Courses

Note: The following is a list of courses that comprise the department’s permanent, regular offerings. Given the importance of current research and disciplinary debate to our graduate curriculum, many of the important course offerings any year are topical seminars and special topics courses (e.g., Political Economy of Health; Critical Race Theory; Archaeology and State Theory; Anthropology of Aging; Visual Anthropology), which are not included by title in this list. For more detailed information on courses offered, please consult the course list available on the department's website here, where course lists, schedules, and descriptions are posted and frequently updated.

510 Advanced Research Methods in Bio-Medical Anthropology
This course is designed to acquaint you with laboratory and field research methods in biological and medical anthropology. Through readings, in-class exercises, data collection, and laboratory analysis, we will examine issues of epistemology, ethics, data and biomarker collection methods, analysis, and data processing. You will learn to develop appropriate research questions, design a project, apply research ethics and responsibilities, and peer review research proposals. Topics covered in this course include nutrition, energetics, cardiovascular function, immune status, and stress markers. Credit, 4.

516 Evolutionary Genetics
Lecture, This course intends to provide you with both a background in elementary genetics and also a brief review of some of the major research in molecular anthropology and primatology. The section will begin with a review of genetics, inheritance, and population genetics. Subsequently, the major methodological advances of genomics will be addressed. Finally, we will review some of the major findings in human and primate genetics, including work on phylogeny, population genetics, molecular adaptation, and species' history.

540 Community, Commons, Communism
This class engages with historical trajectories and theoretical traditions aimed at organizing around and constituting egalitarian relations. We ground ourselves with some history of communism in the United States and find connections and tensions with the black radical tradition; we consider post-marxist theory that deconstructs orthodox Marxism in favor of an anti-essentialist orientation, and can find openings beyond realist politics; and we engage with decolonial and contemporary pluriverse politics that aspires to advance a 'world where many worlds fit.' Throughout our discussions we interrogate the forces constituting and delimiting our individual and collective imaginings, dispositions, and desires. Indeed, a primary aim of this course is for us, as individuals and as a heterogeneous 'we', 'an assemblage of people, histories, identities, relations, and so on' to mobilize and bring to bear the concepts, discussions, and ideas on our own lives, commitments, and projects.

546 Critical Knowledge Practices
This course is designed for people who are actively attempting to teach, conduct research, or do social change work in a way that engages and cultivates the knowledge of marginalized communities. Organized efforts of marginalized people to produce collective knowledge and to make their knowledge matter have bubbled up in and been transported to many places and spaces across the globe, from rural Chiapas to rural Denmark, Appalachia to the Bronx, Brazil to Tanzania, the World Bank to the World Social Forum. This course provides a structure for weekly learning and dialogue about the contexts and implications of such diverse critical knowledge practices, and invites students to consider how the course materials might inform their own practices. Credit, 2.

578 Theory and Method in Archaeology
Intensive examination of the scientific approach to modern archaeological research and utilization of this approach for deriving and testing theories of prehistory and behavioral patterns. Consent of instructor required.

588 Field and Lab Methods in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology
Introduces students to major questions in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology including what constitutes data, how excavations and fieldwork are conducted and how field data are analyzed in the laboratory. Enrollment through application to instructor. Credit, 6.

596 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

600 Pro-Seminar in Anthropology
This course introduces incoming graduate students in anthropology to the philosophies, research issues, and day-to-day practices of the department of anthropology at UMass Amherst. Basic skills in writing research proposals, cv's, and formulating career goals are emphasized. Enrollment is restricted to incoming students in the Department of Anthropology.

602 Community Based Methods
This is a class for graduate students who think of themselves as once, current, and/or future community-engaged researchers/practitioners. This class is intended as a no-pressure container for building greater breadth of awareness, skills, and support/community around engaged research. Credit, 1.

603 Community-Based Research and Practice
This course will introduce students to theoretical frameworks, controversies, methods, and other topics of community-based research and practice in the anthropological tradition. