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A course focused on recent anthropological scholarship that seeks to understand and explain the transformation of contemporary societies and cultures. Topics may include some of the following: new patterns of global inequality, war and neo-colonialism, health and globalization, social justice and indigeneity, religious fundamentalism, gender inequalities, biotechnologies and society etc.

Introduction to medical anthropology with a focus on questions, methods, and insights from sociocultural anthropology. Explores the relationships among culture, society, and medicine with special attention to power, inequality, and globalization. Examples from many parts of the world, addressing biomedicine as well as other healing systems.

Society, culture, kinship, exchange, community, identity, politics, belief: these and other core concepts are explored in this course, which lays the foundation for advanced courses in social and cultural anthropology.

Introduction to applied evolutionary medical anthropology. It explores evidence for the evolution of human vulnerability to disease across the life cycle (conception to death) and implications for health of contemporary populations in behavioral ecological, cross-cultural, health and healing systems, historical trauma, intersectionality, and climate change, lenses.

This course provides a rigorous introduction to historical and contemporary relations between Indigenous peoples and anthropologists, spanning archaeology, biological/ evolutionary anthropology, and socio-cultural & linguistic fields. The course centers Indigenous experience, critique, and scholarship, and fosters students’ critical thinking skills as applied to the ethics and politics of anthropological research, past and present. The course is organised into three modules:

1.     Introduction to Indigenous peoples’ critiques and concerns regarding anthropology

2.     Understanding historical context of these issues

3.     In-depth discussion of current issues, oriented to emergent and possible future transformations in anthropology’s relations with Indigenous peoples.

This course introduces linguistic analysis with a view towards its application to the study of the relation between culture and social structure. The interplay of pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and discourse with rituals, ideologies, and constructions of social meaning and worldview are discussed in tandem with the traditional branches of linguistic analysisphonology, morphology, grammar, syntax, and semantics. The objective of the course is to provide a broad framework for understanding the role of language in society.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-opportunities-program. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Practical field training through six weeks of excavation on an archaeological site. Basic principles of artifact handling and classification. (Offered only in Summer Session) Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An archaeological survey of the human prehistory of northwestern North America from the late Pleistocene to the time of early European contact. Geographical coverage will include the Northwest Coast, California, and the Intermontane Plateau.

Archaeology and ethnohistory of Arctic cultures. Emphasis is on variation in social organization, settlement pattern, economy, ideology, and interaction with the expanding European world-system.

This course examines the precontact and early contact period culture history of eastern North America, including Ontario, through archaeological evidence. Topics covered include the earliest peopling of the region at the end of the Ice Age, diversity of hunter-gatherer societies, introduction of agriculture, and the development of the dynamic First Nations societies who eventually met and interacted with Europeans.

This course offers a comparative examination of the rise and organization of ancient cities through a detailed investigation of urban social theory. We will explore competing anthropological interpretations of urban process while probing the political, ideological, and economic structures of the worlds earliest cities. Students will have the opportunity to consider a broad range of subjects, including mechanisms of city genesis; urban-rural relations; the intersections of city and state; and historical variation in urban landscapes, ideologies, and political economies.

This course examines human prehistory in North America, North of Mexico, from the time of earliest occupation to European contact. Special topics include Paleoindian and Archaic adaptations, the rise of complex hunter-gatherers, origins of farming and the evolution of complex chiefdoms.

This class offers intensive study of the archaeology and culture history of the Andean region prior to the Spanish conquest.  The complexity and distinctiveness of Andean social organization, political institutions, religious ideologies, and economic practices have long fascinated anthropologists.  Ultimately, the course will explore Andean cultures over a 10,000 year period, highlighting key debates, current research projects, and innovative theoretical approaches shaping contemporary archeological scholarship in South America and beyond.      

This course will present various perspectives on the nature and dynamics of youth culture. It will discuss the research accumulated over the past quarter century on youth lifestyles, from fashion and music to the formation and spread of slang. It will also look at the various critical and controversial aspects of adolescence in contemporary culture.

The course uses tourism as a lens to examine global connections. Particular focus will be on the politics of cultural encounters. Drawing examples from diverse ethnographic materials, the course explores how different visions of the world come into contact, negotiated and transformed, and how tourist encounters shape peoples everyday lives.

How do societies understand and manage their own diversity?  This course unites critical studies of multiculturalism and settler colonialism to study Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., also examining strategies in other sites for managing diversity which are framed differently (e.g. superdiversity (Europe), co-existence (Japan), multiracialism (Hawai’i), mestizoness (Mexico)).

The role of language and symbolism in the representation and manipulation of ideology and power structure. Case materials drawn from the study of verbal arts, gender, law, advertising, and politics with a focus on North America.

This course provides background in the practical and theoretical aspects of fieldwork in Paleoanthropology. Students are trained in the treatment and analysis of fossil vertebrates, plant macro- and micro-fossils and sediments. Excursions to paleoanthropological localities of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, and excavation at a hominoid site. (Joint undergraduate-graduate) Not eligible for CR/NCR option. Additional fees of up to $2500 for field trip costs will apply.

A survey of living primates, this lab-oriented course describes and compares the diverse behavioural and anatomical adaptations that are characteristic to this order of mammals. The understanding of the biological diversity and evolutionary history of primates is important for further understanding of human adaptation and evolution.

Exploration of the development and maintenance of the human skeleton and dentition, with emphasis on application to archaeological, forensic and biomedical sciences.

This course takes the student on a survey of human evolution from our ape ancestors to modern humans.  Students will learn to identify skulls, teeth and limb bones, explore hundreds of casts, and learn how researchers understand human origins and trends in the development of human anatomy and behavior.

This course will explore the foundational and leading concepts in evolutionary anthropology. Historically important readings and current concepts will be presented and discussed in the context of research, especially in areas of human population biology, ecology and the evolution of Homo sapiens. Topics will include behavioral ecology and life history theory, as well as a critique of the adaptationist program.

This course will investigate human movement and physical activity patterns through the lens of evolutionary anthropology. The evolution of hominin physical behaviours, such as bipedalism and tool use, will be explored alongside the morphological traits associated with these behaviours. We will also examine social and cultural factors that may moderate physical activities among diverse human groups, including subsistence strategy variation and contemporary views on activity and exercise.

Molecular anthropology is an interdisciplinary field combining biology, genetics, evolution and anthropology. In this class, we will explore the use of DNA for the study of past migrations and admixture patterns, the evolution of pathogens, plant and animal domestication and especially the relationships between recent and archaic humans.

Provides a framework for understanding current anthropological issues in the different geo-political regions of Latin America. Special attention will be paid to historical/conceptual development of the discipline in the region, and the course will introduce a debate about the death and resurgence of area studies.

This course offers a general introduction to transformations in modern and contemporary China from an anthropological perspective. This course covers major aspects of Chinese culture, history, and society in a global context.

Social anthropological perspectives on variations in gender roles and systems. Examines, through comparison of ethnography, the relationship of gender to social organization, economic and political processes, belief systems and social change.

This course examines medical anthropology's contributions to, and critiques of, global health policies and programs. Topics covered include: colonialism and health, the political ecology of disease, indigenous constructions of illness and healing, medical pluralism, the politics of primary health care, population policies, reproductive health, and AIDS.