Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Please consult the Faculty of Arts and Science Calendar for brief course descriptions and prerequisites. Detailed course outlines, which may list textbooks and grade distribution for each course, are available at the first course lecture.

COURSE OFFERINGS / TIMETABLE: The Fall/Winter registration instructions and Timetable are posted in April along with the Arts & Science Calendar.  They contain specific instructions for registration and enrolment in courses and programs, together with detailed timetable and scheduling information. As well, a Summer Session timetable is available in March.

THE FOLLOWING COURSE DESCRIPTIONS ARE BASED ON THE 2023-24 ARTS AND SCIENCE CALENDAR


100- and 200-Level ANT Courses


ANT 100Y – INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

ANT 100Y examines society and culture from various anthropological perspectives: Evolutionary Anthropology, the study of the evolution and biological diversity of humans and non-human primates; Archaeology, the study of the material evidence of  human activities in the past; Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology,  the study of ways in which language and other systems of human communication contribute to the reproduction, transmission and transformation of culture; Social / Cultural Anthropology, the study of  the great range of social and cultural organization in societies of varying complexity.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3) + Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ARH 100Y – INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeology entails an active process of uncovering evidence for and learning about aspects of the human past. The goal of this course is to involve students in current archaeological practice, including its socio-political context, and the global structure of the human experience from human evolution through cities and empires. Students will critically engage with ideas both within and outside the discipline on working with descendant communities, stewardship, ethical practice, and the relevance of archaeology to contemporary issues from climate change to social inequality. This course can serve as an introduction for students planning to pursue an archaeology program or as an opportunity to engage with a fascinating topic that is relevant to disciplines ranging from science to humanities.

  • Exclusion: ANT200Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 192H – MURDER AND OTHER DEATHLY CRIMES: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Anthropology has much to say about death. There is foundational literature on sacrifice, suicide, and the rites surrounding the end of life. Anthropology also has a lot to say about violence: war, conflict, revolution. But at the nexus of death and violence lies murder, a culturally and socially salient phenomenon that garners less scholarly attention. This seminar will explore what constitutes murder in different cultural and historical contexts, by reading across anthropology, cultural studies, and film studies.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

ANT 193H – MAKING, USING, AND INTERPRETING STONE TOOLS

Stone tools are the earliest and longest-lasting record of human technology. This course explores interpreting stone tools from a multidisciplinary perspective. In making, using, and studying stone tools, students will learn how archaeologists form hypotheses and design experiments to understand humans and their technologies in the past. This course presents research that investigate changes in human ancestors’ cognition and livelihoods through the contributions of other disciplines in life and social sciences to the study of stone tools. The course introduces major stone tool discoveries and critically engages with current research through the development of new ideas for research projects.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 194H – HUMAN-NONHUMAN RELATIONS THROUGH MANGA & ANIME

Anthropology has examined various ways human beings imagine and engage with non-human beings in their everyday lives in particular social and cultural contexts. By using manga and anime, specific popular cultural expressive modes developed in Japan, this course examines social and cultural aspects of human relationship with other beings, including but not restricted to animals, plants, microbes, technological objects and spirits from anthropological perspectives.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

ANT 195H – SPECULATIVE FICTION AND SOCIAL REALITY

How do the imagined worlds of speculative fiction reflect, and reflect upon, the real worlds of their authors and audiences? And on the other hand, how can works of speculative fiction have real-world impacts? Is speculative fiction different, in either of these respects, than other genres of narrative? This course explores a variety of works of speculative fiction from the perspective of an anthropological interest in ideas, imaginations, and narratives in relation to social life.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 197H – REPRESENTATIONS OF INTELLECTUALS

The course explores ideas of intellectuals who carved transformative theories during war times or under repressive regimes in the twentieth century. Intellectuals featured in the course include Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon, Walter Benjamin, Lu Xin, Audre Lorde. Further, it would examine cultural representations of them, such as, graphic novels, fictions, essays, films and videos on them or relatable to their ideas. For example, it would assign reading of Red Rosa, a graphic novel of Luxemburg together with her own work Theory of Imperialism. Or it would juxtapose Lorde’s classic, Sister Outsider, with Octavia Butler’s science fiction, Parable of the Sower.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and Its Institutions (3)

ANT 199H – LIVING ON THE WATER IN TORONTO

What do the Great Lakes mean to people living here?   Especially Indigenous people?  When and how do people care about the Great Lakes?  Poems, stories, social science offer perspectives on the water from anthropology and arts.   Field trips including paddling on a river, hiking; talks with local activists and artists.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and Its Institutions (3)

ANT 203Y – THE NATURE OF HUMANS

This course examines where humans fit in the fabric of the natural world.  It explores the history of ideas about humans in nature, humans as primates, the story of human evolution and modern human physical and genetic diversity.

The course is organized around weekly lectures of two hours and weekly tutorials.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1/BIO120H1, 220H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 204H  – SOCIAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND GLOBAL ISSUES (FORMERLY ANT 204Y)

A course focused on recent anthropological scholarship that seeks to understand and explain the transformation of contemporary societies and cultures. Topics may include some of the following: new patterns of global inequality, war and neo-colonialism, health and globalization, social justice and indigeneity, religious fundamentalism, gender inequalities, biotechnologies and society etc.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1
  • Exclusion: ANT204Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 205H  – MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON ILLNESS, MEDICINE, AND CARE

Introduction to medical anthropology with a focus on questions, methods, and insights from sociocultural anthropology. Explores the relationships among culture, society, and medicine with special attention to power, inequality, and globalization. Examples from many parts of the world, addressing biomedicine as well as other healing systems.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1, ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ARH 205H  – ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFERENCE (FORMERLY ARH 305H)

This course explores ways that archaeologists investigate research questions and interpret archaeological evidence. It introduces some of the main conceptual tools that archaeologists use to make inferences, including analogy, ethnoarchaeology, and experimental archaeology. It also uses practical exercises to help students understand the basic logic of some of the methods that archaeologists use in their research, such as dating methods and identification of spatial patterns. This prepares students for more advanced courses in archaeology.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1
  • Exclusion: ARH305H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 207H – CORE CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Society, culture, kinship, exchange, community, identity, politics, belief: these and other core concepts are explored in this course, which lays the foundation for advanced courses in social and cultural anthropology.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 208H – MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN HEALTH

Introduction to applied evolutionary medical anthropology. It explores evidence for the evolution of human vulnerability to disease across the life cycle (conception to death) and implications for health of contemporary populations in behavioral ecological, cross-cultural, health  and healing systems, historical trauma, inter-sectionality, and climate change, lenses.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1/BIO120H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science or Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 210H – ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN NORTH AMERICA (formerly ANT 388H)

This course provides a rigorous introduction to historical and contemporary relations between Indigenous peoples and anthropologists, spanning archaeology, biological/ evolutionary anthropology, and socio-cultural & linguistic fields. The course centers Indigenous experience, critique, and scholarship, and fosters students’ critical thinking skills as applied to the ethics and politics of anthropological research, past and present. The course is organised into three modules:

  1. Introduction to Indigenous peoples’ critiques and concerns regarding anthropology
  2. Understanding historical context of these issues
  3. In-depth discussion of current issues, oriented to emergent and possible future transformations in anthropology’s relations with Indigenous peoples.
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1
  • Exclusion: ANT388H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 215H – FIGHT THE POWER!: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF RESISTANCE AND REVOLUTION

This course examines the efforts of Indigenous communities in North America to subvert, resist, and persist in the face of hegemonic power. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a critical understanding of the inner workings of power and the impact of these structures on the contemporary world. In examining the power-resistance dynamic, this course takes a cross-cultural comparative approach that situates North American case studies in relation to examples of resistance from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In examining these case studies, students are asked to engage with a variety of primary sources including songs, speeches, literary texts, and material culture.

