Anthropology
Jennifer Reynolds, Chair
The department offers an undergraduate major in anthropology leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree.
Courses
An exploration of 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.
Carolina Core: GSS
An exploration and comparison of selected contemporary cultures, including their languages. An introduction to the concepts, methods, and data of socio-cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics.
Carolina Core: GSS
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An introduction to the science of biological anthropology, a subfield of anthropology that emphasizes a focus on humanity and its origin from a biological perspective, employing laboratory components to complement and reinforce lecture materials.
Carolina Core: SCI
Introduces research-based learning in anthropology from a four-field perspective. To encourage self-reflective, professional thinking and provide experience and practice in professional skills and applications in anthropology.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
Human behavior in differing cultural contexts through ethnographic films of social relations in selected societies.
An overview of how plagues and epidemics have shaped human prehistory and history. How large-scale social transformations have produced forms of human/disease interactions. How infectious disease has been conceptualized at different times and by different cultural groups and treated as a threat to the social order.
Carolina Core: GSS
A comparative examination of such topics as ritual, cosmology, revitalization movements, magic, witchcraft, myth, and possession.
Cross-listed course: RELG 260
Anthropological study of gender, with emphasis on cross-cultural investigation of the interaction of biological, cultural, and environmental factors including intersections of race, social class, and sexuality as influences gender behavior.
Cross-listed course: WGST 207
Examine cross-cultural definitions and experiences of globalization and development, through topics including colonial legacies of inequality, migration, land use, economic restructuring, media, consumption, tourism, health, and participatory development.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Folk expression as shaped by various cultures; fieldwork methodology and anthropological theory.
Childhood, maturity, old age, and gender socialization within the family.
Carolina Core: GSS
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Global Learning
Classroom ethnography, bilingualism, cultural minorities, communication across cultural boundaries. Films, videotapes, and fieldwork in classroom settings.
Carolina Core: GSS
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Biological and cultural interactions affecting foodways around the world, and associated ethical issues.
Carolina Core: GSS, VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Anthropological overview of the interactions between cultures around the world and the plants that affect them, from cultural, biological, archaeological, and linguistic points of view.
Carolina Core: GSS
Cultures of alcohol production and consumption from ancient times to the present, including relationships among social roles of alcohol, technological innovations, agriculture, and economy in an anthropological perspective.
Violence and peace in current events, cultural practices, historical periods, and everyday experiences. The ethics shaping violence and peace-making strategies. Classroom discussions and lectures analyzing harm and wellbeing. Themes addressing the Values, Ethics, and Social Responsibility (VSR) Carolina Core component, including colonialism, environmental exploitation, bondage, mass extinctions, and racism.
Carolina Core: VSR
Survey of key archaeological discoveries from around the world.
Forensic methods of Sherlock Holmes within the context of modern forensic science. Aspects of forensic science including history of the discipline, forensic pathology, entomology, print analyses, crime scene analysis, forensic anthropology, early scientific theory, and anthropological theory of Holmes.
Explores the last five centuries of world history, using artifacts and archival sources. Evidence such as probate records, bottles, and geophysical maps are analyzed to discover the age of sites and answers to questions about topics such as colonialism, race, technology, piracy, class, Native Americans, industrialization, slavery, inequality, capitalism, and gender.
Historical archaeology and ethnography of the Casimiroid, Ortoiroid, Saladoid, Ostionoid, Taino and Carib indigenous culture of the Caribbean from 4,000 BC to 1524 AD. Emphasis on social complexity, religion, art and political organization to illustrate the diversity and richness of Amerindian Caribbean life until their rapid decline after European contact.
Archaeological images and ideas in modern popular culture, including film and fiction.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
The fundamental elements of human culture as it relates to biblical archaeology. The defining characteristics of different kinds of society through interdependency of language and culture. The affects of modern world interests in defining / redefining this area
Cross-listed course: RELG 208
History and basis of several popular “fringe” ideas about the human past that utilize archaeological information: giants, Ice Age civilizations, and pre-Columbian transoceanic contact.
Major cultural milestones and lifeways experienced by Indians in the archeological record of the southeastern U.S., including colonization, religion, trade, invention of pottery, and place-making.
Application of techniques and insights of social and cultural anthropology to selected cultural settings in contemporary USA.
An examination of African-American cultures in the New World.
Cross-listed course: AFAM 303
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Application of the methods & techniques of socio-cultural anthropology to the contemporary cultures of SC. Examination of contrasts such as low country and up country, black and white, and rich and poor as they are manifested in cultural patterns.
Ethnographic approach to Caribbean cultures and societies. Topics include colonial histories and experience, gender and race relations, beliefs and religious life, verbal arts, literature, and Creole language.
A comparative study of ethnographic data on African cultures with emphasis upon its significance for broader anthropological theory.
Diversity of lifestyles and institutions of Islam from Morocco to Indonesia, with attention to everyday life in small communities.
A consideration of selected problems in the social and cultural life of peoples in the Middle East with emphasis on non-Arab populations.
Society and culture in South Asia; economic and political institutions, kinship, and religion as they pertain to the daily lives of people in the Subcontinent. Emphasis on India. Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka also included.
Social and cultural patterns of the region and how they influence current developments, especially Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
An overview of Chinese popular culture with an introduction to broad anthropological frameworks concerning popular culture.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
An exploration of Japanese values and the institutions that shape Japanese behavior through analysis or rural and urban community studies and how Japanese people present themselves.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Internships
Contemporary Indian Country in anthropological, historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts.
