Timetable subject to change or modification. Anthropology graduate students will be able to enrol into Fall & Winter session graduate courses starting August 3, 2023. Students from other departments should follow instructions for enrolment on the Graduate Course Description and Timetable page.
*Last Updated Nov 23, 2023
(*) : denotes a CORE COURSE – see the Anthropology Graduate Handbook for program specific course requirements.
(1): strongly recommended for SCL doctoral students in year 2.
(2): Please note the following changes in graduate course requirements for Master’s students in Archaeology: Incoming Master’s students are now required to enrol in ANT 4010: Archaeology in Contemporary Society and no longer required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory. PhD students are still required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory, and are not required to take ANT 4010.
(*) : denotes a CORE COURSE – see the Anthropology Graduate Handbook for program specific course requirements.
(1): strongly recommended for SCL doctoral students in year 2.
(2): Please note the following changes in graduate course requirements for Master’s students in Archaeology: Incoming Master’s students are now required to enrol in ANT 4010: Archaeology in Contemporary Society and no longer required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory. PhD students are still required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory, and are not required to take ANT 4010.
2023-24 Graduate Course Descriptions
ANT 1099H S- Quantitative Methods II (M. Schillaci) (return to timetable)
This course will cover many of the multivariate statistical methods used by biological anthropologists and archaeologists such as principal components analysis (PCA), discriminant analysis including formal classification and canonical variate analysis, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and cluster analysis.
ANT 3005H S - Advanced topics in Paleoanthropology (D. Begun) (return to timetable)
Brains, babies, and bipedalism: Evolutionary origins of the attributes that define us. The first humans (hominins) are often defined by a number of attributes that distinguish them from living great apes. These include a reduction in canine size, an extension of life history, bipedalism, and somewhat later, encephalization. All of these human attributes have their precursors in the fossil record of Miocene apes. In this seminar we will explore the development of human defining attributes from their precursors in the Miocene to their appearance in the earliest hominins. Our extensive collection of Miocene ape casts will be used to illustrate and visualize many of the attributes discussed in the readings. Students will take turns leading the discussion each week, based on readings to be determined together with the instructor. They will also prepare an abstract of a presentation on a topic to be decided in consultation with the instructor, in AABA format, and a presentation, also following AABA format.
ANT 3010H S - Human Osteology: Theory and Practice (M. Cameron) (return to timetable)
This course is directed towards people who already have some knowledge of human osteology and will provide a comprehensive overview of how researchers analyze human skeletal remains. The methods and tools used to study human skeletal remains will be critically examined and the ethical implications of osteological research across the history of the discipline will be discussed in depth. This course will explore diverse theoretical challenges in the field, as well as the limitations and advantages of newly emerging lines of research.
ANT 3031H F- Advanced Research Seminar I: Sleep and Primate Evolution (D. Samson) (return to timetable) [CANCELLED]
This course is an overview of our current understanding of primate sleep ecology and function with particular focus on how these elements drove the evolution of human sleep. Specifically, the aim of the class will be to provide students with a strong, theoretical background of the function of sleep in the animal kingdom with particular attention paid to primate lineages. This will serve as a springboard for the application of several innovative methods measuring the spectrum of behaviors on the inactive-active continuum.
As an overview, the course will be presented in four sections: (i) Sleep: descriptions, functions, and mechanisms from eukaryotes to humans, (ii) The evolution of primate sleep, (iii) Methods: measuring sleep and activity in primates, and (iv) Evolution’s legacy on human sleep. The first section provides students with an overview of the mechanisms and functions of sleep and circadian rhythms, as well as a historical approach that fills in the context for which most of these fundamental discoveries were made. The second section presents a phylogenetic perspective on how sleep is expressed in extant species, in both human and non-human primates. The third section, departs from presenting background information and will focus on the application of the current scientific methods used to measure sleep-wake behavior throughout mammals. Finally, the fourth section provides the most up to date evolutionary narrative of the major transitions of human sleep and the consequences of these derived characteristics to our understanding of modern sleep disorders within an evolutionary mismatch framework. The course will conclude with a forward thinking series of predictions on how science and technology will fundamentally alter the way humans sleep in the 21st century and beyond.
