2024-2025 Course List

What qualifies a word as bad? How does profanity, cursing, and swearing evolve across time and vary across cultures? Where does the power of these bad words come from? What relationship do these words have to issues of gender, race, and class? This course examines the historical evolution and modern usage of obscenities to answer these questions.

Goal Areas:

GE-07, GE-09

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

Survey of human cultures through a variety of classic and contemporary anthropological writing and film. Students write weekly reflections. Written work is shared, discussed, and revised.

Goal Areas:

GE-05

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

Fear and how we depict it in popular culture. Course examines folklore traditions and how they translate in contemporary storytelling formats.

Goal Areas:

GE-05, GE-08

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

People all around the world use tattoos, piercing, makeup and dress codes as symbolic tools to represent their ideas of self, or as a means of gender, ethnicity, and class control and domination. This course looks at how people express connection to and disconnection from culture through body art practices.

Goal Areas:

GE-05, GE-08

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

Sex and our relationship with it. This course examines the topics of sex, sexuality, and gender by exploring the diverse range of sexual cultures of the world in the past and the present. Attention is given to the role of language, biology, culture, and the archeological record of societies's fascination with sex.

Goal Areas:

GE-05, GE-07

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

Courses to be offered just one time or on an irregular basis according to topic demand for a general interest, sophomore level course.

Individual study at an introductory level on the topic of student's choice. Designed for students who wish to pursue independent study at the freshman-sophomore level rather than the more advanced level of the 499 individual study.

Prerequisites:

Consent

This course examines the methodologies of all four fields of Anthropology. Students will gain practical experience in various methods that professionals utilize on a regular basis within the discipline. Discussions of the issues surrounding various anthropological methods will be part of this course.

Prerequisites:

ANTH 101

An in-depth study of ancient Egypt, focusing on the relationship between cultural development and the unique Egyptian environment of the time. Emphasis will be placed on the interpretation of archaeological discoveries in the area.

An examination of the ecology, behavior and biology of living primates.

Prerequisites:

ANTH 101 or ANTH 220 or consent

This course focuses on studying the diversity of human societies using environmental approaches such as evolutionary/ecological perspectives and systems modeling. Case studies will be drawn from Native American cultures.

The variability and universality of human religious expression are explored in specific cross-cultural contexts.

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

This course emphasizes the wealth of ethnographic information which may be captured by visual media. You will learn how to interpret the final product and how to recognize the limitations of visual presentations.

A survey of the people and cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa examining the rich sociocultural diversity of the continent over time.

Language is powerful. What we say, how we say it, where we say it, and to whom we say it matters. This course explores the connection between power, language, performance, and identity. The relationships between language, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class are explored by investigating historical and present day sources of language practices and events.

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

This class focuses on the application of anthropology in the business and organizational domains using a cultural lens. It will provide students with a clearer view of the culture of the business world as well as tools to aid in understanding the business culture and that of their clientele.

Exploring culture through the foods we eat, preparation practices, and historic implications of food in daily life. We will examine a sampling from hunter-gathers, agricultural practices and animal husbandry, mass production, and the food industry to better understand cultural practices from around the globe.

Diverse Cultures:

Purple

Curricular Practical Training: Co-Operative Experience is a zero-credit full-time practical training experience for one semester and an adjacent fall or spring term. Special rules apply to preserve full-time student status. Please contact an advisor in your program for complete information.

Prerequisites:

At least 60 credits earned; in good standing; instructor permission; co-op contract; other prerequisites may also apply.

A detailed study of Minnesota archaeology from ca. 12,000 years ago to ca 1900, with a focus on diverse and changing Native American populations.

A survey of current knowledge about the prehistoric Native American inhabitants of North America from ca. 15,000 years ago until ca. 1900. Topics will focus on the processes of cultural development, change, and disruption by Euro-American influences.

A detailed study of Latin American archaeology from ca. 12,000 years ago to ca.1900, with a focus on diverse and changing Native American populations.

A review of the history and philosophy of museums, the legal and ethical issues impacting museums, the nature and treatment of collections, creation, exhibition and exhibit design, the role of museums in education, museum personnel and financial management, and museums in the technological/electronic age.

Review of how cultural resources are being preserved and managed under current laws and regulations. Emphasis on examination of conservation, preservation and rescue methods in modern archaeology, and problems and issues in historic preservation and resource management.

Prerequisites:

ANTH 101, ANTH 210 or consent

An intensive exploration of how to identify, catalogue, and curate archeological materials in a laboratory setting. Topics will include lithics, pottery, faunal, floral, metal, and other materials as well as data structure and recordation.

An interdisciplinary investigation into Quaternary environmental/climatic change and the impact of change on the behavior and evolution of humans. This course has three segments: 1) an examination of natural systems responsible for climatic change, the impact climatic fluctuations have on Earth systems, timing of Quaternary changes, evidence of climatic/environmental change from spatially distant, climatically distinct environments; 2) investigation into worldwide evidence of human evolution, global dispersion, and adaptation to environmental systems; introduction to various methodological approaches in Quaternary archeologic, geomorphic, and climatic studies. Focus is on proxy records used for climate/environmental reconstruction, archeolgic/geomorphologic field methods, geochronologic dating methods.

Prerequisites:

GEOG 101, ANTH 210; Students are strongly encouraged to take Geog 315 or 4/515 before enrolling. Geol 121 can be substituted for Geog 101 with instructor permission.