Carolina Core: GSS, VSR
A survey of field and laboratory investigations of the comparative anatomy and behavior of nonhuman primates.
The biocultural processes of human variation.
Survey of the basic scientific methods and applications of forensic anthropology.
A cross-disciplinary study of how the bodies of Africans and African Americans were used in medical experimentation, starting in the late 18th century and continuing to the present.
Cross-listed course: AFAM 365
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy
Body language, facial expressions, gestures, use of interpersonal space, and other nonverbal systems of communication and behavior in terms of pertinent theories, research methodology, findings, and cross-cultural implications.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Internships
Linguistic anthropological study of forms of language through the lens of popular culture. Explore the ethnography of communication through play and performance, discursive and semiotic practices, and varieties of language invoked in popular cultural forms that provide resources for cultural reproduction and contestation.
Cross-listed course: LING 241
This course introduces students to the fields of interactional sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Students will learn how they approach the study of cross-cultural and intercultural forms of (mis)communication within the context of globally interconnected people, places, and systems of communication.
Cross-listed course: LING 273
Carolina Core: GSS
Ethnographic study of the Cold War, nuclear culture, and its aftermath.
Carolina Core: GSS, VSR
Topics of special interest. May be taken more than once as topics change.
Course focuses on political and economic processes contributing to the unequal access to health and social inequalities.
Comparative study of selected Latin American cultures with emphasis on their significance for a broader anthropological theory.
Cross-listed course: LASP 311
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An examination of ethical decision-making encountered in the practice of anthropology.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Material aspects of cultures from artifact production in historical societies to contemporary industrial crafts; the cultural context of artifacts; fieldwork; relevant anthropological theories.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Introduction to principles, methods, and theory of archaeology, including prehistoric and historic case studies.
This course charts the history of ideas in archaeology, over the past century, as a means of understanding current directions in archaeological thinking and current applications in archaeological practice.
Prehistoric and historic archaeology of South Carolina.
Archaeological field techniques, laboratory analysis and data interpretation.
Designing and carrying out ethnographic research including project design, data collection, analysis and description.
Current research on use of modern material culture in archaeological analysis.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Study of Mesoamerican and South American civilizations, particularly the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca states. Processes of state formation as reflected in archaeological data.
Cross-listed course: LASP 325
Causes for the rise and fall of several civilizations; ideological and ecological factors, unique events, and personalities versus general processes.
Cultural development and variation in Mesoamerica from the first arrival of man to the arrival of Europeans. Particular attention to cultural continuities from prehistoric times.
Cross-listed course: LASP 322
Prehistoric anthropology in North America from the first arrival of man through the beginning of European acculturation.
Cross-cultural perspectives on environmental issues.
Cross-listed course: ENVR 342
Techniques, customs, verbal expressions, and expressive styles of workers in a variety of occupational cultures.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An examination of political and economic change in contemporary peasant communities.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Kinship, systems of descent, marriage, and domestic organization in different cultures. Variations in childrearing practices, gender, and other aspects of social relations in kin groups.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Understanding human behavior through the examination of cultural norms, mechanisms of social control, and social conflict.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
Language in its social setting. The relationship between linguistic categories and culture categories. Language and cognition.
Cross-listed course: LING 340
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Sculpture, drama, ceramics, weaving, music, and other arts from tribal societies will be discussed in terms of the religious, social, and aesthetic principles that underlie their production, use, and interpretation.
Cultural differences and pan-cultural similarities in such psychological features as personality and cognition.
Theory and practice of ethnology/sociocultural anthropology, based on a wide range of simple and complex societies.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An overview of human sexuality in different cultures in regions across the globe; an examination of anthropological frameworks for sexuality that draws on historical and modern cultural conceptions.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Global Learning
The processes of homonoid development with a review of the basic principles of physical and behavioral evolution using the fossil record and the evolving ecological and psychosocial contexts.
An interdisciplinary study of the health of enslaved African Americans during the nineteenth century by focusing on the conceptions, experiences, and dynamics of the relationship between slaves, medicine, healing, and their masters in the Antebellum American South.
Carolina Core: GSS
Ethnographic analysis of communication in human groups and institutions.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Examines the dialectic between globalization and the social construction of gender. Topics include the global assembly line, transnational markets for domestic labor and sex workers, and global feminist alliances.
Cross-listed course: WGST 381
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Anthropological study of pregnancy and birth with a cross-cultural focus comparing the United States to other nations. Examination of cultural factors such as prenatal care, dietary practices, taboos, birth location, practitioners, and birthing styles.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Topics of special interest. May be taken more than once as topics change.
This course examines health concerns important to the lives of women around the world through an overview of contemporary issues and challenges in the field of global health, broadly construed.
Cross-listed course: WGST 392
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
Linguistic examination of the structure, history, and use of African-American English, as well as literary presentations, language attitudes, and issues relating to education and the acquisition of Standard English.
Cross-listed course: AFAM 442, ENGL 457, LING 442
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Directed research resulting in a written report.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
A seminar synthesizing the major with an examination of anthropology as a field of inquiry.
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
Survey of visual anthropology including theoretical frameworks of ways of seeing, ethnographic photography and filmmaking, contemporary technologies, and their effects on culture.
Carolina Core: GHS
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.
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
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
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.
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.