| The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants. -- Laurent A. Daloz (20th century). |
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The short story about these classes is this; they're neat subjects studied in a way that asks "...broader and deeper questions about the relationship between oneself and the world" -- one's relatives, students, clients, and more. There is an old saying in English culture -- "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree." In other words, influences from our natural and social environments shape each of us in ways that we do not recognize. One interesting aspect of human beings, though, is that we arrange our own environments in "meaningful ways!" The things we arrange (often building them to our taste) and the arrangements we create are our culture, and our culture both identifies and sustains us. Our culture seems so "true" and "natural" -- the "of course" reaction -- that we often pay it no mind, unless our "things" are taken from us or their arrangements are disturbed. Then we often try to recover those valued things or put "things" back into place. In order to "see" and analyze culture, anthropologists live in unfamiliar communities in order to learn from people who have very different patterns of life and values -- a different culture. Some of those communities existed in the past (usually studied by archaeologists), some in the present (usually studied by cultural anthropologists), and some right next door. Of course, it isn't too big a stretch to understand how significant culture is to "practical" fields like health care, education, criminal justice, environmental studies, industrial design, and so on. Besides being interesting and relevant, many of these classes satisfy general education or major requirements. I hope to see you in one (or more) of them. |
| Cultural Anthropology (ANTH 102) | outlines knowledge about contemporary human lives from the perspective of the idea of "culture," the word anthropologists use to identify symbolic influences on a community. There are many influences, and they are complex. So many cultural anthropologists specialize their studies. Some study a community's speech/language, environment, economics, family and marriage systems, kinship systems, religion, politics, stratification, or art. "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" describes these specialties in order to show how we are the result of these various influences. It also describes how anthropologists explain culture and the methods they use to describe a community's culture. | |
| World Prehistory (ANTH 120) | outlines the development of human cultures and societies before written history. Our only information about prehistory comes through archaeology, which examines the things people make and the way people arrange those things, or artifacts. Artifacts and their arrangements show their makers' values. Changes in those values can be seen in changes in artifacts and their patterns. Archaeologists want to know what forces shape and change those values. Those forces may be cultural or social, or they may start in the material world. To accomplish these studies, archaeologists work with paleontologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, and many others. | |
| Introduction to Native American Studies (ANTH 170) | reviews some of the work on Native American issues by indigenous scholars and intellectuals. Indigenous intellectuals provide somewhat different perspectives, analyses, and answers to these issues than others do. Among the issues found in this field are indigenous identity, sovereignty, cultural and social continuity, education, health, and intellectual property rights. | |
| Culture and Environment (ANTH 280) | examines the significance of culture in the relationship between people and their "natural" environment. As you might expect, the relationships--the mutual effects--are manifold. In each part of the world there are physical relationships among various living and non-living elements; humans must cope with those relationships. Each human community recognizes only some parts of their environment. Rarely, if ever, does a community fully realize the full extent of the relationships they recognize. And each community values some of what they recognize more highly than others. Finally, human activities aimed at promoting some values at the expense of others changes their surroundings. | |
| Culture and Education (ANTH 311) | examines the significance of cultural and social context for schooling. Schools are only one context of learning and teaching found in any community. Often the obvious curriculum of a school differs from the daily lessons of life found in the community. And there may be a difference between the goals of class work and the "hidden curriculum." These differences can lead to a wide variety of "failures" in schooling. In particular, ethnicity, race, and class, as they are played out in the school, lead to significant issues in learning and school success. | |
| North American Indians (ANTH 320) | takes an anthropological look at people who are often confused with images on television, in movies, and in advertising. The people who inhabited the part of the world Europeans called "North America" were highly diverse; some lived in camps, others in villages, and still others in magnificent cities. Several questions arise: Where did they come from? What is their history? What people did Europeans find when they first entered the different regions of North America? How have people from other parts of the world changed the course of their civilizations? |
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| Theories of Society (SS 2xx) |
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| Comparative Religions (ANTH 365) |
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| Seminar in Contemporary Native American Cultures (SS 498) |
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