Anthropology

University of California, Berkeley

This is an archived copy of the 2015-16 guide. To access the most recent version of the guide, please visit http://guide.berkeley.edu.

Overview

The Department of Anthropology offers students the opportunity to study humankind from the broadest historical and geographical perspective. Courses in the department offer knowledge of social and cultural aspects of behavior as well as the physical nature of humans. Lower division courses are intended to give a general understanding of human evolution, prehistory, and the nature of human cultures while upper division courses elaborate particular themes.

The collections and research facilities of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology are available for study in archaeology, ethnography, physical anthropology, and related subjects by graduate and undergraduate students, and visiting scholars. The museum's exhibition hall is used for instructional and educational purposes, particularly in connection with classwork. Those interested may address the Director in 103 Kroeber Hall.

Students seeking information on the Undergraduate Program may inquire at 209 Kroeber Hall. Students seeking information on the Graduate Program may inquire at 205 Kroeber Hall.

Library

The Anthropology Library, 230 Kroeber Hall, is part of the campus library system. It contains nearly 70,000 bound volumes and receives 965 current serial titles. The Anthropology Library houses a large reading room and facilities for reading microfilm. It is open to all members of the University but serves primarily the faculty and students of the Anthropology Department.

Undergraduate Program

Anthropology : BA, Minor

Graduate Programs

Anthropology : PhD, with specializations in archaeology, biological anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology
Folklore : MA (through the interdisciplinary Folklore Program)
Medical Anthropology : Joint PhD (in cooperation with UCSF)

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Courses

Select a subject to view courses

Anthropology

ANTHRO 202 Primate Behavior 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 1998

ANTHRO 204 Primate Evolution 4 Units

Terms offered: Prior to 2007

ANTHRO 209 Human Adaptation 4 Units

Terms offered: Prior to 2007

ANTHRO 210 Special Topics in Physical Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2012

ANTHRO 217 Discourse and of the Body 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2011
This course juxtaposes discourse analysis and approaches to health and biomedicine, querying how ideologies of language and communication provide implicit foundations for work on health, disease, medicine, and the body and how biopolitical discourses and practices inform constructions of discourse.

ANTHRO 219 Topics in Medical Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2014, Spring 2014
Comparative study of mental illness and socially generated disease: psychiatric treatment, practitioners, and institutions.

ANTHRO 221 Pre-Columbian Central America 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2010

ANTHRO 226 Archaeology of the Pacific 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Spring 2003, Spring 2000
Subject matter will vary; current issues and debates in the archaeology of the Pacific, e.g., trade, exchange, colonization, maritime adaptations, etc.

ANTHRO 227 Historical Archaeology Research 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2014
Historical archaeology seminar. Subject matter will vary from year to year.

ANTHRO 228 Method 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Fall 2011, Fall 2009
Various topics and issues in the methods of archaeological analysis and interpretation: style, ceramics, architectural analysis, lithic analysis, archaeozoology, etc.

ANTHRO 229A Archaeological Research Strategies 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Required for all first and second year graduate students in archaeology. Three hours of seminar discussion of major issues in the history and theory of archaeological research and practice (229A), and of the research strategies and design for various kinds of archaeological problems (229B). To be offered alternate semesters.

ANTHRO 229B Archaeological Research Strategies 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Required for all first and second year graduate students in archaeology. Three hours of seminar discussion of major issues in the history and theory of archaeological research and practice (229A), and of the research strategies and design for various kinds of archaeological problems (229B). To be offered alternate semesters.

ANTHRO 229C Writing the Field in Archaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2010, Fall 2009
This seminar is intended to guide students in the definition of a field within archaeology, from initial conceptualization to writing of a field statement, dissertation chapter, or review article.

ANTHRO 230 Special Topics in Archaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

ANTHRO 231 Advanced Topics in Bioarchaeology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2009
This advanced seminar course explores how we reconstruct past lifeways from archaeological skeletal remains. It deals with the skeletal biology of past populations, covering both the theoretical approaches and methods used in the analysis of skeletal and dental remains.

ANTHRO 232 Advanced Topics in Bone Biology: Biocultural and Evolutionary Perspectives 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2011
This advanced seminar course will discuss influences on bone health and maintence from a unique biocultural and evolutionary perspective.