  • Prerequisite: 0.5 credit in social sciences or humanities
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 253H – LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY

This course introduces linguistic analysis with a view towards its application to the study of the relation between culture and social structure. The interplay of pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and discourse with rituals, ideologies, and constructions of social meaning and worldview are discussed in tandem with the traditional branches of linguistic analysis – phonology, morphology, grammar, syntax, and semantics. The objective of the course is to provide a broad framework for understanding the role of language in society.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1
  • Exclusion: JAL253H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 299Y – RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-opportunities-program. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Distribution Requirements: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None


300-Level ANT Courses


JAR 301H – PLAGUES AND PEOPLES: FROM DIVINE INTERVENTION TO PUBLIC HEALTH

Infectious diseases have afflicted human societies throughout the history of our species. How are diseases shaped by the societies in which they spread, and how do they change culture and politics in turn? This course introduces perspectives from medical anthropology and religious studies to analyze the intersection of cultural, religious and scientific narratives when people confront plagues. We focus on historical and contemporary examples, such as the Spanish flu and COVID-19, giving students the tools to understand how cultural institutions, religious worldviews, and public health epidemiology shape living and dying during a pandemic.

  • Prerequisite: At least 4.0 FCEs

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ARH 306Y – ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD METHODS

Intensive instruction in archaeological field methods and acquisition of field skills, including archaeological search and survey, site mapping, laying out excavation grids, use of theodolites, total station, and GPS, stratigraphic excavation, stratigraphy, field recording, screening sediment, Ontario license and reporting requirements. Normally this course would take place on campus in the summer. The details and application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/curriculum-course-inf...  The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 or NMC260H1 and NMC262H1 or NMC261Y0

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ARH 309H – ARCHAEOLOGY, ETHICS AND THE PUBLIC

An analysis of ethics in contemporary archaeology that covers reburial and repatriation, interpretation of the arc-haeological record in the context of historically oppressed groups, ethnic minorities, and non-western societies, the ethics of collecting and managing cultural property, relationships with the media, the debates surrounding looting, and other issues.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 311Y – ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELDWORK

Practical field training through six weeks of excavation on an archaeological site. Basic principles of artifact handling and classification (Offered only in the Summer Session)

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ARH 312Y – ARCHAEOLOGICAL LABORATORY 

Techniques for making archaeological data meaningful after excavation or survey. Archaeological measurements, compilation of data, database design, archaeological systematics, and sampling theory in the context of lithics, pottery, floral, faunal and other archaeological remains.

  • Prerequisites: ARH100Y1, ARH205H1 and a half statistics course (e.g., EEB225H1, GGR270H1*, STA220H1, STA221H1, STA257H1, STA261H1, ANTC35H3**)

* Geography pre- or co-requisites waived for Anthropology and Archaeology students

**Scarbourough course

Textbook :

Banning, E.B. The Archaeologist’s Laboratory. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishing, New York.

A basic statistics text, such as Rowntree’s Statistics without Tears or Drennan’s Archaeological Statistics: A Commonsense Approach, is recommended.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)

ANT 314H – ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

An archaeological survey of the human prehistory of northwestern North America from the late Pleistocene to the time of early European contact.  Geographical coverage will include the Northwest Coast, California, and the Intermontane Plateau.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 315H – ARCTIC ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeology  and ethnohistory of Arctic cultures. Emphasis is on variation of social organization, settlement pattern, economy, ideology, and interaction with the expanding European world-system.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 317H – ARCHAEOLOGY OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA

This course examines the precontact and early contact period culture history of eastern North America, including Ontario, through archaeological evidence. Topics covered include the earliest peopling of the region at the end of the Ice Age, diversity of hunter-gatherer societies, introduction of agriculture, and the development of the dynamic First Nations societies who eventually met and interacted with Europeans.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 318H – THE PREINDUSTRIAL CITY AND URBAN SOCIAL THEORY

This course offers a comparative examination of the rise and organization of ancient cities through a detailed investigation of urban social theory.  We will explore competing anthropological interpretations of urban process while probing the political, ideological, and economic structures of the world’s earliest cities.  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; and historical variation in urban landscapes, ideologies, and political economies.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 319Y – ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA

This course examines human prehistory in North America, North of Mexico, from the time of earliest occupation to European contact. Special topics include Paleoindian and Archaic adaptations, the rise of complex hunter-gatherers, origins of farming and the evolution of complex chiefdoms.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 320H – ANCIENT CULTURES OF THE ANDES

This class offers intensive study of the archaeology and culture history of the Andean region prior to the Spanish conquest.  The complexity and distinctiveness of Andean social organization, political institutions, religious ideologies, and economic practices have long fascinated anthropologists.  Ultimately, the course will explore Andean cultures over a 10,000 year period, highlighting key debates, current research projects, and innovative theoretical approaches shaping contemporary archeological scholarship in South America and beyond.

  • Prerequisite: ANT100Y1 or ARH100Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 322H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF YOUTH CULTURE

This course will present various perspectives on the nature and dynamics of youth culture. It will discuss the research accumulated over the past quarter century on youth lifestyles, from fashion and music to the formation and spread of slang. It will also look at the various critical and controversial aspects of adolescence in contemporary culture.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 324H – TOURISM AND GLOBALIZATION

The course uses tourism as a lens to examine global connections. Particular focus will be on the politics of cultural encounters. Drawing examples from diverse ethnographic materials, the course explores how different visions of the world come into contact, negotiated and transformed, and how tourist encounters shape people’s everyday lives.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT 207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 325H – INDIGENOUS ARCHAEOLOGIES

This course introduces students to the field of Indigenous archaeology. Indigenous archaeology is a form of critical praxis that encompasses archaeological research conducted for, with, and by Indigenous peoples. Throughout the class we explore the colonial origins of archaeology, Indigenous activism and its impacts on the discipline of anthropology, ongoing efforts to decolonize and indigenize cultural heritage, and community-based research methods. Students will all also be introduced to new theoretical perspectives emerging out of the intersection of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies including survivance, refusal, futurity, and resurgence.

  • Prerequisite: 1 course from: ARH100Y1, ARH205H1, ANT210H1, ANT215H1, INS201Y, INS200H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 327H – “DIVERSITY”: CRITICAL/COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF INDIGENEITY, MULTICULTURALISM AND (SETTLER) COLONIALISM

How do societies understand and manage their own diversity? This course unites critical studies of multiculturalism and settler colonialism to study Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., also examining strategies in other sites for managing diversity which are framed differently (e.g. superdiversity (Europe), co-existence (Japan), multiracialism (Hawai’i), mestizoness (Mexico)).

