Fall 2025 Grad Courses

ANT 600 M001 - Artificial Intelligence

Instructor: Mona Bhan

Time/Location: M/W 12:45-2:05, Hall of Languages 111

Course Description:

Adopts an anthropological approach to the emerging sociotechnological phenomenon of artificial intelligence weaponry. It explores how AI weapons systems are refiguring geopolitical alliances, modes of border and community surveillance, and conceptions of humanity, human rights, and accountability.

ANT 600 M002 - War Ecologies

Instructor: Azra Hromadžić

Time/Location: M 2:15-5:00, Maxwell Hall 205A

Course Description:

Thinking beyond “war itself” to pay attention to forms of war that are often unrecognized as such - in everyday experiences, material effects, and affective resonances of violence that have penetrated and contaminated the environments and ecologies of places.

ANT 600 M003 - Caribbean Mobilities

Instructor: Kyrstin Mallon Andrews

Time/Location: Tu/Th 12:30-1:50, Smith Hall 337

Course Description:

The Caribbean has long been a crossroads of mobility and migration between the Americas, Europe, and Africa. This course examines the cultures, politics, and socio-economics of Caribbean mobilities both within the region and outward-bound through the perspective of anthropological and ethnographic studies. We will explore historical and contemporary mobility through the themes of legal and carceral politics, religion and magic, multispecies encounters, tourism, health, and changing climates.

ANT 611 M001 - History of Anthropological Theory

Instructor: Robert Rubinstein

Time/Location: Tu 5:00-7:45, Sims Hall 431

Course Description:

This course is the first of a two-part sequence that covers the history and major trends in cultural anthropological theory in the US and Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. This class covers the period up to about 1975. It looks at the nature and organization of the discipline, individual anthropologists and the constraints on their work, and the ways in which anthropological concepts developed and changed during this period. It will focus on the main theoretical approaches to the study of the origin and development of society and culture: cultural evolutionists, functionalists, diffusionists, structuralists, and historicists.

ANT 624 M001 - Negotiation: Theory and Practice

Instructor: Robert Rubinstein

Time/Location: W 5:15-8:00, Hall of Languages 214

Course Description:

This course is a general introduction to the theory of negotiation and to the skills associated with successful negotiation practices. Each student will have an opportunity to develop their own capacities to be a more proficient and successful negotiator. In this course students examine negotiation theory, learn negotiation skills, and gain experience by practice. They subject that practice to criticism and reflection. The course takes students from simple two-person negotiations through more complex multi-party negotiations. The course considers the fundamental aspects of negotiation, the tension between distributive and integrative negotiation, and the importance of preparation.

ANT 633 M001 - Human Osteology

Instructor: Shannon Novak

Time/Location: Tu/Th 2:00-3:20, Lyman Hall 406

Course Description:

The study of human skeletal remains is a crucial component of biological anthropology that has applications in archaeology, paleontology, and forensics. Remains recovered from these contexts are often incomplete, fragmentary, or commingled, making it necessary to identity elements, or separate individuals, based on minute anatomical details. This course provides an intensive introduction to the human skeleton, emphasizing the identification of fragmentary skeletal elements and their osseous structure. The ability to accurately and precisely identify human remains is the fundamental skill in human osteology, and a prerequisite to all subsequent analyses. To this end, students will need to spend a significant amount of time in the laboratory working with the teaching collection.

ANT 634 M001 - Anthropology of Death

Instructor: Shannon Novak

Time/Location: M/W 12:45-2:05, Maxwell Hall 205A

Course Description:

We will begin with some of the classic works by social anthropologists and compare these to more recent ethnographic studies, gaining a comparative perspective on death and its effects on the living. In the process, we will learn how bodies are especially powerful symbols that elicit a visceral reaction from the living, and about the veneration and violation of bodies and their deployment in political and public arenas. From here we will turn to the materials and materiality of death. Though archaeologists have been especially interested in death because their work involves the excavation of objects from the distant past, social anthropologists have also explored the symbolic connotations of cemeteries, graves, and dead bodies. Whether past or present, anthropologists are increasingly interested in “materiality,” or the complex network of humans, things, and performances involved in embodied memories, social action, and (re)enchantment of wider worlds.

ANT 638 M001 - Beyond the Biological Need to Eat

Instructor: Guido Pezzarossi

Time/Location: Tu/Th 11:00-12:20, Lyman Hall 115B

Course Description:

Food is a critical part of our daily life, one of the most obvious biological demands of our bodies. In turn, our need for food catalyzes innumerable demands of our environments, our communities, and of ourselves. This course focuses on interdisciplinary archaeological and anthropological approaches to the study of food as a critical analytical dimension for holistic explorations of past and present lifeways. In addition to the social aspects of food, this course will also explore the material and technical aspects of food production and preparation techniques and associated archaeological methods of analyzing past foodways.

ANT 641 M001 - Anthropological Archaeology

Instructor: Theresa Singleton

Time/Location: M 5:15-8:00, Maxwell Hall 205A

Course Description:

This is the first semester of a two-course sequence in archaeological theory. It provides a survey of the historical development of archaeology as a scholarly discipline and sub-field of anthropology. It is roughly organized chronologically, but also includes topics that transcend chronological boundaries. The development of archaeological theory as practiced by those trained in North America is emphasized here, although developments elsewhere are also considered. The analytical framework, concepts, and methodologies of the culture history, processual, and post-processual (referred to today as interpretive archaeology) theoretical approaches are the primary themes covered in this course. Additional topics include gender in archaeology and indigenous archaeologies.

ANT 644 M001 - Laboratory Analysis in Archaeology

Instructor: Julia Jong Haines

Time/Location: Tu 2:00-4:45, Lyman Hall 411A

Course Description:

This course familiarizes students with work in an archaeological laboratory. A large part of that work is gaining experience working with archaeological materials. For this class, we will focus our attention on the archaeology of/in the modern world (post 1500 AD), with a particular concentration on the emergent entanglements, inequalities, and materialities related to European colonialism. You will learn how to conduct yourself in a laboratory and about theoretical and methodological concerns in archaeological analysis, concerning typology and interpretation. Through a hands-on and careful study of the diagnostic attributes and material properties of common materials and trade items, you will begin to understand how a collection of often broken and fragmentary objects can evidence histories yet untold.

ANT 659 M001 - Contemporary Native North American Issues

Instructor: Heather Law Pezzarossi

Time/Location: Tu/Th 9:30-10:50, Maxwell Hall 108

Course Description:

This course closely examines the Indigenous political landscape and the debates therein. The main objective of this class is to understand the lasting legacies of settler colonial violence on Indigenous lands, communities, and bodies, and the theoretical and practical approaches being taken toward restorative justice, sovereignty, and decolonization in communities across North America. We focus on land by studying the impacts of land dispossession, the role of treaties, the relationship between Indigenous conceptions of land stewardship and extractive industrial capitalism, and the role of TEK and stewardship in healing and sovereignty. We focus on corporeal violence by studying the legacies of scientific racism in the quantification of Indigenous women’s bodies, the physical legacies of that trauma, and the long-term implications of state sponsored food assistance programs on Indigenous health. We focus on decolonization here with discussions of healing, rematriation, Indigenous feminism, and food sovereignty. (Crosslisted with NAT 659)

ANT 672 M001 - Language, Culture, & Society

Instructor: Lauren Woodard

Time/Location: F 9:30-12:15, Huntington Hall 105

Course Description:

This course is a cross-cultural survey of the role of language in culture and society. It is concerned with understanding the role of language in forging and sustaining cultural practices and social structures. We will touch a wide range of subject matter: from cognitive or psychologically oriented topics such as linguistic relativity or universals of color terminology, to sociocultural issues such as language and gender, politeness, socialization, language contact, multilingual nations, and language and agency. One result should be an increased awareness of the critical inter-relationship between human thought, culture, and language.

ANT 674 M001 - Topics in Sociolinguistics

Instructor: Rania Habib

Time/Location: Tu/Th 3:30-4:50, Smith Hall 337

Course Description:

Functions of language in society. Geographical, socioeconomic, and male-female differentiation. Functions of various types of speech events. (Crosslisted with LIN 674 and SOC 672. Contact the Department of Language, Literature, & Linguistics for more info)

ANT 681 M001 - Ethnographic Techniques

Instructor: Amanda Hilton

Time/Location: M/W 2:15-3:35, Smith Hall 337

Course Description:

This course will introduce students to the ethnographic approaches and methodologies through focused readings alongside a project where students will apply ethnographic techniques throughout the semester. It provides a foundation for understanding historical and contemporary contexts of ethnographic research, as well as the ethical questions raised in the process of conducting research alongside communities impacted by colonialism, unequal relations of power, environmental injustices, and intergenerational traumas. This course will explore the practice of ethnographic research while simultaneously analyzing ethnography as a form of knowing and representing knowledge.

ANT 713 M001 - Proposal Writing

Instructor: Azra Hromadžić

Time/Location: W 2:15-5:00, Maxwell Hall 205A

Course Description:

This course is designed primarily for social science and humanities students writing proposals for funding and for their department. The end requirement is a draft of a proposal on your research topic. The process will involve reading and evaluating proposals, learning about funding and the process of submitting proposals for funding here at SU, the ethics of research with human subjects, and writing sections of a proposal for your topic. You will also read and comment on each other’s drafts.