Anthropology
Jennifer Reynolds, Chair
Sharon DeWitte, Graduate Director
The Department of Anthropology offers the M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology in a program of study that provides students with a thorough grounding in the theories and research methods of the discipline. The department provides training in anthropology across all four subfields (archaeology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/physical anthropology), stressing interconnections between subfields and interdisciplinary activity. Students will also develop an expertise within a specific subfield or a crosscutting specialty such as bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, or medical anthropology. Department faculty have geographical specialization in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, North America, and Asia and pursue broad themes of inequality, globalization, cultural interaction, and human diasporas. The department also offers a certificate program in historical archaeology and cultural resource management. Special opportunities are also available for students interested in developing their skills and knowledge in museology and folklore. A more complete description of the graduate program, including the specialty areas of each faculty member, is provided at http://www.cas.sc.edu/anth.
Courses
Anthropology of gender in Chinese-speaking cultures in Chinese-speaking Asia.
Survey of how each anthropological subfield studies the interrelationships between plants and peoples. Application of methods, including interviewing and data analysis.
Islam as a dynamic cultural tradition: emphasis on the tension between Islamization and the larger Islamic tradition.
Cross-listed course: RELG 551
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning
Cultural representations, constructions, production, and consumption of African-American identity in the popular culture medium of feature films.
Cross-listed course: AFAM 517
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Survey of visual anthropology including theoretical frameworks of ways of seeing, ethnographic photography and filmmaking, contemporary technologies, and their effects on culture.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
A two-semester class and field session. Research design, field methods, interpretation of data, and the development of theory from the data.
Seminar exploring human-plant-animal-natural interactions within an anthropological framework.
Prehistoric and historic archaeology.
Prehistoric archaeology of the South American continent.
Cross-listed course: LASP 425
Anthropological and archaeological theories and methods in the study of conflict, war, and warfare. Causes, effects, outcomes of sustained social acts of violence of groups, tribes, states, and nations. Evolutionary, biological, social origins of warfare. History, strategy, and tactics, battlefield archaeology.
Philosophy and mechanics of modern archaeological Cultural Resource Management (CRM). CRM legislation, regulation, and process. Contemporary issues and problems in Public Archaeology including Native American reburial negotiations, conflict resolution, ethics, looting, business practices, standards, contexts and protection.
Archaeological field methods and techniques such as excavation, flotation, sampling, surveying, photography, and remote sensing.
Introduction to Forensic Archaeological Recovery (FAR). Concepts, methods, and contemporary issues.
Laboratory on basic prehistoric and historic artifact analysis, including analytical methods, laboratory equipment, and data interpretation. May be repeated.
Application of observation techniques, field notes, informant interviewing, and secondary data analysis to interpreting differential perceptions of health problem solving in the community and clinic.
Socio-cultural factors in health, illness, healing, and in medical systems. Cross-cultural and ethnographic evidence for public health research and program applications.
Cross-listed course: HPEB 552
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
The ways people from various cultures reflect on, reinforce, and construct their social realities through narrating, which will be considered as both artistic expression and social action.
Cross-listed course: LING 545
Approaches to gender and language emphasizing the social grounding of both; how language reflects sociocultural values and is a tool for constructing different types of social organization.
Cross-listed course: LING 541, WGST 555
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Anthropological approach to issues of language and globalization. Linguistic consequences of globalization under consideration include communicative patterns, linguistic change, and language and political economy.
Cross-listed course: LING 556
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Psychological aspects of behavior from a cross-cultural perspective.
An intensive examination of the human skeleton and techniques for anthropological interpretation.
Varieties and effects of disease patterns among past populations illustrating biological, environmental, and cultural interrelationships.
Theories and methodologies necessary for the identification of human skeletal remains in a forensic setting.
Nutritional problems in developing nations. Measures of nutritional status. Social, economic, and environmental aspects of food consumption and nutrition. Biocultural responses to food deprivation and undernutrition.
Intersections of international development and environmental change; study of general theoretical perspectives balanced with case studies from the Global South.
Cross-listed course: GEOG 569
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning
Problems in conveying and interpreting ethnographic information on film or tape. Includes syntax, suitability of subject matter to the medium, irrelevant or distracting information, and observer bias.
Clocks, cycles, and contingencies as they affect human societies now and have done so in the past. Theories and models from biology and the other natural sciences will be used to interpret the history of culture.
A cross-cultural study of the economic behavior of pre-literate and literate societies.
Foodways, architecture, crafts, and narrative of African-American cultures.
Selected recent theoretical and methodological developments in the study of social organization.
An interdisciplinary approach to prehistoric, historic, and contemporary relationships between the development of socio-cultural configurations and ecosystems.
Students will explore the African Diaspora as a social, cultural, and historical formation with Africa at its center, focusing on US, Latin American, and Caribbean African-descended communities.
Cross-listed course: AFAM 580
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
This course examines cultural understandings of and responses to globalization, examining topics such as its history and theories, migration, economic integration and inequality, identity, social movements, and the environment.
Cross-listed course: GEOG 581
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Anthropological approach to issues of discourse, gender, and emotion. Issues under consideration include the social control, force, and forms of emotional discourse and the relationship between emotion and culture from gender-oriented perspectives.