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT253H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 329H – LANGUAGE AND POWER STRUCTURE

The role of language and symbolism in the representation and manipulation of ideology and power structure. Case materials drawn from the study of verbal arts, gender, law, advertising, and politics with a focus on North America.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or ANT253H1 or VIC223Y1 or one of 200+ series H1 course in SOC or POL or LIN or Women’s Studies

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 330Y –  PALEOANTHROPOLOGY FIELD SCHOOL   

This course provides background in the practical and theoretical aspects of fieldwork in Paleoanthropology. Students are trained in the treatment and analysis of fossil vertebrates, plant macro- and micro-fossils and sediments. Excursions to paleoanthropological localities of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, and excavation at a hominoid site. The details and the application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/curriculum-course-information/field-schools-and-research-opportunities.  The application form should be submitted by the deadlines indicated on the website. (Joint undergraduate-graduate) 

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 333Y – LIVING PRIMATE ADAPTATIONS

A survey of living primates, this lab-oriented course describes and compares the diverse behavioural and anatomical adaptations that are characteristic to this order of mammals. The understanding of the biological diversity and evolutionary history of primates is important for further understanding of human adaptation and evolution.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT334H; BIO120H, 220H
  • Exclusion: ANT333H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 334H – HUMAN SKELETAL BIOLOGY

Exploration of the development and maintenance of the human skeleton and dentition, with emphasis on application to archaeological, forensic and biomedical sciences.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 335Y – HUMAN EVOLUTION

This course takes the student on a survey of human evolution from our ape ancestors to modern humans.  Students will learn to identify skulls, teeth and limb bones, explore hundreds of casts, and learn how researchers understand human origins and trends in the development of human anatomy and behavior.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1
  • Exclusion: ANT332H5, ANT333H5, ANT434H5, ANTC17H3

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 336H – EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY THEORY

This course will explore the foundational and leading concepts in evolutionary anthropology. Historically important readings and current concepts will be presented and discussed in the context of research, especially in areas of human population biology, ecology and the evolution of Homo sapiens. Topics will include behavioral ecology and life history theory, as well as a critique of the adaptationist program.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 337H – HUMAN MOVEMENT

This course will investigate human movement and physical activity patterns through the lens of evolutionary anthropology. The evolution of hominin physical behaviours, such as bipedalism and tool use, will be explored alongside the morphological traits associated with these behaviours. We will also examine social and cultural factors that may moderate physical activities among diverse human groups, including subsistence strategy variation and contemporary views on activity and exercise. 

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 338H – MOLECULAR ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMAN EVOLUTION

Molecular anthropology is an interdisciplinary field combining biology, genetics, evolution and anthropology. In this class, we will explore the use of DNA for the study of past migrations and admixture patterns, the evolution of pathogens, plant and animal domestication and especially the relationships between recent and archaic humans.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 340H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF LATIN AMERICA

Provides a framework for understanding current anthropological issues in the different geo-political regions of Latin America. Special attention will be paid to historical/conceptual development of the discipline in the region, and the course will introduce a debate about the death and resurgence of area studies.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 341H – CHINA IN TRANSITION

This course offers a general introduction to transformations in modern and contemporary China from an anthropological perspective.  This course covers major aspects of Chinese culture, history, and society in a global context.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 342H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF RACE AND RACISM

This course will examine the role of anthropology in the development, maintenance, as well as critique, of race as a concept and racism as a social, cultural, and structural reality.  Topics include: the relationships among anthropology, race, and colonialism; the constructions of race as a social, cultural, and biological concept; ethnographic engagements with whiteness and white supremacy; and the future of anthropology as an anti-racist and anti-colonialist enterprise.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT204H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 343H – SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF GENDER

Gender concerns the ways that groups define and experience what it is to be male, female, or a gender identity in-between or outside of that binary, and in all societies the boundaries of gender categories are both policed and resisted. In this course we examine how gender is made materially, discursively, and through intersections with other structures of inequality (e.g. race, sexuality, class, etc.). 

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 344H – POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This course explores the conceptual and methodological tools anthropologists employ to study the ways social groups enact, resist, and transform social relations that involve the production and distribution of power. It studies how anthropologists theorize politics in relation to power, authority, coercion, and consent. Topics explored in this class include political cultures in state and statelessness societies, political affect and the politics of everyday life, hegemony and resistance, governmentality and bio-politics, violence and militarization, social movements and citizenship, and the difficulties of anthropological research in conflict zones.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 345H – GLOBAL HEALTH: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

This course examines medical anthropology’s contributions to, and critiques of, global health policies and programs. Topics covered include: colonialism and health, the political ecology of disease, indigenous constructions of illness and healing, medical pluralism, the politics of primary health care, population policies, reproductive health, and AIDS.

  • Prerequisite: ANT205H1 or ANT207H1 or permission of the instructor
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT348H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 346H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD

Social anthropological perspective on the nature and meaning of food production, culinary cultures, industrial food, food as metaphor, and famine and hunger.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 347H – METROPOLIS: GLOBAL CITIES (FORMERLY ANT 347Y)

The role of culture, cultural diversity, space and performance in urban institutions and settings. The cultural context and consequence of urbanization.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1
  • Exclusion: ANT347Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course

Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 348H – MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: HEALTH, POWER AND POLITICS

This course deepens students’ understandings of health and illness as social, cultural, political and historical phenomena. Drawing on theories and approaches from social-cultural anthropology, students will develop skills in critical analysis of experiences and meanings of healing and illness in particular contexts, with a focus on anthropological critique of dominant health policies, discourses, technologies and practices.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT205H1 or ANT207H1 or permission of the instructor

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 352H - ANTHROPOLOGY OF LIFE AND DEATH

What might it mean to think of death as inside of life, as opposed to at the end of it? This class examines Anthropological approaches to understanding life and death in our contemporary moment, one marked by widespread illness, war, policing, suicide, accident, and further loss. How do we go on living surrounded by death every day? Why are certain deaths valued above others? We will examine a range of related themes including funerary rituals, grief and mourning, violence and killing, illness and ageing, and ghosts and the afterlife.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

JAL 355H – LANGUAGE AND GENDER

An introduction to some of the principal questions of feminist theory, as viewed from sociolinguistics.  Topics include:  socialization into gendered discourse patterns, cultural and ethnic differences in gendered interactions; the role of language and gender in legal, medical and labour settings; multilingualism, migration, imperialism and nationalism; sexuality, desire and queer linguistics, language, gender and globalization.

  • Prerequisite: One full course equivalent at the 200-level in ANT/JAL/LIN/SOC/WGS
  • Recommended preparation: ANT204H1/ANT253H1/SOC200H1/214H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 356H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION

This course introduces selective anthropological and ethnographic rendering of religion and theology; matter, magic and the miraculous; religion and media. It also engages with some political understandings of religious affects; the religious in movement; mystics and relics; religious practices and their entanglements in colonial histories.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 357H – SOCIAL WORLDS OF MEDICINE AND CARE

Presents anthropological perspectives on provision of healthcare as a complex social and cultural phenomenon. Examines hierarchies and division of labor among health care providers, and how social groups come to occupy particular positions. Considers how knowledge and skills are gained through formal training and/or lived experience, how they are recognized and valued, and may become sources of identity. Examines local variations within biomedicine as practiced in different settings around the world.

  • Prerequisite: ANT205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 358H – MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

It is widely acknowledged that sharp disparities in disease burden and access to medical care characterize global patterns in health. These disparities affect the life chances of much of the world’s population, based on class position, gender, and geographical region.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT205H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ARH 360H – PREHISTORY OF THE NEAR EAST

From earliest times through the rise of complex hunter-gatherers, and the food producing revolution to politically complex societies in Southwest Asia.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 or NMC260H1 and NMC262H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ARH 361Y/H – FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY

Opportunity for students participating in non-degree credit archaeological digs to submit reports, field notes and term papers for degree credit. Instructions on how to obtain an application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.

