Anthropology (ANT)
ANT 101. Introduction to Anthropology. 3 Credit Hours.
This course introduces students to the basic concepts, theories and methodologies in anthropology by focusing on the classic four fields of the discipline: physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and cultural anthropology. This course focuses on the evolution of the human species and theories of early culture, the reconstruction of the past through archaeological analysis, the structure and usage of language as part of culture, and the description and analysis of societies and cultures utilizing comparative theories and methodologies in cultural anthropology. No prerequisite. Fulfills Core requirement(s): DIV.
ANT 102. World Cultures. 3 Credit Hours.
What is it like to grow up in New Guinea? How do the Maya fit into the world system? Where do the Massai go when looking for a mate? This is a survey course to make you aware of various social structures and cultural practices around the world. By systematically analyzing many socio-cultural factors, such as subsistence, family, kinship, gender, political system, and religion the cause will illuminate basic similarities and differences among all peoples and cultures. Fulfills Core requirement(s): Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).
ANT 200. Cultural Myths and Cultural Realities. 3 Credit Hours.
This course focuses on how we study other, especially non-western, cultures. In it, we look at recent critical debates on the nature of anthropological inquiry and the representations of other cultures that anthropologists have constructed. Is anthropology a science or humanity? How accurate are the anthropologists' representations of other cultures? Why do anthropologists studying the same culture come up with very different pictures of that culture? How much of the anthropologist's own personal and cultural biases are revealed in the way other cultures are described? How does the anthropologist's own theoretical perspective affect the way the data are interpreted? Is the nature of anthropological inquiry such that we can never escape biases? What kinds of methodologies do anthropologists use and what are their limitations? How can restudies enable us to refine our methods and generate more sophisticated comparative categories to use in the understanding of cultures? Fulfills Core requirement(s): Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).
ANT 201. Field Methods. 3 Credit Hours.
This course will introduce students to the basic methods of anthropological research, and the range of techniques for gathering information that we call ethnographic fieldwork. We will ask how this tradition began, how it has changed through the course of the 20th century to present, and what new technologies make available new possibilities as we document cultural forms in a variety of scenarios and settings. We will try our hand at key methods in ethnographic research such as participant-observation, structured and unstructured interviewing, and then make our way to thinking about photography and video technologies in the realm of digital media, asking how these have been used in cultural representation in the past and what we might attempt with them in the present. While we cover a breadth of scholarly articles about ethnographic research and working with human subjects, this class will also develop as a workshop in which students produce ethnographic writing, and actively evaluate and guide one anothers work. Students will apply what they learn during the course toward designing their own ethnographic research project, to be presented at the end of the semester.
ANT 202. Gender and Crime. 3 Credit Hours.
This interdisciplinary course examines crime and criminal justice as gendered phenomena. It explores how notions of masculinity and femininity shape and are shaped by criminalized practices, the operation of the criminal justice system, and our understandings of both. Focusing on gender does not mean focusing exclusively on women. Gender is a relational concept; both men and women are gendered. In this course we will consider the implications of feminist theorizing for a range of criminological concepts, approaches, and themes. Case studies from various social contexts (e.g. the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc.) will help students develop cultural sensitivity and a more complete understanding of our social world. Additionally, the course will develop students' ability to think critically about gender and crime from an intersectional standpoint. Historical and contemporary works by criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, feminist theorists, and others will be reviewed. An auxiliary aim of this course is to develop students' capacity to read and write academic texts efficiently and effectively.
Fulfills Core Requirement(s): Diversity (DIV)and Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS).
Cross-listed Courses: CJS 202, SOC 202, PGS 202, GWS 202, GLA 202
ANT 203. Anthropology of War. 3 Credit Hours.
