Major in Anthropology

The mission of the Department of Anthropology and Geography is to:

1) offer and maintain instructional programs that provide a comprehensive overview and analyses of people and their cultures, both past and present;

2) conduct research in order to advance and expand knowledge of the fields of anthropology and geography;

3) participate actively in programs of interdisciplinary research.

The Department of Anthropology and Geography houses a faculty of cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, biological anthropologists, and geographers whose scholarship spans the breadth of the human experience. The program prepares undergraduate students to describe, analyze, and interpret the human condition. An examination of the social, environmental, and evolutionary contexts in which the human species is embedded defines most course work in the discipline. The program is integrative, drawing from geography, biology, the humanities, and other social and natural sciences. Geography figures prominently in our program and provides an important spatial lens through which human groups are examined over time. Four programmatic areas define faculty research and scholarship with which students can engage: humans and the environment, international development and globalization, health and well-being, and professional methods and techniques. In the education of undergraduates, the department values and promotes experiential training, primary research as well as public engagement and education.

The research endeavors of the anthropology faculty are trans-disciplinary and international. They are interested in diverse topics including but not limited to contemporary culture, ethnicity, linguistics, comparative religion, virtual worlds, subsistence patterns, archaeology, human ecology, human anatomy, human evolution, biogeography, land cover/land use patterns, and the behavior of non-human primates.

Anthropology majors follow a liberal arts curriculum that provides a broad education with an emphasis on learning how to learn. The department has ten research and teaching laboratories and three summer field schools; the Ethnographic Field School, the Archaeology Field School, and the Paleontology Field School.

Undergraduate students can pursue a general anthropology degree focused on an appreciation human diversity, past and present, from a broad and holistic perspective. Students can also declare a concentration within the program. Declaring a concentration allows for a focused course of study, specializing in the particular subfield of interest. Within each concentration (Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology), specific categories of classes guide students in learning the major theories, methods, and applications related to the modern practice of our discipline. Along with our offerings of world class field schools, course work in archaeological, biological, and ethnographic methods and geographical techniques are encouraged in order to further gain experience and perspective. Upon graduation, students are prepared for a diverse array of jobs or advanced training in graduate school. Students come away with a respect and appreciation for the diversity of human existence.

• Employ anthropological theory and qualitative/quantitative research methods to describe and analyze human biological and cultural variation over time and across space.
• Describe and evaluate the inter-relationships between environments, health and well-being, and human cultural and biological evolution.
• Synthesize anthropological theory, methods, and data to formulate arguments both orally and in written format.
• Articulate anthropology to non-specialists and explain anthropological concepts across subfields and/or with other social sciences and humanities disciplines.
• Transfer knowledge gained in anthropology program to a career trajectory after graduation.