Overview

Anthropology examines the interplay of social, cultural, political, economic, and physical factors in the construction of human communities and human subjects, addressing collective life as pragmatically built and imaginatively conceived. Undergraduate majors, as well as those students taking individual courses in anthropology, benefit from a department whose faculty research interests’ span a wide range of geographical and theoretical areas and one in which undergraduate teaching is treated as a major part of faculty responsibility.

Anthropology is an excellent undergraduate program for those who plan to enter social work, writing, law, medicine, public administration, public health, education, museums, international affairs, and business, as well as for those who wish to pursue graduate work in the field. While a few majors go on to graduate school in anthropology, many take anthropology as a way of learning how to think and write creatively about complex relationships between seemingly disparate domains (e.g., relationships between forms of storytelling and forms of political economy). In non-academic settings, including nonprofit organizations and private corporations, there is an increasing demand for the critical research and analytic skills that are essential to anthropological training. (For more information on career opportunities in applied anthropology, visit the American Anthropological Association careers webpage at http://www.aaanet.org/careersbroch.htm)

Courses and training in the Department of Anthropology focus on three main areas: (1) sociocultural anthropology, (2) archaeology, and (3) biological/physical anthropology. Courses in biological anthropology will interest biology majors as well as non-science majors, and courses in sociocultural anthropology and linguistics will interest students in the humanities.

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Majors and Concentrations

Sociocultural Anthropology (major or concentration)

Sociocultural anthropology comprises the largest part of the department and accounts for the majority of the faculty and course offerings. Sociocultural anthropology focuses on the ways in which human communities are produced, contested, transformed, and theorized. Specific topics addressed by the department’s faculty include colonialism and postcolonialism; gender; history; knowledge and power; language; law; the magic of the state; migration; mass-mediated cultures; modernity and flows of capital and desire; nationalism; political economy; ritual and performance; racial and ethnic imaginations and contestations; transnational communities and perspectives; semiotics, symbolics, and questions of representation; and issues of violence. Geographical areas of emphasis include Africa, the Caribbean, China, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the United States.

Archaeology (major or concentration)

Archaeology is the study of the formation and transformation of past human societies through examination of the material record. It is an integral part of anthropology, linking social theory, historical analysis, and study of material culture. Particular emphases in the program include the appearance of ancient states and empires, especially in the Americas, the nature of indigenous societies in the American Southwest, and the impacts of European expansion in the Americas and Africa. Issues include the political, economic, social, and ideological foundations of complex societies, landscape, gender relations, materiality, systems of writing and other forms of communication, and museum representations. The program includes the possibility of student internships in New York City museums and archaeological field work in the Americas and elsewhere.

Biological/Physical Anthropology - Evolutionary Biology of the Human Species (major and concentration)

Biological/physical anthropology introduces students to the study of evolution, genetics, morphology and behavioral ecology of human and nonhuman primates. As of fall 2004, the interdepartmental undergraduate program in this field is being coordinated by the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. Students may develop opportunities to conduct research in conjunction with departmental faculty or in affiliated institutions such as the American Museum of Natrual History and the Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx Zoo).

For more on the field of biological/physical anthropology, see:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/eeeb/shapiro/v1010/whatis.html.
For more information on the major/concentration, see:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/e3b/undergrad_requirements2.html.

General Anthropology (major or concentration)

The Anthropology Department offers a general major that integrates sociocultural, archaeological, and biological/physical anthropology. This program draws on material from the social sciences, the physical sciences, and the humanities. From this perspective, anthropology examines the sociocultural and biological constitution of the human species since its emergence.