Why do wars happen? What causes violence to erupt between different groups of people? Are we, as humans, biologically predisposed for violence, or are we pushed towards violence based on the social structures around us? How are societal inequalities exacerbated by war? How do different groups negotiate conflicts to leverage more power or violence, or reduce levels of violence? How do we commemorate and remember war and the casualties of conflict? What do our memories about the past tell us about how power is societally distributed in the present? This course explores the role of warfare in cultural construction and expression using a four-field anthropological approach, evaluating archaeological, skeletal, ethnographic and linguistic evidence of war throughout human existence.
Fulfills Core Requirement(s): Diversity (DIV).
ANT 213. People&Cultures Southeast Asia. 3 Credit Hours.
An anthropological and topical introduction to the region of Southeast Asia and the various societies and cultures found there. Topics to be discussed are: regional definition and intra-regional variation, ecology and economic systems, history and prehistory, social organization including politico-territorial systems and concepts of hierarchy and power, kinship and alliance systems, patron-client systems, ethnic groups and ethnicity, religions, gender systems, personality and communicative systems such as language and other conceptual and symbolic systems. The focus of the course will be on analyses that contrast with western views and that have provided a source of debate on western theories of society and culture. Fulfills Core requirement(s): Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).
ANT 223. Global Crime. 3 Credit Hours.
This course explores illegal activity and criminalization in the context of the destabilizing effects of globalization. The course considers the transnational dimension of crime in both the developed and postcolonial parts of the world, and its connections to our own everyday lives. The course will cover the growth and character of the extra-legal networks of power and finance that shape our contemporary world, and will examine their relations with state power, corporate business, and law enforcement activities. Finally, it introduces some of the challenges of both supra-state and popular responses to illegitimate activities that are shaped by global political economy.Fulfills Core Requirement: Diversity (DIV).
ANT 231. Environment, Culture and Power. 3 Credit Hours.
This course looks at issues in human interaction with environment and resources from a cross-cultural perspective. Anthropological approaches to environment will be presented along with ethnographic examples from various types of societies around the world. Assignments will encourage students to apply this knowledge both to their own community and to environmental concerns on a global scale. FFulfills Core requirement(s): Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).
ANT 300. Anthropological Linguistics. 3 Credit Hours.
An introduction to the science of linguistics, focusing on the social and cultural aspects of language. Topics to be considered are: 1) language and human nature; 2) linguistic and non-linguistic forms of communication; literate and oral cultures; 4) the basic components of language; 5) meaning in language and speech; 6) language differentiation along sociological lines (race, class, gender, etc.); and 7) the relationship between language and cultural knowledge systems, especially those of non-western cultures. Fulfills Core Requirements: Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).
ANT 303. Social Theory in Anthro/Sociol. 3 Credit Hours.
This course explores sociological and anthropological theory by studying a number of the classical thinkers in the disciplines. We study the origins of and interrelationships among these theories in their particular social and historical milieus, as well as their relevance to sociology and anthropology today. The student is expected to gain both a competence in the historical development of social scientific theory and an ability to theorize about social phenomena. Fulfills Core requirement(s): DIV.
Prerequisites: SOC 201 (CJS 201/PSC 202) or ANT/GWS/PGS 200 or permission of instructor.
Cross-listed Courses: SOC 303
ANT 304. Anthropology of Refugees. 3 Credit Hours.
This course offers a critical introduction to the heterogeneous global histories and contemporary world politics that shape the experience of refugees globally and in the United States. By reading a rang of anthropological as well as other related theoretical texts, we will explore issues central to the field of refugee/forced migration studies. What experiences define a refugee? Who is included in the category "refugee," and who or what decides? What constitutes a refugee camp, and where do refugees go from a camp? How have refugees resettled in American cities fared in recent times? In approaching these questions, the course will focus on the topics of displacement, dispossession, statelessness, border crossings, emplacement, refugee rights, subjectivity, and aspirations. We wll examine ethnographies of Palestinian refugees in refugee camps in Lebanon to foreground lived experiences of encampment; Cambodian refugees resettled in the Bronx, New York to understand the relationship between the United States and the refugees it willingly accepts; and the everyday experience of Somali refugees living in Lewiston, Maine to underscore how recently arrived refugees navigate everyday marginalization. We will also consider our local context of Syracuse, New York as a major site for refugee resettlement since the 1980s.