ANT 3032H S - Advanced Research Seminar II: Genetic Analysis of Complex Phenotypes (F. Wendt) (return to timetable) [CANCELLED]
This course is designed to introduce students to the genetics of complex traits as they apply to outwardly visible characteristics and traits with clear evolutionary influence that are commonly the focus of anthropological research. These traits include, but are not limited to height, body mass index, and pigmentation traits. Students will learn about (i) availability of public data for complex trait genetic studies (ii) the theory behind concepts such as heritability, linkage disequilibrium score regression, and genetic association studies, and (iii) learn to apply these methods on sample traits and describe their observations. This course introduces students to the above concepts using biallelic variation in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome. To build familiarity with these topics, students will perform analysis of real data in the programs PLINK and R.
Prerequisite(s): This course assumes you have a basic understanding of Mendelian inheritance. Prior computational competencies are not required for successful completion of this course but a willingness and intellectual curiosity for learning these methods through course activities is essential.
ANT 3046H S - Paleoecology in Primate and Human Evolution (M. Silcox) (return to timetable)
Paleoecology is the study of the relationship between animals and their environment in the past. This course will consider the problem of reconstructing ecological variables relevant to extinct primates, including humans. The first half of the course will examine different methodologies for reconstructing ecological variables in the Cenozoic (last 65 million years). Topics will include stable isotope analysis, sampling issues, and reconstructing autecological variables such as diet and locomotion. The second half of the course will focus on particular localities that have been studied using a variety of methods as case studies. The format of the course will include seminar style discussions, student presentations, and some lecturing.
ANT 3047H S - Evolutionary Anthropology Theory (E. Parra) (return to timetable)
This course is an intensive exploration of the ideas that form the foundation of evolutionary anthropology. We will read historically important theoretical texts and critically examine leading concepts in the field. Through guest lectures by scholars in our department we will discuss topics such as molecular clocks, species concepts, signatures of selection, niche construction, genetic drift, sexual selection, human behavioural ecology, epigenetics, and population genetics. We will actively engage with historical and current issues of diversity and decolonization in the discipline of Evolutionary Anthropology throughout each weekly discussion.
ANT 3439H F - Advanced Seminar in Forensic Anthropology (T. Rogers) (return to timetable)
Students will address advanced theory and method in Forensic Anthropology. Topics include: theory in forensic anthropology; professional practice, e.g. safety, ethics, liability, billing, case management, media training, managing an online presence, being an expert witness, etc.; search logistics and management; scene management and documentation; recovery and collection of evidence (including excavation of graves); forensic significance; sex determination; age estimation; ancestry; identification theory; peri- vs. post-mortem damage (including trauma analysis); and deliberate post-mortem destruction of a body.
ANT 4010H F* - Archaeology in Contemporary Society (A. Hawkins) (return to timetable)
This course will explore the role of archaeology in modern society. Its primary goal is to get students to think about how their research affects, and is affected by, the world around them. For both ethical and practical reasons, it is critical that archaeology graduate students (and faculty!) understand the relationship between their research and the broader society with which it articulates. Seminars will draw papers from diverse regions of the globe based around weekly themes, and will attempt to keep discussions at a “practical” level – how does archaeology actually work “on the ground” in relation to a range of contemporary issues and interest groups? This course will offer a broad-ranging overview of relevant topics, intended to be useful as students frame their research questions, apply for funding, pursue fieldwork, interpret data, contribute to policy discussions, and interact with the public. During the second meeting, students will be polled re. specific topics to be covered this year.
ANT 4020H S - Archaeology Theory (L. Montgomery) (return to timetable)
This course provides an in-depth examination of the major social and historical theories which have informed archaeological approaches to the study of the past. The course is anchored around four major themes: social identity, landscapes, power, and economics. These themes anchor our discussion of core theoretical texts, including the works of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, Frederick Barth, and Adam Smith. Within each 3-week thematic module, we will take a genealogical approach which explores the intellectual origins of contemporary frameworks like post-colonialism, ethnogenesis, resistance, cultural landscapes, behavioral ecology, world systems theory, and object biographies. Ultimately, through a combination of archaeological case studies and theoretical readings, this seminar will provide students with a rich understanding of the broad range of frameworks that underpin contemporary archaeological research and the unique problems inherent in archaeological efforts to represent and interpret the material record.