  • Prerequisite: Permission of Supervisor and Undergraduate Coordinator.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ANT 362H – SPORTS AND PLAY

We tend to think of sports as unserious. This course shows that much serious cultural work is conducted through sports, but also that sports are indeed not always serious. This anthropology of sports engages with sports as both work and play, considering issues like gender, bodies, competition, and pleasure.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative & Cultural Representations (1)

ANT 364H – ENVIRONMENT AND GLOBALIZATION 

This course will examine the relationships between humans and the environment in the context of contemporary efforts to develop within or in opposition to the political economy of neoliberal globalization. We will critically examine the discourses of progress and environment within a broader theoretical inquiry of structure/agency and power.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 366H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 

Explores how anthropologists have traditionally studied social movements and how new social movements have challenged anthropologists to rethink some of their ethnographic methods and approaches. Some specific movements covered include those related to indigenous rights, environmentalism, refugees, gay and lesbian issues, biotechnology, new religions and globalization.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 370H – INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

An in-depth critical review of foundational ideas in the development of the practice of Anthropology.  Topics may include questioning fieldwork, origins and legacies of functionalism, cultural materialism, politics of culture, power and political economy, globalization and post modernism, gender and post-structuralism.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 372H – CULTURAL PROPERTY

This course explores the relationship between cultural property and everyday life through the themes of movement, ownership and value. Case studies, current events and debates help students understand how heritage is informed by the multiple values of cultural property.  This course addresses issues of cultural property and heritage in the contemporary world that are relevant to all subfields of anthropology.

  • Prerequisite: ANT100Y1 or ARH100Y1 or ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or ANT253H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 374H – RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT OR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE WORLD

Development, or deliberate intervention to improve the lives of people deemed to be lacking, or left behind, has shaped the modern world for at least a century. Drawing on historical and ethnographic studies, this course examines the trajectory of development as a concept and practice, and traces its effects.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 or permission of the instructor

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 376H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF ANIMALS

The relationship between humans and other animals is one of the most hotly debated topics of our times. Through key classic and contemporary writings, this course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, and explores how anthropologists and other theorists have critically engaged in debates about “animal” and "human" distinctions.

  • Prerequisite:  ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

JAA 377H - BLACK RADICAL THEORY FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

This course will survey the works of Black theorists and anthropologists from the Global South, who are shaping current debates within and beyond the discipline of Anthropology, concerning colonialism and decolonization, Marxism, indigeneity, political economy, Black radical thought, queer theory and decolonial feminism. Students will look at how these works challenge the “Northern Academy’s monoliteracy” (Musila), politics of knowledge production and construction of the Global South as primarily a site of fieldwork and research extraction. Authors will include Sylvia Tamale, Wangui Kimari, Sabelo Ndlovu-Matsheni, Ochy Curiel, Keguro Macharia, Beatriz Nascimento, Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Abdelghaffar Ahmed.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or ANT215H1 or AFR150Y1 or AFR290H1 or AFR298H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 378H – GIFT, MONEY AND FINANCE

This course introduces dialogue between anthropological literature and other disciplinary studies in regards to the economy and culture of gift and money transaction as a key aspect of human society. Studying the history of gift and money economy from agricultural societies and diverse developments of finance market culture in recent era through various perspectives (e.g., ethnographic, sociological, politico-economic, and historical views), this course aims to train students developing a critical understanding of capitalism.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 380H  – CRAFT OF SOCIAL/ CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This course introduces students to the skills they need to conduct ethnographic research, in particular, participant observation, in-depth interview, as well as writing fieldnotes and research proposals. The emphasis is on interactive, workshop-style small group learning.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 382H - SPECIAL TOPICS IN BIOCULTURAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This course combines lecture and discussion, and focuses on a topic in medical anthropology from a biocultural perspective. Topics change from year to year. See Anthropology website for more details.

  • Prerequisite: ANT208H1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT203Y1 or ANT205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 384H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIETY, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

This lecture-format course focuses on a relatively broad topic in socio-cultural and/or linguistic anthropology. Topics change from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT384H1F - Fall 2023

Anthropology of Borderlands - Prof Valentina Napolitano

Borders and borderlands have been part of reflections and engagements since the inception of the anthropological discipline and yet, more than ever, they are central to our current times. From early colonial periods and the imagination of boundaries-drawing creatures (such as monsters and strangers), borders have been at the core of making and unmaking the permeability and impermeability of spaces and materialities, nations, communities, people and bodies. From the militarization and fortification of borders, their trafficked nature, their utopian, theological renderings and creative potential they help us to be aware of global, local and intimate ways in which we (un)relate. This course will largely focus on cases from the Americas and the Trans-Mediterranean and may have an ethnographic practicum component.

ANT 385H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIOCULTURAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This course combines lecture and discussion, and focuses on a topic in medical anthropology from a sociocultural perspective. Topics change from year to year. See Anthropology website for more details.

  • Prerequisite: ANT205H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT385H1S - Winter 2024

Perspectives on the Body in Medical Anthropology - Prof Anisha Chadha

How has medical anthropology apprehended bodies through its decades-long history? In this course we will nest larger anthropological understandings of the body within central concepts in medical anthropology, namely: medicalization, disease/illness dichotomies, and the history of “alternative” and biomedical cultural systems. In the first unit of the course, we will trace how the concept of the body has morphed throughout the history of medical anthropology in response to theoretical turns occurring between the mid-twentieth century to the present. In the second unit of the course, we will move into discussions that interrogate assumptions about the body as a natural, universal, and uniform entity to yield broad anthropological insights onto the multiplicity of bodies and embodied experiences, as well as specific medical anthropological insights into the ways this multiplicity factors into contemporary healthcare contexts. In the third and final unit of the course, we will examine how technologies have mediated bodies, embodied experiences, and bodily images across spatiotemporal distances, and the resultant implications to contemporary medical cultures.

ANT 386H – GLOBAL CATHOLICISM: ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES

This is a course on material religion and mediation, kingdom and kinship, gender symbolisms and devotions, ecologies of selves and the histories of senses that infuse Catholicism. It challenges us to think about the importance of Catholicism as a global phenomenon expressed through socio-political and cultural practices of the everyday life.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or RLG212H1 or RLG203H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief, & Behaviour (2)

ANT 390H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY

This lecture-format course focuses on a relatively broad topic in anthropology. Topics change from year to year. See Anthropology website for more details.

  • Prerequisite: 9.0 FCEs. Further pre-requisites vary from year to year, consult the department.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT390H1F - Fall 2023

Right-Wing Nationalisms - Prof Ivan Kalmar

Anthropological and other approaches to right-wing nationalism, populism, illiberalism, and “democratic backsliding,” in specific parts of the world and across continents. Economic and geopolitical sources of right-wing nationalist ideas and their patterns of transmission. International cooperation among right-wing nationalists. White supremacism. Conspiracy theories. Connections between extreme and mainstream forms of illiberal nationalism.

Summer 2023  ANT390H1F  *Cancelled*

Practicing Anthropology: Using Anthropology outside of Academia - TBA

ANT 395Y0 – SPECIAL TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Studies in anthropology taken abroad. Areas of concentration vary depending on the instructor and year offered.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1/ ARH100Y1/ ANT203Y1/ ANT204H1/ ANT207H1

Distribution Requirements: Social Science

ANT 396Y0 – SPECIAL TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Studies in anthropology taken abroad. Areas of concentration vary depending on the instructor and year offered.

  • Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1/ ARH100Y1/ ANT203Y1/ ANT204H1/ ANT207H1

Distribution Requirements: Social Science

ANT 398H/Y0 – RESEARCH EXCURSIONS

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-excursions-program.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ANT 399Y0 – RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-opportunities-program .

