Course Description
A survey of human-environment interaction in North America taught in the field from coastal Georgia to coastal Washington and places in between. Covers from the earliest to the most recent settlers on the continent to gain a holistic, comparative, and critical understanding of human diversity in space and time.
Athena Title
Anthropology of North America
Non-Traditional Format
This is a field-based course in which students visit and systematically record observations at sites of geological, ecological, and anthropological significance across the United States while interacting with local cultural representatives and integrate this information with thematic content from lectures, readings, and media in biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics.
Prerequisite
ANTH 1102 or ANTH 1102E or ANTH 2120H or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- Students will be able to demonstrate competency in applying anthropological principles to human variation and adaptation to local environments.
- Students will be able to explain how history and comparative analysis of local human populations and ethnic communities can be used to test hypotheses and draw conclusions about human diversity.
- Students will be able to evaluate how communities and societies manage common property and act collectively to meet resource challenges through social institutions based in family, exchange, politics, religion, and ethnicity.
- Students will understand how the complex and dynamic nature of cultural, social, political, and economic systems can be used to evaluate real-world collective-action situations and critically assess policy applications at local to national scales.
Topical Outline
- Key concepts in cultural, biological, material, and linguistic anthropology
- Native peoples and immigrants of North America
- Regional North American cultural histories
- Biocultural embodiment to denaturalize race and gender
- Social inequalities and health disparities
- Political ecology of fire, water, and land
- Conservation vs. preservation
- Food system inequalities
- People and the American landscape
- Sovereignty and self-determination
- Language ideologies and language change
- Indigenous/traditional knowledge systems
- Cultural preservation and species conservation