ANT 4038H F - Archaeology of Urban Development (J. Jennings) (return to timetable)
Since the work of V. Gordon Childe, archaeologists have recognized the importance of the urban revolution in human history. Yet what happened within these cities was only one small part of this revolution. Urbanization also created the countryside and the tenuous, shifting relationships that linked cities to farmers, herders, traders, pilgrims, and other people that lived outside the city walls. In this seminar, we will examine the early relationship between city and countryside from around the world. Each week we will read 3 articles on one aspect of this relationship and then discuss the articles in class. Students will submit a reading report for 7 of these weeks. The one page single spaced report will distill the critical elements of each reading and link them to the broader themes of the course. Each student will lead discussion for one week, as well as be asked to write a 20-25 page research paper that examines this city/countryside dynamic in one region of the world.
ANT 4043H S - Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Ideology (E. Swenson) (return to timetable)
This course offers an intensive study of archaeological approaches to ritual, religion, and ideology within a comparative historical framework. Students will examine key theoretical paradigms in the anthropology of religion while assessing the ways in which inferences on social process, identity politics, and prehistoric worldviews can be derived from ritual contexts preserved in the material record. We will critically evaluate archaeological methods employed to identify the physical traces of ritual practice and will scrutinize in turn competing theories of past ceremonialism. Other themes to be addressed in the course include: a critique of functionalist interpretations of religion popular in archaeological research; the materiality of ritual performance and the aesthetics of religious spectacles; and archaeological analyses of ritual deposits/landscapes to reconstruct past ontologies, power relations, historical change, and culturally specific structures of practice.
ANT 4050H F - Zooarchaeology (G. Dewar) (return to timetable)
This course will focus on zooarchaeological interpretation: how do archaeologists reconstruct past human behaviour on the basis of animal bones recovered from archaeological sites? As has become increasingly clear over the past decades, in order to interpret archaeofaunas the zooarchaeologist must understand factors ranging from the natural (e.g., fluvial processes, carnivore activity, and differential bone density) to the cultural (e.g., ritual disposal of bone, and status differences in access to meat of different species), and everything in between (e.g., methods of quantification, patterns of bone transport, isotope analyses, and butchery methods). This course will cover seminal and recent papers on the theory and methods used to develop robust and complex pictures of ancient human lifeways.
ANT 4051H F - Archaeology and Climate Change (M. Friesen) (return to timetable)
Evidence from the natural sciences for past and present climate change is overwhelming. However, its deployment as an explanatory framework in archaeology is inconsistent – on the one hand, climate change must have had profound impacts on many past human societies; but on the other, archaeologists are justifiably wary of automatically pinning changes in past lifeways on external environmental forces, rather than seeking “internal” political, social, and ideological explanations. Currently, archaeological investigations of climate change impacts are experiencing a surge of interest, at least in part because of the prominence of modern climate change in public political, social, and economic discourse. As a global community, we are worried about it! Many major past phenomena, from hunter-gatherer migrations through agricultural origins to the rise and demise of state-level societies have been hypothesized to result, often quite directly, from changing climates (though of course other explanations also exist). At the same time, climate change archaeology is becoming increasingly sophisticated, particularly in terms of understanding the mechanisms through which aspects of climate/weather and human lifeways are entangled. To begin to come to grips with these issues, this survey course will cover: 1) general approaches to studying climate change in relation to past human lifeways; 2) case studies in which climate change is hypothesized to have had direct impacts on past societies; 3) the impacts of modern climate change on the archaeological record; and 4) the relationship of archaeology as a discipline to broader considerations of current and future climate change.
