Explores cultures and peoples from specific geographic regions of the world. Broadly considers social, gendered, economic, and political changes in ecological and historical context, focusing on precolonial, colonial, and contemporary societies and globalization. Sections: A. North America, B. Latin America, C. Middle East and North Africa, D. Sub-Saharan Africa, E. Southeast Asia. May be repeated barring duplication of subject.

This foundational course, required within the first year of declaring the major, provides students with a cross-field perspective on anthropology through a focus on writing in the discipline. Approaching humankind as cultural and biological beings with distinct as well as interconnected histories, the course exposes students to the varied research practices of cultural, biological, archaeological, and linguistic anthropologists. Students will build skills in reading and research and will practice writing within several disciplinary genres and conventions that reflect anthropology's public as well as scholarly sides. Featured topics provide entry points into key anthropological themes, including the holistic study of human thought, behavior, language, ideologies, and institutions; race, gender, and inequality; and adaptation and change within social and natural environments.

This course surveys the way our human bodies are valued, transformed, experienced and made subject to control in different societies around the world. It explores cultural constructions of fatness and obesity, fitness and sports as sites of politics, economics and social change, and bodily modification and dis-integration in tattooing, injury, biomedical technology, disability, aging, and extreme environments of war and outerspace. Uses anthropological and feminist theories and introduces ethnographic methods.

This course examines the ideologies and practices associated with sexuality from a broad perspective that incorporates diverse case studies from the ethnographic record. Working from the argument that much of human sexual behavior is culturally constructed rather than biologically determined, the course invites students to expand their notion of the "normal" and to consider the human condition from a cross-cultural perspective. Topics discussed include cross-cultural varieties of transgendered experience, same-sex sexualities, and heteronormative identities.