Anthropology

361 Social Sciences 1 Building
(831) 459- 3320
http://anthro.ucsc.edu/

Program Description

Anthropology studies people throughout the world and through time. Because it covers a wide range of topics—physical evolution, material remains of the past, and the world that humans create through their ideas and practices in present-day societies—anthropology is an especially integrative discipline.

The anthropology program at UCSC offers courses that reflect the diversity of the field.
Cultural anthropology explores the movements of people, objects, and ideas in diverse societies, including our own. Cultural anthropology courses examine such topics as race and ethnicity, medicine, science, gender, sexuality, the environment, religion, law, popular culture, and politics.

Archaeology uses the material evidence of human activities to understand past human lives. Archaeology at UCSC focuses on past people’s interactions with one another at the local level and within their wider social and ecological contexts. Faculty research areas include the pre-colonial and early post-colonial history of East Africa and the American Southwest.

Physical anthropology traces the human journey from its beginnings in Africa over five million years ago. Physical anthropology courses look at fossil evidence, evolutionary theory, human variation, and the behavior of primate relatives in order to analyze biological, social, and cultural changes over time.

UCSC students have the opportunity to do independent library and field research in cultural anthropology, archaeology, and physical anthropology. Laboratory courses in archaeology and physical anthropology offer practical experience in the analysis of biological and cultural materials. Students may use the social science media laboratory to develop technical and creative skills in visual and audio media. In cultural anthropology courses, students learn to carry out anthropological research through interviews, participant observation, surveys, the collection of oral histories, and the interpretation of archives.

Because anthropology is concerned with understanding human interaction, it is a useful major for anyone planning a career that involves working with people, especially those from diverse cultures. Some UCSC anthropology graduates are in social work, many are in teaching, and others pursue careers in law, city planning, politics, medicine, public health, cultural resource management, and journalism. Students intending to specialize in anthropology usually go on to graduate school because professional employment in the field almost always demands an advanced degree.

Most anthropology faculty have their offices in Social Sciences 1 Building. Social Sciences 1 also houses the Visual Culture Research Laboratory and laboratories for archaeology and physical anthropology where space is provided for laboratory and individual studies courses and for collections of mammalian skeletal material, casts of fossil hominids, ceramics, stone tools, and other archaeological artifacts.

The Anthropology Society, a campus club, is open to all students interested in anthropology. The Anthropology Colloquium showcases guest speakers and gives faculty and students an opportunity to discuss new approaches to anthropological questions. Students and faculty interested in archaeology also gather informally at the Archaeology/ Physical Anthropology Forum to share information on fieldwork and employment opportunities.

Undergraduate Handbook

All undergraduate majors should obtain a copy of  the Anthropology Department undergraduate handbook at UCSC from the department office (361 Social Sciences I Building). It outlines information on department procedures and requirements, program planning, independent study, faculty interests, and campus resources for anthropology majors.

Major Requirements

The Anthropology Department urges students to seek faculty advice early in planning for the major. Faculty hold regular office hours weekly and encourage students to come in to talk about their program or course work. Peer advisers are also available.

To graduate with an anthropology major, students must take courses 1, 2, 3, and either course 4 or an 80s-level course as background for upper-division courses. They must take a minimum of nine upper-division courses, including at least one course selected from each of these five categories:

Anthropological Theory Courses
100       History and Theory of Physical Anthropology
150       Communicating Anthropology
152       Survey of Cultural Anthropological Theory
170       History of Archaeological Theory

Sociocultural Anthropology Courses
123     Psychological Anthropology
124     Anthropology of Religion
126     Sexuality and Society in Cross-Cultural Perspective
127     Ethnographies of Capitalism
128     Contemporary American Evangelical Culture
129     Other Globalizations: Cultures and Histories of Interconnection
131     Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective
132     Photography and Anthropology
133     Narratives of the Popular
134     Medical Anthropology
135A  Cities
137     Consuming Culture
138     Political Anthropology
139     Language and Culture
142     Anthropology of Law
143     Performance and Power
145X  Special Topics in Socio-Cultural Anthropology
146     Anthropology and the Environment
151     Workshop in Ethnography
154     Multimedia Ethnography
155     Cultural Encounters
157     Modernity and Its Others
159     Race and Anthropology
164     Anthropology of Dance
165     Anthropological Folklore

Ethnographic Area Studies Courses
130A  Peoples and Cultures of Africa
130B  Brazil
130C  Politics and Culture in China
130E  Culture and Politics of Island Southeast Asia
130F   African Diasporas in the Americas
130G  Asian Americans in Ethnography and Film
130H  Ethnography of Russia and Eastern Europe
130I   Cultures of India
130L  Ethnographies of Latin America
130M Inside Mexico
130N  Native Peoples of North America
130O  Postcolonial Britain and France
130R  Provincializing America
130T  Anthropological Approaches to Islam
130X  Special Topics in Ethnography

Physical Anthropology and Archaeology Courses
101     Human Evolution
102A  Human Skeletal Biology
103     Forensic Anthropology
104     Human Adaptability
106     Primate Behavior and Ecology
107     Human Functional Anatomy
110     Comparative Functional Anatomy
111     Human Ecology
112     Life Cycles
172     Archaeological Research Design
173     Origins of Farming
174     Origins of Complex Societies
175A  African Archaeology
175B  African Archaeology: Development
175C  African Diaspora Archaeology
176A  North American Archeology
176B  Meso-American Archaeology
178     Historical Archaeology: A Global Perspective
180     Ceramic Analysis in Archaeology
183     Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
184     Zooarchaeology
185     Osteology of Mammals, Birds, and Fish

Senior Seminar Courses
190A  Tropical Forest Ecology
190B  Field Methods in Primatology
190C  Independent Field Research
194A  Community
194B  Chimpanzees: Biology, Behavior and Evolution
194C  Food and Medicine
194F   Memory
194G  Politics and Secularism
194I   Consumption and Consumerism
194K  Reading Ethnographies
194L  Archaeology of the African Diaspora
194M Medical Anthropology
194N  Comparison of Cultures
194P  Space, Place, and Culture
194S   The Anthropology of Sound
194T  Poverty and Inequality
194U  Environmental Anthropology: Nature, Culture, Politics
194V  Picturing Cultures
194X  Women in Politics: A Third World  Perspective
194Y  California Archaeology
194Z  Emerging Worlds
196A/B    Southwest American Archaeology

Two-credit courses do not count toward the nine upper-division courses required for the major. Only one 5-credit individual studies course (197, 198, or 199) may be counted toward the nine required upper-division courses. Course 107L does not count toward the nine upper-division courses required for the major. Theory courses can only be counted toward the theory requirement or an upper-division elective.

Disciplinary Communication (DC) Requirement

Students of every major must satisfy that major's upper-division Disciplinary Communication (DC) requirement. The DC requirement will normally be met within one to three courses already required for the major. For detailed information on this major’s DC requirement, consult your major adviser or see the 2010-11 general catalog.

Comprehensive Requirement

Students can fulfill the senior comprehensive requirement in anthropology either by passing an advanced senior seminar (194-series course, 190A-B-C, or 196A-B), by writing an acceptable independent senior thesis, or by passing an approved graduate-level topical seminar in anthropology.

Senior seminars are small, writing-intensive classes focusing on advanced topics in anthropology. The prerequisite for admission to a senior seminar is successful completion of courses 1, 2, and 3; senior seminars are restricted to anthropology majors.

Students considering an independent thesis must arrange for the sponsorship and support of a faculty member before beginning research. An independent senior thesis (not written within a senior seminar) should be based on original research and reflect the student’s understanding of fundamental theories and issues in anthropology. The thesis should be comparable in content, style, and length (generally 25–30 pages) to a professional journal article in its subfield.

