Fall 2021
ANTH 64: Public Archaeology in Bronzeville, Chicago’s Black Metropolis
Dr. Anna Agbe-Davies
In the early 20th century millions of African Americans migrated to large northern cities. The Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls was run by black women to provide social services for female migrants to Chicago starting in 1926. The course combines elements of archaeology, anthropology, and history to study their lives.
ANTH 454 The Archaeology of African Diasporas
Dr. Anna Agbe-Davies
How is archaeological evidence used to understand the movement of Africans and their descendants across the globe? This course focuses on what archaeologists have learned about the transformation of societies on the African continent and in the Americas from the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the present.
ANTH 62: First-Year Seminar, Indian Country Today
Dr. Valerie Lambert
This course explores the tremendous diversity that exists within and across American Indian tribes in the United States and engages with a range of concerns, issues, and challenges that are helping shape the kinds of futures American Indians are charting for themselves. Students will learn and use various methodologies in anthropology and American Indian and Indigenous Studies to critically examine and analyze the social, legal, and political landscapes that Indians and non-Indians are creatively negotiating.
ANTH 406: Native Writers
Dr. Valerie Lambert
In this course, students will have the opportunity to read a broad selection of writings by Native or Indigenous scholars. We will explore the hopes, dreams, priorities, and perspectives of these authors. All of the authors we will read are Indigenous, with most being professionally-trained ethnographers, ethnologists, or written record-keepers of their societies. Students will read narratives from a broad range of historical periods, from the mid-16th century to the late 19th century to the present.
ANTH 63: First-Year Seminar: The Lives of Others: Exploring Ethnography | 3 Credits
Dr. Towns Middleton
Anthropology opens windows onto diverse peoples and cultures. But can we truly access, understand, and represent the lives of others? What might such an endeavor entail? And what might it do for the people involved? In this class, we will take on these questions by exploring ethnography: a research method consisting of entering into a community, interacting with its members, observing social life, asking questions, and writing about our findings.
FYS 89: Race and Small Town America
Dr. Karla Slocum
The goal of this course is for students to understand the conditions under which race is influential in the ways that people live their lives in U.S. small and rural towns. We will also address such questions as: How do a rural identity and a racial identity connect? How do different racial groups experience rural life? How is race significant for small town experiences in the areas of economies and work; education; culture; health and environment; and community history and heritage? To explore these questions, we will focus on ethnographic studies of particular U.S. rural communities. Students will also understand how race features in small town America by conducting life histories research of an individual from a small town.
ANTH 102: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Dr. Angela Stuesse
My principal goal in this course is for students to develop an appreciation for and understanding of cultural difference, and to gain a relativistic view of themselves and their own culture as one particular system among many. By examining our own cultural practices and comparing them with those of other peoples, we can come to understand the roles of culture, power, and economics in shaping the taken-for-granted structures and meaning systems within which we live.
ANTH 490: Work and Migration in the Americas
Dr. Angela Stuesse
In recent decades globalization has dramatically transformed working people’s life and employment prospects throughout the world. This course examines experiences of migration and low-wage work in order to better understand the consequences of advanced capitalism in Latin America and the United States. With a focus on the intersections of class, race, gender, and citizenship, students explore how neoliberal globalization has molded the terrains of power, oppression, and resistance in key immigrant-rich industries.