ANTHRO 235 Special Topics in Museum Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2012, Spring 2011
Contemporary issues in museum studies from an anthropological perspective.

ANTHRO 240A Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory 5 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Anthropological theory and practice--following the rest of the world--have been undergoing important restructuring in the past decade. The course is organized to reflect this fact. We will begin by looking at recent debates about the nature and purpose of anthropology. This will provide a starting point for reading a series of classic ethnographies in new ways as well as examining some dimensions of the current research agenda in cultural anthropology.

ANTHRO 240B Fundamentals of Anthropological Theory 5 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Anthropological theory and practice--following the rest of the world--have been undergoing important restructuring in the past decade. The course is organized to reflect this fact. We will begin by looking at recent debates about the nature and purpose of anthropology. This will provide a starting point for reading a series of classic ethnographies in new ways as well as examining some dimensions of the current research agenda in cultural anthropology.

ANTHRO 250A Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Psychological Anthropology 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Fall 2010, Fall 2006

ANTHRO 250E Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Politics 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2012, Spring 2011

ANTHRO 250F Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Religion 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2003

ANTHRO 250G Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Ethics 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 1999, Fall 1996

ANTHRO 250J Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Ethnographic Field Methods 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

ANTHRO 250N Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Classic Ethnography 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013

ANTHRO 250R Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Dissertation Writing 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014

ANTHRO 250V Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Tourism 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2015

ANTHRO 250X Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Special Topics 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

ANTHRO C254 Topics in Science and Technology Studies 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This course provides a strong foundation for graduate work in STS, a multidisciplinary field with a signature capacity to rethink the relationship among science, technology, and political and social life. From climate change to population genomics, access to medicines and the impact of new media, the problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic.

ANTHRO C261 Theories of Narrative 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Spring 2006
This course examines a broad range of theories that elucidate the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion; imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. It focuses on narratives at work, on the move, in action as they emerge from the matrix of the everyday preeminently, storytelling in conversation--as key to folk genres--the folktale, the legend, the epic, the myth.

ANTHRO C262A Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.

ANTHRO C262B Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.

ANTHRO 270A Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Semantics 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2010

ANTHRO 270B Seminars in Linguistic Anthropology: Fundamentals of Language in Context 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2011
Intensive introduction to the study of language as a cultural system and speech as socially embedded communicative practice. This is the core course for students wishing to take further coursework in linguistic anthropology.

ANTHRO C273 Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work.

ANTHRO 280B Seminars in Area Studies: Africa 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester.

ANTHRO 280C Seminars in Area Studies: South Asia 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester.

ANTHRO 280D Seminars in Area Studies: China 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester.

ANTHRO 280X Seminars in Area Studies: Special Topics in Area Studies 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2008, Fall 1999, Spring 1998
Courses will vary from year to year. See Departmental Internal Catalogue for detailed descriptions of course offerings for each semester.

ANTHRO 290 Survey of Anthropological Research 1 Unit

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Required each term of all registered graduate students prior to their advancement to Ph.D. candidacy.

ANTHRO 296A Supervised Research 2 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Practice in original field research under staff supervision. One unit of credit for every four hours of work in the field.

ANTHRO 296B Supervised Research 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Analysis and write-up of field materials.

ANTHRO N296A Supervised Research 1 - 6 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Summer 2016 8 Week Session, Summer 2015 8 Week Session
Practice in original field research under staff supervision. One unit of credit for every four hours of work in the field.

ANTHRO 298 Directed Reading 1 - 8 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Individual conferences intended to provide directed reading in subject matter not covered by available seminar offerings.

ANTHRO 299 Directed Research 1 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Individual conferences to provide supervision in the preparation of an original research paper or dissertation.

ANTHRO 301 Professional Training: Teaching 1 - 6 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Group consultation with instructor. Supervised training with instructor on teaching undergraduates.

ANTHRO 375 Graduate Pedagogy Seminar 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Training in both the logistics and the pedagogical issues of undergraduate teaching.

ANTHRO 602 Individual Study for Doctoral Students 1 - 12 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
In preparation for Ph.D. examinations. Individual study in consultation with adviser. Intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare themselves for the various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D. May not be used for unit or residence requirements for the degree.

