About Anthropology

Anthropology is the science that studies the human species, its relatives and antecedents. Anthropology is a diverse discipline that combines the social sciences, biological sciences, earth sciences, humanities, and the health sciences. Often conceived of as a set of sub-disciplines: cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology, and archaeology, it is necessarily interdisciplinary. Consequently, anthropology students are sometimes encouraged to take courses outside the major that relate to the particular area of anthropology that they are emphasizing. For example, biological anthropology students may take biology courses, while linguistic anthropology students may take courses in the Linguistics Department.

As a result of our field’s interdisciplinary interests, many anthropology undergraduate students may double major, or combine the anthropology major with a minor in a complementary discipline. Anthropology graduate students use their degrees for a variety of purposes, from university teaching and research, to research and action in local, regional, and global community contexts. Students in the past have found it to be a useful preparatory degree for a variety of professions that benefit from a multi- and interdisciplinary study of the human condition (for example, business, law, medicine, education, and others).

Anthropology provides the tools needed to analyze and diagnose the issues we collectively face.  At the core of the anthropological perspective is an understanding of how human ideas and behavior are shaped by – and also shape – the structures that we interact with on a daily basis.  Faculty teach and research in our department, for example, look at topics that explore this dynamic in a range of different fields, often integrating the approaches of the four fields in productive ways. Our courses that cover community health integrate biological and cultural anthropology to explore how health outcomes involve a complex interaction between racial and economic inequalities, environmental conditions, genetic predispositions, and politics at the local, regional, national and international levels.