ANT4060H-F - Specific Problems: Fire (M. Chazan) (return to timetable)
Fire is an essential element in our world that in the modern world often remains hidden from view. This course is inspired by Stephen Pyne’s argument that we live in an age of fire and that engaging with fire is critical to our survival. Fire is also one of those topics that benefits from the unique capacity of anthropology to take a holistic perspective on human experience. The course will explore the deep prehistory of fire reaching back to the initial human interactions with fire and through changing engagements with the potential of fire to effect technology, adaptation, society, and cosmology-- and how these seemingly distinct domains are linked, not only in the past but also in the present. Course work will involve reading and participation in class discussion along with a research project culminating in a class presentation and paper. Students from all streams of anthropology, as well as interested students from other disciplines, are welcome.
ANT4060H S - Specific Problems: Paleoethnobotany (M. Ramsey) (return to timetable)
In this lab-based course student research interests will guide the course content. Focused upon the intensive study of a particular paleoethnobotanical topic, it is expected that students will develop and undertake a substantial research project, culminating in the preparation of a paper formatted for submission to a journal of their choosing. They can work individually or in teams, submitting a single-author or jointly-authored paper. This project will advance their paleoethnobotanical skills and provide them with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the related academic literature.
ANT 4065H S - Specific Problems: Geoarchaeology (D. Butler) (return to timetable)
Geoarchaeologists have raised several issues concerning our understandings of human-environment interactions. These include the contextual integrity and interfacing of bleeding-edge biomolecular and geochemical proxies, scale mismatching among environmental and behavioral evidence, and the challenges with leveraging the past to anticipate future socio-ecological resilience. In this seminar, we integrate theory and method crosscutting the social and geosciences to address these and other problems in contemporary geoarchaeology. We will collaborate on addressing geoarchaeological questions relevant to each student’s research interests through weekly thematic discussions and explorations of tri-campus analytical capabilities. The class will actively engage with the collection, critical evaluation, and interpretive possibilities of geoarchaeological evidence such as geochemistry, biomolecules, micromorphology, and micro-sedimentary archives. Each student will complete a project that contributes to their thesis research or adjacent research interests. While your research interests will steer the seminar, we will also examine geoarchaeological contributions to advancements in studies of human evolution, habitat reconfiguration, peopling processes, resilience and collapse, the Anthropocene, and decolonization.
ANT 4068H F - Archaeology of Technology (H. Miller) (return to timetable)
In this course, participants will learn to examine technologies both from the perspective of the modern scholar and (as best we can) from the perspective of the ancient craftsperson. Final hands-on projects for the course will employ these perspectives to carry out experimental or replicative studies. Many past students have been able to use their projects as portions of their PhD or Masters research, or as the basis for publications unrelated to their main focus of research.
We will explore various themes and approaches in the archaeological study of technology, such as organization and control of production and consumption, material culture, style of technology, the value of objects, and reasons for the development and adoption of new technologies, as well as techniques that archaeologists and others have used to study ancient technology. The course is designed to allow discussion of additional themes of interest to participants related to their research foci, and to be flexible in the particular crafts examined by the class as a whole. (Resign yourselves to stone tools and pottery, but additional craft or technology groups covered are usually quite varied: food, metals, textiles, transportation, etc.) Typical sources of information for these explorations include archaeological and other papers on major theoretical topics; ethnographic readings, videos and interviews with experts; analysis of archaeological data; and hands-on reconstruction, experimentation and analysis by participants.
In Fall 2023, this course will be offered at UTM, to allow use of the teaching labs and equipment needed for hands-on work. Individual lab access for specific projects can also be arranged as needed. The course is scheduled for 9:30 am to 12:30 pm, but most weekly meetings will be able to end by noon to accommodate transit schedules. Potential participants are requested to contact Heather Miller (heather.miller@utoronto.ca) as soon as possible during the summer to discuss possible themes of interest and/or course projects; participation during the summer is not required, however, to successfully enrol and complete this fall course. Please also email Heather with any questions or concerns about transit to UTM.
