Timetable subject to change or modification. Anthropology graduate students will be able to enrol into Fall & Winter session graduate courses starting August 6, 2024. Students from other departments should follow instructions for enrolment on the Graduate Course Description and Timetable page.
*Last Updated July 04, 2024
(*) : denotes a CORE COURSE – see the Anthropology Graduate Handbook for program specific course requirements.
(1): strongly recommended for SCL doctoral students in year 2.
(2): Please note the following changes in graduate course requirements for Master’s students in Archaeology: Incoming Master’s students are now required to enrol in ANT 4010: Archaeology in Contemporary Society and no longer required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory. PhD students are still required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory, and are not required to take ANT 4010.
(*) : denotes a CORE COURSE – see the Anthropology Graduate Handbook for program specific course requirements.
(1): strongly recommended for SCL doctoral students in year 2.
(2): Please note the following changes in graduate course requirements for Master’s students in Archaeology: Incoming Master’s students are now required to enrol in ANT 4010: Archaeology in Contemporary Society and no longer required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory. PhD students are still required to enrol in ANT 4020: Archaeological Theory, and are not required to take ANT 4010.
2024-25 Graduate Course Descriptions
ANT 3031 H1S - Advanced Research Seminar I: Sleep and Primate Evolution (D. Samson)
This course is an overview of our current understanding of primate sleep ecology and function with particular focus on how these elements drove the evolution of human sleep. Specifically, the aim of the class will be to provide students with a strong, theoretical background of the function of sleep in the animal kingdom with particular attention paid to primate lineages. This will serve as a springboard for the application of several innovative methods measuring the spectrum of behaviors on the inactive-active continuum.
As an overview, the course will be presented in four sections: (i) Sleep: descriptions, functions, and mechanisms from eukaryotes to humans, (ii) The evolution of primate sleep, (iii) Methods: measuring sleep and activity in primates, and (iv) Evolution’s legacy on human sleep. The first section provides students with an overview of the mechanisms and functions of sleep and circadian rhythms, as well as a historical approach that fills in the context for which most of these fundamental discoveries were made. The second section presents a phylogenetic perspective on how sleep is expressed in extant species, in both human and non-human primates. The third section, departs from presenting background information and will focus on the application of the current scientific methods used to measure sleep-wake behavior throughout mammals. Finally, the fourth section provides the most up to date evolutionary narrative of the major transitions of human sleep and the consequences of these derived characteristics to our understanding of modern sleep disorders within an evolutionary mismatch framework. The course will conclude with a forward thinking series of predictions on how science and technology will fundamentally alter the way humans sleep in the 21st century and beyond.
ANT 3034 H1S* - Applied Anthropology (T. Galloway)
This course aims to fill an important and growing need for anthropologists to contribute to interdisciplinary research. Increasingly, employers in both academic and non-academic institutions see high value and complementarity in anthropological approaches to community engagement, research design, data analysis and knowledge sharing. This course will bring together a community of learners from across anthropological subdisciplines to engage with applied anthropological theory and practice. Learners will explore the ethics and praxis of applied anthropology as it pertains to their subdiscipline and develop confidence with basic tools and processes of interdisciplinary and applied scholarly communication. The goal of this course is to prepare anthropologists for careers in a broad range of academic and non-academic settings including government and non-governmental agencies, the non-profit sector, municipal and community-based organizations and the private sector.
ANT 3047 H1S* - Evolutionary Anthropology Theory (S. Lehman)
This course is an intensive exploration of the ideas that form the foundation of evolutionary anthropology. We will read historically important theoretical texts and critically examine leading concepts in the field. Through guest lectures by scholars in our department we will discuss topics such as molecular clocks, species concepts, signatures of selection, niche construction, genetic drift, sexual selection, human behavioural ecology, epigenetics, and population genetics. We will actively engage with historical and current issues of diversity and decolonization in the discipline of Evolutionary Anthropology throughout each weekly discussion.
ANT 3048 H1F - Primatological Theory and Methods (J. Teichroeb)
This course will take a historical perspective and examine major changes and advancements in theory in primatology. Students will critically review some seminal theoretical works and the research of important scholars in the field. We will focus on how the social movements and gender biases of the time shaped the disciplines of primatology and biological anthropology. Students will then move on to cover current issues and important theories in primatology. Given the breadth of the field, topics may include ecology, population biology, social behavior, cognition, genetics, and conservation. Students will present and discuss articles at weekly meetings, with a strong focus on class participation, and a final paper will be required.