Students writing a senior thesis must complete five, instead of four, upper-division electives.
Students who intend to satisfy the exit requirement by taking a graduate seminar must first get permission from the department. Not all graduate seminars are appropriate for fulfilling this requirement.

All majors, including double majors, must prepare a program of study in consultation with a member of the Anthropology Department. A combined major in anthropology and Earth and planetary sciences, leading to a B.A. degree, is also offered; for that program description, see Earth and Planetary Sciences. Students going on to graduate school should plan course schedules in close consultation with faculty advisers.

Many anthropology majors whose studies emphasize archaeology have benefited from concurrent study in the Cabrillo College Archaeological Technology Certificate Program. This vocational certification program is sponsored entirely by Cabrillo College, but credit for its summer field survey and excavation component may be transferred for credit at UCSC. Although courses in the Archaeological Technology Certificate Program do not count toward the UCSC anthropology major, students who have obtained the certificate in tandem with their bachelor’s degree in anthropology have expanded their employment and  advanced degree program opportunities. Students interested in exploring this possibility are encouraged to consult with UCSC archaeology faculty and to visit the program’s web site at http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/archtech/.

Transfer Students

If possible, transfer students should complete lower-division requirements for the major before coming to UCSC by taking classes equivalent to courses 1, 2, and 3. Department policy also allows up to 10 quarter credits (equivalent to two UCSC courses) of upper-division transfer credit toward the major requirement. Transfer students should bring a copy of their UCSC Transfer Credit Summary and an unofficial copy of all pertinent transcripts to the undergraduate adviser in the department office (361 Social Sciences 1 Building) as soon as possible after reaching campus so that prerequisites can be verified and course enrollment can proceed smoothly.

Peer Advisers

The Anthropology Department has instituted a peer adviser program as a supplement to academic advising offered by faculty members. The peer advisers are juniors and seniors who have been trained to help students with questions and general guidance through the anthropology major. Peer advisers hold regularly scheduled office hours in the department office.

Honors

The Anthropology Department awards “honors in the major” based on a ranked departmental grade point average that is calculated using all upper-division courses taken in the major with the exception that only one independent-study course can be used in this calculation. For students who have taken multiple independent-study courses in the department, the independent-study course that has the highest grade is used for the calculation. Approximately 15 percent of the graduating class is considered for honors based on their cumulative GPA through the quarter before graduation.

“Highest honors in the major” is determined by faculty review of all the departmental narrative evaluations for all students considered for honors within a particular quarter. The criteria for awarding highest honors in the major are overall superlative performance in the major and general breadth of excellence across the subfields of anthropology as reflected in the narrative evaluations. Receiving honors on the senior exit requirement is also considered as a factor in awarding highest honors, but is not always determinative.

Minor Requirements

Students earn a minor in anthropology by completing all of the requirements for the major with the following differences:

The number of upper-division courses is reduced from nine to six. Of these, at least one must be from each of the following categories: (1) theory, (2) sociocultural anthropology, (3) ethnographic area studies, and (4) physical anthropology or archaeology.
Independent study courses cannot be used toward completion of the minor.

No senior seminar or thesis is required.

For more information regarding department policies, please consult the undergraduate adviser at the Anthropology Department office, 361 Social Sciences 1 Building. A handbook on the anthropology program is available there or on the anthropology web site.

Graduate Program

The anthropology doctoral program at UCSC consists of three tracks: cultural anthropology, anthropological archaeology, and physical anthropology. The majority of students are admitted to the cultural anthropology program. Smaller numbers of students are admitted to the programs in anthropological archaeology and physical anthropology.

Although applicants are accepted only for the Ph.D. program, students may obtain an M.A. degree after fulfilling specific requirements during the first two years.

