Anthropology CoursesAnthropology offers Social Science and Science Courses; below are first, Social Science courses, then Science courses.
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Anthropology Social Science CoursesSSC199Y1 SSC199H1 Undergraduate seminar that focuses on specific ideas, questions, phenomena or controversies, taught by a regular Faculty member deeply engaged in the discipline. Open only to newly admitted first-year students. It may serve as a distribution requirement course; Details here.. ANT100Y1 Society and culture from various anthropological perspectives: socio-cultural, biological, archaeological, and linguistic. ANT200Y1 Cultures in the Old and New Worlds from an archaeological perspective. Principles of prehistoric research are applied to archaeological information, from the Early Pleistocene to the beginning of written history. ANT204H1 A course focused on recent anthropological scholarship that seeks to understand and explain the transformation of contemporary societies and cultures. Topics may include some of the following: new patterns of global inequality, war and neo-colonialism, health and globalization, social justice and indigeneity, religious fundamentalism, gender inequalities, biotechnologies and society etc. ANT210H1 This course introduces students to the skills they need to read theory, conduct research, write essays, and do presentations in the field of social/cultural anthropology. The emphasis is on interactive, small group learning. ANT253H1 This course introduces linguistic analysis with a view towards its application to the study of the relation between culture and social structure. The interplay of pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and discourse with rituals, ideologies, and constructions of social meaning and worldview are discussed in tandem with the traditional branches of linguistic analysis—phonology, morphology, grammar, syntax, and semantics. The objective of the course is to provide a broad framework for understanding the role of language in society. ANT299Y1 Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details here. ARH305H1 See Archaeology ANT311Y1 Practical field training through six weeks of excavation on an archaeological site. Basic principles of artifact handling and classification. (Offered only in Summer Session) ARH312Y1 See Archaeology ANT314H1 An archaeological survey of the human prehistory of northwestern North America from the late Pleistocene to the time of early European contact. Geographical coverage will include the Northwest Coast, California, and the Intermontane Plateau. ANT315H1 Archaeology and ethnohistory of Arctic cultures. Emphasis is on variation in social organization, settlement pattern, economy, ideology, and interaction with the expanding European world-system. ANT316H1 This course provides an introduction to the cultures of Mesoamerica, from the first arrival of indigenous peoples to the appearance of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Students will become acquainted with cultures including Olmec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Maya, and Aztec, while also considering issues of method and evidence. ANT317H1 This course examines the precontact and early contact period culture history of eastern North America, including Ontario, through archaeological evidence. Topics covered include the earliest peopling of the region at the end of the Ice Age, diversity of hunter-gatherer societies, introduction of agriculture, and the development of the dynamic First Nations societies who eventually met and interacted with Europeans. ANT318H1 This course offers a comparative examination of the rise and organization of ancient cities through a detailed investigation of urban social theory. We will explore competing anthropological interpretations of urban process while probing the political, ideological, and economic structures of the world’s earliest cities. Students will have the opportunity to consider a broad range of subjects, including mechanisms of city genesis; urban-rural relations; the intersections of city and state; and historical variation in urban landscapes, ideologies, and political economies. ANT319Y1 This course examines human prehistory in North America, North of Mexico, from the time of earliest occupation to European contact. Special topics include Paleoindian and Archaic adaptations, the rise of complex hunter-gatherers, origins of farming and the evolution of complex chiefdoms. ANT322H1 This course will present various perspectives on the nature and dynamics of youth culture. It will discuss the research accumulated over the past quarter century on youth lifestyles, from fashion and music to the formation and spread of slang. It will also look at the various critical and controversial aspects of adolescence in contemporary culture. ANT323Y1 Theories of culture and society, with examples from ordinary life and fantasy and their popular expressions. ANT324H1 The course uses tourism as a lens to examine global connections. Particular focus will be on the politics of cultural encounters. Drawing examples from diverse ethnographic materials, the course explores how different visions of the world come into contact, negotiated and transformed, and how tourist encounters shape people’s everyday lives. JAL328H1 Introduction to writing systems; their historical development, their relationship to language, and their role in culture and society. (Given by the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics) ANT329H1 The role of language and symbolism in the representation and manipulation of ideology and power structure. Case materials drawn from the study of verbal arts, gender, law, ethnic relations, consumption patterns, advertising, and politics with a focus on North America. ANT340H1 Provides a framework for understanding current anthropological issues in the different geo-political regions of Latin America. Special attention will be paid to historical/conceptual development of the discipline in the region, and the course will introduce a debate about the dealth and “resurgence” of area studies. ANT341H1 This course offers a general introduction