Course Descriptions

Acquaints students with historical and contemporary approaches in Anthropology to the study of social and cultural variation.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Note: Students with previous credit for ANTH 110 may not take this course for credit.

This course will acquaint students with anthropological and ethnographic approaches to Indigenous research in Canada. The course is focused on understanding first and foremost the historical and contemporary diversity and complexity of Indigenous societies and issues in Canada; secondly on understanding anthropological questions and the distinctive contributions and perspectives that anthropologists provide or have historically provided through Indigenous research in Canada.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 30 credit units of university courses.

This course is designed to provide an introduction to the anthropological grounding of cultural competency and its application to community, health, and violence intervention programming. The course uses a “case-study” approach so that the application of academic cultural competency models can be critically assessed.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or permission of the instructor.

A comprehensive survey of the ethnography, ethnohistory, and contemporary cultural issues facing the peoples of the North American plains. The composition and development of the plains culture complex and the impact of culture change will be considered centrally in this course.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or INDG 107.3 or ARCH 112.3 or permission of instructor.

Examination of the utility of cultural anthropology's concepts, theory, methodology and insights in creatively influencing the conduct of domestic and international business. Cross-cultural business etiquette, understanding of marketing and consumer behaviour, and importance of intercultural negotiation in solving business problems in multicultural/transnational organizational settings are also discussed.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or completion of 30 credit units at the university level including a 100-level social science course.

Broadly considers society and culture in Eastern and Central Europe, how the region today is related to both the socialist and pre-socialist pasts, and how ethnography as a key research tool used by anthropologists helps to account for sociocultural changes the region is undergoing since the late 1980's.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or completion of 30 credit units at the university level, including an introductory social science course.
Note: Students with credit for ANTH 298 Special Topics: Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe may not take this course for credit.

Examines some of the major dimensions of non-material culture including religion, magic, and constructs of space and time. It also examines processes of enculturation and culture change.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or permission of instructor.

This course is an introduction to contemporary medical anthropology. It surveys anthropological approaches to the relationship between socio-cultural factors and illness, health, healing practices, the body, and mind. The ways in which social, cultural and political forces impact how various forms of human health and illness are understood, experienced, and dealt with will be examined.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or 30 credit units of university courses including an introductory social sciences course.

Introduction and assessment of various anthropological approaches to the study of ethnicity and ethnic groups in a cross-cultural comparative framework.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or completion of 30 credit units at the university level including a 100-level social science course.

This course examines the cultural construction of landscapes, as well as of built and social environments, through a series of topical readings focusing on historical, archaeological, literary, and ethnographic understandings.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or permission of instructor.
Note: Not open to students with credit in ANTH 498.3(02): Anthropological Perspectives on Space and Place (2009).

Taking a political ecology approach drawn from anthropology, cross-cultural examples, and other disciplines, the course examines the impact of major 20th. and 21st. Century economic and technological developments upon peoples and environments. The focus is upon Indigenous nations, farming, peasant, and other local communities in cross-cultural and global perspective. A core emphasis is on environmental crises (chronic and acute), often associated with asymmetrical power relations, and socio-cultural responses to them, especially in the form of movements of resistance, protest, and reform. Political ecology blends the insights of a unified political economic approach in the social sciences with cultural and human ecologies as well as a mixture of biological and social ecological sciences. The course also explores sustainable futures through this paradigm.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or ARCH 112.3 or successful completion of 30 credit units of university study.
Note: Students who have taken ANTH 298 (Special Topics): Political Ecology, Anthropology and Contemporary Environmental Issues may not take this course for credit.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations. Students interested in these courses should contact the department for more information.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours

This course examines the practice of ethnography by integrating a discussion of ethnographic research methods with training in the critical reading of ethnography and skills development in writing ethnography. Specific techniques are explored, with an emphasis on qualitative approaches. The relationship of ethnographic theory and methodology is highlighted.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or permission of instructor.
Note: Students who have credit for ANTH 430 may not take ANTH 302 for credit.

Supervised research (literature, laboratory, or field-based) course in a particular aspect of one of anthropology not offered in lecture form in this department. A detailed research program will be designed on an individual basis and will be guided by regular consultation with one or more faculty members. The student is required to consult with prospective faculty member(s) to plan a research project and make arrangements for supervision. The student may register in the course only after a detailed course syllabus has been approved by the Department Head.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 24 credit units ARCH or ANTH courses; and permission of department.
Note: This course is available for graduate credit. Students may take this course more than once for credit, provided the topic covered in each offering differs substantially. Students must consult the Department to ensure that the topics covered are different. There may be costs additional to tuition fees.

Supervised reading course in a particular aspect of anthropology not offered in lecture form in this department. A detailed reading program will be designed on an individual basis and will be guided by regular consultation with one or more faculty members. The student is required to consult with prospective faculty member(s) to plan the reading course and make arrangements for supervision. The student may register in the course only after a detailed course syllabus has been approved by the Department Head.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 24 credit units ARCH or ANTH courses; and permission of department.
Note: This course is not available for graduate credit. Students may take this course more than once for credit, provided the topic covered in each offering differs substantially. Students must consult the Department to ensure that the topics covered are different.

Introduces students to the anthropological approaches to gender, looking specifically at the gendered norms of collective behaviours and identities. The course centers on two questions: How is gender understood in different cultural contexts? What are the processes by which people learn to identify themselves as gendered and sexual citizens?

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or WGST 112.3 or permission of instructor.

Coverage of specialized areas of anthropological and/or ethnographic analysis.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Permission of instructor is required.
Note: Students may take this course more than once for credit, provided the topic covered in each offering differs substantially. Students must consult the Department to ensure that the topics covered are different.

Critically examines various approaches to the study of religion and religious symbolism. Different ways of interpreting myth, ritual, and symbol are considered through a survey of the works of both early social scientists and contemporary scholars. The role of symbols and rituals in social communication is examined.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units of 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.

Applications of anthropological concepts to contemporary cultural and social issues. There is a focus on anthropology as a policy science including research and non-academic practice. Applied methods and domains are emphasized, including needs and social impact assessment, program evaluation, rapid assessment, participatory-action, and advocacy. Discussion focuses on anthropological contributions to community and economic development, environmental impact and sustainability, business and industry, cultural and natural resource management, education, immigration, Indigenous issues, technology transfers, and health.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units of 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.

Analytical and comparative examination of anthropological approaches to the study of political and legal structures and processes. Sources of conflict resolution and the relationships among politics, law, and religion are explored from a cross-cultural and comparative framework.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.

Examines the variety of cultural adaptations that both large-scale and small-scale societies make to local and, increasingly, global environments. Illustrates how the principals of general ecology apply to humans in their environmental relations, while also applying ethnographic perspectives to new political manifestations of environmentalism.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.

Offers an anthropological perspective on stories and storytelling events, their meanings, interpretations, and applications. Drawing on a wealth of scholarship generated by folklorists, anthropologists and oral historians, students will examine current theories and principles of oral historical research and consider the implications of storytelling and oral narrative in modern societies.

Weekly hours: 1.5 Lecture hours and 1.5 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.
Note: Students with credit for ANTH 398 Special Topics: Oral History and Storytelling may not take this course for credit.

Offers a biocultural anthropological perspective on infectious diseases, epidemics, syndemics, and pandemics. The course focuses primarily on gendered and racialized experiences of infectious disease.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3 or WGST 112.3 or permission of instructor.
Note: Students with credit for WGST 353.3 may not take this course for credit.

Surveys anthropological theories that relate to change, from classical ones (such as neo-evolutionism, acculturation and assimilation, innovation, and diffusion) through more contemporary approaches to urbanization, social movements and networks, development, and globalization, to complexity and emergence theories. The tensions between the capacity for people to direct their futures and the limiting of external determinants are discussed through this course.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 200-level ANTH or permission of instructor.

This course takes an anthropological life course approach to examine cultural and historical dynamics of birth, sex, and death cross-culturally. These three universal facts of human life are experienced, valued, and undertaken in in vastly different ways across cultural contexts and throughout time. Major topics include fertility, political and cultural determinants of birth and infant survival, emergent sexualities, sexual citizenships, sexual agency, aging, documenting death, and funerary rites.

Weekly hours: 2 Lecture hours and 1 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 111.3; and 30 credit units of university-level courses or permission of the instructor.
Note: Students who have taken ANTH 311: Selected Topics - Birth and Sex and Death may not take this course for credit.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours

This is a fourth-year capstone course that integrates archaeology and anthropology in a weekly seminar focusing on contemporary (i.e., 21st century) issues spanning the two sub-disciplines. Students will engage in a variety of contemporary readings and discussions and will be required to produce an original research paper that integrates archaeological and anthropological literature in a (previously-approved) topic of their choice. While weekly topics will vary from year to year, they will be grouped under one or more of five broad themes: Power, Identity, Community, Conflict, and Body. Topics covered will be timely and responsive to current events. This course will require active engagement by students, rather than passive absorption of lecture material. Assessment will be based on class participation, presentation, and an iterative series of writing assignments (a research paper proposal, annotated bibliography, and original research paper). This is a required course for the BA and BA Hons degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 24 credit units ANTH or ARCH courses; and permission of the department.

Students will undertake a project involving original research or a review essay under the direction of a faculty member. An oral presentation and written report submitted at the end of the project will be evaluated by a faculty committee. Topics are open within the field of Anthropology, subject to the availability of a faculty advisor. An outline of the project must be submitted to the course coordinator in the term preceding registration and be approved before Departmental permission will be granted.

Prerequisite(s): Admission to Honours program in Archaeology and Anthropology; ANTH 302.3; and permission of the department.

This course exposes students to critical anthropological perspectives on the concepts of healing, health, and well-being. Emphasis is placed on understanding the meaning of healing in cultural context, and on the cultural bases of psychosocial, medical, restorative, and transformational therapeutic processes.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units of 300 level ANTH, or permission of the instructor.
Note: Students who have taken ANTH 498 (Special Topics): Anthropology of Healing may not take this course for credit.

This seminar course explores anthropological approaches to the human experience of disaster, disruption, and dislocation. Adopting perspectives primarily from medical and environmental anthropology, the course examines social and cultural responses to natural and human-made disasters, forced resettlement, and other forms of population disruption.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 300-level ANTH or permission of instructor.
Note: Students who have received credit for ANTH 498.3: Anthropology of Disaster and Disruption may not take this course for credit.

This course provides a historical survey of the evolution of basic concepts and theories in anthropological thought and practice. The development of the field of anthropology is examined by a review of foundational perspectives on the nature of human culture, thought, behavior and experience in relation to its natural and social environment, covering a range of ideas from early philosophical views to mid-twentieth century social and philosophical schools of thought.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 300-level ANTH or permission of instructor.
Note: Students with credit for ANTH 420 cannot take this course for credit.

This course consists of a broad survey of the development of contemporary concepts and theories in anthropology and related fields. Special emphasis will be given to the evolution of such terms and ideas as ethnography, culture, subjectivity, and the shifting models of the relationship between individual and group in contemporary theory.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units 300-level ANTH or permission of instructor.
Note: Students with credit for ANTH 420 may not take this course for credit.

This course is designed to expose you to the basic elements of zooarchaeology, which is the study of faunal remains from archaeological sites. It will focus on specimen identification, quantification, taphonomy, modification, age and sex estimations, seasonality, and other contemporary techniques in this discipline. You will be exposed to a wide variety of animal taxa from large and small-bodied ungulates, to carnivores, fishes, and birds. The presentation of course material is based on lectures, laboratory activities, and discussions of methods, approaches, and case studies. A heavy emphasis is placed on learning through hands-on experience and developing practical skills in working with large faunal assemblages. Please note that this is NOT a course in comparative vertebrate or invertebrate anatomy, nor this is a course in human or non-human mammalian anatomy.

Weekly hours: 1.5 Lecture hours and 1.5 Practicum/Lab hours
Prerequisite(s): ARCH 250.3.
Note: Students with credit for ARCH 458.6 may not take this course for credit.

This course is designed to expose you to advanced issues and discourses in the field of zooarchaeology related to contemporary methods and theoretical approaches. It will address a range of topics that cover different aspects of human-animal studies including subsistence, foraging strategies, domestication, bone chemistry, use of biometrics, animal life histories, integration of Indigenous knowledge, and other contemporary techniques and approaches applied in the discipline. The presentation of course material is based on lectures, laboratory activities with a sample faunal assemblage, and discussions of methods, theoretical approaches, and case studies. A heavy emphasis is placed on learning through hands-on experience and developing practical skills in working with large faunal assemblages.

Weekly hours: 1.5 Lecture hours and 1.5 Practicum/Lab hours
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 457.3.
Note: Students with credit for ARCH 458.6 may not take this course for credit.

The goals of this seminar course are twofold: first, to provide detailed knowledge about contemporary Indigenous mental health issues; second, to develop a critical perspective on the theoretical and methodological issues pertaining to research in Indigenous mental health. Material from the fields of anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry will be in integrated to provide an interdisciplinary perspective. Examples will be drawn from both Canada and internationally.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 3 credit units in 300-level Anthropology, or permission of the instructor.
Note: Students may not receive credit for both PSY 480 and ANTH 480.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours

This course explores strategies for community-based research and engagement, with an emphasis on the practice of ethnography.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Permission of the instructor required.

Will survey the theoretical and conceptual trends within the field of medical anthropology, spanning biocultural, clinical, and critical interpretive approaches. The substantive areas of focus include reproductive health, infectious disease, disability, mental illness and healing.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Permission of the instructor required.

Environmental Anthropology is the study of human interactions with nature. Topics include livelihood, place, adaptation, spirituality, environmental justice and environmental risk.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Permission of the instructor required.

This course will familiarize students with the application of anthropological insights to address social and other problems. Professional and practicing skills will be developed to assist students developing careers outside of the academy, as well as those wishing to take a scholarly approach to applied research.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Restriction(s): Must be enrolled in the M.A. Project-based program in Anthropology, with a concentration in Practicing Anthropology.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Reading hours
Permission of the instructor required.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Reading hours
Permission of the instructor required.

During residence, all graduate students will register in and attend ANTH 990 and will make at least one presentation based on their research. Graduate students in the Anthropology program are required to attend and participate; interested undergraduate students may also be invited.

Restriction(s):Enrolment in the graduate program in Anthropology or permission of the Graduate Chair or designate.

Students enrolled in the M.A. Project-based program in Anthropology must complete this course.

Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s):Open to students admitted to the M.A. Project-based program in Anthropology.

Students writing a Master's thesis must register for this course.

Students writing a Ph.D. thesis must register for this course.