles in identifying victims of mass fatalities (such as World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings), in investigating homicides (such as identifying the Russian tsar?s family), and in distinguishing cause of death. We examine how forensic anthropologists approach modern and historic crimes in the laboratory and the field. Students are introduced to the underlying theory and the applied techniques that forensic anthropologists use to recover and identify individuals and assess cause of death.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 326-000 (9746)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Fri2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Ortiz, Alejandra · Hernandez, Jasmine
This course offers an overview of the human rights system, looking at its basic elements and studying how it works. It focuses on the relationships between human rights and culture and between global ideas and practices and local ones. Human rights campaigns frequently encounter resistance in the name of protecting cultural differences. This is particularly common with issues concerning women, children, and the family. The course explores several issues that raise questions of human rights and culture, such as female genital cutting, trafficking of persons, food justice, and indigenous peoples’ rights to culture. Using these examples, the course considers how the human rights system deals with tensions between global standards and local ways of life. It examines the meanings of rights and of culture in these debates and shows the implications of adopting an anthropological analysis of these situations. The goal of the course is developing an understanding of human rights in practice.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Analyzes fossil evidence for human evolution and the paleoanthropological inferences derived from such evidence. Emphasizes methods of phylogenetic reconstruction, taxonomy, functional anatomy, and paleoecology.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Examines how primates communicate and why their communication takes the forms it does. Discusses general issues associated with the study of animal communication: potential functions of communication, different modalities by which communicative signals can be transmitted, types of information that can be conveyed via each of these modalities, and ways in which researchers go about studying animal communication systems. Examines ways environmental and sociological factors influence the evolution of forms of communication.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 59-000 (20885)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Mon4:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Lawrence, Jenna
Integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, immunology, ecology, and behavioral ecology, along with sociocultural anthropology, politics, and economics, to better understand newly emerging and reemerging diseases as they affect human health. General evolutionary theory and an introduction to Darwinian medicine are provided before the course examines viral, bacterial, parasitic, and prion-based diseases along with their hosts, vectors, and other organisms. Particular attention is paid to how humans have purposely and inadvertently created both biological and cultural environments for the transmission of different diseases. Media representations and misrepresentations are examined throughout the course.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Explores how identity is a process of “becoming” rather than a mode of “being” by examining how speakers enact their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and socioeconomic class through everyday conversations, narratives, performances, literacy activities, and public debates. Also explores the moral and political consequences of people’s identification strategies by examining how their beliefs about language reinforce or contest normative power structures. Readings on the relationship between bilingual education and accent discrimination, multilingualism and youth counterculture, migration and code-switching, media and religious publics, linguistic nationalism and xenophobia, and literacy and neo/liberalism in different areas of the world.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 16-000 (20883)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Wed11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Das, Sonia · Franco, Pedro
What does it mean to think anthropologically? This course considers historically foundational practices of anthropological thought, its core method, fieldwork, and its most influential product, the ethnography, in order to think practically and creatively along the lines of what constitutes cultures, societies, translation, and difference. A central goal is to advance the concept of culture, with its attendant solidarities, hierarchies, and exclusions, in order to better understand continually changing systems of collective identifications.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 1-000 (7762)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue,Thu11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Zhang, Amy
ANTH-UA 1-000 (7763)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Fri8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Jaramillo, Alejandro
ANTH-UA 1-000 (7764)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Fri8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Sengupta, Rohan
ANTH-UA 1-000 (7765)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Fri9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Peckham, Moira
ANTH-UA 1-000 (7766)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Fri9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Jaramillo, Alejandro
ANTH-UA 1-000 (9371)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Thu4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Martinez, Katrina
ANTH-UA 1-000 (9372)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Thu4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Thomas, Sujit
ANTH-UA 1-000 (10568)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Thu6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by Thomas, Sujit
ANTH-UA 1-000 (10569)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Thu6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by Sengupta, Rohan
ANTH-UA 1-000 (26334)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Thu2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Martinez, Katrina
This course examines the social and political life of media and how it makes a difference in the daily lives of people as a practice – in production, reception, or circulation. It is organized around the following key questions: What is media? What role do media play in producing or shaping our sense of reality? What is the relationship between media and culture? How are media implicated in social change? It provides an overview of the increasing theoretical attention paid to the mass media by anthropologists, and focuses on concrete ethnographic examples.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 123-000 (20426)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Mon,Wed11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind today and most of the public discourse on this topic focuses on the future. And yet, all of our experience with the natural world lies in the past. This course will delve into some of the issues that arise from contemplating climate change in a historical and human evolutionary perspective: what is humans’ natural environment? How many times did the climate change significantly during human history? Did climate determine the course of human evolution and/or social change? When did humans first begin to tinker with the environment? And finally: what solutions for the future can we glean from our collective historical experience? The course will use primary literature from the fields of archaeology, paleoanthropology, and paleoclimatology to guide students toward a better understanding of climate change at the human scale.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Investigates the evolutionary origins of humans. The study of human evolution is a multidisciplinary endeavor involving a synthesis of concepts, techniques, and research findings from a variety of different scientific fields, including evolutionary biology, paleontology, primatology, comparative anatomy, genetics, molecular biology, geology, and archaeology. Explores the different contributions that scientists have made toward understanding human origins and provides a detailed survey of the evidence used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of our own species.
Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7767)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Mon,Wed12:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Higham, James
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7775)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Mon3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Gunson, Jessica
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7768)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Mon4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Gunson, Jessica
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7769)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Galway-Witham, Julia
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7770)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Galway-Witham, Julia
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7771)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue12:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Wang, Xue
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7772)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by Dudas, Madelynne
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7773)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Dudas, Madelynne
ANTH-UA 2-000 (7774)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Wed2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Wang, Xue
ANTH-UA 2-000 (26376)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Wed3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Guerra, Jordan
For students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, our new program structure affects the categorization of courses on this site.
Classes listed in the “IMA Major Electives” categories refer to the old IMA program structure. If you’re under the new IMA program structure, these courses count as general IMA Electives for you. Your program structure is noted on your academic advising spreadsheet.
Students on the new program structure can search the Interchange for courses. If you’re looking for “IMA Major Distribution” courses, you'll find them listed here: