Courses

Required Courses

There are five core required courses offered on a rotating basis and taken in the first and second year:

ANTH 60201 Orientations to Biological Anthropology

Course Description:
This course will review, engage and analyze major themes, perspectives, and methodologies in biological anthropology and illustrate their connectivity and integration into a broader anthropological approach. The seminar will contain a heavy reading load of historical and current theoretical and practical applications of evolutionary, ecological, physiological, endocrinological, molecular and morphological approaches in the study of humans and other primates, past and present.

ANTH 60202 Orientations to Anthropological Archaeology

Designed in coordination with the other core areas of anthropology, this course prepares you to situate works you encounter within the sweep of anthropologically-oriented archaeological theory and method in the twenty-first century. You will encounter the principal analytic paradigms of the discipline, examining both big picture questions and dominant thematic foci of the field. You are further expected to consider how you might incorporate material from the course into your own planned doctoral work, and to explore integrative bridges between anthropological subdisciplines.

ANTH 60203 Orientations to Sociocultural Anthropology

Designed in coordination with the other core areas of anthropology, this course prepares you to situate works you encounter within the sweep of sociocultural anthropological theory and method in the twenty-first century. You will encounter the principal analytic paradigms of the discipline and will become conversant with both big questions and dominant thematic foci of the field. You are further expected to consider how you might incorporate material from the course into your own planned doctoral work. Shared activities and readings across our graduate courses emphasize the integrative nature of our inquiry.

ANTH 60204 Orientations to Linguistic Anthropology

This course orients you to the theory and practice of anthropological inquiry focused on the constitution of subjects through language use. To what ends do social beings engage in communication and what are obligatory properties of its organization? The seminar examines how language and cultural structure and change afford sometimes opposing limitations and possibilities for linguistically mediated life. We explore the dialectic between creative agency and semiotic systems as material fields in the collective fashioning of meaning and difference through speech, ritual, mass media, and verbal art. You are expected to incorporate concepts from the course into your own planned doctoral work and to explore integrative bridges between anthropological subdisciplines.

ANTH 63500 Research Design in Anthropology

This course is geared towards understanding, developing, assessing, and applying the necessary skills and tools to undertake advanced research in anthropology. Core areas covered include research project development, design and implementation, connecting theory to practice, institutional review boards (human and animal subjects), ethics, grant writing and evaluating, field and lab work, qualitative vs/and quantitative approaches, and related topics. In addition to short written assignments and classroom presentations, students will be required to develop a research proposal and a companion grant proposal over the course of the term in dialogue with the topics covered.

Electives for Fall 2026

To search for a class and to view course descriptions for all anthropology courses please visit inside.nd.edu.

ANTH 60131 Societal and Medical Issues in Human Genetics

It has been 20+ years since the first draft sequence of the entire human genome was published, spurring development of genetic technologies that were previously impossible, such as CRISPR genome editing. These technologies carry potential to identify, treat, or even prevent genetic conditions; at the same time, they often rely on assumptions that genes determine one’s fate and are shaping contemporary ideals of health, wellness, and disability. This course will examine how genetics and genetic technologies raise a host of complicated ethical questions, such as concerns about “new” forms of eugenics and genetic determinism, the ownership and commodification of genetic material, the ethics of genetics research in marginalized communities, legislative efforts to prevent genetic discrimination, and more. We will use a case study approach, pairing examinations of the biological and technical bases of specific genetic technologies with bioethical analysis to consider costs and benefits from a variety of stakeholder perspectives. This will entail engagement with perspectives from the history of science, genetics, bioethics, genetic counseling, etc. to explore complicated questions about the relationships between genetics, research, medicine, and society.

ANTH 60210 The Anthropology of Your Stuff

Have you ever pondered how people live(d) in a world without television, YouTube, smartphones, and automobiles? Why have bellbottoms come and gone twice in the last 50 years? Will we be forced to relive the fashion mistakes of the 1970s and 1980s? What new stuff will people invent and sell next? In asking and answering these questions, we must focus on one underlying query: What does our stuff really say about who we are and who we want to be? This course combines lectures, discussions, and interactive small group activities to explore the nature and breadth of peoples' relationships with their things. We will investigate why and how people make and use different types of objects, and how the use of these material goods resonates with peoples' identities in the deep past, recent history, and today. Since everyone in the class will already be an expert user and consumer of things, we will consider how people today use material objects to assert, remake, reclaim, and create identities, and compare today's practices to those of people who lived long ago. Class members will learn about how anthropologists, including ethnographers (studying people today) and archaeologists (studying past peoples) think about and approach the material nature of our social, economic, and political lives. We will discuss why styles and technologies change through time, and why, in the end, there is very little new under the sun in terms of human behaviors and the way people produce and consume goods. The topical breadth of this workshop encompasses most social science disciplines, including history, economics, psychology, and anthropology, and resonates with classics, art history, and gender studies.

ANTH 60300 Digital Commons

From the late 1960s debates on environmental degradation and overpopulation to the present concerns with sociotechnical and climate change, the "commons" has returned as a key symbol for social analysis, political organizing, and collective resource management. Since then, various currents have claimed and reclaimed the concept under the guide of "communality," "conviviality," and "common-pool resources" as concrete alternatives to public and private modes of governance of tangible and intangible goods. In the past two decades, the concept has been central for the discussion of the "digital commons" with decentralized, community-based governance of information production and sharing. In this seminar, we will map out the key definitions of the "commons" with a focus on the introduction of algorithmic forms of governance. This course will be organized as a seminar for the study of concepts, case studies, and methodological approaches for the study of the digital commons. We welcome students working on Internet-based research and Free and Open Source technologies as well as climate change, conservation, and sustainability to join the seminar.

ANTH 60303 "Charlie Don't Surf" and Other Stories from Southeast Asia

Have you ever pondered how people live(d) in a world without television, YouTube, smartphones, and automobiles? Why have bellbottoms come and gone twice in the last 50 years? Will we be forced to relive the fashion mistakes of the 1970s and 1980s? What new stuff will people invent and sell next? In asking and answering these questions, we must focus on one underlying query: What does our stuff really say about who we are and who we want to be? This course combines lectures, discussions, and interactive small group activities to explore the nature and breadth of peoples' relationships with their things. We will investigate why and how people make and use different types of objects, and how the use of these material goods resonates with peoples' identities in the deep past, recent history, and today. Since everyone in the class will already be an expert user and consumer of things, we will consider how people today use material objects to assert, remake, reclaim, and create i

ANTH 60312 Health & Culture: Introduction to Medical Anthropology

What are the cultures of medicine? How does belief create possibilities for healing? How do cultural, social, and political forces shape experiences of illness? When can care be a form of violence? How can histories of oppression make you sick? Medical anthropology is an expansive field of research concerned with the study of medicine, affliction, and healing in historical and cultural context. This course provides an introduction to topics in medical anthropology, from classical texts on belief, illness experience, and structural violence to contemporary work on disability, care, and critical global health. Over the course of the semester, students will gain experience in methods, critical thinking, independent research, and public communication as we collectively explore what medical anthropology can contribute to the urgent health challenges that we face in the contemporary world today.

ANTH 60319 Anthropology of Science and Technology: Past and Present

What are the contributions of anthropology to the study of contemporary science and technology? In this course, we will respond to this question by examining the history of anthropological studies of the technosciences from the post-war period to the present. We will cover the history of ethnographic engagements with the biological and natural sciences, the debates about the nature of knowledge production, and the contemporary studies of computing and engineering with a focus on Artificial Intelligence. We will organize the class as a seminar, so be prepared to engage in close readings of the material and workshopping a research project of your own.

ANTH 60343 Indigenous Environments

The ancestors interrelated with the environments we live in today and will interact with in the future. This course explores indigenous cultures and perspectives on the importance of traditional knowledge and the environment. In this seminar-style course, we will learn about how indigenous groups in the Americas, both past and present, think about the world around us and how their cultural livelihoods are threatened by climate change and ongoing development. The goal is to provide students with a strong foundation in indigenous environmental issues. We will cover a range of topics that intersect with traditional ecological knowledge, land use and perceptions, reciprocity, sense of place, memory-making, and environmental justice.

ANTH 60403 Talk to the Animals...and Plants, Ghosts, & AI: Linguistic Anthropology Beyond the Human

Models of human communication developed in linguistic anthropology have long relied on empirical analysis and cross-cultural comparison of how people talk to other people, and to a variety of non-human “persons” as well. This course examines how anthropologists study communication between humans and non-humans, and how communication helps make persons out of non-humans. The class concerns research on seances and related scenes of spirit possession where the dead speak, talking with animals whether pets or prey, learning spiritual lessons from teacher plants, and contemporary conversations people have with artificial intelligence language models. We compare how anthropologists have asked questions about personhood when considering speech across species boundaries or across divides such as life and death. We ask how communication constructs interlocutors and makes relationships possible, and we consider the commonality and variety among communicative approaches and tactics. We ask if communication with non-humans connects people to other worlds of experience, or if it is more instructive as a projection of our own social life onto others.

ANTH 60700 Preparing for Fieldwork

This course will give students the opportunity to develop a research proposal and prepare for anthropological fieldwork, regardless of subfield. The class will meet for three weeks at the beginning of the semester and two weeks following Spring Break. The first section will focus on developing a research proposal, seeking approval from the Institutional Review Board, and submitting the proposal for funding. The second part will concentrate on logistical preparation for the field and examining fieldwork ethics and expectations. Students should begin the course with a concrete idea for a research project that they develop in consultation with their advisor.

ANTH 60890 Archaeology of Death

Our species is unique because it is the only species that deliberately buries its dead. Mortuary analysis (the study of burial patterns) is a powerful approach that archaeologists use for the study of prehistoric social organization and ideology. This course explores the significance of prehistoric human mortuary behavior, from the first evidence of deliberate burial by Neanderthals as an indicator of the evolution of symbolic thought, to the analysis of the sometimes spectacular burial patterns found in complex societies such as ancient Egypt and Megalithic Europe. We will also examine the theoretical and practical aspects of the archaeology of death, including the applications of various techniques ranging from statistics to ethnography, and the legal and ethical issues associated with the excavation and scientific study of human remains.

ANTH 63100 Human Osteology

This is a lab-intensive course that explores the methods used in physical anthropology for studying individual human skeletal remains, as well as those employed to establish biocultural connections at the population level. Forensic techniques utilized in individual identification will be developed in the first third of the course.

ANTH 63109 Physiology & Health in Social and Ecological Context

Research in the social and life sciences increasingly explores the ways in which social and ecological contexts shape the functioning of individuals' neurobiology and physiology, with ramifications for their health, behavior, and fitness. In both humans and other animals, these dynamics include social hierarchy, social network dynamics, differential diets and access to critical resources, and the quality of the lived environment. For humans, there are added dimensions of cultural systems and political economic, structural forces that shape these facets of daily life, affecting biological development and function across the life course, with implications for acute and chronic health. Related to those political economic and cultural forces, we are in an age of rapid anthropogenic depletion of the environment. Consequently, there are increasing and novel pressures placed on nonhuman animal populations, affecting their access to resources and typically having negative ramifications for their health and reproduction. Such ecological encroachment also heightens risks for human-nonhuman pathogen transmission, highlighting the need to understand health and physiological function from interspecies perspectives. Theoretically, this course will draw on frameworks such as life history theory, the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD), and niche construction theory that emphasize feedbacks between biological and social processes at the individual and population levels. We will focus on bio-social feedback at multiple levels of biological function, potentially including: endocrinology, immunology, epigenetics, genetics (gene X environment interaction), nutrition/energy allocation, and the microbiome. The course structure will include time allotted to workshopping students' own data analyses and/or grant writing, with the culminating project for the course being a draft of a journal article or grant submission.

ANTH 63201 Nasty, Brutish, and Short: The Archaeology of War

Organized violence between human communities is one of the unfortunate realities of human existence, and its causes and consequences have consequently been of great interest. Is war an inevitable outcome of human nature, or the result of specific social, historical, and environmental circumstances? Archaeology is uniquely positioned to provide concrete insights into the history of human violence through study of its direct material correlates, including traumatic injuries on skeletons, fortified settlements, weaponry, and iconography. However, the archaeological record also documents the impacts of violence (reduced nutritional status and health, evidence for enslavement, cannibalism, and population decline) and can provide insights into why war occurred through examination of environment, population, and social conditions. In this course, we will explore what the archaeological record tells us about violence, human nature, and the veracity of claims for either a more violent or more peaceful past. We will examine theoretical models of war, anthropological studies of conflict, and archaeological case studies of both violent and peaceful times to understand the role that organized violence has played in human history and evolution.

ANTH 63210 Anthropology of Everyday Life

Have you ever pondered how people live(d) in a world without television, YouTube, iPhones, Lady GaGa, and cellphones? Why have bellbottoms come and gone twice in the last 50 years? Will we be forced to relive the fashion mistakes of the 1980s? What new stuff will people invent and sell next? In asking and answering these questions, we must focus on one underlying query: What does our stuff really say about who we are and who we want to be? This course combines lectures, discussions, and interactive small group activities to explore the nature and breadth of peoples' relationships with their things. We will investigate why and how people make and use different types of objects, and how the use of these material goods resonates with peoples' identities in the deep past, recent history, and today. Since everyone in the class will already be an expert user and consumer of things, we will consider how people today use material objects to assert, remake, reclaim, and create identities, and compare today's practices to those of people who lived long ago. Class members will learn about how anthropologists, including ethnographers (studying people today) and archaeologists (studying past peoples) think about and approach the material nature of our social, economic, and political lives. We will discuss why styles and technologies change through time, and why, in the end, there is very little new under the sun in terms of human behaviors and the way people produce and consume goods. The topical breadth of this workshop encompasses most social science disciplines, including history, economics, psychology, and anthropology, and resonates with classics, art history, and gender studies.

ANTH 63313 Anthropology of Childhood and Education

Concepts of human growth vary extraordinarily across time and space. When children become full-fledged persons, when they can reason, when or whether they should be independent from their parents, and how all this happens are variable and illuminating. Education - either formal or informal - reflects and also constitutes a society's view of childhood. This course provides a selective cross-cultural survey of childhood and education, looking at stages from pregnancy and infancy to late adolescence. Students will devise and conduct projects of their own.

ANTH 63316 Ballads to Hip-Hop: Race, Music, and American Latinos

Together with the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean have been among the most influential exporters of music globally since the early 20th century. This course traces these processes of musical production and consumption. Students will be introduced to important historical and stylistic musical developments as we survey various styles and genres with attention to their cultural significance - including the corrido (Mexican ballad), Caribbean-derived salsa, and cumbia, among others. Our approach, such that we are dealing with music-cultures, is at once anthropological and ethnomusicological. In order we achieve our aims, the course is organized along two axes: one chronological (so to speak), the other conceptual, neither complete. The chronological portion will allow us to survey various genres and ensembles of musical production. We dovetail this effort with a focus on important themes and concepts that aid in understanding the present and historical conditions of the terrain where performance, identity, race-ethnicity, gender, transnationalism, and commoditized publics intersect.