Fulfills Core Requirement(s): Diversity (DIV).
ANT 310. Religion and Healing. 3 Credit Hours.
This course in an exploration of the plurality of cultural and religious contexts in which healing occurs with the goal of enabling students to appreciate the overlap between the fields of medicine and religion. We research the understandings that religions and healing systems, both traditional and modern, have of the human condition, of health and illness and of acceptable ways of maintaining and restoring health. We look at how religious readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students become exposed to alternative and complementary forms of medicine, and healing practices and the religious and spiritual worldviews that give shape to them.
ANT 325. Religious and Cultural Ecologies. 3 Credit Hours.
This course explores the rich diversity of religious and cultural ecologies found throughout much of the world. Religious and cultural ecologies refer to the scientific and scholarly studies of the vast, complex, diverse, and dynamic arena at the interfaces of religions and cultures on the one hand, and environments, ecologies and environmentalism on the other. The course asks the question of what roles, if any, the religious traditions of different cultures the world over might play in addressing the contemporary ecological crisis. This question is addressed from a combined religous studies and anthropological approach focusing on the intersections of religion, culture, and ecology from a textual, contexual, and cross-cultural or comparative framework.
Fulfills Core Requirement(s): Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS).
ANT 390. Independent Study in Anthropol. 1-3 Credit Hours.
A student who wishes to pursue an independent study project in anthropology for academic credit must submit, prior to registration, a proposed plan of study that includes the topic to be studied and goal to be achieved, the methodology to be followed, schedule of supervision, end product, evaluation procedure and number of credits sought. The proposal must be approved by the supervising faculty member, the department chair and the academic dean. It will be kept on file in the academic dean's office.
ANT 410. Culture & Reproductive Health & Medicine. 3 Credit Hours.
This course examines diverse ways in which societies throughout the globe view and manage human reporoduction and the implications this has for health care and medicine. The emphasis will be primarily, though not exclusively, on women's reproductive health throughout the life cycle, including puberty, sex, pregnancy, family planning, childbirth, infertility, and menopause. The course also explores changes in reproductive health care in the context of globalization and considers how an understanding of the influence of culture on reproductive health is crucial for the development of international public health policy and practice.
ANT 416. Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective. 3 Credit Hours.
This course explores the interaction of biological and cultural factors in disease causation, diagnosis, and treatment in Western and non-Western societies. The introduction of Western medicine to non-Western cultures is examined. After taking this course, students will be able to: describe the interaction of biological & cultural factors in the etiology, manifestation, and outcome of diseases cross-culturally; explain the psychosomatic basis of health & healing; describe the methods and efficacy of non-Western healers and view illness and healing in historical, evolutionary, and ecological perspectives. Permission of instructor required before registration. Fulfills Core requirement(s): DIV.
ANT 490. Internship in Anthropology. 1-6 Credit Hours.
Participation in a field learning experience closely related to one of the areas of anthropology. The student intern will meet regularly with his or her supervisor in the agency and/or will report as required to the faculty member assigned to supervise the field experience. Students are expected to apply what they have learned in the academic program to the field experience. An evaluation of the field experience will also be required. The internship and placement must be approved by the instructor. Three hours of field work per week are required to generate one credit hour. The number of credit hours to be awarded must be contracted prior to registration.
ANT 496. Honors Project in Anthropology. 3-6 Credit Hours.
The nature of the project is determined by the mentor and the student. The due dates for each draft as well as the number of credit hours the student is to receive is contracted prior to registration.
ANT 499. Research in Anthropology. 3-6 Credit Hours.
An upper-level student who wishes to undertake an anthropological research project for academic credit during a given semester must submit a research proposal prior to registration and a research report at the end of the semester. The proposal must be approved by the research director, the department chair and the assistant academic vice president and dean. The proposal will be kept on file in the assistant academic vice president's office.