Folklore

FOLKLOR C261 Theories of Narrative 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Spring 2006
This course examines a broad range of theories that elucidate the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion; imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. It focuses on narratives at work, on the move, in action as they emerge from the matrix of the everyday preeminently, storytelling in conversation--as key to folk genres--the folktale, the legend, the epic, the myth.

FOLKLOR C262A Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.

FOLKLOR C262B Theories of Traditionality and Modernity 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities.

FOLKLOR 298 Readings in Folklore 3 - 6 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

FOLKLOR 299 Directed Research 3 - 6 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

Faculty and Instructors

Faculty

Sabrina C. Agarwal, Associate Professor. Bioarchaeology, skeletal biology, gender research, biological and evolutionary anthropology, osteology and osteoporosis, health and disease, paleopathology.
Research Profile

Stanley H. Brandes, Professor. Cultural anthropology, ritual and religion, food and drink, alcohol use, visual anthropology, Mediterranean Europe, Latin America, Spain, Mexico.
Research Profile

Charles L. Briggs, Professor. Linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence.

Lawrence Cohen, Professor. Social cultural anthropology, medical and psychiatric anthropology, critical gerontology, lesbian and gay studies, feminist and queer theory.
Research Profile

Terrence W. Deacon, Professor. Neuroscience, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, neurobiology, semiotics, primates, linguistic theory.
Research Profile

Nicholas Dirks, Professor. History and anthropology of South Asia, social and cultural theory, history of imperialism, historiography, cultural studies, globalization.
Research Profile

Mariane C. Ferme, Associate Professor. Material culture and agrarian landscapes, gender, historical anthropology, Sierra Leone, contemporary Africa, political culture, transitional justice in post-conflict societies.
Research Profile

Daniel Fisher, Assistant Professor.

Junko Habu, Professor. Japan, anthropology, archaeology, climate change, sustainability, East Asia, Jomon hunter-gatherers.
Research Profile

William F. Hanks, Professor. Social and cultural anthropology, linguistics, shamanism, language, Yucatan Mexico, Maya culture.
Research Profile

Christine Hastorf, Professor. Anthropology, archaeology, paleoethnobotany/archaeobotany, ancient plant use, foodways, Andean South America, ritual, agriculture.
Research Profile

Cori Hayden, Associate Professor. Latin America, Mexico, social and cultural anthropology, kinship, anthropology of science, technology, and medicine, post-colonial science, gender, queer studies.
Research Profile

Charles Hirschkind, Associate Professor. Islam, anthropology, religious practice, media technologies, political community, Middle East, Europe.
Research Profile

James Holston, Professor. Citizenship, Brazil, architecture, law, planning, the United States, cities, democracy, political and social anthropology, urban ethnography, the Americas.
Research Profile

Rosemary Joyce, Professor. Latin America, anthropology, gender, archaeology, sexuality, museums, cultural heritage, ethics, Central America, feminism.
Research Profile

Kent Lightfoot, Professor. California archaeology, coastal hunter-gatherers, North American archaeology, archaeology of colonialism, indigenous landscape management.
Research Profile

Xin Liu, Professor. History and/of anthropology, contemporary trends in social theory, social/cultural anthropology, comparative societies, capitalism and culture, America and China/East Asia.
Research Profile

Lisa A. Maher, Assistant Professor. Archaeology, hunter-gatherers, prehistory, geoarchaeology, landscape use, stone tools technology, emergence of social complexity.
Research Profile

Saba Mahmood, Professor. Religion, secularism, gender, ethics and politics, minorities, Islam, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Research Profile

Donald S. Moore, Associate Professor. Ethnicity, development, cultural politics, race, and identity, spatiality and power, governmentality, environment, postcolonial theory, Africa.
Research Profile

Laura Nader, Professor. Latin America, Mexico, social anthropology, comparative ethnography of law, dispute resolution, conflict, controlling processes, comparative family organizations, the anthropology of professional mind-sets, ethnology of the Middle East, contemporary U.S.
Research Profile

Aihwa Ong, Professor. Cultural anthropology, anthropology, transnationalism, citizenship, global cities, migration, Southeast Asia, urbanism.
Research Profile

