Anthropology - Environmental Studies
How does culture mediate relationships with land, water, soils, climate, plants, and animals? And how have these more-than-human beings had reciprocal relationships with humans? Using a range of methodologies, including ethnography, Anthropology-Environmental Studies majors will learn to build from different ways of knowing to examine the multi-faceted character of the environment and environmentalism at a time widely heralded as the Anthropocene. With humans at the center of this proposed geologic epoch the Anthropology-Environmental Studies major requires students to develop a working grasp of fundamental natural and scientific concepts central to environmental studies, while also understanding how scientific knowledge is always embedded in specific cultural features and historical contexts. An anthropological approach stresses that, while environmental processes and phenomena have material existence, they work within diverse cultural frames of meaning. As an environmental anthropologist you will be able to recognize the commonalities, coalitions and alliances that cut a across cultures, as well as recognizing the political and economic agendas that guide and inform globalized environmental movements.
Students must take 30 credits in Anthropology, as specified below. No more than eight credits earned in off-campus programs and transfer credits may be used to satisfy major requirements. Courses taken P-D-F may not be used to satisfy the course and credit requirements for the major.
In addition to core courses required of all environmental studies majors, Anthropology-Environmental Studies majors must fulfill the requirements noted below.
- Anthropology 101 Becoming Human: An Introduction to Anthropology
- Anthropology 203 Introduction to Environmental Anthropology
Two of the following courses (8 credits) from the department's offerings in Environmental Anthropology:
- Anthropology 246 ST: The Anthropology of Design
- Anthropology 300 Malignant Cultures: Anthropologies of Cancer
- Anthropology 313 Communism, Socialism and the Environment
- Anthropology 328 Medical Anthropology
- 333 Domestic/Wild: Unruly Homes Wild Biomes
- Anthropology 360 The Cultural Politics of Science
Two of the following elective courses (8 credits):
- Anthropology 257 Chinese Society and Culture
- Anthropology 258 Peoples of the Tibetano-Burman Highlands
- Anthropology 259 Culture, Environment, and Development in the Andes
- Anthropology 317 Language and Culture
- Anthropology 349 Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of Cities
- Anthropology 358 Social Bodies, Diverse Identities: the Anthropology of Sex and Gender
And, in their senior year, Anthropology-ES majors must take both: