AnthropologyFaculty List
Chair: Michael Lambek From this vantage point, Anthropology attempts to understand the common factors underlying human existence and the factors that produce social change and differences between people and cultures. Due to its vast subject matter, Anthropology is traditionally divided into four subject fields: Socio-cultural Anthropology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Anthropological Linguistics, and Archaeology. At the present time, University of Toronto Scarborough offers courses within two major streams: Socio-cultural and Evolutionary. Some Linguistic Anthropology courses are also offered and are closely linked to the Socio-cultural stream. Students intending to complete a program in Anthropology must take ANTA01H3 and ANTA02H3 within their first year in order to prepare them for more advanced courses. Students normally elect whether to pursue the Socio-cultural stream (which leads to a B.A. degree) or the Evolutionary Anthropology stream (which leads to a B.Sc. degree) during their second year of study, but are encouraged to take courses in both streams. All courses in Evolutionary Anthropology carry a science credit. Anthropology ProgramsSPECIALIST PROGRAM IN ANTHROPOLOGY (ARTS/SCIENCE) The Specialist Program in Anthropology is intended to provide the professionally oriented student with background preparation of sufficient breadth and depth to pursue specialized training at the graduate level. It is also designed to offer interested students a course structure as background for a wide range of occupations and professions. Students are encouraged to consult with the Undergraduate Counsellor regarding the selection of a course sequence appropriate to their interests and objectives. In exceptional circumstances, supervised research and reading courses are available at the C- and D-levels (ANTC03H3, ANTC04H3, ANTD31H3, ANTD32H3). These courses require special arrangements prior to registration. Read the descriptions for these courses carefully as restrictions apply.
Note: For a B.Sc. at least 7.5 of the credits required for the program must be science credits. MAJOR PROGRAM IN ANTHROPOLOGY (ARTS/SCIENCE)The major program in Anthropology provides a course structure for those students desiring to expand upon or supplement other areas of academic interest by taking advantage of Anthropology's unique global, chronological, and biological perspective on the human condition.
Note: For a B.Sc., at least 5.5 of the credits required for the program must be science credits. MINOR PROGRAM IN ANTHROPOLOGY (ARTS)The Minor Program in Anthropology provides a course structure for students majoring or specializing in other disciplines who want some directed exposure to anthropological thought.
Anthropology CoursesANTA01H3 Introduction to Anthropology: Becoming Human An introduction to Biological Anthropology and Archaeology. How does an anthropological perspective enable us to understand cultural difference in an interconnected world? In this course, students will learn about the key concepts of culture, society, and language. Drawing upon illustrations of family, economic, political, and religious systems from a variety of the world's cultures, this course will introduce students to the anthropological approach to studying and understanding human ways of life. This course examines human-environmental relations from an anthropological perspective. Throughout the semester, we explore how peoples from different parts of the globe situate themselves within culturally constructed landscapes. Topics covered include ethnoecology, conservation, green consumerism, the concept of 'wilderness', and what happens when competing and differentially empowered views of the non-human world collide. An overview of the range and diversity of African social institutions, religious beliefs and ritual, kinship, political and economic organization, pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial experience. How is culture represented through visual media, from ethnographic and documentary film, to feature films, television, and new media? How do various communities re-vision themselves through mass, independent, or new media? This course investigates media and its role in the contemporary world from a socio-cultural anthropological perspective. This course surveys humanity's origin. The synthetic theory of evolution, its principles, processes, evidence and application underlie this course. Lecture topics and laboratory projects include: evolutionary theory, human variation, human adaptability, primate biology, and behaviour, taxonomy and classification, paleontological principles and human origins. Basic to the course is an understanding of the synthetic theory of evolution and the principles, processes, evidence and application of the theory. Laboratory projects acquaint the student with the methods and materials utilized Biological Anthropology. Specific topics include: the development of evolutionary theory, the biological basis for human variation, the evolutionary forces, human adaptability and health and disease. This course explores the creation or invention of a Canadian national identity in literature, myth and symbolism, mass media, and political culture. Ethnographic accounts that consider First Nations, regional, and immigrant identities are used to complicate the dominant story of national unity. This course addresses Latin American systems of inequality in relation to national and transnational political economy, from colonialism to neoliberalism; how ideas of race, culture, and nation intersect with development thinking and modernization agendas; and how the poor and marginalized have accommodated, resisted, and transformed cultural and political domination. This course introduces students to the theory and practice of ethnography, the intensive study of people's lives as shaped by social relations, cultural beliefs, and historical forces. Various topics, including religion, economics, politics, and kinship introduce students to key anthropological concepts and theoretical developments in the field. This course is a further examination of approaches to the study of human cultural diversity in an interconnected world. Through ethnographic accounts and documentary films, students examine the effects of globalization through the political dimensions of culture and the global flows of technology, religion, kinship networks, migration, capital and crime. How are language and culture connected? How does language work in ritual, kinship, religion, myth, media, and everyday life, and how does language affect thought? These questions are introduced with a variety of ethnographic examples. This course will provide students with a general introduction to the behaviour and ecology of non-human primates (prosimians, Old and New World monkeys, and apes), with a particular emphasis on social behaviour. The course will consist of lectures reinforced by course readings; topics covered will include dominance, affiliation, social and mating systems, communication, and reproduction. This course examines the social significance of food and foodways from the perspective of cultural anthropology. We explore the beliefs and behaviours surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food, and the role of food in shaping or revealing cultural relations, identities, political processes, and forms of globalization. Introduces the cultures and peoples of the Pacific. Examines the ethnography of the region, and the unique contributions that Pacific scholarship has made to the development of anthropological theory. Explores how practices of exchange, ritual, notions of gender, death and images of the body serve as the basis of social organization. A directed exploration of specific topics in Anthropology, based on extensive investigation of the literature. A directed exploration of specific topics in Anthropology, based on extensive investigation of the literature. This course explores the intersection of the social and the material by examining the role of objects in making worlds. We examine the relationship between people, culture, and 'things' through topics such as commodification and consumption, collecting and representation, technology and innovation, art and artifact, and the social life of things. This course explores Anthropological approaches to kinship and family arrangements. In addition to examining the range of forms that family arrangements can take cross-culturally, we also examine how kinship configurations have changed within our own society in recent years. Topics to be covered include trans-national adoption, "mail-order-brides", new reproductive technologies and internet dating. A critical probe of the origins, concepts, and practices of regional and international development in cultural perspective. Attention is paid to how forces of global capitalism intersect with local systems of knowledge and practice. This course examines how recent developments in biotechnology - cloning, the manufacture of genetically modified organisms, assisted reproduction technologies, and the mapping of the human genome, to name a few - are transforming our understanding of what it means to be human, including the relationship between human beings and other species. Examines why, when, and how gender inequality became an anthropological concern by tracing the development of feminist thought in a comparative ethnographic framework. Complements and extends ANTC14H3 by exploring cultural constructions of male and female in a range of societies and institutions. The study of human origins in light of recent approaches surrounding human evolution. This course will examine some of these, particularly the process of speciation, with specific reference to the emergence of Homo. Fossils will be examined, but the emphasis will be on the interpretations of the process of hominisation through the thoughts and writings of major workers in the field. The study of human origins in light of recent approaches surrounding human evolution. New fossil finds present new approaches and theory. This course will examine some of these, particularly the process of speciation and hominisation with specific reference to the emergence of Homo. Labs permit contact with fossils in casts. Urban spaces, neighbourhoods, and institutions have at different times been the focus of ethnographic studies of cities. In this course we will examine the role of culture, cultural diversity, space and performance in urban institutions. This course examines economic arrangements from an anthropological perspective. A key insight to be examined concerns the idea that by engaging in specific acts of production, people produce themselves as particular kinds of human beings. Topics covered include gifts and commodities, consumption, global capitalism and the importance of objects as cultural mediators in colonial and post-colonial encounters. What limits exist or can be set to commoditized relations? To what extent can money be transformed into virtue, private goods into the public "Good"? We examine the anthropological literature on gift-giving, systems of exchange and value, and sacrifice. Students may conduct a short ethnographic project on money in our own society, an object at once obvious and mysterious. This course will review primate socio-sexual behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Following a broad survey of mating patterns in the primate order, specific topics will be discussed, including male and female mating strategies, mate choice and sperm competition. Taxonomic groups of focus will include prosimians, monkeys, apes and humans. How are we to understand the relationship between psychological universals and diverse cultural and social forms in the constitution of human experience? Anthropology's dialogue with Freud; cultural construction and expression of emotions, personhood, and self. The nature and logic of ritual. Religious practices and projects; the interface of religion, power, morality, and history in the contemporary world. Can ethnographic research help us make sense of various political situations and conflicts around the world? In this course we will review different approaches to power and politics in classical and current anthropology. We will consider notions of the state, political agency and power, civil society, authoritarianism and democracy. Anthropological approaches to the origin and function of religion, and the nature of symbolism, myth, ritual, sorcery, spirit possession, and cosmology, with primary reference to the religious worlds of small-scale societies. This course considers dimensions of transnationalism as a mode of human sociality and site for cultural production. Topics covered include transnational labour migration and labour circuits, return migration, the transnational dissemination of electronic imagery, the emergence of transnational consumer publics, and the transnational movements of refugees, kinship networks, informal traders and religions. A consideration of quantitative data and analytical goals, especially in archaeology and biological anthropology. Some elementary computer programming, and a review of program packages suitable for anthropological analyses will be included. An examination of the biological, demographic, ecological and socio-cultural determinants of human and non-human population structure and the interrelationships among them. Emphasis is given to constructing various demographic measures of mortality, fertility and immigration and their interpretation. Human adaptability refers to the human capacity to cope with a wide range of environmental conditions, including aspects of the physical environment like climate (extreme cold and heat), high altitude, geology, as well as aspects of the socio-cultural milieu, such as pathogens (disease), nutrition and malnutrition, migration, technology, and social change. Human adaptability refers to the human capacity to cope with a wide range of environmental conditions. Emphasis is placed on human growth and development in stressed and non-stressed environments. Case studies are used extensively. A "hands-on" Laboratory course which introduces students to analyzing human and nonhuman primate skeletal remains using a comparative framework. The course will cover the gross anatomy of the skeleton and dentition, as well as the composition and microstructure of bone and teeth. The evolutionary history and processes associated with observed differences in human and primate anatomy will be discussed. A "hands-on" laboratory course which introduces students to the methods of analyzing human skeletal remains. Topics and analytic methods include: (1) the recovery and treatment of skeletal remains from archaeological sites; (2) odontological description, including dental pathology; (3) osteometric description; (4) nonmetric trait description; (5) methods of estimating age at death and sex; (6) quantitative analysis of metric and nonmetric data; and (7) paleopathology. How do media work to circulate texts, images, and stories? Do media create unified publics? How is the communicative process of media culturally-distinct? This course examines how anthropologists have studied communication that occurs through traditional and new media. Ethnographic examples drawn from several contexts. An investigation of how social-cultural anthropologists collect data and conduct fieldwork. Students complement reading and lectures on methods with gaining first-hand experience in carrying out various techniques of anthropological research including interviewing, collecting life histories, participant observation, and project design. We also consider what it means to carry out ethically responsible research. Social and symbolic aspects of the body, the life-cycle, the representation and popular explanation of illness, the logic of traditional healing systems, the culture of North American illness and biomedicine, mental illness, social roots of disease, innovations in health care delivery systems. The examination of health and disease in ecological and socio-cultural perspective. Emphasis is placed on variability of populations in disease susceptibility and resistance in an evolutionary context. With its sister course, ANTC61H3, this course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts and principles of medical anthropology. Principles of epidemiology, patterns of inheritance and biological evolution are considered. This course explores the global cultural phenomenon of tourism. Using case studies and historical perspectives, we investigate the complex motivations and consequences of travel, the dimensions of tourism as development, the ways tourism commodifies daily life, the politics of tourism representation, and the intersection of travel, authenticity and modernity. Epidemiology is the study of disease and its determinants in populations. It is grounded in the biomedical paradigm, statistical reasoning, and that risk is context specific. This