For the most up to date course descriptions, check the Registrar's Office Anthropology Course Descriptions Page.

The Anthropology Schedules Page has current information on what courses are available.

Introductory

21A.100 Introduction to Anthropology
3-0-9 HASS-D, Category 4

What kinds of wisdom do other ways of life offer our own? How do other perspectives on the world challenge our assumptions about life? These questions are addressed through the four fields of anthropology: biological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. We examine family and kinship, religion, economics, politics, survival of indigenous groups, and Western influences from an anthropological perspective to gain appreciation for cultural and ethnic diversity.

21A.109 Understanding Culture
3-0-9 HASS-D, Category 4

Students are introduced to anthropological fieldwork and the concept of culture from readings, films, and their own research projects in the Boston area. A ``hands-on'' approach to understanding cultural differences and what produces them. Students discover the excitement and challenges of systematically observing human interaction and convincing others of the accuracy of their findings.

21A.110 Seminar in Anthropological Theory
Prereq: Major or minor in Anthropology, or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS

Seminar focuses on core issues and approaches in anthropological theory and method. Studies theoretical frameworks for the analysis and integration of material from other subjects in cultural anthropology. Reading and discussion of classics of anthropological theory and contemporary critiques. Students prepare and present analyses of texts. (For Anthropology majors, this is a CI-M subject.)

21A.112 Seminar in Ethnography and Fieldwork
Prereq: Major or minor in Anthropology, or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS

Introduction to ethnographic practices: the study of and communicating about culture. Subject provides instruction and practice in writing and revision of field notes and a final paper. (For Anthropology majors, this is a CI-M subject.)

21A.113 The Supernatural in Music, Literature and Culture (Freshman Experience class)
(Same subject as 21M.013J)
3-0-9 HASS-D, CI-H

Explores the relationship between music and the supernatural, focusing on the social history and context of supernatural beliefs as reflected in key literary and musical works from 1600 to the present. Provides a better understanding of the place of ambiguity and the role of interpretation in culture, science and art. Explores great works of art by Shakespeare, Verdi, Goethe (in translation), Gounod, Henry James and Benjamin Britten. Readings will also include selections from the most recent scholarship on magic and the supernatural. Writing assignments will range from web-based projects to analytic essays. No previous experience in music is necessary. Projected guest lectures, musical performances, field trips.

Social Anthropology

21A.211 Magic, Witchcraft, and the Spirit World
3-0-9 HASS

Spiritual, magical, and "occult" aspects of human behavior in anthropological and historical perspective: divination and other forms of magic, ritual curing, trance, spirit possession, sorcery, and accusations of witchcraft. Material drawn from traditional non-western societies, medieval and early modern Europe, and colonial and contemporary North America.

21A.212 Myth, Ritual, and Symbolism
3-0-9 HASS

How people make sense of their worlds symbolically through myth, ritual, metaphor, and cosmology. The structure of symbols, the natural and social elements they draw on, their social use, and the messages they convey. Students learn to record and analyze myth and ritual.

21A.215 Medical Anthropology
3-0-9 HASS

Examination of how medicine is practiced cross-culturally, with particular emphasis on western biomedicine. Analysis of medical practice as a cultural system, focusing on the human, as opposed to the biological, side of things. Also examines how we and people in other cultures think of disease, health, body, and mind.

21A.216J Dilemmas in Bio-Medical Ethics: Playing God or Doing Good?
(Same subject as SP.622J)
CI-H
An introduction to the cross-cultural study of bio-medical ethics. Examines moral foundations of the science and practice of western bio-medicine through case studies of abortion, contraception, cloning, organ transplantation and other issues. Evaluates challenges that new medical technologies pose to the practice and availability of medical services around the globe, and to cross-cultural ideas of kinship and personhood. Discusses critiques of the bio-medical tradition from anthropological, feminist, legal, religious, and cross-cultural theorists. Enrollment limited.

21A.217 Anthropology of War and Peace
3-0-9 HASS

This class will look at issues of war and peace from an anthropological perspective: we will ask if humans are by nature warlike, examine the evolution of war in cross-cultural perspective, analyze the socialization of warriors and the construction of enemies, and trace the recent emerence of anti-war movements. Class readings will focus on sociobiological and other theories of war; anthropologists' claims to have studied societies that do not have war; ethnic hatred and civil war in Rwanda, Bosnia and Northern Ireland; military culture in the U.S. and elsewhere; peace movements; and studies of military conversion.

21A.218J Identity and Difference
(Same subject as SP.454J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Subject examines several theoretical perspectives on human identity and focuses on processes of creating categories of acceptable and deviant identities; how identities are formed, how behaviors are labelled, and how people enter deviant roles and worlds; and responses to differences and strategies for coping with these responses. Subject material describes how identity and difference are inescapably linked.

21A.219J Law and Society
(Same subject as 11.163J/17.249J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Law is a common and yet special feature of everyday life in modern societies. Subject studies legal reasoning, types of law and legal systems, and relationships of law to social class and social change. Emphasis on the profession and practice of law including legal education, stratification within the bar, and the politics of legal services. Investigation of emerging issues in the relationship between institutions of law and science.

21A.225J Violence, Human Rights & Justice
(Same subject as SP.621J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H
An examination of the problem of mass violence and oppression in the contemporary world, and of the concept of human rights as a defense against such abuse. Explores questions of cultural relativism, race, gender and ethnicity. Examines case studies from war crimes tribunals, truth commissions, anti-terrorist policies and other judicial attempts to redress state-sponsored wrongs. Considers whether the human rights framework effectively promotes the rule of law in modern societies. Students debate moral positions and address ideas of moral relativism. Enrollment limited.

21A.226 Ethnic and National Identity
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

An introduction to the cross-cultural study of ethnic and national identity. We explore the history of nationalism, focusing on ideologies about the nation-state, and look at ways gender, religious and racial identities intersect with ethnic and national ones. Ethnic conflict is examined, along with the emergence of social movements and the ways culture can become highly politicized. Finally, we discuss the effects of globalization, migration, and transnational institutions.

21A.231J Gender, Sexuality, and Society
(Same Subject as SP.455J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

An introduction to the anthropological study of human sexuality, gender constructs, and the sociocultural systems these are embedded in. Examines current critiques of Western philosophical and psychological traditions, and cross-cultural variability and universals of gender and sexuality.

21A.233J Masculinity in Popular Culture
(Same subject as SP.410J)
3-0-9

This subject is an examination of how masculinity is represented in popular culture. Using recent approaches from anthropology, sociology, women's studies, minority discourses and cultural studies, popular culture is examined as a place where our identities, roles, pleasures and power are negotiated in everyday life. Topics may include the history of masculinity, masculinity as deviance, masculinity in consumer culture, and virtual masculinity.

21A.235 American Dream: Exploring Class in the U.S.
3-0-9 HASS

Americans have historically preferred to think of the United States in classless terms, as a land of economic opportunity equally open to all. Yet, social class remains a central fault line in the US. Subject explores the experiences and understandings of class among Americans positioned at different points along the US social spectrum. Considers a variety of classic frameworks for analyzing social class and uses memoirs, novels and ethnographies to gain a sense of how class is experienced in daily life and how it intersects with other forms of social difference such as race and gender.

21A.240 Race and Science
3-0-9 HASS

Examines how the discourse of science has contributed to both making and unmaking of race and how the scientific idiom of race has shaped our everyday life. Overviews the history of (de)construction of race.  Will also explore why race is still real, in both science and society. Issues addressed in this course include color and race, census and mapping, eugenics, sex and miscegenation, genetics and race, representation of race, and identity politics. Emphasizes cross-cultural perspectives. Includes an excursion to Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

21A.245 Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions
(Same subject as 17.045J)
3-0-9 HASS

Using examples from anthropology and sociology alongside classical and contemporary social theory, subject explores the nature of dominant and subordinate relationships, types of legitimate authority, and practices of resistance. Examines how we are influenced in subtle ways by the people around us, who makes controlling decisions in the family, how people get ahead at work, and whether democracies, in fact, reflect the "will of the people".

21A.250J Storytelling: Women and Performance
(Same subject as SP.573J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Compares oral and written folktales primarily from the Arabic-speaking world, but also from Chinese, African, North American, and European traditions. Studies the formation and reception of storytelling in different sociocultural contexts: western and eastern, contemporary and traditional, male and female. Through lectures, presentations, and videorecordings students consider storytelling and associated performance practice in the light of a variety of theoretical disciplines such as gender studies, folklore, anthropology, performance studies, and literary criticism.

21A.252 How Cultures Remember
3-0-9 HASS

Introduces scholarly debates about the socio-cultural practices through which individuals and societies create, sustain, recall, and erase memories. Emphasis is given to the history of knowledge, construction of memory, the role of authorities in shaping memory, and how societies decide on whose versions of memory are more "truthful" and "real." Other topics include how memory works in the human brain, memory and trauma, amnesia, memory practices in the sciences, false memory, sites of memory, and the commodification of memory.

21A.253 God, Violence, Media
3-0-9 HASS

Approaches to the socio-cultural study of religion. Provides conceptual tools for analyzing the resilience and diversity of religious experience in the face of large socio-economic and political change. Traces the connections between contemporary religious resurgence and violence, displacement, globalization, economic insecurity, and ethnic and national identity. Cases include Catholic conversion via mass media in the Philippines; a witchcraft epidemic in post-apartheid South Africa; underground Protestantism in the atheist Soviet Union; spiritual shopping in the United States.

21A.260 Culture, Embodiment, and the Senses
3-0-9 HASS

Examines historical and cross-cultural debates about the relationship between mind, brain, emotion, and behavior; memory and recall; sensory experience; and illness and healing. Assesses cultural traditions that challenge scientific interpretations of experience arising from western philosophical and physiological models. Explores how experience itself is culturally mediated, interpreted, and elaborated within symbolic, political, and other fields.

21A.265 Food and Culture
3-0-9

Explores cross-cultural issues in food and identity, brought into focus by new attention to connections between what we eat and who we are. Uses anthropological and literary classics as well as recent writing on the politics of food and agriculture. Examines how identities and socialities are built through food production, preparation, and consumption. Considers how people use food to develop a sense of themselves as moral persons through embodying self-control or religious codes, or as a means of preserving the environment, cultural history, or one's health.

21A.330J Reproductive Politics and Technologies
(Same subject as SP.467J)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines through comparative case studies how cultural, moral, and political values give meaning to human reproductive events and inform people's uses of medical technologies. Focuses on how technological mediations of fertility, pregnancy and birth (e.g., contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization, prenatal testing, etc.) offer opportunities for the formation of gender and kinship, the reproduction of social inequalities, and the implementation of national population and international development agendas. Considers how bioethical evaluation of reproductive technologies might take into account the motivations and experiences of actual users.

Technology in Cultural Context

21A.336 Marketing, Microchips and McDonalds: Debating Globalization
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

Class debates the meaning of globalization and explores economic, social and cultural dynamics in various parts of the world. Questions include: Have "global" dynamics existed in the past? Is the world becoming more homogeneous culturally? What is the influence of new technologies? What is capitalism and how is it changing? We address such issues as : factory labor in Java, tourism in the Amazon, immigration in France, high tech workers in the US, the film industry in Bombay, India, and baseball in Japan.

21A.337 Documenting Culture
(Meets with CMS-917)
(3-0-9 HASS)

How -- and why -- do people seek to capture life on film? What can we learn from their work? We examine the motives of documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, including curiosity about exotic peoples, concern with documentary as a form of science, and an interest in capturing the truth about cultural life. Students view documentaries about people in the US and abroad, examining the relationship between film images and "reality," tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film.

21A.338J Gender, Power, and International Development
(Same subject as SP.457J)
3-0-9 HASS

After decades of efforts to promote development, why is there so much poverty in the world? What are some of the root causes of inequality world-wide and why do poverty, economic transformations and development policies often have different consequences for women and men? This course explores these issues while also examining the history of development itself, its underlying assumptions, and its range of supporters and critics. It considers the various meanings given to development by women and men, primarily as residents of particular regions, but also as aid workers, policy makers, and government officials. In considering how development projects and policies are experienced in daily life in urban and rural areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Melanesia, this course asks what are the underlying political, economic, social, and gender dynamics that make "development" an ongoing problem world-wide.

21A.340J Technology and Culture
(Same subject as STS.075J)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines the intersections of technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from 19th century factories to 21st century techno dance floors, from Victorian London to anything-goes Las Vegas. Our discussions and readings will be organized around three questions: What cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology? How have computers changed the way we think about ourselves and others? How are politics built into our infrastructures? We will explore the forces behind technological and cultural change, how technological and cultural artifacts are understood and used by different communities, and whether, in what ways, and for whom technology has produced a better world. Class limited to 25. There will be a lottery in which seniority will take precedence.

21A.342 Environmental Struggles
3-0-9 HASS

Subject offers an international perspective on the environment. Using environmental conflict to consider the stakes that groups in various parts of the world have in "nature," while also exploring how ecological and social dynamics interact and change over time, subject considers such controversial environmental issues as: nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe; genetic bio-prospecting in Mexico; toxic run-off in the rural United States; the Bhopal accident in India; and the impact of population growth in the Third World.

21A.344J Drugs, Politics, and Culture
(Same subject as STS.062)
3-0-9 HASS

Examines the relationship between drugs, politics, and society in cross-cultural perspective; use of mind-altering and habit-forming substances by "traditional societies"; the development of a global trace in sugar, opium, and cocaine with the rise of capitalism; and the use and abuse if alcohol, LSD, and Prozac in the US. Finishes by looking at the war on drugs, shifting attitudes to tobacco, and by evaluating America's drug laws.

21A.345 The Politics of International Development
3-0-9 HASS

Offers an anthropological perspective on international development. Students consider development, not in policy or technical terms, but through its social and political dynamics and its impacts in daily life. Examines the various histories of, and meanings given to, international development as well as its often unintended consequences.

21A.348 Photography and Truth
(Meets with CMS.835)
3-0-9 HASS

Photographs in anthropology serve many purposes: as primary data, illustrations of words in a book, documentation for disappearing cultures, evidence of fieldwork, matieral objects for museum exhibitions, and even works of art. Topics include the relationships between subject and treatment of image, between art and photography and ethnographic documentation, the role of a museum photograph and its caption, the social practice of "taking pictures" and a case study of photographing women in the MiddleEast and North Africa.
(Same subject as CMS.835)

21A.350J The Anthropology of Computing
(Same subject as STS.086J, SP.484J)
3-0-9 HASS

Subject examines computers anthropologically, as highly meaningful tools and artifacts revealing the social and cultural orders that produce them. Classic texts in computer science are read along with works analyzing links between machines and culture. Explores early computation theory and capitalist manufacturing; cybernetics and WWII operations research; artificial intelligence and gendered subjectivity; the hacking aesthetic, commodification, and creation of the personal computer; the growth of the Internet as a military; academic, and commercial project; the politics of identity in cyberspace; and the emergence of "adaptive" and "evolutionary" computation.

21A.355J The Anthropology of Biology
(Same subject as STS.060J)
3-0-9

Applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. Examine such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. Offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology — ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic — are changing. Examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?," today.

21A.360J The Anthropology of Sound
(Same subject as CMS.710J, STS.065J)
3-0-9

Examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Consider how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and scientific contexts. Learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed.

21A.370J Art, Craft, Science
(Same subject as STS.074J)
3-0-9

Examines how people learn, practice, and evaluate traditional and contemporary craft techniques. Social science theories of design, embodiment, apprenticeship learning, skill, labor, expertise, and tacit knowledge are used to explore distinctions among art, craft, and science. Also discusses the commoditization of craft into market goods, collectible art, and tourism industries. Ethnographic and historical case studies include textiles, Shaker furniture, glassblowing, quilting, cheesemaking, industrial design, home and professional cooking, factory and laboratory work, CAD/CAM. Demonstrations, optional field trips, and/or hands-on craft projects may be included.

Area and Historical Studies

21A.430J Introduction to Latin American Studies
(Same subject as 21F.884J, 17.55J)
3-0-9 HASS-D, Category 4, CI-H

Introduction to contemporary reality of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic peoples of Latin America. Organized around six topics: indigenous identity and struggle, nineteenth-century liberalism and current crisis of the liberal nation-state, Afro-Americans in Brazil and Cuba, democratization and worker's movements in contemporary Brazil, the new urbanization and women's activism (case study - Mexico City), and the Latino-Americanization of the US. Major emphasis on the period from 1970 to present but certain units explore historical antecedents as far back as late eighteenth century.

21A.441 The Conquest of America
3-0-9 HASS-D, Category 5

The five-hundred-year encounter between native peoples of the Americas and European power and culture. Exploration and conquest. European ideology and fantasies about "savages." Colonialism, resistance, and adaptation. Missionizing and culture contact. Cases include struggles of Maya, Iroquois, and native New Englanders. Students learn to use primary documents.

21A.453 Anthropology of the Middle East
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

This course examines traditional performances of the Arabic-speaking populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Starting with the history of the ways in which the West has discovered, translated and written about the Orient, we will consider how power and politics play roles in the production of culture, narrative and performance. This approach assumes that performance, verbal art, and oral literature lend themselves to spontaneous adaptation and to oblique expression of ideas and opinions whose utterance would otherwise be censorable or disruptive. In particular we will be concerned with the way traditional performance practices are affected by and respond to the consequences of modernization. Topics include oral epic performance, sacred narrative, Koranic chant performance, the folktale, solo performance, cultural production and resistance.

21A.458J The Harem and the Veil: Images and Representation of Gender in the Middle East
(Same subject as SP.450J)
3-0-9 HASS, CI-H

An introduction to women and gender in the Middle East and North Africa region, as reflected in anthropology, oral history, and literature. Are common themes -- e.g., the harem, the desert, the veil -- and modes of expression cross-disciplinary? How do readers determine point of view and positionality, ideology and subjectivity, in fictional, autobiographical, and ethnographic texts? Explores how scholarship in women's studies and gender studies addresses selected issues -- such as activism and human rights -- central to contemporary Middle East studies.

21A.460J Medicine, Religion and Politics in Africa and the African Diaspora
(Same subject as SP.620J)
3-0-9 HASS

An exploration of colonial and postcolonial clashes between theories of healing and embodiment in the African world and those of western bio-medicine. Examines how Afro-Atlantic religious traditions have challenged western conceptions of illness, healing, and the body, and have offered alternative notions of morality, rationality, kinship, gender and sexuality. Analyzes whether contemporary western bio-medical interventions reinforce colonial or imperial power in the effort to promote global health in Africa and the African diaspora.

21A.470J Gender and Representation of Asian Women
(Same subject as SP.448J)
3-0-9 HASS

Explores some of the forces and mechanisms through which stereotypes are built and perpetuated. In particular, examines stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students read ethnography, fiction, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to debates about Orientalism, gender, and power.

Special Topics

21A.650, 21A.651 Special Topics in Anthropology
Prereq: Any two subjects in Anthropology
Undergraduate FALL, SPRING
Consult Program Head
Units arranged
Can be repeated for credit

Topics in anthropology not included in other subjects. Students electing this subject must secure the approval of the Head of the Anthropology Program. HASS credit for Special Topics subjects awarded only by individual petitions to the Committee on Curricula. Normal maximum is 6 units; to count toward HASS Requirement, 9 units are required. Exceptional 9-unit projects occasionally approved.

21A.660, 21A.661, 21A.662, 21A.663, 21A.664 Special Seminars in Anthropology

Seminar for subjects taught outside the regularly-offered curriculum.

Advanced Topics

For Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society

21A.750J Social Theory and Analysis (Same subject as STS.250)
3-0-9

Major theorists and theoretical schools since the late nineteenth century. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Bourdieu, Levi-Strauss, Geertz, Foucault, Gramsci, others. Key terms, concepts, debates.

21A.760J Qualitative Research Methods (G)
(Same subject as STS.401J/15.349J)

Training in the design and practice of qualitative research. Organized around illustrative texts, class exercises, and student projects. Topics include the process of gaining access to and participating in the social worlds of others; techniques of observation, fieldnote-taking, researcher self-monitoring and reflection; methods of inductive analysis of qualitative data including conceptual coding, grounded theory, and narrative analysis. Discussion of research ethics, the politics of fieldwork, modes of validating researcher accounts, and styles of writing up qualitative field research.

21A.780J Representing Reality: Theories and Production of Documentary Film and Video (G)
(Same subject as STS.451J)
3-0-9

Explores theories and production of documentary film and video-making. Topics include how documentaries encapsulate or contest commonplace meanings of reality and truth in everyday life; how the historical use of visual technologies have alternately built upon and contested positivistic scientific understandings; and how historical transformations in film and video technologies periodically restructure the nature of documentary filmmaking, reshaping understandings of everyday truth in the process. Assignments in written and production-oriented exercises. Enrollment limited.

21A.790J Ethics of Intervention: Anthropological Approaches (G)
(Same subject as 11.238J)
3-0-9

An historical and cross-cultural study of the logics and practices of intervention: the ways that individuals, institutions, and governments identify conditions of need or states of emergency within and across borders that require a response. Examines when a response is viewed as obligatory, when is it deemed unnecessary, and by whom; when the intercession is considered fulfilled; and the rationales or assumptions that are employed in assessing interventions. Theories of the state, globalization, and humanitarianism; power, policy, and institutions; gender, race, and ethnicity; and law, ethics, and morality are examined.

21A.800J Environmental Conflict and Social Change (G)
(Same subject as STS.320J)
3-0-9

Explores the complex interrelationships among humans and natural environments, focusing on non-western parts of the world in addition to Europe and the United States. Use of environmental conflict to draw attention to competing understandings and uses of "nature" as well as the local, national and transnational power relationships in which environmental interactions are embedded. In addition to utilizing a range of theoretical perspectives, subject draws upon a series of ethnographic case studies of environmental conflicts in various parts of the world.

21A.810J Social Study of Science and Technology (G)
(Same subject as STS.350J)
3-0-9

Intensive reading and analysis of key works in the theory and methods of the social study of science and technology. Aims at understanding the different questions social scientists have posed in exploring how cultural context and norms influence the work of scientists and engineers. Students read works in the philosophy and sociology of science, the anthropology of laboratory culture, the feminist critique of science, political economic and policy analyses of biotechnology, and in rhetoric of scientific texts.

21A.820J Ethnography (G)
(Same subject as STS.360J)
3-0-9

A practicum-style course in anthropological methods of ethnographic fieldwork and writing, intended especially for STS, CMS, HTC, and Sloan graduate students, but open to others with permission of instructor. Depending on student experience in ethnographic reading and practice, the subject is a mix of reading anthropological and science studies ethnographies; and formulating and pursuing ethnographic work in local labs, companies, or other sites.

21A.830J History and Anthropology of Medicine and Biology (G)
(Same subject as STS.330J)
3-0-9

Explores recent historical and anthropological approaches to the study of medicine and biology. Topics might include interaction of disease and society; science, colonialism, and international health; impact of new technologies on medicine and the life sciences; neuroscience and psychiatry; race, biology and medicine. Specific emphasis varies from year to year.

21A.850J The Anthropology of Cybercultures (G)
(Same subject as STS.484J)
3-0-9

Focuses on anthropological exploration of cyber space and cyber culture and its origins in the emergence of cybernetics, the production and use of information and communication, online sociality, and the cyborg imaginaries. Includes discussions of the distinctive characteristics of computer-based artifacts, their place in academic and popular discourses, as well as specific practices of design and use.

21A.860J Methods for Graduate Research in the Social Sciences(G)
(Sometimes offered as 21A.861J)
(Same subject as STS.380J)

Foundations of good empirical research in the social sciences. Introduction to the basic assumptions and underlying logic of both quantatative and qualitative methodologies. Explore a variety of approaches to research design, evaluate the products of empirical research, and practice several common techniques. Students develop a framework for their own research project.

21A.998, 21A.999 Advanced Topics in Anthropology
Graduate FALL, SPRING
Consult Program Head
Units arranged
Can be repeated for credit

Special studies or projects at an advanced level with a member of the Anthropology faculty.

Individual Research, Pre-Thesis and Thesis

For individual research in Anthropology, register for 21A.UR or 21A.URG. For Anthropology pre-thesis tutorial, register for 21A.ThT. For undergraduate thesis, register for 21A.ThU.

21A.UR Research in Anthropology
FALL, SPRING
Consult Anthropology Academic Officer
Units Arranged
Can be repeated for created

21A.URG Research in Anthropology
FALL, SPRING
Consult Anthropology Program Academic Officer
Units Arranged
Can be repeated for credit

Individual participation in an ongoing research project. For students in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

21A.ThT Anthropology Pre-Thesis Tutorial
FALL, SPRING
Consult Anthropology Program Academic Officer
1-0-5
Can be repeated for credit

Definition of and early-stage work on thesis project leading to 21A.ThU Undergraduate Thesis in Anthropology. Taken during the first term of the student's two-term commitment to the thesis project. Student works closely with an individual faculty tutor.

21A.ThU Undergraduate Thesis in Anthropology
Prereq: 21.ThT
FALL, SPRING
Consult Program Head
Units Arranged
Can be repeated for credit

Completion of work on the senior major thesis under supervision of a faculty tutor. Includes oral presentation of thesis progress early in the term, assembling and revising the final text, and meeting at the close with a committee of faculty evaluators to discuss the successes and limitations of the project.