Stefania Pandolfo, Professor. Cultural anthropology, Islam, Middle East, theories of subjectivity, postcolonial criticism, anthropology and literature, the Maghreb, mental illness.
Research Profile

Paul M. Rabinow, Professor. Cultural anthropology, social thought, modernity, biotechnology, genome mapping, France, Iceland.
Research Profile

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Professor. Critical medical anthropology, violence, genocide, inequality, marginality, childhood, family, psychiatry, deinstitutionalization, medical ethics, fieldwork ethics, globalization medicine, social/ political illness, disease, AIDS, Ireland, Brazil, cuba.
Research Profile

Jun Sunseri, Assistant Professor. Historical archaeology, zooarchaeology, ceramic material science, GIS, landscape archaeology, experimental archaeology, community-engaged scholarship, outreach, foodways, actualistic research.
Research Profile

Laurie Wilkie, Professor. Anthropology, historical archaeology, oral history, material culture and ethnic identity, family and gender relations; North America, Northern California, Caribbean. Bahamas, African consumerism, creolization, multi-ethnic community.
Research Profile

Alexei Yurchak, Associate Professor. Language, Discourse, power, social theory, late socialism, theories of ideology, subjectivity, popular culture, ideology, Soviet and post-Soviet culture and society, post-socialism, telecommunications, linguistics, speech synthesis.
Research Profile

Lecturers

Christopher J. Ames, Lecturer.

Nathan Kwame Braun, Lecturer.

Kimberly E. Christensen, Lecturer.

Mather M. George, Lecturer.

Ruth Goldstein, Lecturer.

Emeritus Faculty

Overton B. Berlin, Professor Emeritus.

Elizabeth F. Colson, Professor Emeritus. Religion, anthropology, migration, social organization, Zambia, women's lives, social change, politics, anthropological history, anthropological theory, ethnography of Africa, ethnography of North America.
Research Profile

Margaret W. Conkey, Professor Emeritus. Anthropology, gender, archaeology, prehistoric art, hunter-gatherers, feminist perspectives, Paleolithic art, rock art.
Research Profile

Phyllis C. Dolhinow, Professor Emeritus. Anthropology, development, ecology, physical anthropology, primate social behavior, human behavior, evolution.
Research Profile

Nelson H. Graburn, Professor Emeritus. Social and cultural anthropology, kinship, art, tourism, Japan, circumpolar, China, Heritage, Inuit.
Research Profile

John A. Graham, Professor Emeritus.

Eugene A. Hammel, Professor Emeritus. Kinship, social anthropology, stratification, statistical and formal analysis, computer applications, peasant society and culture, demography, Balkans.
Research Profile

Patrick V. Kirch, Professor Emeritus. Historical anthropology, Oceania, ethnoarchaeology, Melanesia, Polynesia, environmental archaeology, prehistoric agricultural systems, human paleoecology, ethnobotany.
Research Profile

Herbert P. Phillips, Professor Emeritus.

Jack M. Potter, Professor Emeritus. Anthropology, social anthropology, U.S., Thailand, classical social theory, peasants, change, ethnographic film, China.
Research Profile

M. Steven Shackley, Professor Emeritus. Northwest Mexico, anthropology, archaeology, North America, geochemical analysis.
Research Profile

William S. Simmons, Professor Emeritus.

Ruth Tringham, Professor Emeritus. Archaeology, Central European, Eastern European, Mediterranean, Anatolian prehistory, early agriculturalists, neolithic, bronze age, prehistoric architecture, household archaeology, feminist practice of archaeology, multimedia (hypermedia).
Research Profile

Contact Information

Department of Anthropology

232 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-3392

Fax: 510-643-8557

Visit Department Website

Department Chair

Cori Hayden, PhD

327 Kroeber Hall

cphayden@berkeley.edu

Folklore Program Chair

Charles L. Briggs, PhD

333 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-643-2012

clbriggs@berkeley.edu

Medical Anthropology Program Director

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, PhD

305 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-8341

nsh@berkeley.edu

Undergraduate Student Affairs Officer

Frances Bright

209 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-3616

f.bright@berkeley.edu

Graduate Student Affairs Officer

Ned Garrett

205 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-3406

ned@berkeley.edu

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