course will examine such issues as: methods of sampling, types of controls, analysis of data, and the investigation of epidemics. Colonization, globalization and socio-ecological factors play an important role in origin, maintenance and emergence of old and new infectious diseases in human populations such as yellow fever, cholera, influenza, SARS. Issues of co-morbidity, the epidemiological transition, syndemics and the impact of global warming on the emergence of new diseases are discussed. What makes the Middle East unique as a world region? This course considers topics like transnational religious movements, imperial and nationalist histories, issues of language diversity, the impact of new communication technologies, and regional conflicts. This course examines 65 million years of evolutionary history for non-human primates. The primary emphasis will be on the fossil record. Topics covered may include the reconstruction of behaviour from fossil remains, the evolution of modern primate groups, and the origins of the Order. An ethnographic inquiry into the culturally configured human body as a reservoir of experiential knowledge, focus of symbolism, and site of social, moral, and political control. This course examines the social life of violence, its cultural production and political effects in a global perspective. It asks how social worlds are made and unmade through, against, and after violent events, how violence is remembered and narrated, and how ethnography might respond to experiences of suffering, trauma, and victimhood. This course provides students with experience in carrying out ethnographic research in the Greater Toronto Area. Working with the Center for Ethnography, students define and execute a research project of their own design. This course culminates in an original research paper. This course considers the reading and writing of ethnography - the classic genre of socio-cultural anthropology. We examine what differentiates ethnography from other forms of research and how to distinguish ethnographic works of high quality. Also considered are the politics of representation, including how ethnographic writing may reflect unequal relationships of power. This course allows students to examine particular culture areas at an advanced level. Regions to be covered may include South Asia, East Asia, the Muslim World, Latin America, The Pacific, Europe, Africa, or North America. Specific case studies from the region will be used to highlight theoretical and ethnographic issues. An advanced seminar course primarily for majors and specialists in biological anthropology. Topic to be announced annually. An advanced seminar course primarily for specialists and majors in Anthropology. Topic changes annually and is linked to the theme of our seminar series for the year. Students will attend talks by 2-3 guest speakers in addition to the regular seminar. In previous years, the theme has been Masculinities, Pilgrimage, History and Historicities. This course is designed for advanced students seeking an intensive examination of specific problems in medical Anthropology. Problems to be discussed include: genetic disorders in families and populations, the interaction of malnutrition and infectious diseases in human populations, chronic non-infectious diseases in populations today, and epidemiology and medical anthropology as complementary disciplines. This seminar course will examine the clinical, epidemiological and public health literature on osteoporosis and other conditions impacting skeletal health. The course will also explore the potential economic impacts of osteoporosis on Canada's health care system given emerging demographic changes. This seminar course will examine current socio-ecological theory in primatology and explore different methods for studying and sampling primate behaviour. An overview of the history of socio-cultural anthropology. This course focuses on certain key theoretical debates which run through it and largely determine the "state of the art" today. Evolutionary, diffusionist, psychological, cross-cultural, functionalist, structuralist, hermeneutical and other classical approaches are among those that will be considered through the works of major figures like Tylor, Durkheim, Boas, Kroeber, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Levi-Strauss, and others, up to the present. An attempt will be made to understand these individuals in terms of the social and intellectual climates in which they wrote. This course will examine the social and cultural contexts of animal-to-human disease transmission globally, and the public risks associated zoonoses present here in Canada. The course will incorporate both anthropological and epidemiological perspectives. Directed critical examination of specific problems in Anthropology, based on library and/or field research. Directed critical examination of specific problems in Anthropology, based on library and/or field research. This course will focus on a new direction in anthropology, exploring the potential of skeletal remains in reconstructing past lifeways. This seminar style class will build upon concepts introduced in Human Osteology courses. Additionally, more advanced methods of reconstructing patterns of subsistence, diet, disease, demography and physical activity. This course will examine questions of particular controversy in the study of Primate Evolution. Topics to be covered may include the ecological context of primate origins, species recognition in the fossil record, the identification of the first anthropoids, and the causes of extinction of the subfossil lemurs. |
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