ANTH 200 - Contemporary Problems in Anthropological Perspective

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200, COLL 350
Domain (Anchored): ALV
Additional Domain (if applicable): CSI
Anthropology aims to be the holistic, comparative study of human being. In its American configuration, anthropology combines a variety of archaeological, text-analytic, and ethnographic methods that can be used to inquire human social life in virtually any historical and geographic context that we can gather evidence about. This means that anthropology is well situated for providing multifaceted, long-range insights into a wide range of social problems. It also means that self-reflexivity-in other words, the development of awareness of one’s own self and society-is built into the discipline. This course aims to demonstrate what it means to apply anthropological perspectives to some pressing contemporary problems, both globally and in the U.S. context. Our hope is that you emerge from this course with a richer understanding of these problems, a solid overview of anthropology as an academic discipline, and the ability to apply anthropological perspectives to the problems that you encounter beyond this course in a thoughtful way.