BA Anthropology

The anthropology major combines the study of social and cultural theory with the empirical study of everyday life, social organization, cultural and political expression, and forms of imagination across the diversity of human cultures past and present, including those of the students themselves.

The department particularly focuses on the challenges of our own moment in history: new religious practices and religious strife, globalization and competition, law and the problems of governance, new diseases and medical interventions, global social movements and transnational media forms, environmental crises such as climate change, and further challenges offered up by turbulence and destitution. In all cases, acute awareness of shifting contexts in which institutions are embedded, and the impact of global, regional, and national politics on social life, is built into the methodology and the theory engaged by faculty and students.