Courses

2025-2026 Undergraduate Course Schedule

ANTH/CHST 20015 Anthropology at Chicago: Tradition, Discipline, Department
Instructor: Sarah Newman, M/W/F 12:30-1:20pm
For nearly a century, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago has been home to ethnographers, linguists, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists who have shaped the field of anthropology. This course explores those intellectual traditions, with an emphasis on faculty members' current scholarship: archival and historical silences, notions of kinship, language-in-use, ideas of waste (ancient to nuclear), science and technology studies, and more. Class meetings will focus on discussions with current faculty around their research, while assignments will incorporate faculty and departmental archives held at the Regenstein Library, artifact collections at the Field Museum, and oral histories collected from members of the department. Intended for those interested in anthropology and/or the history of the social sciences, this course encourages students to get to know faculty members and scholarship that are part the Department, and provides an opportunity to learn more about the people and traditions that have shaped anthropological research at UChicago.

ANTH 21006 Media, Animation, and the Semiotic Construction of Social Life
Instructor: Kenzell Huggins, T/TH 12:30-1:50pm
Human beings have constituted other objects as possessing some kind of vitality, from the fetish objects that early colonial authorities found among African societies to fictional characters that seem to have lives of their own. This course investigates the construction of such figures in contemporary social worlds, understanding said worlds as composed not only of humans but also their creations. What do robots and AI chatbots have to tell us about people's desire for intimacy, and how do entities like corporations come to be seen as having forms of personhood in contemporary legal formations? The course draws on social theory and contemporary anthropology of media and religion to address these questions. Students will learn how to apply this literature to develop insights about the analysis of social worlds.

ANTH/CEGU/CHST/HLTH/RDIN 21014 Toxic Chicago
Instructor: Reed McConnell, M/W 3:00-4:20pm
In this field trip-rich course, students will learn about Chicago's many toxic environments, focusing in particular on fallout from the city's industrial past and on racialized, unequal distributions of harmful exposure. We will ask: What is unique (and not unique) about the way that Chicago's toxic geography has been shaped by environmental racism? What happens when we think about toxicity on different temporal and geographical scales, from molecule to neighborhood to international corporation, from a day in the life to deep time? How does this trouble everyday ideas about cause and effect, responsibility and liability? And finally, what unique challenges are presented by the difficulty of producing scientific knowledge about toxic environments, especially when it comes to environmental justice activism or other attempts at change-making? We will visit former Superfund sites, city history museums, industrial processing facilities, and environmental justice non-profits, among other sites. Readings will be drawn from environmental anthropology, STS, Black studies, Native studies, and the history of science, and will forefront scholarship about Chicago. Excerpts from final projects will be collected together into a (physical) zine that will be distributed guerilla-style around the city.

ANTH/EALC 21270 Material Worlds Across Premodern East Asia
Instructor: Alice Yao, W 10:30am-1:20pm
China, Korea, and Japan are recognized as key players in the globalized world. Together they figure East Asia as a region of dynamic growth where consumers and producers create new goods and tastes at an unprecedented pace. East Asia however perplexes in that liberal ideology and politic does not appear to be a condition of liberal economy. This course examines the topic of materialism in East Asia in its pre-capitalist formations (1000 BC-1500 AD) through the lens of consumption and production in China, Korea, and Japan. In particular we explore how things become goods within the framework of autocratic states, how rituals create consumers and temptations, as well as the conditions which entertain popular panregional forms such as manga, martial arts, and mafia. The course draws on anthropology, archaeology, mixed media materials, and museum visits.

ANTH 24001 Colonizations I
Instructor: Stephan Palmie, T/TH 11:00 am – 12:20 pm
This quarter examines the making of the Atlantic world in the aftermath of European colonial expansion. Focusing on the Caribbean, North and South America, and western Africa, we cover the dynamics of invasion, representation of otherness, enslavement, colonial economies and societies, as well as resistance and revolution.

ANTH 24123 Digital Ethnographic Methods
Instructor: Kenzell Huggins, T/TH 9:30-10:50 AM
Social life occurs not only in face-to-face contexts but also through many digitally mediated environments. Yet ethnography is still traditionally conceived of as built on the primacy of "being-there," the seeming immediacy of co-presence between researcher and social interlocutors. This course is an introduction to conducting ethnographic research with digitally mediated environments. Students will engage with prior literature in anthropology on doing research in virtual gaming worlds, through social media websites and apps, and in face-to-face interaction with mobile digital devices. Students will also gain hands-on experience through conducting a designed research project of their own throughout the quarter.

ANTH 24304 Talking with Animals
Instructor: Summerson Carr. F 9:30 am – 12:20 pm
All over the world, children have long learned the lessons of what it means to be human from what animals tell them. In addition to ventriloquizing non-human animals to socialize human ones, projects for facilitating cross-species communication abound. These projects reveal not only how people imagine their relations with other animals, but also how we conceive of the possibilities and limits of sign systems. And while many focus on talking with animals, others suggest that animals are effective communicators precisely because they lack language, raising fascinating questions about ideologies of (im)mediation. As we learn how Peruvian kids talk with llamas and American cowboys whisper to wild horses, and explore what spiders say and how apes read the human keepers who teach them to sign, this class explores how distinctions are drawn between human and non-human animals, as well as attempts to cross those divides through communicative forms and technologies.

ANTH 25305 Anthropology of Food and Cuisine
Instructor: Stephan Palmié, T/TH 12:00-1:50 PM
Contemporary human foodways are not only highly differentiated in cultural and social terms, but often have long and complicated histories. Anthropologists have long given attention to food. But, until quite recently, they did so in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion. This course explores several related themes with a view towards both the micro- and macro-politics of food by examining a range of ethnographic and historical case studies and theoretical texts. It takes the format of a seminar augmented by lectures (during the first few weeks), scheduled video screenings, and individual student presentations during the rest of the course.

ANTH 26335 Principles of Kinship
Instructors: Sarah Newman and Natacha Nsabimana, M/W 1:30-2:50pm
This introductory course is an attempt to think about the theoretical and historical debates around kinship and world-making practices in anthropology. People everywhere across time and space create meaning about the world they live in and their relations in that world. For this reason, anthropology, the study of human societies past and present, has been preoccupied with kinship relations since its inception as a discipline. Co-taught by an archeologist and a socio-cultural anthropologist, the course will explore different forms of making kin from the deep past to the present. We will ask how and why anthropologists have made kinship a central category in understanding ourselves and others, and review critiques of the concept. The ultimate goal of this course is to encourage students to recognize the ongoing importance of kinship in our own lives and in the contemporary world. By the end of the course we hope to have provided tools to think about kinship and its centrality in human societies from an informed, critical perspective.

ANTH 26701 Capitalism and the State
Instructor: John Kelly, T/TH 9:30-10:50am
What can historical ethnography teach us, about the origins of capitalism, sovereignty and corporations, and the past and future of planning? This course will examine transformative events: the advent and the abolition of British empire slavery. Whaling and its consequences. The "7 Years War" in India and America. The Mongol conquests. Also, twentieth century (c20) stock market crashes. The late c20 rise of global cities. China's c21 "Belt and Road Project." Cognizance of global warming. We will use transformative events to track the emergent assemblage of state and capitalist institutions, including money, markets and taxation, banks and stock markets, accounting and budgets. Like Weber, we will seek causal patterns in between determinism and serendipity. Following Veblen, we will focus on corporations and "New Deals."

ANTH 29910 BA Honors Seminar 1
Instructor: Kamala Russell, W 3:00-5:50 pm
This seminar is designed to prepare fourth-year Anthropology majors to write a compelling BA thesis. To that end, the course is structured as a writing workshop that addresses three key issues: First, we will focus on formulating a viable research question that can be interrogated in a 35-40 page paper; second, we will examine core anthropological research methods, paying particular attention to the relationship between questions and evidence; finally, we will consider the writing process (including aspects such as planning, outlining, and drafting) and modes of argumentation. In the first quarter, participants will work toward producing a 20-page first draft.

ANTH 20100 The Inka and Aztec States
Instructor: Alan Kolata
T/TH 9:30 am – 10:50 am

This course is an intensive examination of the origins, structure, and meaning of two native states of the ancient Americas: the Inca and the Aztec. Lectures and discussions are framed around an examination of theories of state genesis, function, and transformation, with special reference to the economic, institutional, symbolic, and religious bases of indigenous state development. This course is broadly comparative in perspective and considers the structural significance of institutional features that are either common to or unique expressions of these two Native American states. Finally, we consider the causes and consequences of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and the continuing impact of the European colonial order that was imposed on and to which the Native populations adapted with different degrees of success over the course of the 16th century.

ANTH 20205 The Maya of Yucatán: From Colonial Encounters to Contemporary Transformations
Instructor: Chris Bloechl
M/W /F: 10:30 am – 11:20 am

This course explores historical and ethnographic studies of the lowland Maya region in southeastern Mexico. Through classic and contemporary accounts, students examine how colonial encounters, political change, and global forces have shaped Maya culture, language, and social life. Topics include colonial legacies, rebellion and resistance, tourism, cultural preservation, and the politics of Indigenous identity. The course offers a nuanced understanding of continuity and transformation in Maya worlds, past and present.

ANTH 21011 The Poetics of Pop Culture
Instructor: Wee Yang Soh
FRI: 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm

Pop culture is all around us, shaping conversations, informing collective consciousness, and influencing how social and political identities take form. From Taylor Swift and Donald Trump to viral memes about Squid Game and K-pop, pop culture feels pervasive, insistent, and self-evident. But what exactly is pop culture? Is it a core aspect of mainstream culture, a subculture, or something else entirely? How do media technologies drive its creation and circulation? What roles do commodification, fame, and identity play in its production? And who are its central figures—celebrities, influencers, politicians, idols, or even artificial intelligences? This course draws from cultural studies, science and technology studies (STS), and media studies to examine how pop culture takes shape at the intersection of media, language, and technology. Weekly sessions combine key theoretical frameworks with case studies spanning film, television, gaming, animation, literature, and more. By the end of the course, students will apply these tools to critically analyze a popular culture phenomenon of their choice.

ANTH 21013 From Lab to Museum: Thinking with Things
Instructor: Nikki Grigg
M/W/F: 9:30 am – 10:20 am

What happens to artifacts after they’re excavated? This class explores how archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum professionals make use of the rich data available in the archaeological record to answer questions about the past, reconsider the present, and imagine the future. Through readings, field trips and hands-on practice, students will gain a foundation in thinking through things from a wide range of times and places. We will consider the ethics of working with archaeological collections, from questions of access to efforts to repatriate stolen belongings and ancestors. As we follow archaeological materials from their arrival in the lab through their curation and eventual storage, we will examine how different forms of public engagement can help make the study of the past relevant and accessible to present-day communities.

ANTH 21107 Anthropological Theory
Instructor: Stephan Palmie
M/W/F: 1:30 – 2:20 pm

Since its inception as an academically institutionalized discipline, anthropology has always addressed the relation between a self-consciously modernizing “West” and its various and changing “others.” Yet it has not always done so with sufficient critical attention to its own concepts and categories – a fact that has led, since at least the 1980s, to considerable debate about the nature of the anthropological enterprise and its epistemological foundations. This course provides a brief critical introduction to the history of anthropological thought over the course of the discipline’s “long” twentieth century, from the 1880s to the present. Although it centers on the North American and British traditions, we will review important strains of French and, to a lesser extent, German social theory in chronicling the emergence and transformation of “modern” anthropology as an empirically based, but theoretically informed practice of knowledge production about human sociality and culture.

ANTH 21721 Power in the Streets: The Political Thought of C.L.R James
Instructor: Ryan Jobson
WED: 1:30 – 4:20 pm

Born in Trinidad in 1901, C.L.R. James was the preeminent radical intellectual of the 20th Century. This course will trace the political thought of C.L.R. James over more than a half-century, from the publication of his short story “La Divina Pastora” in 1927 to the speeches and writing of his final years before his death in 1989. Over his lifetime, James’s political thought developed in accordance with his application of Marxist theory to his engagement with working people in Trinidad, London, Detroit, and elsewhere.In 1982, an octogenarian James paused to reflect on “where [his] Marxism ha[d] arrived at after events in Poland and Ghana.” This course will accordingly survey his writings and speeches in his roles as novelist, sports journalist, historian, editor, organizer, and orator. Through texts such as Minty Alley, The Black Jacobins, A History of Pan-African Revolt, Facing Reality, Party Politics in the West Indies, and Beyond a Boundary, this course will engage the organic conditions of working-class revolt and spontaneous insurgency that surrounded his signature writings

ANTH 22826 Commodities and Consumption
Instructor: Hanna Pickwell
T/TH: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

In this discussion-based, reading- and writing-intensive seminar, we will explore “consumption” and “commodities” from an anthropological perspective. Drawing from a range of works from anthropology and other disciplines, and thinking with material from many different cultural contexts, we will reflect critically on everyday practices of consumption and relationships with things that are so often taken for granted. We will investigate the enchanting aspects of commodities; how things can materialize claims about identity or status and produce and reproduce social relationships; shopping and fashion and their relationships to capitalism, gender, and colonialism; ethical, political, and ecological aspects of various kinds of consumption; and more. Previous coursework in anthropology, while beneficial, is not required to do well in this class.