ANT 6003H S - Critical Issues in Ethnography I (S. Kassamali / W. Butt) (return to timetable)
Ethnography’ is at once a (relatively disciplined) practice of interpersonal engagement, a way of thinking about the world, and the results of such practices conveyed and transformed through writing. In this reading intensive course we examine books published over the past few decades (skewed towards more recent years) that are all variously understood as ‘ethnography’ in an effort to become more familiar with the scope and elasticity of the genre. The selected texts are diverse but thematically linked by concerns for place, time, subject/person, power, and subordination. Each provides a point of departure for exploring a range of research methods and theoretical models. We examine issues such as research design, collaboration and sole-authorship, authorial positioning and voice, narrative style, use of ‘plot’, characterization, and representation, all the while attending to how each ethnography was produced within its historical and intellectual context.
ANT 6005H F - Ethnographic Methods Proseminar (Credit/No Credit) (J. Sidnell) (return to timetable)
This course is offered to students in anthropology as a not-for-credit supplement to the curriculum in socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology (as well as to interested students from other departments). Each week will feature a presentation by a current faculty member focusing on a method that they have used in their own research or on, a broadly speaking, set of methodological problems they have encountered. Some of the topics covered during the course of the term might include: interviews; fieldnotes; participant observation; performance ethnography; land defense; community advocacy; community partnership; confidentiality and secrecy; photography, film and video; archives and historical records; reading fiction; digital ethnography. Each week, students will be expected to complete a short exercise relating to the presentation. A student who attends and completes the exercises for eight of the ten seminars will receive an annotation of course completion in their transcript.
ANT 6006H F* - Genealogies of Anthropological Thought (J. Song / C. Krupa) (return to timetable)
This course introduces graduate students to some of the major thinkers and traditions in, and for, the discipline of anthropology. While this course establishes strong familiarity with canonical texts, it also demands a critical reflexivity about discipline formation itself and the normalization of ideas. As such, this course aims to situate contemporary anthropological thought within past and ongoing debates among a range of social and political theorists.
ANT 6014H F - Media and Mediation (F. Cody) (return to timetable)
This reading-intensive seminar focuses on anthropological approaches to the process of mass mediation, with specific reference to critical theories of technology and semiotics. The course combines “classic” theoretical texts drawn from a range of disciplines with more empirical accounts of how communicative processes are integral to large-scale social formations, and how such processes influence our current understanding of mass politics, publicity, “big data,” racialization, militarization, digitalization. This year, the course will focus in particular on considering the information regime of imperial and colonial formations. Placing our understanding of media technologies within the more encompassing concept of mediation, this course asks what ethnographic or cultural accounts can offer to the interdisciplinary field of media studies.
ANT 6031H S - Advanced Research Seminar 1: Anthropological Theories of Transformation (V. de Aguiar Furuie) (return to timetable)
In this graduate seminar, we will engage with anthropology’s response to the undeniable fact that societies change. Recently, a prominent author observed that, over the last half century, the focus of anthropological investigation shifted from searching for society’s unchanging structures to analyzing how transformation takes place. Although there is truth to the statement that grand theories are out of fashion, it could be argued that anthropology has always put transformation at the center of its concern. From discredited theories of social evolutionism to eternal arguments about the role of culture in history, we will engage with this history by investigating anthropology’s theories of transformation, how it occurs and what it means. Examples of topics and thinkers to be covered are: theories of time (eg. Leach, Evans-Pritchard, Gell); Social Evolutionism, schismogenesis, acculturation and Ecological Racism (eg. Morgan, Bateson, Hage, Ferdinand); economic transformation (Marx, Polanyi); history and event ( Lévi-Strauss, Sahlins); colonialism and revolution (eg. Manchester School); anthropological readings of Deleuze and Guatarri’s notion of becoming.
ANT 6032H S - Advanced Research Seminar II: Politics, Theology, Sovereignty (V. Napolitano) (return to timetable)
Are politico-anthropological concepts always theological ones? Yes and no. This course through selected ethnographic renderings and critical theory debates focuses on the relation between politics, theologies (in the plural) and the everyday life, aiming to expand our political, anthropological imagination. It introduces, among others, classic and recent debates on sovereignty, capitalism as religion, grace and charisma, saintly and evil formations, affective nationalism and sensory politics, tribulation and migration, mysticism and the body. In close conversation with students’ respective research, this course explores anthropological engagements with political theology as an emerging and exciting field, whose centrality rests on orienting toward multi species and divine justice and their political formations. Together with ethnographic texts, readings may also include work by Giorgio Agamben , Carl Schmitt, Khaled Furani, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Sylvia Wynter, Catherine Keller, Joseph Tonda, Marcella Althaus-Reid , Vincent Lloyd, Niklaus Largier and Teresa d’Avila. Modes of assessment will be discussed and finalized with participants.
ANT 6033H F - Advanced Research Seminar III: Unsettling Settler Colonialism (B. McElhinny) (return to timetable)
This course reviews strategies for unsettling settler colonialism, by considering a growing body of research which investigates decolonial and anticolonial approaches to water governance. While we consider serious and on-going water crises in many Indigenous communities because of environmental racism and infrastructural neglect, including the impact of resource extraction (e.g. pipelines and mines), government policies (e.g. nuclear waste disposal, dams and town dumps) and corporate pollution, as well as on-going boil water advisories, we also consider a range of initiatives which centre Indigenous scholarship and sovereign actions which enact and imagine other futures, which build other kinds of relations with water, and which recognize the rights and responsibilities of water and forms of water governance that adhere to natural law. This course reviews anticolonial research methodologies which emphasize “interdependency, reciprocity, respectful conduct” (Arsenault et al 2018), respect for treaty rights, and support self-determination for Indigenous peoples’ relationship with water. We also consider critiques of some discourses which challenge the commodification of water, including “water is a human right” or “water is a public trust” or “water is a commons” and even “anticolonial water governance.” We consider, with care and humility, the role of allies, solidarity, and accomplices in this work. While the course focuses on Turtle Island/North America, on-going and related work in other sites is also considered. Some sessions of this course will be outside the university classroom, and on the land and with the water.
ANT 6056H F - Decolonizing Diversity Discourse (G. Daswani) (return to timetable)
This course takes a comparative and critical approach to discourses and policies surrounding “Diversity” and other related terms such as “Multiculturalism” and “Multiracialism”. How are practices and histories of colonialism, settler-colonialism and post-colonialism interacting with and impacting expressions of “Diversity”? How do they affect Indigenous, racialized, or minority groups in several countries across North America, Asia, and Africa differently? Decolonization as a method and practice will also be addressed in this course – can we truly decolonize the institutions that claim to study or practice “Diversity” including Anthropology? What does it mean to want to “decolonize” institutions, universities, and research methods in academia? How can anthropologists learn to do better?
ANT 6061H S - Anthropology of Sexuality and Gender (A. Allen) (return to timetable) [CANCELLED]
This graduate research seminar explores the core genealogies of feminist anthropology and anthropology of sexuality, with a focus on how scholarly conversations which emerged in 20th century anglophone sociocultural anthropology reverberate in the discipline today. We will examine the theoretical and methodological innovations that scholars enacted in the shift from “women anthropologists” to an “anthropology of women” to feminist and transfeminist ethnography. We will also analyze the production on anthropological texts within colonial and postcolonial contexts as they connect with local and transnational understandings of sexuality and gender. In doing so, we will ask: How has the field as a whole responded to feminist critiques of knowledge production? Moreover, how has anthropology contributed to the emergence of today’s robust, transnational gender and sexuality studies? What is an anthropological approach to gender and sexuality? How ought anthropologists reconcile the prescriptivism of gender and sexual identity politics with the descriptivism of the ethnographic project? How does the anthropological perspective challenge assumptions about human gender and sexuality across culture and over time? What theoretical underpinnings hold together the core logics of the anthropological approach to gender and sexuality? Throughout, we will problematize normative cultural paradigms of: biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction; kinship & marriage; masculine and feminine divisions of labor; and sexuality and gender in racializing and colonizing projects. Texts include works by scholars such as: Jafari Allen, Ruth Benedict, Tom Boellstorff, Dána-Ain Davis, Claude Levi-Strauss, Ellen Lewin, Martin Manalansan, Margaret Mead, Esther Newton, Elizabeth Povinelli, Gayle Rubin, Kamala Visweswaran, Gloria Wekker, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Tiantian Zheng, and others. While the focus of this course is on sociocultural anthropology, the course is appropriate for graduate students from across the discipline, and students are invited to integrate related scholarly conversations in archaeology and biological anthropology into discussions and coursework.