to contemporary China in a global context from an anthropological perspective. It covers four major aspects of Chinese culture and society: Political Economy, Social Relations, Modernities and Modernization, and Overseas Chinese. ANT343H1 Social anthropological perspectives on variations in gender roles and systems. Examines, through comparison of ethnography, the relationship of gender to social organization, economic and political processes, belief systems and social change. ANT345H1 This course examines medical anthropology’s contributions to, and critiques of, global health policies and programs. Topics covered include: colonialism and health, the political ecology of disease, indigenous constructions of illness and healing, medical pluralism, the politics of primary health care, population policies, reproductive health, and AIDS. ANT346H1 Social anthropological perspective on the nature and meaning of food production, culinary cultures, industrial food, food as metaphor, and famine and hunger. ANT347Y1 The role of culture, cultural diversity, space and performance in urban institutions and settings. The cultural context and consequence of urbanization. ANT348H1 Aspects of health and disease in cross-cultural perspective. Critical views on the interface between conventional “western” medicine and alternative, indigenous, and traditional therapeutic systems. ANT350H1 The course uses ethnographic material to examine the ways in which global forces have changed the nature of work in different sites since World War Two - North America, Europe, and the countries of the South are selectively included. ANT351H1 This course utilizes a social movements perspective to examine the various kinds of conflicts emerging over “environment,” including disputes over food, animal rights, parks, wilderness, energy, and water. Building on the anthropological literature on landscape and political ecology, this course explores the various ways in which social movement constituencies are responding to and engaging with the uncertain and uneven nature of environmental change. ANT352H1 This course examines key themes in the constitution of South Asia as an area for ethnographic analysis. Lectures and discussions will focus on classic works in the anthropology of South Asia, examining the rise of gatekeeping concepts such as caste, the village, collectivity, and the oppression of women. The course provides theoretical and historical perspectives for the anthropological study of contemporary South Asia. ANT353H1 The course will focus on the dynamic interplay between developments in Canadian Indigenous rights, contested understandings of the environment and primary resource exploration/development in mining, forestry and hydro. The changing relationship is challenging industry to re-think social/environmental responsibility, local vs national equity with implications beyond the Aboriginal community. ANT354H1 This course examines how what we know as Japan and its culture has been constructed through global interactions. Topics include gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, social and family life, work and leisure, and Japanese identity amid changing global power relations. JAL355H1 An introduction to some of the principal questions of feminist theory, as viewed from sociolinguistics. Topics include: socialization into gendered discourse patterns, cultural and ethnic differences in gendered interactions; the role of language and gender in legal, medical and labour settings; multilingualism, migration, imperialism and nationalism; sexuality, desire and queer linguistics, language, gender and globalization. ANT356H1 This course introduces anthropological definitions of religion; debates on rituals and rites of passage; rationality, religion and modernity; belief and body; religion and the media. It also engages with studies in the anthropology of popular and transnational religion, and the politics of religious movements. ANT357H1 Anthropological perspectives on how continental and overseas expansion and conquest have shaped the cultures of the U.S. and of those it has dominated within and beyond its borders. Topics include interventions into health and education of colonized groups, sport and imperial masculinity, culture of U.S. military bases/cities, living with “terror.” ANT358H1 It is widely acknowledged that sharp disparities in disease burden and access to medical care characterize global patterns in health. These disparities affect the life chances of much of the world’s population, based on class position, gender, and geographical region. ANT359H1 The concept of culture in historical and current debates about difference between human beings. The relationship between anthropological and other treatments of difference (psychoanalytical, philosophical, literary, and artistic). Political implications: multiculturalism, separatism, imperialism. ARH360Y1 See Archaeology ARH361H1 See Archaeology ANT363Y1 Origins, history and internal dynamics of early and modern state societies, examined with a view to placing our own system in an historical and comparative perspective. Case studies include material from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. ANT364Y1 This course will examine the relationships between humans and the environment in the context of contemporary efforts to ‘develop’ within or in opposition to the political economy of neoliberal globalization. We will critically examine the discourses of progress and environment within a broader theoretical inquiry of structure/agency and power. ANT365H1 Culture areas and types existing in precontact and early contact times in North America; problems arising out of contacts between North American Indians and Euroamericans. ANT366H1 Explores how anthropologists have traditionally studied social movements and how new social movements have challenged anthropologists to rethink some of their ethnographic methods and approaches. Some specific movements covered include those related to indigenous rights, environmentalism, refugees, gay and lesbian issues, biotechnology, new religions, and globalization. ANT367Y1 This course focuses upon religion and