Cross-listed course: LING 543
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Topics of special interest. May be taken more than once as topics change.
Survey of core areas of linguistics and extensions to closely related disciplines. Introduction to the linguistic component of human cognition. Formal description and analysis of the general properties of speech and language, the organization of language in the mind/brain, and cross-linguistic typology and universals.
Human origins, human evolution, human prehistory, and cultural existence from its less complex forms to early civilizations. An introduction to the concepts, methods, and data of physical, biological, and archaeological anthropology primarily for teachers. May be taken with, or independently of, ANTH 702.
Selected contemporary cultures, including their languages. An introduction to the concepts, methods, and data of sociocultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics, primarily for teachers. May be taken with, or independently of, ANTH 701.
A discussion of the general topics of anthropological inquiry, theories, and methods.
Faculty representing subdisciplines of anthropology will explore with students the connections between subfields, theoretical and regional perspectives, and analyses of the past and present.
The origins of global capitalism, the nature of money and debt, the roles of gender, race and class in social formations, and the relationship between production and reproduction.
Cross-listed course: WGST 706
Presentations of critical skills to achieve career goals in a variety of anthropological applications, develop portfolios, prepare competitive job applications, and produce effective grant proposals. Ethics issues in anthropological research publishing and teaching.
Skills needed for writing a master’s thesis in anthropology, including literature review, current theory, research design, data analysis, and written presentation.
Uses the context of leading discussions in ANTH 101 and 102 to introduce and explore issues relating to pedagogy. Restricted to TA's for ANTH 101 and ANTH 102.
Consideration and critique of current research in European archaeology.
Advanced graduate seminar on methods of ethnology, including research design, field methods, and interpretation of data, and the development of theory from data. Includes class and field sessions.
Anthropological archaeology: history, theory, contemporary issues, and relationship to other disciplines.
Those skills of social/cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics which can aid practitioners in health, law, education, and other professional fields to function in community settings. Emphasis on cultural and sub-cultural differences in South Carolina, the Southeast, and the United States.
Experience in supervising archaeological research, making field decisions, and directing the collection, processing, and interpretation of archaeological data in the field.
Experience in designing and carrying out ethnographic research including project design, data collection, analysis, and description.
Exploring the range of anthropological research utilizing visual records (still photographs and video/film) including theoretical underpinnings and hands-on practice: how and why to use visual records in research.
Theories of culture presented through ethnographies from different parts of the world. Issues in writing, reading, and interpreting ethnographic information.
Consideration and critique of current research in North American archaeology.
Review of theoretical trends in American archaeology.
Ethnographic data important to archaeological thinking; archaeological models resting on ethnographic data. Emphasis on variation of ethnographic data.
The legal, philosophical, and ethical foundations of archaeology in the United States. Considerations on relating archaeology to the non-professional.
Observation and participation in the on going management of archaeological resources.
Observation and participation in the on going management of archaeological resources.
Advanced seminar on theoretical considerations and methodological approaches to the study of historical archaeological materials.
Examines language as a social, cultural, and political matrix. Topics include ideology, gender, race, power, agency, and resistance. Students will apply linguistic theories in their own analyses of everyday speech.
Cross-listed course: LING 747
Methods and techniques necessary to operationalize and test archaeological hypotheses in a laboratory context.
An overview of skills required to design and organize archaeological field and laboratory research.
Types of interactive organization found within conversation and the methods and procedures used by participants to achieve order.
Cross-listed course: LING 743
Approaches to human adaptation emphasizing the interaction of biology and culture. Studies of biocultural adaptation to environmental, social, and economic constraints. Research design and methodology in adaptation studies.
Methods and theories of application of physical anthropological data to archaeological problems.
Major theories and principles of biological anthropology.
Theories of migration; peopling of the earth; family structure and migration in different economic regimes and cultures; seasonal and cyclical patterns.
Different cultures’ ideas about gender and use of gender to organize social groups in a wide range of societies, including American subcultures.
Cross-listed course: WGST 772
Cross-cultural study of history. Includes theoretical perspectives and cases from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Cross-listed course: HIST 772
Findings of ecological and economic anthropology applied to problems of contemporary development. Emphasis on less developed countries.
Anthropological examination of the art of small-scale societies with attention, where appropriate, to the art of more complex societies.
Critical examination of films dealing with archaeological subjects.
Ethnographic analysis of communication in groups and institutions in different cultures.
Introduction to basic research on how human beings interact with each other and an historically constituted material world.
Linguistic anthropological approaches that examine how ideological systems mediate social structures and Iinguistic /discursive forms and functions. Topics range from language and political economy, identity and identifications, institutions, and nation-building/nationalism.
Cross-listed course: LING 782
Seminar in historical study of material culture; principal disciplinary and theoretical perspectives; emphasis on material culture of North America.
Cross-listed course: HIST 787
Seminar for advanced students. Topics vary according to student and instructor interest. May be repeated for different topics.
Independent study course designed to facilitate student’s research. An independent study contract with content approved by instructor is required.
Participation under faculty supervision of anthropological research. Development of the research project, collecting, recording, analyzing, and reporting on the data.
T/U grading.