ANTH 23312 Datasets
Instructor: Alice Yao
WED: 10:30 am – 1:20 pm

This course is a follow up to Datasets and offers hands-on opportunities to tackle various aspects of your work, ranging from structuring your methods chapter to refining and analyzing categories of archaeological materials, counts, and spatial , including GIS datasets. Some key areas to be addressed include: Identifying the most relevant evidence and appropriate levels of detail needed to answer your research questions. Visualizing your data effectively, whether through maps, tables, charts, or other means. Troubleshooting technical challenges with your analysis. Students are encouraged to use their own datasets for course material.

ANTH 24304 Talking with Animals
Instructor: Summerson Carr
WED: 9:30 am – 11:50 am

All over the world, children have long learned the lessons of what it means to be human from what other animals tell them. In addition to ventriloquizing non-human animals to socialize human ones, projects for facilitating cross-species communication abound. These projects not only reveal how humans imagine their relations with other animals, but also how we conceive of the possibilities and limits of different sign systems. And while many focus on whether and to what degree non-human animals can apprehend linguistic signs, others suggest that animals are effective communicators precisely because they lack language, raising fascinating questions about ideologies of (im)mediation on the one hand, and multi-modality on the other. As we learn how Peruvian kids talk with llamas and American cowboys whisper to wild horses, and explore what spiders say and how apes read the human keepers who teach them to sign, this class explores how distinctions are drawn between human and non-human animals, as well as attempts to cross those divides through communicative forms and technologies.

ANTH 25310 Drinking Alcohol: Social Problem or Normal Cultural Practice
Instructor: Dietler/Green
T/TH: 2:00 pm – 3:20 pm

Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world, and, as archaeologists have recently demonstrated, it has a very long history dating back at least 9,000 years. This course will explore the issue of alcohol and drinking from a trans-disciplinary perspective. It will be co-taught by an anthropologist/archaeologist with experience in alcohol research and a neurobiologist who has experience with addiction research. Students will be confronted with literature on alcohol research from anthropology, sociology, history, biology, medicine, psychology, and public health and asked to think through the conflicts and contradictions. Selected case studies will be used to focus the discussion of broader theoretical concepts and competing perspectives introduced in the first part of the course. Topics for lectures and discussion include: fermentation and the chemistry and pharmacology of alcohol; the early history of alcohol; histories of drinking in ancient, medieval, and modern times; alcohol and the political economy; alcohol as a cultural artifact; styles of drinking and intoxication; how is alcohol metabolized; addiction; how does alcohol affect sensations; social problems; alcohol and religion; alcohol and health benefits; comparative case studies of drinking.

ANTH 25810 Social Problems, Social Policy and Social Change
Instructor: Summerson Carr
W/F: 1:30 pm – 2:50 pm

This course is designed to provide an analytic framework that enables students to understand how social problems are socially constructed, how social policies are created in response to those identified problems, and how social change efforts both shape and respond to the policy environment. During the quarter, we will examine how social problems, policies and programs are framed, re-framed, and addressed and how individuals, organizations, and relevant constituencies take part in social change. In addition to providing an overview of the relationship between social problems, social policy, and social change efforts, the course encourages critical thought about the role of and relationship between professional elites (philanthropists, advocates, researchers, etc.) and ground-level activists (affected populations, community leaders, etc.) in constructing and contesting social problems and promoting social change.

ANTH 26910 Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
Instructor: Chris Bloechl
M/W/F: 11:30 am – 12:20 pm

How do we use language when we interact with others (and ourselves)? What lies beyond semantic meaning, or the presupposed function of language to deliver “information”? In this introductory course to the field of linguistic anthropology, we explore how power, inequality, and difference are enacted through various communicative features of human interaction—features that include, but are not limited to, what we refer to as “language.” We ask how the things that we say (and how we say them) signal and shape our identities (such as race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, and class). Furthermore, we investigate how language enacts forms of human relationality—forms that, among others, encompass solidarity, conflict, and hierarchy in face-to-face interactions as well as in mass-mediated productions. Through this course, student will engage with and analyze linguistic features of human interaction in their cultural and political contexts.

ANTH 27809 Repeat, Remake, Refresh: Authenticity and Authorship in the 21st century
Instructor: Shubham Shivang
M/T/TH: 3:30 – 6:20 / 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

What makes an artwork “original” today? How do we decide if a food dish is “authentic”? Who is the author of a digital meme? Is there a common metric which can rate the originality and authenticity of a film or a piece of music (Tomato-meter and IMDB ratings notwithstanding)? This course will investigate these and other questions to understand why and how authenticity and originality continue to matter in today’s world of global information and capital flows. Taking three case studies – cultural performance genres like traditional music/dance, cross-cultural film remakes, and digital publics – we will unpack how an ostensibly “foreign” cultural object becomes domiciled in a new cultural location. We will also discuss which practices and objects resist such adaptation.