The theme of emerging worlds—culture and power after progress unites the research interests of many faculty in the cultural anthropology graduate program at UCSC. In recent years, anthropology’s central concept of culture has been subjected to extraordinary ethnographic and theoretical pressures.  Across the social sciences, scholars are responding to emergent scientific and social dilemmas by turning to the concept of culture and the ethnographic method. Such disciplinary turns grow from a challenging new set of social configurations, which affect both scholarly and lay understandings of the present, past, and future: the demise of certainties about progress and modernization and the need to understand newly emergent worlds. Nineteenth- and 20th-century ideas of progress and programs of modernization both created the concept of culture and relegated it to a nostalgic role as backward-looking sentiment. Anthropologists studied “vanishing worlds.” In the last 30 years, however, such certainties have been challenged. Grand theories of human behavior that depended on the idea of a universal man have begun to fray around the edges. Heterogeneity and disjuncture have caught the attention of a wide range of social scientists, calling out for ethnographic investigation. In this context, scholarly discussions have turned toward culture, not as “tradition,” but as the world-making networks, geographies, innovations, meanings, and assemblages that are carrying us into the future.

Our concentration on ”emerging worlds” and on the construction of anthropological knowledge is especially well suited for drawing together diverse scholars and specialists in challenging and enriching conversations. Rather than reproduce the boundaries among the traditional subfields of anthropology, we explore how recombinations of these approaches can elucidate specific anthropological problems.

Working with their faculty advisory committee, students in cultural anthropology have considerable freedom to design their own programs of study after completing the two-quarter core course and the ethnographic practice course during the first year. To achieve Ph.D. candidacy, students are expected to pass a first-year review of their written work, take three additional 5-credit courses in anthropology (excluding independent study courses), maintain satisfactory academic progress, satisfy the ethnographic writing requirement and the foreign language requirement, pass a qualifying exam at the end of the third year, and meet the specific requirements of the Division of Graduate Studies. After advancing to Ph.D. candidacy, students carry out a sustained ethnographic fieldwork project and are expected to complete their dissertation within a year after returning from the field.

Graduate students in cultural anthropology may obtain a notation on the anthropology Ph.D. diploma indicating that they have specialized in feminist studies or Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) if they meet requirements spelled out by the individual committee composed of anthropology and feminist studies faculty or the anthropology and  faculty from the program awarding the notation.

The Ph.D. program in anthropological archaeology is highly selective, focusing on the archaeology of late precolonial societies in East and West Africa and North America, especially the Southwest and California. The program also features an emerging concentration on the archaeology of colonial encounters among peoples of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It is distinctive in insisting that theories of power, production and exchange, human ecology, gender, ethnicity, and technological practice be explored through rigorous laboratory and field research methods.

The Ph.D. program in physical anthropology combines a strong emphasis on hard and soft tissue anatomy with a broad evolutionary perspective. This highly selective track is characterized by intense mentoring of students, involvement of students in instruction as well as course work, and interdisciplinary training. Specific training is offered in skeletal biology, comparative primate anatomy, behavior and ecology, forensic anthropology, and evolutionary theory.
Although the areas of study of the archaeology and physical anthropology programs are distinct, their paths toward the Ph.D. are similar. In the first year, students take two foundational theory courses and pass a review of their work. Within the first two years of study, students complete at least two foundational materials/methods courses or laboratory courses in other departments; two advanced laboratory apprenticeship courses or similar courses in other departments; two foundational courses in geographic/temporal areas or, in physical anthropology, topical areas; two graduate seminars with other anthropology or campus faculty; one quantitative methods course; and two terms of supervised teaching experience.

The third-year requirements are three laboratory apprenticeship courses, the grant writing seminar, and tutorials to prepare the student for the qualifying exams. All courses outside the department must be approved by the student’s adviser. After advancing to Ph.D. candidacy, the student carries out a sustained laboratory or fieldwork project and is expected to complete the dissertation within a year after finishing research.