spirituality amongst peoples with a direct, experiential relationship to the world. The first term examines case studies from Australia, Native North America and Africa; the second term examines aspects of the “world religions’. ANT370H1 An in-depth critical review of foundational ideas in the development of the practice of Anthropology. Topics may include questioning fieldwork, origins and legacies of functionalism, cultural materialism, politics of culture, power and political economy, globalization and post modernism, gender and post-structuralism. ANT371H1 A detailed review of human dietary adaptations, subsistence strategies and the suite of cognitive, cultural and life history traits that make humans so adaptable. Focus is on the relevance of the past to understanding the modern world food system and finding solutions to contemporary problems in population, food, and health. ANT375H1 The focus of this course is on reading full length ethnographies considered to be foundational to social and cultural anthropology. It will expose students to key issues in anthropological writing. ANT395Y0 ANT396Y0 Studies in anthropology taken abroad. Areas of concentration vary depending on the instructor and year offered. ANT398H0 ANT399Y0 An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details here. JAL401H1 Practice in language analysis based on elicited data from a native speaker of a foreign language, emphasizing procedures and techniques. (Given by the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics) ANT406H1 Core reduction strategies, replication, experimental archaeology, use-wear, design approaches, ground stone, inferring behaviour from lithic artifacts. ANT407H1 This course provides a comparative study of the emergence, organization, and transformation of the two historically-documented states of the native Americas: the Inka and the Aztec. Students will have the opportunity to analyze ethnohistorical and archaeological data in order to critically evaluate models of the pre-industrial “state” while gauging the anthropological significance of either convergence or particularity in the historical development of centralized political formations. ANT409H1 The survey and spatial analysis of archaeological evidence over territories larger than individual camps, villages or towns. Settlement systems, regional exchange and communication, rank-size analysis, nearest neighbour analysis etc. ANT410H1 Examines the diversity of recent hunter-gatherer societies, as a source of analogues for understanding the archaeological record of past foraging peoples. ANT411H1 Seminar in the critical examination of major schools of archaeological thought. ANT412H1 Introduces the problems, methods and some of the material culture of colonial and industrial archaeology with emphasis on Canada and colonial America. Covers the use of documentary evidence, maps, architecture, and a variety of artifact classes. ANT415Y1 Examination and interpretation of faunal material from archaeological sites as evidence for culture. ANT417H1 Methods for studying the socio-spatial aspects of the archaeological evidence for households and communities. ANT419H1 Current research in Palaeolithic Archaeology reflecting emerging issues. ANT420H1 How social complexity is manifested in the archaeological record. Origins and evolution of prehistoric complex societies, from small-scale chiefdoms to large-scale states. ANT421H1 This course examines the institution of the royal court in the ancient New World as a nexus for negotiation of power and assertion of cultural identity. Case studies concentrate on the Maya; Aztec and Inca cultures provide important comparative contexts. We also explore the integration of textual and material evidence in investigating ancient cultures. ANT425H1 How ideas about language fit into the overall views of humankind as expressed by selected anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and philosophers. ANT426H1 Language and imagery representing the “oriental” in the West. Emphasis on representations of the “Semites”, the Islamic peoples of North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the Jews from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. ANT427H1 Theoretical and empirical studies on the role of language in the reproduction and transformation of ideology, hegemony and political economy. Topics may include language & colonialism, imperialism, globalization, nationalism, racism, sexism, bureaucratic interactions, environmentalism, migration, gentrification. Compares and contrasts critical discourse analytic and linguistic anthropological approaches to method and politics. ANT435H1 A detailed review of the classic and recently emerging literature on the anthropology of children, childhood, and childcare. Focus is on theories for evolution of human parenting adaptations, challenges in research methodology and implications for contemporary research, practice and policy in the area of care and nutrition of infants and children. ANT440H1 An exploration of the conceptual tools used to understand reflexive modernity. Focus on the articulated web of global and local networks that produce simultaneously inequalities and potentially new identities and collectivities. ANT442H1 The relationship between technology and culture through a focus on reproductive, genetic and communications technologies. ANT444Y1 Social and linguistic anthropological approaches to research in urban settings. Methodology, field techniques and research ethics. Students must formulate and complete a field research project. ANT445H1 This course examines science and technology from an anthropological perspective. Throughout the course, in addition to introducing major concepts of science studies, we will examine multiple “concrete things,” like computers as cultural artifacts, connected to wider social, political, economic, ideological, and cultural contexts. ANT446H1 Europe is a, landmass and a (transnational) collection of people – in both cases rather vaguely defined. Europe is also an idea, one often closely associated with “western civilization”. So if anthropology is a combination of the ethnographic study of a place and its