We will read scholars and writers from a range of disciplines – anthropology, cinema and media studies, history – dealing with the construction of cultural authenticity and circulation. Our readings will be supplemented each week by a class screening where we will encounter materials which will serve as examples to analyze authenticity and authorship in today’s world. For instance, through the screening materials, students will be encouraged to examine if a film remake can ever be original, if the musical traditions of an itinerant community can be claimed as national, and how a globally circulating digital meme can come to acquire different meanings and significances in different places.

ANTH 28400 Bioarcheology and Forensic Anthropology
Instructor: Nene Lozanda
TUE/TH: 2:00 – 3:20 pm
Lab 1: TH 9:30 – 10:50 am
Lab 2: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm
Lab 3: 3:30 – 4:50 pm

This course is intended to provide students with a thorough understanding of bioanthropological, osteological and forensic methods used in the interpretation of past and present behavior by introducing osteological methods and anthropological theory. In particular, lab Instructorction stresses hands-on experience in analyzing human remains, whereas seminar classes integrate bioanthropological theory and its application to specific archaeological and forensic cases throughout the world. At the end of this course, students will be able to identify, document, and interpret human remains from archaeological and forensic contexts. Lab and seminar-format classes each meet weekly.

ANTH 29920 BA Seminar II
Instructor: Joseph Masco
WED: 3:00 – 5:50 pm

ANTH 10100 Introduction to Anthropology
Instru: Hanna Pickwell
M/W 3:30 pm – 4:20 pm

Classically defined as the ‘science of humankind’ or the ‘study of human diversity’, anthropology examines how people organize themselves into groups and relate to the environment through their cultural beliefs and practices. Students will be introduced to the types of arguments, questions, and problems that have driven anthropological thinking, and to the discipline’s unique focus on intensive fieldwork methodologies that span ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and even biology. We will examine how anthropologists have historically studied topics like belief, kinship, ritual, politics, exchange, and material culture in the non-western world in order to unsettle western norms and assumptions. And we will explore how post-colonial critiques and indigenous perspectives have redefined the discipline in the twenty-first century. Students will learn how anthropologists are today contributing to solving complex global problems, from climate change to economic inequality, racism, violence, immigration, health disparities, political technologies, and the effects of social media. This course serves as a sampler for those curious about the field and it fulfills a basic requirement for those pursing the Anthropology major or minor. Offered at least once yearly by rotating faculty who will provide their unique take on the discipline.

ANTH 20043 Medicine, Culture, and Society
Instru: Nesilhan Sen Firestone
M/W /F: 12:30 pm – 1:20 pm

Medical anthropology is the study of human health and illness across culture, time, and location. This course will introduce and explore some of the aspects of medical anthropology. We will approach medical systems as cultural systems and discuss health, well-being, illness, and disease as ethnographic questions. This is a reading intensive, discussion-based course. All of the scholars we will read in this class use anthropological tools and methods to explore various conditions in their specific sociocultural and historical contexts. After this course, students will have a working knowledge about the scope of the field of medical anthropology. What is so cultural about disease? How does culture shape illness experience and narrative? What is the significance of language talking about health? How are power and violence defined in the context of health and illness? How is medicine related to culture? This course is designed to help us develop critical thinking about the issues of health and medicine and the ways in which they are related to culture and society.

ANTH 20200 Research Practicum for Undergraduates
Instru: Natacha Nsabimana
M/W: 1:30 pm – 2:20 pm

This course is designed for third-year anthropology majors and minors who are planning summer research ahead of completing an honor's thesis in their fourth year. Students will learn best practices in research design for ethnographic, archaeological, and archival projects, receive guidance on developing their proposal and methodology, as well as applications for funding and IRB approval. The course will entail a mixture of in-person class time and in-field practicum assignments, with priority given to the latter. Students in allied fields or those planning other types of independent research may be considered depending on enrollment.

ANTH 20522 Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘Artwork’ Essay
Instru: William Mazzarella
T/TH: 12:30 – 1:50 pm

Seldom has a canonical essay been at once so widely and so carelessly read as Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.’ This seminar takes a deep dive into the text, reading it alongside writings by Benjamin’s contemporaries as well as more recent analyses. We will discuss themes including the technological transformation of the conditions of experience amid the rise of fascism, the significance of Benjamin’s highly complex conception of aura, the indexicality of the photographic image, the political potentialities of innervation, the psychoanalytic implications of the notion of the optical unconscious, the redemption of distraction and mimesis (including Benjamin’s mimetic theory of language), and Benjamin’s productively ambivalent relation to right-wing cultural theorists.

ANTH 20576 Social Theory for the Digital Age
Instru: Karin Knorr Cetina
TUE: 9:30 am – 12:20 pm

Society rearranges itself, though we don’t always know where it is heading. When the postmodern moment had arrived in the 1980s it perplexed social theorists, hence its characterization as simply a “post”-stage of modernity. Digitization is one answer to the question of direction of change in the last decades. In this class, we take the ongoing transformations that we attribute to digital media as a starting point to ask what challenges they provide to social theory that may force us to reconsider some of our most basic concepts and premises. We will understand the term digital age broadly to refer to the rise of algorithms, sensors, (big) data, machine learning, and computational methods, all developments that swirl in and around the Artificial Intelligence scene and intersect with and replace purely human relations. The class gives particular attention to concepts such as action and interaction, embodiment, social situations, subjectivity and autonomy, as wells as society as communication.

ANTH 20258 Maverick Markets: Cultural Economy and Cultural Finance
Instru: Karuin Knorr Cetina
WED: 9:30 – 10:50 am

What are the cultural dimensions of economic and financial institutions and financial action? What social variables influence and shape 'real' markets and market activities? 'If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?' is a question economists have been asked in the past. Why isn’t it easy to make money in financial areas even if one knows what economists know about markets, finance and the economy? And why, on the other hand, is it so easy to get rich for some participants? Perhaps the answer is that real markets are complex social and cultural institutions which are quite different from organizations, administrations and the production side of the economy. The course provides an overview over social and cultural variables and patterns that play a role in economic behavior and specifically in financial markets. The readings examine the historical and structural embeddedness of economic action and institutions, the different constructions and interpretations of money, prices and other dimensions of a market economy, and how a financial economy affects organizations, the art world and other areas.

ANTH 20703 Intro to African Civ III
Instru: Kathryn Takabvirwa
TU/TH: 12:30 – 1:50 pm

African Civilizations III provides a selective introduction to the interdisciplinary study of Africa in the modern era, with particular attention to Africa’s history since independence. Beginning with an exploration of African notions of spiritual and philosophical uniqueness and ending with contemporary debates on the meaning and historical viability of African integration, this course explores the meaning of “Africa” and “being African.” Along the way, we will discuss what happened in the African past, how to address the problems of the present, and what the future might look like.

ANTH 21107 Anthropological Theory
Instru: Natacha Nsabimana
TU/TH: 12:30 – 1:50 pm

ANTH 21265 Celts-Ancient, Modern, Postmodern
Instru: Michael Dietler
T/TH: 2:00 pm – 3:20 pm

Celts and things Celtic have long occupied a prominent and protean place in the popular imagination, and "the Celts" has been an amazingly versatile concept in the politics of identity and collective memory in recent history. This course is an anthropological exploration of this phenomenon that examines: (1) the use of the ancient past in the construction of modern nationalist mythologies of Celtic identity (e.g., in France and Ireland) and regional movements of resistance to nationalist and colonialist project (e.g., in Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gallicia, Asturias); (2) the construction of transnational ethno-nostalgic forms of Celtic identity in modern diasporic communities (Irish, Scottish, etc.); and (3) various recent spiritualist visions of Celticity that decouple the concept from ethnic understandings (e.g., in the New Age and Neo-Pagan movements). All of these are treated in the context of what is known archaeologically about the ancient peoples of Europe who serve as a symbolic reservoir for modern Celtic identities. The course explores these competing Celtic imaginaries in the spaces and media where they are constructed and performed, ranging from museums and monuments, to neo-druid organizations, Celtic cyberspace, Celtic festivals, Celtic theme parks, Celtic music, Celtic commodities, etc.

ANTH 21420 Ethnographic Methods
Instru: Kathryn Takabvirwa
WED: 9:30 am – 12:20 pm

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of ethnographic methods. In the class, we will consider the ways ethnography works as both a mode of inquiry and a form of knowledge production. We will examine the kinds of questions anthropologists ask, as well as the relationship between research questions, methodological approaches, data analysis, and knowledge. We will examine the ways scholars marshal evidence to address their questions, and practically, how they arrive at that evidence. We will study different components of ethnographic fieldwork, such as participant observation, interviewing, photography, object analysis, archival work, digital methods, and qualitative surveys. In so doing, we will engage with the complexities surrounding ethnographic research, including how one negotiates access during fieldwork, the racialized and gendered subjectivities that inhere in fieldwork, the ethics of knowledge production, and the politics of representation. The class entails both critical engagement with scholarship, and practical exercises. The goal is to give students practical, theoretically grounded insights into fieldwork in order to help them understand how to develop and carry out a research project.