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None


400-Level ANT Courses


ANT 406H – LITHIC ANALYSIS

Core reduction strategies, replication, experimental archaeology, use-wear, design approaches, ground stone, inferring behaviour from lithic artifacts.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 and ARH205H1 and ARH 312Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)

ANT 407H – INKA AND AZTEC STATES

This course provides a comparative study of the emergence, organization, and transformation of the two historically-documented states of the native Americas: the Inka and the Aztec.  Students will have the opportunity to analyze ethnohistorical and archaeological data in order to critically evaluate models of the pre-industrial “state” while gauging the anthropological significance of either convergence or particularity in the historical development of centralized political formations.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 and ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 409H – LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY 

Archaeological survey, spatial analysis of archaeological evidence over landscapes and territories, and ways archaeologists attempt to interpret landscapes, regional settlement systems, agricultural land use, regional exchange and communication, and past people’s perceptions of or ideas about landscape.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1
  • Recommended Preparation: GGR270H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 410H – HUNTER-GATHERERS PAST AND PRESENT

Examines the diversity of recent hunter-gatherer societies, as a source of analogues for understanding the archaeological record of past foraging peoples.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 411H – ADVANCED ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY

Seminar in the critical examination of major schools of archaeological thought.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 412H – HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Introduces the problems, methods and some of the material culture of colonial and industrial archaeology with emphasis on Canada and colonial America. Covers the use of documentary evidence, maps, architecture and a variety of artifact classes.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 or HIS374H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 415Y – LABORATORY IN FAUNAL ARCHAEO-OSTEOLOGY

Examination and interpretation of faunal material from archaeological sites as evidence for culture. The application form is posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. The application form should be submitted by the deadline indicated on the website.

  • Prerequisite: ARH312Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science or Science course
Breadth Requirement: The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5) + Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 416H – ARCHAEOLOGY OF RITUAL AND IDENTITY

This course offers a comparative survey of archaeological approaches to ritual practice as it relates to identity politics, personhood, and the negotiation of power relations in past societies.  An important goal of the seminar is to introduce students to social theories on the inherent materiality of ritual performance, whether orchestrated in everyday practice or in elaborate religious and political spectacles.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1 and ANT100Y1 or ARH100Y1 or ANT356H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 419H – CURRENT DEBATES IN PALAEOLITHIC  ARCHAEOLOGY

Current research in Palaeolithic Archaeology reflecting emerging issues.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 or ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 420H – ARCHAEOLOGY OF INEQUALITY

How social complexity is manifested in the archaeological record. Origins and evolution of prehistoric complex societies, from small-scale chiefdoms to large-scale states.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 and ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 425H – LANGUAGE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT

How ideas about language fit into the overall views of humankind as expressed by selected anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and philosophers.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or ANT253H1 and 0.5 300+ level course from Group C

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 426H – WESTERN VIEWS OF THE NON-WEST

The history and present of western concepts and images about the ‘Other’, in anthropological and other scholarship and in popular culture.

  • Prerequisite: 0.5 300 level FCE from Anthropology Group C (Society, Culture, Language), or NMC or Jewish Studies or Diaspora and Transnational Studies or History

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative & Cultural Representations (1

ANT 430H – PRIMATE CONSERVATION BIOLOGY

The focus of this course is on the science of primate conservation biology in an anthropological context. Topics will include primate biodiversity and biogeography, human impacts, and conservation strategies/policies.  The effects of cultural and political considerations on primate conservation will also be discussed.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 431H – THE REAL PLANET OF THE APES

Through fossil labs and lectures, we look back over 30 to 5 million years ago when apes roamed from Spain to China and Germany to Southern Africa. The fossil record of these apes, our ancestors, reveals how we evolved our large brains, dexterous hands, extended growth period and incredible intelligence. We encounter many surprises along the way, such as apes living with pandas in Hungary, animals with a mix of monkey, ape and pig traits and apes the size of polar bears. Of the more than 100 species of fossil apes known, only one gave rise to us.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT335Y1 or ANT330Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 434H – HEALTH, DIET AND DISEASE IN THE PAST

Advanced exploration of the life histories of past populations, through the application of  palaeodietary analyses, palaeopathology and other appropriate research methods.

  • Prerequisite: ANT334H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 435H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD AND CHILDCARE

A detailed review of the classic and recently emerging literature on the anthropology of children, childhood, and childcare. Focus is on theories for evolution of human parenting adaptations, challenges in research methodology and implications for contemporary research, practice and policy in the area of care and nutrition of infants and children.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1 or ANT208H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 436H – PRIMATE ECOLOGY AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

This course will provide an overview of the ecology and social behavior of extant non-human primates. Topics will include socioecology, conservation biology, biogeography, aggression and affiliation, community ecology, communication, and socio-sexual behavior. There will also be extensive discussions of methods used in collecting data on primates in the field.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ANT 437H – INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Virtual anthropology is a set of new methods that allow us to digitize objects, analyze, reconstruct and share them digitally, and bring them back into the real world. After a theoretical introduction, students will use surface scanners, photogrammetric software and 3D printers to digitize and study archaeological and anthropological specimens.

  • Prerequisite: ANT334H1 or ARH312Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: The Physical & Mathematical Universes (5)

ANT 438H – TOPICS IN EMERGING SCHOLARSHIP (EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY)

Taught by an advanced PhD student or postdoctoral fellow, and based on his or her doctoral research and area of expertise, this course presents a unique opportunity to explore intensively a particular Evolutionary Anthropology topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1 and 0.5 FCE 300+ Group B (Evolutionary) course

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

2023-24  ANT438H1F - Fall 2023

From Womb to Tomb: How Early-Life Conditions Can Affect Lifetime Fitness in Primates - Samantha Stead

Early-life growth and development can have long-term impacts on an animal’s fitness. These processes are affected both by an animal’s genome as well as by its environment. In this course, we will focus on the latter and explore how early-life environmental conditions (both before and after birth) can affect growth, development, and ultimately long-term fitness in primates. This course will emphasize the effects of the maternal environment, as young primates rely on their mothers for an extended period of time. This course will introduce students to several key biological systems and their roles in maternal effects on offspring. The ideas discussed in this course will be grounded in life history theory and developmental plasticity and applied to primates. Given the importance of measuring long-term fitness when assessing life history trade-offs, and the difficulty in acquiring such data for long-lived animals such as primates, we will also draw on research from other mammals.

ARH 440H – PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND 3D ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL CULTURE 

With the increasing availability of powerful computers and software, 3D modeling and recording has become commonplace in archaeology, architectural history, museum studies, and other areas of cultural heritage research. In this course, students will learn about a powerful new method for 3D recording known as photogrammetry. After a series of tutorials, they will gain firsthand experience creating their own models of various subjects, such as historical architecture and public art in Toronto, and museum objects on campus. They will also learn how to analyze and present 3D content, while thinking critically about the impact of how digital tools are currently being employed by and shaping the agendas of researchers in archaeology, art history, and related fields.

  • Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ARH/FAH courses at the 300 level
  • Recommended Preparation: Previous experience with photography or imaging software will be helpful but is not required

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

ANT 441H – LOVE, SEX AND MARRIAGE

Beginning with anthropology’s early work on kinship, and ending with recent analyses of sex work and the globalization of ideologies of romantic love and companionate marriage, this course will investigate how emotional and sexual relationships are produced, used, conceptualized, and experienced both within particular societies and transnationally.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and ANT343H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 450H – MULTISPECIES CITIES

As of 2007, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s peoples lived in cities. It is estimated that by 2030 over 60% will be urban-dwellers. This demographic shift suggests that for many (if not most) people, their primary encounter with “nature” will be urban based. This course explores the idea of “urban-nature” by 1) focusing on the ways in which various theorists have challenged traditional ways of viewing both “the city” and “nature” and 2) encouraging students to develop their own critical perspectives through ethnographic engagements with the city of Toronto.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 and one 300 + level course in Society, Culture and Language.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 455H –  ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

What can Anthropology, as both an academic discipline and a way of knowing, bring to our understanding of the Middle East, a region deeply entangled in global geopolitics? What kinds of questions have social and cultural anthropologists asked when faced with the diversity of a region that stretches from North Africa to West Asia? This course explores the cultural, historical, and political complexity of the region from an ethnographic perspective, while also attending critically to the way “The Middle East” has been constructed in the first place. Rather than attempting an overview of the entire region, it focuses on themes that have compelled anthropological research in the area in recent decades, including but not limited to war, migration, labour, “terrorism”, gender, racialization, and religion. We will draw from key academic texts in conversation with other genres of knowledge production including film, journalism, and literature. No previous familiarity with the region is required.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1
  • Recommended Preparation: NMC241H1, RLG204H1, NMC283Y1
  • Exclusion: ANTC89H3, ANT484H1 Winter 2014; ANT384H1 Winter 2017, Winter 2018.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 456H – QUEER ETHNOGRAPHY

This course explores, first, how and where forms of desire and sexual practice have become sites of anthropological inquiry and exemplars of particular cultural logics. Tracing, then, the “transnational turn” in the anthropology of sexuality, the course engages important debates about culture, locality, and globalization. By focusing on the transnational movement of desires, practices, and pleasures through activisms, mass media, and tourism, the course asks how sex is global and how globalization is thoroughly sexed.  Course material will stress, but not be limited to, forms of same-sex or otherwise “queer” sexualities.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and any 300-level course in Society, Culture and Language

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 457H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF MATERIAL CULTURE

The course addresses the cultural and social significance of material culture in specific cultural settings, and the role that artifacts have played in the history of anthropological thought from early typological displays to the most recent developments of material culture studies.

  • Prerequisite: ARH100Y1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

ANT 458H – INDIGENOUS HEALTH HISTORIES AND CANADIAN SETTLER COLONIALISM

We focus on the relationship between the health and well-being of Indigenous people/s and Canadian settler colonialism, drawing on scholarship from medical anthropology, history, Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies. The course is centrally concerned with how Indigenous social and political actors have engaged with health, illness, social suffering and healing throughout the 20th century, and informed by anthropological and historical understandings of healthcare systems as permeated by dynamic relations of power.

  • Prerequisite: any 300 or 400 level course in Society, Culture and Language or INS350H1 or INS355H1 or JFP450H1 or permission of the instructor
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT345H1 or ANT348H1 or ANT358H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 459H – MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY

This course introduces perspectives which extend anthropological inquiry beyond the solely human realm. Building on an acknowledgement of the fundamental interconnectedness of humans and other life forms, it explores the agencies of other-than-humans, including nonhuman animals, land and seascapes, plants, bacteria, “contaminants,” and others. The course also engages with ethnographic methodologies best suited to investigations of inter-species, inter- life form relationships.

  • Prerequisite: ANT376H1 or three 300-level anthropology courses in any subfield or permission of instructor

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 460H – GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN’S HEALTH

This fourth-year seminar examines how female gender shapes health and illness. Using case studies of sexual health, fertility and its management, substance use/abuse, mental health, and occupational/labor health risks, the course investigates the material, political, and socio-cultural factors that can put women at risk for a range of illness conditions.

  • Prerequisite: ANT343H1 or ANT345H1 or  ANT348H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 462H – ANTHROPOLOGY OF AFFECT

This course examines how anthropologists have studied the way that people hope, imagine, love, and despise.  Ethnography of “the intimate” realms of affect raises important questions about knowledge production and methodology as well as offering insight into how people come to act upon the world and what the human consequences of such action are.  The course will also examine how “the intimate” is socially produced and harnessed in the service of politics and culture.  Topics will include grief and its lack; dreams and activism; love and social change; memory and imperialism; sexuality and care; and violence and hope.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and any 300-level course in Society, Culture and Language

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 463H - ANTHROPOLOGY OF RACIAL CAPITALISM AND DISPOSSESSION

This course considers racial capitalism from an anthropological perspective through ethnographies and films which examine the role race, colonialism and white supremacy play in shaping and enabling contemporary forms of capitalist accumulation by dispossession in everyday life. Considering dispossession broadly, we will explore not only processes that dispossess people of property and land, but also of rights, modes of belonging, health, citizenship and life. We will also look at the ways people are organizing to reclaim what they have been dispossessed of or denied, from anti-eviction movements and abolitionist organizing to struggles for reproductive rights, food sovereignty and climate justice.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT342H1 or ANT366H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 464H – BLACK ETHNOGRAPHIES

Black populations in the African Diaspora defy simple characterizations.  In this course, we will examine the experiences of Black people through an ethnographic exploration of their lives.  The close analysis of ethnographic monographs and articles will illuminate the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, nationality, and other factors, shape the everyday for Black people in different cultural contexts.  An additional focus will be a consideration of the experiences of Black anthropologists as ethnographers and scholars who are broadening anthropological discourses.

  • Prerequisite: ANT342H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 465H - ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICUM: TORONTO TOURS

This course provides students with a partnered field experience by conducting ethnographic research on visitor tours in partner organizations in Toronto with faculty’s supervision. The project will be developed in collaboration with the partner organizations to offer students partnership-based experiential learning opportunities. Students will produce detailed ethnographic descriptions of tourist experiences, analyze how media representations and tourism infrastructure shape diverse visitor experiences, explore how existing infrastructure can be potentially repurposed for a decolonial or inclusive tour, and develop skills to communicate their findings to the broader audience.

  • Prerequisite: ANT380H1 or permission of the instructor
  • Recommended Preparation: ANT324H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 472H – JAPAN IN GLOBAL CONTEXT: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

This course examines how what we know as Japan and its culture has been constructed through global interactions. Topics include gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, social and family life, work and leisure, and Japanese identity amid changing global power relations.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 473H – ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICUM: THE UNIVERSITY

Students carry out original ethnographic research projects on some aspect of life in the University of Toronto: its students, staff and faculty; its hierarchies and habits; and the everyday practices in classrooms, labs, dining halls, offices, clubs, and residence corridors. Class time is used for collective brainstorming, feedback and analysis.

  • Prerequisite: ANT380H1 or permission of the instructor

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 474H – ETHNOGRAPHIES OF HIV/AIDS: RISK, VULNERABILITY, AND CARE

This course examines HIV/AIDS globally and ethnographically focusing on how gendered political economies create HIV vulnerability; the experiences of sexual minorities; how religious institutions shape practices of social care and exclusion; and anthropological critiques of HIV awareness campaigns and counseling as sites of governmentality.

  • Prerequisite: ANT348H1 or ANT345H1 or ANT358H1 or ANT343H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 475H – READING ETHNOGRAPHY

Students read several full-length ethnographies, both classical and contemporary, and debate what makes for sound ethnographic research and writing, as well as what ethnography is and “should” be as a genre of writing and representation.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and ANT370H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 477H – TRANSNATIONAL KOREA IN AND OUTSIDE THE  PENINSULA 

This course addresses reading ethnography as a tool to understand compressed and complex modernity such as Korean societies, both in and outside of the Korean peninsula. In particular, this course aims to develop students’ critical thinking on class, ethnicity, gender, family, and migration in Korea and diasporic societies of Koreans in Canada, China, Japan, and US.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and at least one 300+ course in social sciences and humanities

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 480Y/H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Unique opportunity to explore a particular anthropological topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: Any 200 level Anthropology course and 1.0 FCE at the 300+ level

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

2023-24 ANT480H1F - Fall 2023

Politics, Theology and Sovereignty: Anthropological Approaches - Prof Valentina Napolitano

This course aims to  expand our  political, anthropological imagination through selected ethnographic renderings and critical theory debates that focus on the relation between politics, theologies (in the plural) and the everyday life. It introduces, among others, themes of the Modern Sovereign, capitalism as religion, grace and charisma, affective nationalism and sensoria, mysticism and politics. 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 Carl Schmitt, Khaled Furani, Arturo Escobar, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, and Teresa d’Avila.

2023-24 ANT480H1S - Winter 2024

Embodied Anthropology - Prof Michael Chazan

The goal of this course is to engage with embodied experience and with the question of how to draw this aspect of human experience into anthropological research.  My sense is that there is some urgency to this issue as we move into a world increasingly dominated by virtual experience. I hope to draw on the capacity of anthropology to take a wholistic perspective on humanity to gain a new perspective on what it is to be a person who acts in a skillful manner.  I am asking all students in the class to commit to actively pursuing the development of an area of skilled behavior over the course of the semester as a compliment to the reading and discussion.  We will discuss in class what these skills might be, but I am looking for an engagement of at least a couple of hours a week.  The class journal will be a response to the weekly reading that might draw connections with your efforts to gain skill.  I am not looking for a formal academic response but rather a sustained effort to develop your own perspective on the issues raised in the weekly reading.  As a rough guideline the weekly responses should average 750 words.  I will only be collecting these journals at the end of term.  Towards the end of the term we will be dedicating a series of sessions to the question of who skill is transmitted.  To bring this to life I will be asking each of you to teach us one aspect of the skill you have been working on.  The length of these presentations will depend on the number of students in the class but will likely be about 15 minutes.  The approach you take is completely up to you.  At the end of the term there will be an in-class final in which long answer format questions will test your knowledge of the reading and provide an opportunity to synthesize the material from the semester.

2023-24 ANT480Y1Y

Archaeology and Heritage in the Public Sphere - Prof Katherine Patton

In this year long course, students are invited to critically examine the key themes in public archaeology and heritage. This year’s theme is collections management. Learning from experts in collections management and partnerships, students will have the opportunity to gain collections management skills and undertake preliminary interpretations of material culture to produce a public-facing document.   

This year’s partnership is with the Ontario Heritage Trust. Further partnerships may be developed with other government, not-for-profit, or private organizations.  

As a community-engaged and experiential learning course, students will work 6 hours per week with their partner organization.  In class, students will engage with larger theoretical issues such as what is meant by “heritage” and how it is increasingly shaping archaeological practice in the contemporary world, how narratives about the past are constructed, and by whom, and why they are so often contested. This course builds on some of the topics discussed in Cultural Properties and Archaeological Ethics.   

The class will meet once each month for a two-hour seminar. In the first hour, we will discuss assigned readings and any links you may be able to make between the ideas in them and your volunteer experience. The second hour will provide you with a chance to share your experiences with each other. In addition, 4 field trips to (or with) public heritage organizations are planned.

Summer 2023  ANT480H1S *Cancelled*

User Experience and Design Research: Anthropological Approaches - TBA

Course description to be posted when available

ANT 481H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY

Unique opportunity to explore in-depth a particular topic in Evolutionary Anthropology. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT203Y1 and 0.5 FCE 300+ Group B (Evolutionary) course

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Science course
Breadth Requirement: Living Things and Their Environment (4)

ARH 482H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Unique opportunity to explore in-depth a particular topic in Archaeology. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ANT 483H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

This course will focus on an advanced topic in Linguistic Anthropology. Topic will vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT253H1 and 1.0 FCE 300 level Group C (Society, Culture and Language) course

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

ANT 484H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Unique opportunity to explore a particular Social Cultural Anthropology topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and 1 FCE 300 level Group C (Society, Culture and Language) course

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24 ANT484H1F - Fall 2023

Global Indigeneity and Human Rights - Prof Omer Ozcan

This course approaches indigeneity and human rights as both objects of inquiry and subjects of critique. Studying diverse anthropological perspectives that shed light on different aspects of indigeneity and human rights, we will explore (a) the heterogeneous practices and tangible social processes that shape our understanding of human rights, and (b) how indigeneity, as both a theoretical concept and a lived experience cuts across ideas about colonialism, sovereignty, citizenship, race, gender, and human rights. The course will explore the history, politics, and everyday life of indigenous people across the globe and the limits and possibilities of the discourse of human rights for the struggle of indigenous people.

Throughout the course, we will survey a wide array of anthropological studies, historical texts, films, and documentaries to address key issues and topics critical to indigenous communities. These include histories of colonialism; the politics of indigenous political recognition; the relationship between sovereignty and citizenship; the various forms of legal inclusion and exclusion of indigenous people; and their historical, cultural, and individual rights.

2023-24 ANT484H1S - Winter 2024

Anthropology of Aging, Health, and the Life Course - Meredith Evans

Drawing on anthropological theories, concepts, and methodologies, this seminar explores the socio-cultural dynamics of aging, health, and the life course. We will investigate how aging is understood, experienced, and negotiated both globally and locally, paying attention to the ways in which cultural beliefs, social norms, and power dynamics shape the experiences and meanings of aging and health. Themes such as the affective, material-semiotic, economic, and political dimensions of aging and the relationship of aging to illness and health will be explored through close reading, analysis, and discussion of texts focusing on a variety of topics, such as: aging-related anxieties; aging in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; aging, meaning, and identity; inequities of aging and health care; kinship, intergenerational relations, and personhood; cultures of clinical, long-term, and end-of-life care; gerontechnologies of aging and care; and temporalities of aging. Throughout the course, students will engage in critical analysis of ethnographic case studies and scholarly articles.

ANT 485H – TOPICS IN EMERGING SCHOLARSHIP (SOCIETY, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE)

Taught by an advanced PhD student or postdoctoral fellow, and based on his or her doctoral research and area of expertise, this course presents a unique opportunity to explore intensively a particular Socio-cultural or Linguistic Anthropology topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and 1 FCE 300+ Group C (Society, Culture and Language) course

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT485H1F - Fall 2023

Anthropology and Design - Nicholas Smith

This course engages the myriad ways that anthropology and design inform one another. Design “translates values into tangible experiences” as Dori Tunstall puts it, and such processes of translation – including economies, artifacts, and practices – are frequently the subject of anthropological work. Design sensibilities have also come to inform ethnographic work at a methodological level, for instance, in the form of multimodal ethnography. At the same time, designers in the professional workplace frequently make use of ethnographic methods in order to understand user needs or grasp the intangibles of a design proposition. These productive overlaps are the focus of this course. Engaging critically with design means probing the contingencies, assumptions, and exclusions which characterize our designed worlds. We will explore conceptual case studies, taking up various anthropological concepts and concerns and observing how they are designed -- made material, experiential, affective; given form -- through a range of design practices. We will consider what design might have to say about the otherwise ways our worlds could be. Finally, we will unpack the tricky intersections between design work in professional and academic venues. Particular consideration will be given to design thinking and the use of ethnographic methods in user experience research. Students will create a “design ethnography” as their final project, encompassing both a critical engagement with class themes and a practical engagement with ethnographic collaboration and playfulness.

2023-24  ANT485H1S - Winter 2024

Medical Anthropology: Anthropology of Transgenerational Trauma - Yasmine Lucas

This course explores the meanings and effects of the concept of transgenerational trauma. While the idea of transgenerational trauma has been widely circulated over the last thirty years, its basic premise was not always readily accepted. “Transgenerational trauma” posits that people born of those who experienced traumatic events experience their harmful effects without having experienced the events first-hand. Whether the Holocaust, transatlantic slavery, Indigenous dispossession, obesity, or drug use, casualties include descendants, or even secondary witnesses of, those who experienced the horrors. A significant subset of theory from the sciences and humanities understands traumatic transmission as biological—determined by the epigenetic transfer of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to offspring—or performative, occurring through the internalization of the spoken or unspoken testimonies of the traumatized. Anthropology and its sister disciplines have sought to provide a more nuanced understanding of these ideas by examining the ways in which political and institutional influences shape the transmission of transgenerational trauma. These influences include nationalist ideologies, as well as heritage organizations and therapeutic support groups. This course will offer students an overview of debates bearing on transgenerational trauma, and an understanding of the various models that have been developed to grasp this concept. We will read seminal texts responsible for the dominant frameworks, alongside critiques. Questions to consider will include: What are the socio-political and ethical effects of trafficking in discourses on transgenerational trauma? What personal and collective needs or desires might these discourses seek to fulfill? What experiences and social conditions might “transgenerational trauma” conceal?

ANT 486H – SPECIAL TOPICS: SOCIO-CULTURAL RESEARCH SEMINAR

Unique opportunity to explore a particular Social Cultural Anthropology topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ANT207H1 and 1.0 300-level FCE in ANT (Society Culture and Language)

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT486H1F - Fall 2023

User Experience and Innovation Research: Anthropological Approaches - Nadine Hare

Ethnographic methods are commonly used by designers to inform and guide the design of products, services, and experiences. This course teaches students the practical skills needed to apply anthropological thinking and ethnographic methods in design, specifically in the fields of user experience (UX) and innovation. Throughout the course, we will explore the ways in which Anthropology has most commonly been taken up in UX/innovation (for example, through design research methods such as “shadowing”), including the value and limitations of its current application. We will also explore shifts in the field of design research and design ethnography and emerging practices that are challenging the role that anthropologists play in UX/innovation. This course will be interactive and hands-on, meaning we will not only discuss methods/theories but also practice applying and workshopping them in and outside of class. Throughout the term, you will conduct an UX/innovation project in which you will apply methods/frameworks discussed in class to a design challenge. By the end of the course, you should feel equipped to translate your anthropological training into ways of thinking, practicing, and collaborating that are applicable and legible in UX/innovation.

2023-24  ANT486H1S - Winter 2024

Social Studies of Autism - Prof Krista Maxwell

Autism elicits a diverse spectrum of responses: increasingly celebrated by autists and allies as a core identity, the basis for distinct emergent cultures and communities, autism continues to be pathologized and feared in public and clinical discourses, in which it is commonly characterized as a disease to be cured. This course focuses on the interface between anthropology and critical autism studies, an emergent field in which social science and humanities scholars (some themselves autistic) examine autism as both lived experience, and rubric for a complex set of social and cultural phenomena.  Engaging with academic and popular texts and multi-media sources, we will explore how knowledge of autism is socially produced in given historical, political and cultural contexts; autobiographical and ethnographic works challenging dominant ideas about autism; histories of autistic people’s self-organising and advocacy, including tensions between adult autists and parents of autistic children; autism and intersectionality, with particular attention to race and gender; and how autism studies both converges with and challenges disability studies. Autistic and other neurodivergent students are welcome in this course, which is open to all.

Summer 2023  ANT486H1F

Social Studies of Autism - Prof Krista Maxwell

Autism elicits a diverse spectrum of responses: increasingly celebrated by autists and allies as a core identity, the basis for distinct emergent cultures and communities, autism continues to be pathologized and feared in public and clinical discourses, in which it is commonly characterized as a disease to be cured. This course focuses on the interface between anthropology and critical autism studies, an emergent field in which social science and humanities scholars (some themselves autistic) examine autism as both lived experience, and rubric for a complex set of social and cultural phenomena.  Engaging with academic and popular texts and multi-media sources, we will explore how knowledge of autism is socially produced in given historical, political and cultural contexts; autobiographical and ethnographic works challenging dominant ideas about autism; histories of autistic people’s self-organising and advocacy, including tensions between adult autists and parents of autistic children; autism and intersectionality, with particular attention to race and gender; and how autism studies both converges with and challenges disability studies. Autistic and other neurodivergent students are welcome in this course, which is open to all.

ANT 488H – SPECIAL TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This discussion-based, seminar course focuses on a topic in medical anthropology. Topics change from year to year. See Anthropology website for more details.

  • Prerequisite: ANT205H1, ANT208H1, and 1.0 credit in ANT/ARH/JAH/JAL/JAR courses at the 300-level

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

2023-24  ANT488H1S - Winter 2024

Political Economy of Biomedical Technologies - Prof Anisha Chadha

This seminar will explore anthropological discussions about technology, materiality, and political economy within the context of medical anthropology. Medical anthropologists have long focused on the ways health and illness are reconceptualized in relation to the production and circulation of various organic and inorganic materials—for example, drugs, devices, vaccines, organs, and stem cells, to name a few. More recently, as anthropology as a discipline increasingly embraces new materialisms, medical anthropologists have begun to interrogate how relationships between human and non-human actors mutually shape health and wellbeing. Against the backdrop of these scholarly debates, this seminar will take up a series of contemporary medical anthropology ethnographies with biopolitical and “biocapital” theoretical orientations, to foster student discussions about the global transaction of biological materials in the current “anthropocene” moment of pandemics, vaccine resistance, shifting corporate power and state interests, and more.

ANT 490Y – FIELD COURSE IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 

An instructor-supervised experiential study project in social and cultural anthropology. Course takes place in an off-campus setting.

  • Prerequisite: ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 and 1.0 additional FCE from the Society, Culture and Language course group

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ANT 491H/Y – INTERNSHIP IN ANTHROPOLOGY

This course is an opportunity to apply acquired knowledge in anthropology or archeology in a work placement environment. Opportunities may include local community organizations, international development organizations, museum or heritage projects, or media production projects. Only internships that require knowledge and skills in anthropology and/or archeology will be considered. Student must fulfill responsibilities of the internship as well as complete a final research paper. If qualified, the student’s internship supervisor will mark the final paper for the course; if not, an appropriate academic supervisor will be assigned from within the Dept. of Anthropology. Not eligible for CR/NCR option. Instructions on how to obtain an application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.

  • Prerequisite: Fourth year; major or specialist in a program in Anthropology; 3.0 FCEs in Anthropology

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ARH 494H – TOPICS IN EMERGING SCHOLARSHIP (ARCHAEOLOGY)

Taught by an advanced PhD student or postdoctoral fellow, and based on his or her doctoral research and area of expertise, this course presents a unique opportunity to explore intensively a particular Archaeology topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year.

  • Prerequisite: ARH205H1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

ARH 495H – ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH PRACTICUM

Laboratory or practical research on an archaeological project that emphasizes methods and research design in archaeology. Students must obtain the consent of a Supervisor before enrolling. Students are required to give an oral presentation of research results to an open meeting of the Archaeology Centre at the conclusion of the course.  Application must be made to the Anthropology Department. Instructions on how to obtain an application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.

  • Prerequisite: A minimum of 14 credits, permission of Supervisor and Undergraduate Coordinator.
  • Recommended Preparation: ARH205H1, ARH312Y1
  • Exclusion: ANT497Y1

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

ANT 497Y1Y, 498H1H/Y, 499H1H – INDEPENDENT RESEARCH COURSE

Supervised independent research on a topic agreed on by the student and supervisor before enrolment in the course. Open in exceptional circumstances to advanced students with a strong background in Anthropology. Course Supervisor must be a member of the Anthropology faculty. A maximum of one year of Independent Research courses is allowed per program. Instructions on how to obtain an application form are posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.

  • Prerequisite: A minimum of 10 credits, permission of Supervisor and Undergraduate Coordinator.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None