people, and also the critical study of a culture, then certainly both of these perspectives could usefully be applied to a course on Europe. Both of these dimensions are also of pressing concern to within Europe today. ANT447H1 The course investigates the nature and significance, in history and the history of ideas, of the ways of life of the Australian Aborigines. The emphasis is on the influence of religion and music on the economic, political and social organization of the people. ANT448H1 An examination of theories and critique of ethnicity and nationalism from an anthropological perspective. The problem of the cultural context of ethnicity. Case studies. ANT450H1 Comparative examination of human ecological adaptations, livelihood strategies, spiritual and cultural values and their relation to environmental maintenance or degradation. Explores contemporary “grass roots” environmental movements and ideologies. ANT452H1 The concept of human rights in its universal claims rises fundamental questions for anthropology as it challenges a central value of the discipline: cultural relativism. Students are asked to consider epistemological and theoretical questions and case studies (e.g. claims of rights by ethnic collectivities). ANT454H1 This course investigates the connection between religion, music and society from an anthropological point of view. The primary focus is on societies where music is seen by people as the principal vehicle for religious expression. Examination of religions and musics of Australian aboriginal, Melanesian, Native North America, African societies, others. ANT456H1 This course explores, first, how and where forms of desire and sexual practice have become sites of anthropological inquiry and exemplars of particular cultural logics. Tracing, then, the “transnational turn” in the anthropology of sexuality, the course engages important debates about culture, locality, and globalization. By focusing on the transnational movement of desires, practices, and pleasures through activisms, mass media, and tourism, the course asks how sex is global and how globalization is thoroughly sexed. Course material will stress, but not be limited to, forms of same-sex or otherwise “queer” sexualities. ANT459H1 A study of the cross-cultural meaning of two-dimensional representations of space and the socio-political relevance of place. ANT460H1 This fourth-year seminar examines how female gender shapes health and illness. Using case studies of sexual health, fertility and its management, substance use/abuse, mental health, and occupational/labor health risks, the course investigates the material, political, and socio-cultural factors that can put women at risk for a range of illness conditions. ANT461Y1 History and development of theories which underlie contemporary anthropology. ANT462H1 This course examines how anthropologists have studied the way that people hope, imagine, love, and despise. Ethnography of “the intimate” realms of affect raises important questions about knowledge production and methodology as well as offering insight into how people come to act upon the world and what the human consequences of such action are. The course will also examine how “the intimate” is socially produced and harnessed in the service of politics and culture. Topics will include grief and its lack; dreams and activism; love and social change; memory and imperialism; sexuality and care; and violence and hope. ANT463H1 Drawing on ethnographies, anthropological theories of social change and case law, the course will explore recent Canadian legal decisions dealing with Native issues and review how the Indigenous argument for Aboriginal difference (land and treaty rights, customary law, self-governance) is shaped in legal contexts and affects changes to the practice of Aboriginality in Canada. ANT464H1 This course reviews the issues in theory and practice of oral history and narratives, examining the multiple forms of oral evidence, its reliability, and strategies for compilation and analysis of oral data. One important component of the course will be the conducting of interviews. ANT465H1 This course explores themes such as the emergence of political and religious imaginaries; the relationship between anthropology and psychoanalysis; anthropology of transnational and diasporic subjectivity; affect and violence; subjectivity and the state. ANT466H1 This seminar studies the Philippines and in the Filipino diaspora. It draws on anthropological, historical, and literary perspectives on culture and social practices, with an eye to considering the ways “the Philippines” as an object of inquiry is differently understood in a real/anthropological studies, feminist, North American ethnic studies and transnational studies. ANT467H1 This seminar course explores critical issues in contemporary South Asia through ethnographies centering on popular culture, globalization, gender and sexuality, activism, and development. ANT475H1 This course draws on many of the themes developed in the third year course but with an emphasis on contemporary ethnography. A sequence of full length recent ethnographies will be read. ANT480H1 Unique opportunity to explore a particular anthropological topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year. ARH482H1 See Archaeology. Unique opportunity to explore a particular archaeological topic in-depth. Topics vary from year to year. ANT483H1 This course will focus on an advanced topic in Linguistic Anthropology. Topic will vary from year- to-year. ANT490Y1 An instructor-supervised experiential study project in social and cultural anthropology. Course takes place in an off-campus setting. ANT497Y1 ANT498H1 ANT499H1 Supervised independent research on a topic agreed on by the student and supervisor before enrolment in the course. Open in exceptional circumstances to advanced students with a strong background in Anthropology. Course Supervisor must be a member of the Anthropology faculty. Application for enrolment should be made to the Department in the preceding term. A maximum of one year of Independent Research courses is allowed per program.
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