ANTH 21421 Methods for Linguistic Anthropology
Instru: Shubham Shivang
MON/WED: 1:30 – 2:50 pm

"This course is designed to give students a methodological and analytical background in the ethnographic study of cultural forms. Through in-class workshops and readings, students will be introduced to and get hands-on experience with different methods and tools to transcribe and analyze scenes of discursive interaction. The in-class workshopping of interactional data will center epistemological questions about the transformation performed by processes of transcription and analysis on such data and the limits of such analysis. Taking students through the prevalent transcription conventions in linguistic anthropology and related fields for analyzing interaction, the course will start with analysis of an interaction as conversation. It will then bring in the analysis of interaction as multimodal events with gesture, gaze, spatial orientation. The course will end by bringing narrative media, such as cinema, into its orbit by thinking through methods from other fields and disciplines (cinema studies, media studies) in the analysis of data. The course aims to leave students with a better understanding of the artefacts we consider to be data – what processes undergird their making, how we ask anthropological questions of data, and what are the limits of such questioning."

ANTH 21428 Apes and Human Evolution
Instru: Larissa Smith
T/TH: 9:30 – 10:50 am

This course is a critical examination of the ways in which data on the behavior, morphology, and genetics of apes have been used to elucidate human evolution. We emphasize bipedalism, hunting, meat eating, tool behavior, food sharing, cognitive ability, language, self-awareness, and sociability. Visits to local zoos and museums, film screenings, and demonstrations with casts of fossils and skeletons required.

ANTH 22001 Climate and Collapse: Environmental Change and the Fate of Civilizations
Instru: Alan Kolata
T/TH: 9:30 am – 10:50 am

The “climate crisis” is upon us. Public warnings about global warming have been widely publicized since the mid-1970s. Multiple science and policy-based analyses have provided a range of suggestions on how human societies must adapt to a world of accelerating climate change. But climate change and the profoundly related problems of environmental degradation and resource depletion that accompany that change are nothing new. This undergraduate seminar will explore past, present and projected future scenarios of climate change and its cascading effects on human civilization. We will analyze empirical cases of previous civilizational collapse driven, in great part, by climate change as documented in historical, archaeological and paleoecological records in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We will pose questions about the relationship between natural and anthropogenic climate change, as well as closely intertwined stressors such as transformations in land use, biodiversity loss, and nutrient imbalances that have contributed to social and population dislocations over large expanses of space and time. After analyzing previous cases of societal collapse, the course will conclude with reflections on “what now?” How do we understand the physical and social consequences of climate change, and what steps can humanity take to avert, or, more likely, adapt to these transformational processes to avoid systemic civilizational collapse?

ANTH 22079 Mass Media in Semiotic Perspective
Instru: Chris Bloechl
T/TH: 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm

Mass media are commonly understood as channels for public information, expression, and debate. Yet, mass media technologies also serve governmental and corporate actors as instruments for shaping public opinion and behavior. In this undergraduate course, we will explore this and related problems from a semiotic perspective, with special attention to the dynamic relations between state, market, culture, and language at work in projects of mass communication. We will study several theories and empirical cases (both historical and contemporary) of mass mediation. Topics will include the role of mass media in nation-state formation and control; the role of mass media in cultural and linguistic assimilation; and group subjectivity and solidarity within media publics.

ANTH 22204 Caste and Politics in India
Instru: Victoria Gross
TUE: 3:30 – 6:20 pm

This course examines caste not simply as an assemblage of fixed social hierarchies, but as a dynamic field of political subjectivity through which individuals and communities come to understand themselves as citizens of democratic India and as collective actors with shared interests on the broader global stage. Moving from the late colonial period to the present, the course explores how caste has shaped and been shaped by democratic politics, ideals of liberal modernity, and claims of recognition, belonging, and identity. We will engage with anthropology, history, and political theory to examine how caste identities are produced and contested through institutions of law and electoral democracy, as well as embodied, everyday forms of politics, such as protests, commemorations, performances, and popular narratives. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand caste as a historically situated and affectively charged mode of political life, and to critically assess how caste shapes modern Indian politics and vice versa.