ANT 3049 H1F - Advanced Seminar in Evolutionary Morphology (L. Schroeder)
This advanced seminar will provide students with a critical understanding of evolutionary biology and its fundamental concepts. The focus will be on evolutionary morphology, an aspect of evolutionary biology that addresses the “how” and “why” of morphology; the evolutionary processes that shape morphological variability and the effects of these at multiple levels of organismal biology. This course will also emphasize the application of quantitative genetic methods and theory to studies in biological anthropology. In addition, the concepts of integration, evolvability and modularity will be discussed in an evolutionary developmental context. The ultimate goal of this course is to provide students with the foundational knowledge of the key concepts of evolutionary biology, cultivate critical evaluation skills, and provide the theoretical background for independent research project development in evolutionary morphology.
ANT 3438 H1S - Skeletal Trauma and Violence: Theory and Practice (T. Rogers)
This course addresses methodological approaches to recognizing, documenting, and analyzing skeletal trauma, as well as theoretical frameworks for understanding violence in bioarchaeological and forensic contexts. Course readings include a reference text, and literature examining principles underlying fracture causation and interpretation (bone biomechanics), inventorying fragmentary bone, distinguishing ante-,peri-mortem injury from post-mortem damage, etc. Topics for discussion include intimate partner violence, interpersonal violence, warfare, and genocide in bioarchaeological and forensic contexts. Grading is based on presentations, discussions, and labs during which students will practice techniques of analysis and interpretation.
ANT 4010 H1F* - Archaeology in Contemporary Society (A. Hawkins)
This course will explore the role of archaeology in modern society. Its primary goal is to get students to think about how their research affects, and is affected by, the world around them. For both ethical and practical reasons, it is critical that archaeology graduate students (and faculty!) understand the relationship between their research and the broader society with which it articulates. Seminars will draw papers from diverse regions of the globe based around weekly themes, and will attempt to keep discussions at a “practical” level – how does archaeology actually work “on the ground” in relation to a range of contemporary issues and interest groups? This course will offer a broad-ranging overview of relevant topics, intended to be useful as students frame their research questions, apply for funding, pursue fieldwork, interpret data, contribute to policy discussions, and interact with the public. During the second meeting, students will be polled re. specific topics to be covered this year.
ANT 4020 H1S* - Archaeology Theory (H. Miller)
This course provides an in-depth examination of the major social and historical theories which have informed archaeological approaches to the study of the past. The course is anchored around four major themes: social identity, landscapes, power, and economics. These themes anchor our discussion of core theoretical texts, including the works of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, Frederick Barth, and Adam Smith. Within each 3-week thematic module, we will take a genealogical approach which explores the intellectual origins of contemporary frameworks like post-colonialism, ethnogenesis, resistance, cultural landscapes, behavioral ecology, world systems theory, and object biographies. Ultimately, through a combination of archaeological case studies and theoretical readings, this seminar will provide students with a rich understanding of the broad range of frameworks that underpin contemporary archaeological research and the unique problems inherent in archaeological efforts to represent and interpret the material record.
ANT 4041 H1S - Landscape Archaeology (E. Banning)
This course will serve as an introduction and critical examination of the diversity of archaeological approaches to landscapes, with some historical perspective from early “field archaeology” and Crawford’s aerial archaeology, through economic-geographical approaches to settlement, exchange and land-use systems, to archaeological survey, place, wayfaring, phenomenology, and Ingold’s “dwelling” perspective.
ANT 4060 H1F - Specific Problems: Interregional Interaction in the Ancient World (J. Jennings)
Seminar courses are subject to selected topics. Detailed description coming soon.
ANT 4065 H1F - Specific Problems: Southern African Archaeology (G. Dewar)
This intensive graduate reading course provides a foundation in the archaeology of foragers in Southern Africa, with focus on Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa. The seminar’s temporal remit is broad, spanning ~300 ka of human adaptation to a range of biomes, from coastal deserts to highland mountain systems. For the first module we will cover the paleoenvironmental data, with focus on isotopic approaches to understanding evidence for environment, diet, and trade / mobility. The second module will focus on evidence for social networks including how people used ostrich eggshell beads, as a risk reduction strategy. The third module will assess the technological changes and innovations, while the fourth module will identify changing subsistence strategies. Integrating the evidence for social, technological, and subsistence innovations within their palaeoenvironmental contexts allows us to more fully explore human adaptive plasticity.
ANT 4065 H1S - Specific Problems: Archaeology of Human-Animal Relationships (L. Janz)
This seminar delves into the archaeology of human-animal relationships in order to highlight the diverse ways that researchers identify, discuss, and interpret such interactions. Although we will engage with a diversity of topics, the emphasis this year will be on animal management systems, including hunting, domestication and nomadic pastoralism. This includes discussion of how we interpret various theoretical and ideological perspectives under constraints of the material record. Students will be graded on participation, reading syntheses, a presentation somehow relevant to their own field of research, and a final written assignment.
ANT4070 H1S - Archaeologies of Place, Urbanism, and Infrastructures (E. Swenson)
This seminar offers a critical review of archaeological approaches to place, space, landscapes, cities, and infrastructures in comparative perspective. In our post-industrial world, the second circuit of capital (real-estate speculation and public works) increasingly dominates political discourse. Archaeological research demonstrates that political economies grounded in the construction of place is not a modern phenomenon but has defined hierarchical polities ever since their inception. In this course, students will examine the emergence and organization of ancient cities and pre-industrial infrastructure projects through a detailed investigation of social theory on space and the urban condition. We will explore competing interpretations of urban process and examine how physical infrastructures shaped the political institutions, economies, and ideologies of cities past and present. 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; infrastructures and the politics of place-making; and historical variation in urban landscapes, worldviews, and political economies. Discussion will focus in part on the spatial practices, social inequalities, and political institutions linking ancient urbanism with industrial and post-industrial cities. In turn, an examination of competing theories on capitalist and “postmodern” urbanism is intended to advance our understanding of the distinctive socioeconomic characteristics of pre-modern complex polities.
ANT 5144 H1S - Foundations in Linguistic Anthropology (J. Sidnell)
This course offers an introduction to contemporary linguistic anthropology by means of a survey of some dissertations and ethnographic monographs. This year the focus will be on Southeast Asia. In our reading of each book or dissertation we will consider their theoretical foundations, analytic goals and methodological orientations thereby tracking alternative approaches to foundational questions and, at the same time, mapping some key intellectual genealogies of the field. The idea is to provide a survey of contemporary work and an overview of disciplinary foundations while at the same time providing an opportunity to read some dissertations and ethnographies that might inspire students in their own PhD research.
ANT 6003 H1S - Critical Issues in Ethnography I (B. Dahl)
Ethnography’ is at once a (relatively disciplined) practice of interpersonal engagement, a way of thinking about the world, and the results of such practices conveyed and transformed through writing. In this reading intensive course we examine books published over the past few decades (skewed towards more recent years) that are all variously understood as ‘ethnography’ in an effort to become more familiar with the scope and elasticity of the genre. The selected texts are diverse but thematically linked by concerns for place, time, subject/person, power, and subordination. Each provides a point of departure for exploring a range of research methods and theoretical models. We examine issues such as research design, collaboration and sole-authorship, authorial positioning and voice, narrative style, use of ‘plot’, characterization, and representation, all the while attending to how each ethnography was produced within its historical and intellectual context.
ANT 6005 H1F - Ethnographic Methods Proseminar (Credit/No Credit) (N. Elamin)
This course is offered to students in anthropology as a not-for-credit supplement to the curriculum in socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology (as well as to interested students from other departments). Each week will feature a presentation by a current faculty member focusing on a method that they have used in their own research or on, a broadly speaking, set of methodological problems they have encountered. Some of the topics covered during the course of the term might include: interviews; fieldnotes; participant observation; performance ethnography; land defense; community advocacy; community partnership; confidentiality and secrecy; photography, film and video; archives and historical records; reading fiction; digital ethnography. Each week, students will be expected to complete a short exercise relating to the presentation. A student who attends and completes the exercises for eight of the ten seminars will receive an annotation of course completion in their transcript.
ANT 6006 H1F - Genealogies of Anthropological Thought (F. Cody / N. Dave)
This course introduces graduate students to some of the major thinkers and traditions in, and for, the discipline of anthropology. While this course establishes strong familiarity with canonical texts, it also demands a critical reflexivity about discipline formation itself and the normalization of ideas. As such, this course aims to situate contemporary anthropological thought within past and ongoing debates among a range of social and political theorists.
ANT 6032 H1F - Advanced Research Seminar II: Politics, Theology, Sovereignty (V. Napolitano)
Are politico-anthropological concepts always theological ones? Yes and no. This course through selected ethnographic renderings and critical theory debates focuses on the relation between politics, theologies (in the plural) and the everyday life, aiming to expand our political, anthropological imagination. It introduces, among others, classic and recent debates on sovereignty, capitalism as religion, grace and charisma, saintly and evil formations, affective nationalism and sensory politics, tribulation and migration, mysticism and the body. In close conversation with students’ respective research, this course explores anthropological engagements with political theology as an emerging and exciting field, whose centrality rests on orienting toward multi species and divine justice and their political formations. Together with ethnographic texts, readings may also include work by Giorgio Agamben , Carl Schmitt, Khaled Furani, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Sylvia Wynter, Catherine Keller, Joseph Tonda, Marcella Althaus-Reid , Vincent Lloyd, Niklaus Largier and Teresa d’Avila. Modes of assessment will be discussed and finalized with participants.
ANT 6033 H1S - Advanced Research Seminar IV: Palestine/Israel and Contemporary Colonialism (A. Paz)
Seminar courses are subject to selected topics. Detailed description coming soon.
ANT 6061 H1F - Anthropology of Sexuality and Gender (A. Allen)
This graduate research seminar explores the core genealogies of feminist anthropology and anthropology of sexuality, with a focus on how scholarly conversations which emerged in 20th century anglophone sociocultural anthropology reverberate in the discipline today. We will examine the theoretical and methodological innovations that scholars enacted in the shift from “women anthropologists” to an “anthropology of women” to feminist and transfeminist ethnography. We will also analyze the production on anthropological texts within colonial and postcolonial contexts as they connect with local and transnational understandings of sexuality and gender. In doing so, we will ask: How has the field as a whole responded to feminist critiques of knowledge production? Moreover, how has anthropology contributed to the emergence of today’s robust, transnational gender and sexuality studies? What is an anthropological approach to gender and sexuality? How ought anthropologists reconcile the prescriptivism of gender and sexual identity politics with the descriptivism of the ethnographic project? How does the anthropological perspective challenge assumptions about human gender and sexuality across culture and over time? What theoretical underpinnings hold together the core logics of the anthropological approach to gender and sexuality? Throughout, we will problematize normative cultural paradigms of: biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction; kinship & marriage; masculine and feminine divisions of labor; and sexuality and gender in racializing and colonizing projects. Texts include works by scholars such as: Jafari Allen, Ruth Benedict, Tom Boellstorff, Dána-Ain Davis, Claude Levi-Strauss, Ellen Lewin, Martin Manalansan, Margaret Mead, Esther Newton, Elizabeth Povinelli, Gayle Rubin, Kamala Visweswaran, Gloria Wekker, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Tiantian Zheng, and others. While the focus of this course is on sociocultural anthropology, the course is appropriate for graduate students from across the discipline, and students are invited to integrate related scholarly conversations in archaeology and biological anthropology into discussions and coursework.
ANT 6062 H1F - Disability Anthropology (C. Hartblay)
This graduate research seminar explores the emergence of disability anthropology as a subfield at the intersection of medical anthropology and critical disability studies. Students will examine the theoretical and methodological innovations that scholars enacted in the shift from “anthropologists with disabilities” to an “anthropology of disability” to a “disability anthropology” that tracks the work that the category of disability does. In doing so, students track systems of ableism that emerge across different cultural settings. Throughout the course, we will ask and engage the following questions: What is an anthropological approach to the study of disability? How has disability anthropology emerged as an area of research for sociocultural anthropologists? What epistemological concerns does disability anthropology provoke regarding human ways of knowing and coming to know, and what are the implications for ethnography? Moreover, how has anthropology as a field and ethnography as a research practice contributed to the emergence of today’s robust scholarly debates in global disability studies? How ought anthropologists reconcile the prescriptivism of disability pride politics with the descriptivism of the ethnographic project? How does the anthropological perspective challenge assumptions about about disability vis-à-vis human capacities and socialities across social worlds and over time? What theoretical underpinnings hold together the core logics of the anthropological approach to disability, and what divergent theoretical approaches characterize recent disability anthropology? Throughout, we will problematize normative cultural paradigms of: a biological and curative approach to bodily and mental difference; cartesian dualism in perceptions “normal” bodyminds; patriarchy, racialization, and colonization as bound to logics of ableism; and ableist hierarchies of productivity.
ANT 6065 H1F - Anthropology in/of Troubled Times (T. Sanders)
Climate emergencies, forced migration, energy finitude, poverty, racism, mediated mass-surveillance, conspiracies, alternative facts, populism, pandemics – all provide unsettling markers of our times. As chroniclers and theorists of the moment, anthropologists are providing key insights into some of today’s most pressing problems as well as new analytic tools with which to examine them. This advanced seminar surveys a range of contemporary concerns and explores some of the ways current anthropologists are engaging – methodologically, analytically, theoretically – with them. It should thus be of interest to students who have yet to choose a research topic, and/or who wish to expand their knowledge of the discipline today. The seminar’s second concern is less with an anthropology of troubled times than with an anthropology in them. This concern arises from the observation that anthropology is part of the world it seeks to apprehend: a world that enables and constrains, invites and inhibits particular modes of anthropological thinking, theorising and practice. The seminar thus interrogates anthropology’s own grounds of knowledge, dwelling on some of the epistemological, ethical and political conundrums that anthropology’s real-world entanglements unavoidably entail. This will take us well beyond “troubled times,” inviting students to interrogate that curious set of Euro-American knowledge practices we call “Anthropology.”
ANT 6100 H1F - History of Anthropological Thought (O. Ozcan/F. Bozcali)
As an introduction to the history of anthropological thought, this MA-level core course aims to familiarize students with the key thinkers, theoretical approaches, and ethnographic innovations that shaped the discipline in the twentieth century. It likewise considers the kinds of knowledge, ethics, and modes of both representation and analysis these different approaches have demanded. An understanding of the historically situated character of our discipline is a crucial component of our contemporary practice, and this includes taking seriously the intellectual genealogies out of which–and often against which—contemporary thought has emerged.
ANT 6150H Y1 - Proposing Ethnographic Research (V. Furuie / T. Li)
This seminar aims to assist doctoral students in the socio-cultural and linguistic field to develop thesis and research grant proposals. Throughout the seminar, the participants will be guided step by step to produce effective proposals for anthropological fieldwork. The seminar is designed as an intensive writing workshop that is based on timely sharing of work and peer-discussion. Run in workshop style, the seminar will help participants to develop skills of giving and receiving constructive comments on each other’s writing.
ANT 7001 H1S - Medical Anthropology I (K. Maxwell)
Offers a graduate level introduction to current work in the field of medical anthropology that is informed by sociocultural anthropology. Readings address many topics and geographic locations, and will be selected to highlight differences -- at the level of questions asked, literatures and disciplines engaged, methods used, writing style employed, and intended audience. May feature some virtual visits by scholars whose work the class will read.
ANT 7002 H1F - Medical Anthropology II (D. Sellen)
Humans are exquisitely social animals and shared care of young is crucial to survival and adult functioning. In this class we sample, explore and discuss the variety of forms of human infant and young child care across space and time, of which parenting is just one. Specifically, we explore perspectives generated by anthropologists, international public health practitioners and others interested in variation in childcare practices and its social determinants and health effects. We consider the complex, biocultural and bi-directional relationships between care and health in different social and ecological settings. Students can:
- expand their understanding of patterns of human care-giving, and theories offered to explain them
- think about the design, techniques and goals of anthropological and interdisciplinary research
- consider the evolutionary history of childcare and its potential contemporary relevance
- identify differences and commonalities in cross-cultural patterns of childcare
- reflect on the salient care needs of human young
- discuss variation in practice through the alternative “lenses” of diversity, disparity, and inequity
- understand the relation between child care contexts and global health indicators
- address implications for policy and the future of human well being and planetary health