2024-25 Anthropology Graduate Timetable

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Timetable subject to change or modification. Anthropology graduate students will be able to enrol into Fall & Winter session graduate courses starting August 6, 2024. Students from other departments should follow instructions for enrolment on the Graduate Course Description and Timetable page.


 

*Last Updated October 2, 2024

Fall 2024

Courses start September 03, 2023.

Course

Title

Section

Field

Day

Time

Instructor

Delivery Method

Campus

ANT4065H1F

Specific Problems: Southern African Archaeology

LEC0101

 ARC

Monday

12:00-2:00 PM 

G. Dewar

In-person

STG

ANT3049H1F

Advanced Seminar in Evolutionary Morphology

LEC0101

 EVO

Monday

12:00-2:00 PM

L.Schroeder 

In-person

STG

ANT6032H1F

Advanced Research Seminar II: Politics, Theology, and Sovereignty

LEC0101

SCL

Monday

3:00-5:00 PM

V. Napolitano

In-person

STG

ANT4060H1F

Specific Problems:  Interregional Interaction in the Ancient World

LEC0101

ARC

Tuesday

10:00-1:00PM

J. Jennings

In-person

STG

ANT6100H1F*

History of Anthropological Thought

LEC0101

SCL

Tuesday

12:00-2:00 PM

O.Ozcan & F. Bozcali

In-person

STG

ANT4010H1F*2

Archaeology in Contemporary Society

LEC0101

ARC

Tuesday

2:00-4:00PM

A. Hawkins

In-person

STG

ANT6006H1F*  

Genealogies of Anthropological Thought

LEC0101

SCL

Tuesday

2:00-5:00PM

F. Cody & N. Dave

In-person

STG

Dissertation Writing Seminar 
(Year long)

Dissertation Writing Seminar (bi-weekly half course running form Sept. to April)

LEC0101

 

Wednesday

10:00-12:00PM

A. Mittermaier

In-person

STG

ANT6061H1F

Anthropology of Sexuality & Gender

LEC0101

SCL

Wednesday

10:00-12:00PM

A. Allen

In-person

STG

ANT7002H1F

Medical Anthropology II

LEC0101

EVO

Wednesday

11:00-1:00PM

D. Sellen

In-person

STG

ANT6065H1F

Anthropology in/of Troubled Times [CANCELLED]

LEC0101

SCL

Wednesday

3:00-5:00PM

T. Sanders

In-person

STG

ANT6150H1Y1

(Bi-weekly full year course)

Proposing Ethnographic Research

LEC0101

SCL

Thursday

10:00-1:00PM

A. Furuie & T. Li

In-person

STG

             ANT6062H1F

Disability AnthropologyDisability Anthropology

LEC0101

SCL

Thursday

1:00-4:00PM

C. Hartblay

In-person

STG

ANT3048H1F

Primatological Theory and Methods

LEC0101

EVO

Thursday

1:00-4:00PM

J. Teichroeb

In-person

STG

 

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(*) : 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.                                      

Winter 2025

Courses start January 6, 2025.

Course

Title

Section

Field

Day

Time

Instructor

Delivery Method

Campus

ANT5144H1S

Foundations in Linguistic Anthropology

LEC0101

SCL

Monday

1:00-4:00PM

J. Sidnell

In-person

STG

ANT4041H1S

Landscape Archaeology

LEC0101

ARC

Monday

2:00-4:00PM

T. Banning

In-person

STG

ANT3034H1S

Advanced Research Seminar IV: Applied Anthropology

LEC0101

EVO

Monday

2:00-4:00PM

T. Galloway

In-person

STG

ANT6033H1S

Advanced Research Seminar III: The Question of Palestine and Contemporary Colonialism 

LEC0101

SCL

Tuesday

1:00-4:00PM

A. Paz

In-person

STG

ANT3031H1S

Advanced Research Seminar I: Sleep and Primate Evolution

LEC0101

EVO

Tuesday

1:00-4:00PM

D. Samson

In-person

STG

ANT3438H1S

Skeletal Trauma and Violence: Theory and Practice

LEC0101

EVO

Wednesday

10:00-1:00PM

T. Rogers

In-person

UTM

Dissertation Writing Seminar 
(Year long)

Dissertation Writing Seminar (bi-weekly half course running form Sept. to April)

LEC0101

 

Wednesday

10:00-12:00PM

A.Mittermaier

In-person

STG

ANT6003H1S

Critical Issues in Ethnography I

LEC0101

SCL

Wednesday

12:00-2:30PM

B. Dahl

In-person

STG

ANT4070H1S

Archaeologies of Place, Urbanism, and Infrastructures

LEC0101

ARC

Wednesday

2:00-5:00PM

E.Swenson

In-person

STG

ANT6005H1S

Ethnographic Methods Proseminar

LEC0101

SCL

Wednesday

3:00-5:00PM

N. Elamin

In-person

STG

ANT6150H1Y1

Proposing Ethnographic Research (bi-weekly half course running form Sept. to April) 

LEC0101

SCL

Thursday

10:00-1:00PM

A. Furuie & T. Li

In-person

STG

ANT4065H1S

Specific Problems: Archaeology of Human-Animal Relationships

LEC0101

ARC

Thursday

11:00-1:00PM

L. Janz

In-person

STG

ANT3047H1S*

Evolutionary Anthropology Theory

LEC0101

EVO

Thursday

12:00-2:00PM

S. Lehman

In-person

STG

ANT4020H1S*

Archaeology Theory

LEC0101

ARC

Thursday

2:00-4:00PM

H. Miller

In-person

STG

ANT7001H1S

Medical Anthropology

LEC0101

SCL

Thursday

1:00-4:00PM

K. Maxwell

Online

Online

Return to Top

(*) : 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.      

 


2024-25 Graduate Course Descriptions

ANT 3031 H1S - Advanced Research Seminar I: Sleep and Primate Evolution (D. Samson

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 3034 H1S* - Applied Anthropology (T. Galloway)

This course aims to fill an important and growing need for anthropologists to contribute to interdisciplinary research. Increasingly, employers in both academic and non-academic institutions see high value and complementarity in anthropological approaches to community engagement, research design, data analysis and knowledge sharing. This course will bring together a community of learners from across anthropological subdisciplines to engage with applied anthropological theory and practice. Learners will explore the ethics and praxis of applied anthropology as it pertains to their subdiscipline and develop confidence with basic tools and processes of interdisciplinary and applied scholarly communication. The goal of this course is to prepare anthropologists for careers in a broad range of academic and non-academic settings including government and non-governmental agencies, the non-profit sector, municipal and community-based organizations and the private sector.

ANT 3047 H1S* - Evolutionary Anthropology Theory (S. Lehman

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 3048 H1F - Primatological Theory and Methods (J. Teichroeb

This course will take a historical perspective and examine major changes and advancements in theory in primatology. Students will critically review some seminal theoretical works and the research of important scholars in the field. We will focus on how the social movements and gender biases of the time shaped the disciplines of primatology and biological anthropology. Students will then move on to cover current issues and important theories in primatology. Given the breadth of the field, topics may include ecology, population biology, social behavior, cognition, genetics, and conservation. Students will present and discuss articles at weekly meetings, with a strong focus on class participation, and a final paper will be required.

ANT 3049 H1F - Advanced Seminar in Evolutionary Morphology (L. Schroeder)

This advanced seminar will provide students with a critical understanding of evolutionary biology and its fundamental concepts. The focus will be on evolutionary morphology, an aspect of evolutionary biology that addresses the “how” and “why” of morphology; the evolutionary processes that shape morphological variability and the effects of these at multiple levels of organismal biology. This course will also emphasize the application of quantitative genetic methods and theory to studies in biological anthropology. In addition, the concepts of integration, evolvability and modularity will be discussed in an evolutionary developmental context. The ultimate goal of this course is to provide students with the foundational knowledge of the key concepts of evolutionary biology, cultivate critical evaluation skills, and provide the theoretical background for independent research project development in evolutionary morphology.

ANT 3438 H1S - Skeletal Trauma and Violence: Theory and Practice (T. Rogers

This course addresses methodological approaches to recognizing, documenting, and analyzing skeletal trauma, as well as theoretical frameworks for understanding violence in bioarchaeological and forensic contexts.  Course readings include a reference text, and literature examining principles underlying fracture causation and interpretation (bone biomechanics), inventorying fragmentary bone, distinguishing ante-,peri-mortem injury from post-mortem damage, etc.  Topics for discussion include intimate partner violence, interpersonal violence, warfare, and genocide in bioarchaeological and forensic contexts.  Grading is based on presentations, discussions, and labs during which students will practice techniques of analysis and interpretation.

ANT 4010 H1F* - Archaeology in Contemporary Society (A. Hawkins

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 4020 H1S* - Archaeology Theory (H. Miller

This seminar offers an in-depth examination of the history of archaeological theory and the major theoretical approaches defining the discipline today. Students will explore changing schools of archaeological thought concerned with the study of material culture, past social formations, and historical process throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, employing a diverse set of perspectives. Emphasis is placed on how shifting positions on fundamental aspects of the practice and foci of archaeological thought directly shape archaeological reconstructions and representations of the past. Ultimately, the seminar should provide students with a rich understanding of the theoretical frameworks that underpin contemporary archaeological research and the unique problems inherent in archaeological efforts to represent and interpret the material record.

ANT 4041 H1S - Landscape Archaeology (E. Banning

This course will serve as an introduction and critical examination of the diversity of archaeological approaches to landscapes, with some historical perspective from early “field archaeology” and Crawford’s aerial archaeology, through economic-geographical approaches to settlement, exchange and land-use systems, to archaeological survey, place, wayfaring, phenomenology, and Ingold’s “dwelling” perspective.

ANT 4060 H1F - Specific Problems: Interregional Interaction in the Ancient World (J. Jennings

Since at least the Lower Paleolithic Period, interregional interaction has been fundamental to the development of cultures from around the world.  The movement of ideas, people, and objects across vast areas is not confined to the modern era, and in this course we will explore the role that interregional interaction has played in many of the most important processes in human history from the dispersal of Homo Erectus, the beginnings of social inequality, the origins of agriculture, the birth of cities, and the spread of civilizations. The course is run as a discussion seminar and readings for the course will consist largely of case studies from around the world and across time.  The major requirement for the course is a 20-25 page research paper that explores how changes in interregional interaction changed society in one particular region of the world (50% of grade). Students will also submit a reading report for 7 of the weeks in the course. The one page, single spaced report will distill the critical elements of each reading and link them to the broader themes of the course (30% of grade). Each student will also be responsible for organizing discussion questions for one day of class (10%), as well as for regular participation and attendance (10%). All readings are posted on the course page in the university’s Quercus site (access Quercus via the UT website). 

ANT 4065 H1F - Specific Problems: Southern African Archaeology (G. Dewar

This intensive graduate reading course provides a foundation in the archaeology of foragers in Southern Africa, with focus on Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa. The seminar’s temporal remit is broad, spanning ~300 ka of human adaptation to a range of biomes, from coastal deserts to highland mountain systems.  For the first module we will cover the paleoenvironmental data, with focus on isotopic approaches to understanding evidence for environment, diet, and trade / mobility. The second module will focus on evidence for social networks including how people used ostrich eggshell beads, as a risk reduction strategy. The third module will assess the technological changes and innovations, while the fourth module will identify changing subsistence strategies.  Integrating the evidence for social, technological, and subsistence innovations within their palaeoenvironmental contexts allows us to more fully explore human adaptive plasticity.

ANT 4065 H1S - Specific Problems: Archaeology of Human-Animal Relationships (L. Janz

This seminar delves into the archaeology of human-animal relationships in order to highlight the diverse ways that researchers identify, discuss, and interpret such interactions.  Although we will engage with a diversity of topics, the emphasis this year will be on animal management systems, including hunting, domestication and nomadic pastoralism.  This includes discussion of how we interpret various theoretical and ideological perspectives under constraints of the material record.  Students will be graded on participation, reading syntheses, a presentation somehow relevant to their own field of research, and a final written assignment. 

ANT4070 H1S - Archaeologies of Place, Urbanism, and Infrastructures (E. Swenson)

This seminar offers a critical review of archaeological approaches to place, space, landscapes, cities, and infrastructures in comparative perspective.  In our post-industrial world, the second circuit of capital (real-estate speculation and public works) increasingly dominates political discourse. Archaeological research demonstrates that political economies grounded in the construction of place is not a modern phenomenon but has defined hierarchical polities ever since their inception.  In this course, students will examine the emergence and organization of ancient cities and pre-industrial infrastructure projects through a detailed investigation of social theory on space and the urban condition.  We will explore competing interpretations of urban process and examine how physical infrastructures shaped the political institutions, economies, and ideologies of cities past and present.  Students will have the opportunity to consider a broad range of subjects, including mechanisms of city genesis; urban-rural relations; the intersections of city and state; infrastructures and the politics of place-making; and historical variation in urban landscapes, worldviews, and political economies.  Discussion will focus in part on the spatial practices, social inequalities, and political institutions linking ancient urbanism with industrial and post-industrial cities.  In turn, an examination of competing theories on capitalist and “postmodern” urbanism is intended to advance our understanding of the distinctive socioeconomic characteristics of pre-modern complex polities.

ANT 5144 H1S - Foundations in Linguistic Anthropology (J. Sidnell

Contemporary linguistic anthropology approaches the study of language in relation to other sign systems and socio-cultural life more generally. This course offers a graduate-level introduction to the field through a chronological survey of key works, discussion of central themes and theories, and an exploration of multiple intellectual genealogies. The purpose of this course is to develop a framework for viewing language as a social, cultural, and political matrix, and as incorporating forms of practice through which social relations, cultural forms, ideology, and consciousness are constituted. Our historical approach provides insights into the foundations of linguistic anthropology as we know it today, offering in-depth understandings of core concepts and how these were developed. More recent scholarship in linguistic anthropology is included so as to provide the basis for an understanding of how these core ideas have been elaborated, challenged, or given new life in contemporary debates. Topics covered include among others: signs and semiotics; meaning and intentionality; language and politics; language and social relations; metalanguage, ideology, and consciousness; the organization of interaction; performance and poetics. A basic argument of the course is that, although typically thought of as a separate subdiscipline, linguistic anthropology can and should be seen as an approach within anthropology – an approach that takes language and other semiotic processes as a point of departure in the study of social life in the broadest possible sense, i.e., inclusive of what is typically understood as aesthetic, economic, religious, political and so on. Another way to put this is to say that language and other sign forms are centrally implicated in all aspects of socio-cultural life among humans. Linguistic anthropology is nothing more, nor less, than an approach to anthropology premised on recognition of this basic fact.

ANT 6003 H1S - Critical Issues in Ethnography I (B. Dahl

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 6005 H1F - Ethnographic Methods Proseminar (Credit/No Credit) (N. Elamin

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 6006 H1F - Genealogies of Anthropological Thought (F. Cody / N. Dave

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 6032 H1F - Advanced Research Seminar II: Politics, Theology, Sovereignty (V. Napolitano

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 6033 H1S - Advanced Research Seminar IV: The Question of Palestine and Contemporary Colonialism (A. Paz

This course considers how Palestine as a country figures in an international order of imperialism and colonialism, and how this international order, in turn, impacts Palestinians in particular. We will introduce the Question of Palestine as part of the study of contemporary colonial formations, especially as an object of Zionist settler colonialism and out of which the State of Israel (as a nation-state) was established. We will seek to challenge hegemonic Zionist narratives and categories which have been central to legitimating the dispossession of Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian life, and draw on Palestinian and other Indigenous approaches to think about sovereignty, and to think about the right of return and a just future. We will engage anthropology, history, and diverse media to think through these questions, and students are encouraged to draw on their own interests to think through the major project in this course, which can take a variety of forms.

ANT 6061 H1F - Anthropology of Sexuality and Gender (A. Allen

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 6062 H1F - Disability Anthropology (C. Hartblay

This graduate research seminar explores the emergence of disability anthropology as a subfield at the intersection of medical anthropology and critical disability studies. Students will examine the theoretical and methodological innovations that scholars enacted in the shift from “anthropologists with disabilities” to an “anthropology of disability” to a “disability anthropology” that tracks the work that the category of disability does. In doing so, students track systems of ableism that emerge across different cultural settings. Throughout the course, we will ask and engage the following questions: What is an anthropological approach to the study of disability? How has disability anthropology emerged as an area of research for sociocultural anthropologists? What epistemological concerns does disability anthropology provoke regarding human ways of knowing and coming to know, and what are the implications for ethnography? Moreover, how has anthropology as a field and ethnography as a research practice contributed to the emergence of today’s robust scholarly debates in global disability studies? How ought anthropologists reconcile the prescriptivism of disability pride politics with the descriptivism of the ethnographic project? How does the anthropological perspective challenge assumptions about about disability vis-à-vis human capacities and socialities across social worlds and over time? What theoretical underpinnings hold together the core logics of the anthropological approach to disability, and what divergent theoretical approaches characterize recent disability anthropology? Throughout, we will problematize normative cultural paradigms of: a biological and curative approach to bodily and mental difference; cartesian dualism in perceptions “normal” bodyminds; patriarchy, racialization, and colonization as bound to logics of ableism; and ableist hierarchies of productivity.

ANT 6065 H1F - Anthropology in/of Troubled Times (T. Sanders [CANCELLED]

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 6100 H1F - History of Anthropological Thought (O. Ozcan/F. Bozcali

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 Y1 - Proposing Ethnographic Research (V. Furuie / T. Li

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 7001 H1S - Medical Anthropology I (K. Maxwell

This advanced introduction to the anthropological study of health as socio-cultural phenomenon is suitable for those with and without prior training in medical anthropology (upper-year undergraduate training in socio-cultural anthropology is recommended preparation).  Alongside conventional ethnographies of experiences of health, illness, disability, and the workings of health care systems, we’ll consider how medical anthropological research is enhanced through engagement with complementary disciplinary and methodological approaches, such as the history of medicine; critical Indigenous, race and disability studies; literary studies; and auto-ethnographic/ auto-biographical work. Substantive topics addressed by assigned readings may include food sovereignty, autism and neurodiversity, Black health in North America, global health and humanitarianism, and Indigenous health and settler colonialism, while our theoretical engagements will span political economy of health, biopolitics, subjectivity and intersectionality, and the social production and construction of biomedical knowledge. Discussions in and between classes will include demystifying theory and methodology in medical anthropology research, intended to support students’ future independent research. In winter 2025 the course will run entirely online and designed to maximize participation by neurodivergent students/ those with cognitive disabilities.  

ANT 7002 H1F - Medical Anthropology II (D. Sellen

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