ANTH 23288 Tracing Black and Native Relations In South Chicago
Instru: Montoya//Zhang
T/TH 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

This course traces the labor of Black and Native people in relation to Hyde Park, Chicago, beginning with the 1893 World's Fair through Nuclear Development in the 20th century. We will study the afterlives of slavery and native dispossession by visiting local sites and archives. Using methodologies from the fields of Anthropology, Literary Studies and Native Studies, we will foreground the importance of being in place, to situate ourselves as students and teachers in the neighborhood. Students will theorize themselves in place and in relation to those past as they work towards a public facing final assignment. (20th/21st, Theory)

ANTH 24002 Colonization II
Instru: Alice Yao
T/TH: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

This quarter covers the histories of modern European and Japanese colonialism in South and East Asia and the Pacific. Themes examined include the logics and dynamics of imperial expansion and rule; Orientalist discourses; uprisings and anti-imperial movements; the rise of nationalisms; and paths to decolonization in the region.

ANTH 24003 Colonization III
Instru: Teresa Montoya
TUE/TH: 2:00 – 3:20 pm

The third quarter of the Colonizations sequence considers the processes and consequences of decolonization both in newly independent nations and former colonial powers. Through an engagement with postcolonial studies, we explore the problematics of freedom and sovereignty; anti-colonial movements, thinking and struggles; nation-making and nationalism; and the enduring legacies of colonialism.

ANTH 24021 Anthropological Landscapes: Explorations Explorations into the Secularity of Social Theory
Instru: Hussein Agrama
TUE: 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm

This advanced reading seminar builds upon and explores more extensively the possibilities introduced by the previous course entitled "Tradition and Embodiment: An Inquiry into the Secularity of Social Theory."

ANTH 25272 Human Rights on the Ground: Ethnographic Perspectives
Instru: Jay Henderson
T/TH: 11:00 am – 12:20 pm

The aim of this course is to investigate the ways in which ethnographers have dealt with questions of human rights and humanitarianism. While ethnography is the hallmark of anthropology, it has gained popularity in recent years in other fields of social science, from sociology to political science. Over the course of the quarter, we will discuss what makes a human rights ethnography and what we can learn about human rights from the perspective of ethnography. Rather than reading chapters and articles, we will focus on excerpts of full ethnographies. The purpose of this is to delve into the nitty-gritty details of living with (or without) human rights. Students will not only learn about human rights from an ethnographic perspective, but they will also gain familiarity with ethnography as a genre.

ANTH 25330 Race, Nation and Baseball
Instru: John Kelly
TUE: 7:00 – 9:50 pm

In March 2026, Venezuela sends a national team to Miami and the Baseball World Classic. Politics entangle with sports: do nations, races, boundaries, or corporations organize our world? Sports both use and stage the overcoming of race and nation – with what effects? Does Venezuelan play resist or confirm US hegemony? Will guardrails built for global baseball hold, against Trump’s naked compellence? Baseball was the first professional team sport, and last with a forum (deliberately limited) for national teams. Race seems more central: baseball was paradigm for color-bars in the US. then Jackie Robinson became transcendentally famous. This course introduces historical ethnography by reading only baseball texts. Light but epic readings cover classic topics – the color bar, Jackie Robinson, the rise of Japanese and Caribbean baseball, nation and globalization in MLB – and explore less known by-ways, barnstorming, the California League, Japan’s encounter with the Negro Leagues; Cuba, Rickey, revolution and its consequences; the careers of Toni Stone, Wally Yonamine, and Masanori Murakami (firsts, a woman in a major league, a US player in Japan, a Japanese in MLB) and pathbreakers Chet Brewer and Lefty O’Doul. We read books by Donald Hall, Adrian Burgos, Kazuo Sayama (in English) and Martha Ackmann, and primary texts, Walt Whitman’s on baseball, America and race, and the “Frick Report,” secret manifesto written to block Branch Rickey’s plan to break the color bar.

ANTH 25440 Maverick Markets: Cultural Economy and Cultural Finance
Instru: Karin Knorr Cetina
TUE: 9:30 am – 12:50 pm

ANTH 28701 The Archaeology of Alcohol and Feasting
Instru: Michael Dietler
With Consent Only
FRI: 1:30 – 4:20 pm

This seminar examines the role of alcohol, as a globally important form of "embodied material culture", and feasting, as a ubiquitous ritual practice of "commensal politics", in human history. The course explores the growing theoretical literature on these subjects as well as a wide-ranging series of case studies showing how archaeologists can study drinking and feasting and how attention to these practices can illuminate a variety of social, political, and economic processes.