ANT 6065H F - Anthropology in/of Troubled Times (T. Sanders) (return to timetable)
Climate emergencies, forced migration, energy finitude, poverty, racism, mediated mass-surveillance, conspiracies, alternative facts, populism, pandemics – all provide unsettling markers of our times. As chroniclers and theorists of the moment, anthropologists are providing key insights into some of today’s most pressing problems as well as new analytic tools with which to examine them. This advanced seminar surveys a range of contemporary concerns and explores some of the ways current anthropologists are engaging – methodologically, analytically, theoretically – with them. It should thus be of interest to students who have yet to choose a research topic, and/or who wish to expand their knowledge of the discipline today. The seminar’s second concern is less with an anthropology of troubled times than with an anthropology in them. This concern arises from the observation that anthropology is part of the world it seeks to apprehend: a world that enables and constrains, invites and inhibits particular modes of anthropological thinking, theorising and practice. The seminar thus interrogates anthropology’s own grounds of knowledge, dwelling on some of the epistemological, ethical and political conundrums that anthropology’s real-world entanglements unavoidably entail. This will take us well beyond “troubled times,” inviting students to interrogate that curious set of Euro-American knowledge practices we call “Anthropology.”
ANT 6100H F* - History of Anthropological Thought (O. Ozcan/F. Bozcali) (return to timetable)
As an introduction to the history of anthropological thought, this MA-level core course aims to familiarize students with the key thinkers, theoretical approaches, and ethnographic innovations that shaped the discipline in the twentieth century. It likewise considers the kinds of knowledge, ethics, and modes of both representation and analysis these different approaches have demanded. An understanding of the historically situated character of our discipline is a crucial component of our contemporary practice, and this includes taking seriously the intellectual genealogies out of which–and often against which—contemporary thought has emerged.
ANT 6150H Y - Proposing Ethnographic Research (K. Kilroy-Marac / J. Taylor) (return to timetable)
This seminar aims to assist doctoral students in the socio-cultural and linguistic field to develop thesis and research grant proposals. Throughout the seminar, the participants will be guided step by step to produce effective proposals for anthropological fieldwork. The seminar is designed as an intensive writing workshop that is based on timely sharing of work and peer-discussion. Run in workshop style, the seminar will help participants to develop skills of giving and receiving constructive comments on each other’s writing.
ANT 7001H S - Medical Anthropology I (Z. Wool) (return to timetable)
Offers a graduate level introduction to current work in the field of medical anthropology that is informed by sociocultural anthropology. Readings address many topics and geographic locations, and will be selected to highlight differences -- at the level of questions asked, literatures and disciplines engaged, methods used, writing style employed, and intended audience. May feature some virtual visits by scholars whose work the class will read.
ANT 7002H F - Medical Anthropology II (Applied Biocultural Perspectives on Global Child Health) (D. Sellen) (return to timetable)
Humans are exquisitely social animals and shared care of young is crucial to survival and adult functioning. In this class we sample, explore and discuss the variety of forms of human infant and young child care across space and time, of which parenting is just one. Specifically, we explore perspectives generated by anthropologists, international public health practitioners and others interested in variation in childcare practices and its social determinants and health effects. We consider the complex, biocultural and bi-directional relationships between care and health in different social and ecological settings. Students can:
- expand their understanding of patterns of human care-giving, and theories offered to explain them
- think about the design, techniques and goals of anthropological and interdisciplinary research
- consider the evolutionary history of childcare and its potential contemporary relevance
- identify differences and commonalities in cross-cultural patterns of childcare
- reflect on the salient care needs of human young
- discuss variation in practice through the alternative “lenses” of diversity, disparity, and inequity
- understand the relation between child care contexts and global health indicators
- address implications for policy and the future of human well being and planetary health