Course Description:

Human skeletal remains provide a window into the lived experiences of people in the past, but their interpretations are typically divided along theoretical and disciplinary lines. Human osteologists, for example, rely heavily on techniques for gathering and validating biological data on bodies and populations that supposedly transcend history, geography, and social setting. On the other hand, studies of the body that are deeply embedded in social contexts often fail to recognize the powerful material constraints posed by the human form, as well as the evolutionary history that has produced and shaped it. In this course we will seek a middle ground that acknowledges how the body emerges from evolutionary, biological, social, and behavioral forces. This approach recognizes the plasticity of the body, particularly the skeletal body.

This course will introduce the fundamental of skeletal analysis and overview traditional methods to determine demographic parameters (i.e., sex, age, ancestry) as well as indicators of activity, diet, pathology, and trauma. At the same time, we will carefully consider social identities, including gender, ethnicity, and class, as key variables and intersectional forces in the formation and transformation of bodies across the life course.

Fall 2022 T/Th 11am-12:05pm
Instructor: Dr. Lauren Hosek (lauren.hosek@colorado.edu)

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Course Description:

The study of human skeletal remains is a crucial part of biological anthropology, and has applications in archaeology, anatomy, paleontology, and forensics. This course is an intensive, in-depth study of the human skeleton. The primary focus is on the identification of human skeletal remains and fragmentary skeletal elements and their osseous structure. The ability to accurately and precisely identify remains is the fundamental skill in human osteology, and prerequisite to all subsequent analyses. To this end, students will be working in the laboratory with the human remains teaching collection. This course will also provide an introduction to the fundamentals of skeletal analysis and the methodologies used by practitioners to “read” skeletal remains.

Fall 2022 T/Th 2pm-3:05
Instructor: Dr. Lauren Hosek (lauren.hosek@colorado.edu)

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Anth 1143: Exploring Global Cultural Diversity

CIVILIZATION-The Early Years Mesopotamia in the 2nd Millennium BC

Jeanne Nijhowne, PhD

At the dawn of the second millennium BC, Mesopotamia was in chaos. Eventually, the kings of Babylon established control and created an empire. While Mesopotamian political, economic, social and religious systems were markedly different from ours, the problems and issues they faced were not. These include surviving political upheaval, the role of religion in everyday life, the dynamics of international trade, and human rights.

May 31-July, 2022 A Term – In Person 9:20-10:55 AM

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This course focuses on some of the present, and possible future, socio-ecological conditions of life on planet earth. In particular we will work to understand the historic, economic, political, and socio-cultural forces that created the conditions we call climate change. With this we will take a particular interest in the question of how race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, class, and gender articulate with the material effects of climate change. The course also focuses on how we, as scholars, citizens, and activists can work to alter these current conditions in ways that foster social and ecological justice for all living beings.

The course will be a combination of lecture and discussion. Students will be assigned a small group to work in, which will be the same group of students they will work with throughout the semester. Each student is expected to attend each class and participate in each class discussion. Many class meetings will involve group or paired work. Students are also expected to participate fully in the collaborative work.

Professor Jerry Jacka

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Fall: 2021, Instructor: Dr. J. Terrence McCabe, Office: Hale 440

This course is designed to explore both the historical and current theories and paradigms concerning human/environmental relationships. Because this is an anthropology course, there will be an emphasis on how anthropologists have examined these relationships, but the readings will also incorporate how geographers and sociologists have looked at, and written about, humans and the environment. Emphasis will also be given to current debates in the literature, but during the first few weeks of the course we will cover important works that form the basis of research being conducted today. Specific paradigms to be discussed include: neo-functionalism, early and later systems ecology, evolutionary ecology, political ecology, symbolic or humanistic ecology, complex adaptive systems and resilience.

The readings will consist of a set of articles that outline or explain each theory being discussed, and for some paradigms, an ethnography in which an author utilizes that theoretical perspective in his/her analysis. Each student will be required to write a final seminar paper that takes one or more theoretical perspectives that have been discussed in class and examine how it has been used either topically or ethnographically. Other possibilities for the paper are the application of one of the paradigms to a specific research problem; or a paper based on the career and changes in thought of one of the more influential theorists in human ecology (e.g. Roy Rappaport or Robert Netting).

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Explore 10,000 years of Maritime peoples, histories, and cultures!

• Key Themes: migration; human- nature relationships; development; resistance; sailing; knowledges; climate change

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Instructor: Bailey Duhé

Who invented race? Do police really target communities of color? Are race and ethnicity the same thing? Is white privilege bad?

If you’ve asked any of these questions and want a space to work through the answers, ANTH 4020: Brown Studies is for you.

This is an introduction to Critical Race Theory course that uses mixed-race experiences in the United States as examples to answer, discuss, and problematize race as we understand it today.

Want more information? Got a question? bailey.duhe@colorado.edu

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