Major Description

The discipline of anthropology is as much one of the humanities as one of the social sciences, and it also has affinities with the natural sciences through its bio-archaeological component. Anthropology majors are expected to become acquainted with the major subfields of the discipline and to pursue an individually tailored concentration of courses designed in consultation with their advisors. These individual programs should draw on courses available in this department and others. No more than three courses taken outside Wesleyan may be counted toward the major.

Major requirements. If you plan to major in anthropology, you should take Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (ANTH101), the department's required gateway course, during your first or sophomore year. Starting with the class of 2014, a minimum grade of B in ANTH101 is expect as a condition of acceptance into the major. In addition to 101, majors are required to earn a minimum of nine anthropology credits numbered 200 or higher. These must include two core courses in anthropological theory, Theory 1 (ANTH295) and Theory 2 (ANTH296), offered in fall and spring, respectively. As the precise topics of these courses will sometimes vary in consecutive years, it may be possible to repeat one or the other for credit and fulfill the requirement in that way. Archaeology-track majors should take either Theory 1 or Theory 2 plus another advisor-approved course in archaeological theory. The major must also include one course on anthropological methods (ANTH230, ANTH232, ANTH307, ANTH349, or another advisor-approved course).

Concentrations. In addition to the two core theory courses and a course in anthropological methods, students must develop and complete an area of concentration consisting of four elective courses; one of these courses can be from outside the department. Concentrations are conceived of as flexible specializations reflecting the students' particular areas of interest. They work with their faculty advisors to decide on a coherent set of four courses that demonstrate their specific focus within anthropology. Our areas of concentration currently include

Social and cultural theory

Students concentrating in social and cultural theory would take four theory-focused courses in addition to Theory 1 and 2. If, however, they complete the core theory course requirement in their junior year and the topics of Theory 1 and/or Theory 2 change in their senior year, they may repeat either or both for credit towards the concentration. Other courses include:

ANTH203 Sex, Money and Power

ANTH302 Critical Perspectives on the State

ANTH307 Middle-class Culture: Politics, Aesthetics, Morality

ANTH312 Bodies, Science, Knowledge

ANTH322 Nationalism, Gender and Sexuality

ANTH331 Black Feminist Thought

ANTH336 Nationality, Ethnicity, Identity

ANTH397 The Politics of Nature

ANTH398 Queer/Anthropology

Crafting ethnography

This concentration examines the dialogic and textual production of anthropological knowledge through critical reflection on processes of ethnographic research and writing. It includes hands-on training in ethnographic methods, consideration of the processual ethics and politics of knowledge production, and attention to creative ways of representing cultural diversity.

ANTH227 Middletown Materials

ANTH230 Anthropology of Cities

ANTH232 Alter(ed)native Approaches: Middletown Lives

ANTH321 Rereading Gendered Agency

ANTH362 Crafting Ethnography (may count towards both methods requirement and concentration)

ANTH398 Queer/Anthropology: Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies

Producing and consuming culture

This concentration explores the interplay between anthropological notions of culture as "way of life" and humanist notions of culture as aesthetic and intellectual productions. Drawing from anthropology, cultural studies and the sociology of taste, it interrogates "low" or "popular" as well as "high" cultural forms and takes the formation and operation of regimes of cultural value as a primary object of knowledge. Courses in this concentration deal with such matters as: the formation of a market for cultural goods, the development of modern media and culture industries and their relationship to autonomous artistic production, the use of cultural commodities in the formation of social identities.

ANTH203 Sex, Money and Power

ANTH222 Anthropology of Art

ANTH244 Television: The Domestic Medium

ANTH277 Commodity Consumption and the Formation of Consumer Culture

ANTH306 Understanding Television

ANTH307 Middle-class Culture: Politics, Aesthetics, Morality

ANTH308 Television Storytelling: The Conditions of Narrative Complexity

ANTH324 Youth Culture

ANTH340 Urban Social Movements

Colonial and postcolonial Worlds

This concentration examines the ongoing process of colonialism in a wide variety of geographical contexts, questioning any clear division between pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. The courses stress the unequal power relations that structured colonial encounters and that continue to pervade postcolonial conditions and neocolonial structures. They also stress the manner in which indigenous agency in the form of cultural and political resistance has been studied by a variety of anthropologists. This concentration also includes prehistoric archaeology by extending the study of the manner in which social and economic differentials structured inter- and intra-societal relations prior to the existence of more recent historical colonial contexts.

ANTH217 Intro to U.S. Racial Formations

ANTH228 Transnational Sexualities

ANTH250 Foragers to Farmers: Hunting and Gathering and the Development of Agriculture

ANTH259 Anthropology of Development

ANTH261 Native Sovereignty

ANTH264 Native Americans, Archaeology

ANTH268 Prehistory of North America

ANTH301 U.S. in the Pacific Islands

ANTH303 African Diaspora Archaeology

ANTH304 Gender in South Asian Contexts

ANTH336 Ethnicity, Nationality, Identity

Capitalist modernities: past and present

This concentration focuses on transnational capitalist formations and transformations. Taking a historical and ethnographic approach to the study of capitalist modernities, the courses examine such themes as material culture, capitalist cultures, relations of production and consumption, class making and struggles, and commodities and signs. They pay careful attention to the cultural particularities and peculiarities of capitalist processes in time and across space while simultaneously holding in tension their interconnections and overlaps.

ANTH203 Sex, Power, Money: Intimacy and Exchange

ANTH225 Historical Archaeology of the Modern World

ANTH234 Anthropology and Political Economy

ANTH259 The Anthropology of Development

ANTH277 Commodity Consumption and the Formation of Consumer Culture

ANTH307 Middle-class Culture: Politics, Aesthetics, Morality

ANTH324 Youth Culture

ANTH336 Ethnicity, Nationality and Identity

ANTH339 Anthropology of Globalization

ANTH340 Urban Social Movements

Social and political geographies

This concentration focuses on how culture, identities, and socio-political institutions and struggles are spatialized and altered in the context of globalization. The courses examine how world-making projects, such as development and neoliberalism, for example, impact nations and states, boundaries and borderlands, cities, towns, and villages, and how they affect the subjectivities, modes of belonging, and cultural and political practices of those inhabiting these shifting landscapes.

ANTH227 Middletown Materials

ANTH228 Transnational Sexualities

ANTH230 Anthropology of Cities

ANTH232 Alter(ed)native Approaches: Middletown Lives

ANTH255 Religious Worlds of New York

ANTH259 The Anthropology of Development

ANTH302 Critical Perspectives on the State

ANTH339 The Anthropology of Globalization

ANTH340 Contemporary Urban Social Movements

ANTH397 The Politics of Nature: Modernity and its Others

Material culture and temporal processes

This concentration provides a specifically anthropological archaeology alternative to the Archaeology major, which offers a more art historical approach. Through this concentration students are introduced to a variety of historical and prehistorical approaches to the study of the human past. Courses combine studies of archaeological materials and contemporary studies of material culture, space and place, with theoretical questions surrounding interpreting these. The concentration also offers an engagement with contemporary and historical cultural anthropology through the study of space and place in the material world.

ANTH202 Paleoanthropology

ANTH225 Historical Archaeology of the Modern World

ANTH226 Feminist and Gender Archaeology

ANTH227 Middletown Materials: Theory and Practice

ANTH230 Anthropology of Cities

ANTH250 Foragers to Farmers: Hunting and Gathering and the Development of Agriculture

ANTH268 Prehistory of North America

ANTH277 Commodity Consumption and the Formation of Consumer Culture

ANTH372 Archaeology of Death

ANTH373 Field Methods in Archaeology

Axes of difference

This concentration focuses on difference along lines of identity and identification. Courses emphasize the cultural, economic, political and historical production (through, e.g., colonialism, slavery, commodity capitalism, immigration, state formation, religion, social movements) of social categories age, race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. Through queer, antiracist, feminist, and materialist approaches, this concentration highlights the links between the localized and historical construction of social categories and the ways subjects come to identify with and as these categories. The concentration also focuses critical attention on the ways such identifications create social belonging, with attendant potentials for the (re)entrenchment of social hierarchy as well as political empowerment.

ANTH203 Sex, Money, and Power Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange

ANTH207 Gender in a Transnational Perspective

ANTH217 Introduction to U.S. Racial Formations

ANTH220 Rereading Gendered Agency Black Women's Experience of Slavery

ANTH226 Feminist and Gender Archaeology

ANTH228 Transnational Sexualities

AMST265 Introduction to Trans Studies Interdisciplinary Approaches

ANTH304 Gender in South Asian Contexts

ANTH307 Middle-Class Culture Politics, Aesthetics, Morality

ANTH321 Rereading Gendered Agency II Black Women's Experience of Slavery

ANTH322 Nationalism and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality

ANTH324 Youth Culture

ANTH331 Black Feminist Thoughts and Practices

ANTH398 Queer/Anthropology Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies

Embodiment and biopolitics

Students in this concentration explore the politics and poetics of living in bodies in a range of modernities around the globe, from transnational technocultures to biomedicine to indigenous life worlds to pre-modern communities, and study how cultural and historical processes entangle bodies in regimes of power and truth. The concentration's themes include the ways science and biotechnology are reconfiguring bodies and naturecultures; the commoditization of bodies; bodies as evidence and texts; and how bodies are both marked by difference (e.g. gender, race, sexuality, etc) and sites of counter-resistance and human agency and creativity. An important focus of the concentration concerns contestations over what is taken to be 'the' universal ground of being, i.e. 'nature.' Courses cover illness and healing in both biomedicine and indigenous medicines, biopolitics and biosociality, biological citizenship, kinship and 'new' reproductive technologies, reproductive politics, the queering of bodies and knowledges, the human and the posthuman, theory and embodiment, forensic science, bodies in archeology, and imaginations of embodiment that extend to the nonhuman (technology, machine) and/or the other-than-human (animals, spirits, gods).

ANTH228 Transnational Sexualities

ANTH242 All Our Relations? Kinship and the Politics of Knowledge

ANTH220 Rereading Gendered Agency Black Women's Experience of Slavery

ANTH261 Indigenous Sovereignty Politics

ANTH264 Native Americans, Archaeology, and Repatriation

ANTH283 Interpretation of Ritual

ANTH312 Bodies of Science, Bodies of Knowledge

ANTH349 The Human Skeleton

ANTH372 Archaeology of Death

ANTH397 The Politics of Nature Modernity and Its Others

ANTH398 Queer/Anthropology Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies

Performance, representation, identity

This concentration focuses on cultural performances and ethnographic representation. Courses emphasize the performativity of cultures and identities, for example, the ways individuals both become social subjects and exert their agency through embodied processes of identity-making, or the ways in which social or religious ritual, popular culture or media can both reinforce as well as challenge social belonging and norms of power and culture. This concentration also focuses attention on the ethnographic representation of cultural performances and performativity students study video, film, and other mediated approaches to performance and cultural production, including ethnographic writing and museum studies.

ANTH223 Blurred Genres Feminist Ethnographic Writing

ANTH228 Transnational Sexualities

ANTH232 Alter(ed)native Approaches Middletown Lives

ANTH277 Commodity Consumption and the Formation of Consumer Culture

ANTH283 Interpretation of Ritual

ANTH244 Television The Domestic Medium

ANTH304 Gender in South Asian Contexts

ANTH307 Middle-Class Culture Politics, Aesthetics, Morality

ANTH308 Television Storytelling The Conditions of Narrative Complexity

ANTH321 Rereading Gendered Agency II Black Women's Experience of Slavery

ANTH322 Nationalism and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality

ANTH324 Youth Culture

ANTH398 Queer/Anthropology Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies

Senior writing requirement. Senior majors are required to write an honors thesis, a senior essay, or an extended paper as part of their capstone experience.

Honors thesis. It is strongly recommend that students contemplating an honors thesis either enroll in an individual tutorial (ANTH402), in which they would begin library research on their area of interest, or else take a course that is relevant to their research concerns in the spring semester of their junior year. A minimum grade of B+ in either Theory I or Theory II and departmental approval are required for the pursuit of honors. For thesis projects involving field research, proposals are due on the last day of spring semester classes; these projects are also eligible for partial funding through the department. If students wish to compete for these funds, they should include a budget in their proposal. Proposals for library-based theses may also be submitted in the spring, or up to the second week of classes in the following fall semester.

In the fall semester of their senior year, all students pursuing honors take ANTH400 Cultural Analysis, a research seminar in which students pursue individual research projects in a group context. In the spring semester, honors candidates enroll in an individual thesis tutorial (ANTH410).

Senior essay. This involves fewer requirements but also represents a serious research commitment. If students choose to do an essay, they have two options. They may (and are strongly encouraged to) enroll in ANTH400, Cultural Analysis, the research seminar described above. In this case, they would complete a draft of their essay in the fall semester for final submission in February. Alternately, if their project is one that a particular faculty member is especially qualified (and willing) to supervise, they may take an individual tutorial (ANTH403/404) with that person in either the fall or the spring semester, respectively' of their senior year. Please note that if they intend to do a spring semester tutorial, they must make the arrangements with their advisor before the end of fall semester.

An extended paper is a revised and extended version of a term research paper. Students who select the extended paper option should take a 300-level course in their senior year (or an advisor-approved 200-level course) in which they complete a substantial research paper. The revised version is completed in consultation with an appropriate faculty member. No additional course credit is earned. Extended papers are due on the last day of spring semester classes and should be submitted to the department chair.

Cross-listed courses. Various departments and programs offer cross-listed or other courses that can be counted toward the anthropology major. These include African American studies, American studies, archaeology, biology, classical studies, earth and environmental sciences, history, religion, sociology, and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. If outside courses are to be counted toward the anthropology major requirements, they must be approved in advance by your advisor.

Double majors. Students may pursue double majors for example, anthropology/history, anthropology/biology, anthropology/sociology, anthropology/music, anthropology/film, anthropology/English, or anthropology/E&ES. All the requirements for the two majors must be met, except when faculty representatives of the two departments approve alterations in your program. Please consult with the department chair and/or a department advisor.

Study abroad. Majors are welcome to take advantage of semester-abroad programs and, with the approval of your advisor, you may be able to substitute up to three of your study-abroad courses for specific concentration or elective courses. The Office of International Studies has information about specific programs, etc.

Contact the Department

Major Description