This course takes a big-picture approach to investigating how humans in diverse cultures have related to the non-human world, placing an emphasis on landscapes and plant and animal species. Comparing our Western worldviews and practices with Indigenous approaches, we will identify the underlying assumptions with which humans and their technologies have encountered, modified, and impacted the natural world. Designed with an experiential component, the course invites us to rethink our philosophies and sustainability of the human/non-human interface.

This course provides an overview of forensic anthropology, a sub-field of biological anthropology that applies knowledge of skeletal anatomy to problems of medico-legal significance (i.e., identification of human skeletal remains and interpretation of the circumstances surrounding death). This course outlines concepts underlying the recovery and analysis of human remains, the determination of the biological profile (including age, sex, ancestry, and stature), and the interpretation of skeletal trauma and pathology.

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.

This course will cover the study of the human skeleton (osteology) and the ethical handling and treatment of human remains. The lecture format will be followed for the first 2/3 of the course while students will participate in hands-on skeletal analysis for the last third of the class. Students will learn about the major bones of the body, common pathologies, trauma analysis and interpretation, and age, sex, stature, and ancestry estimation.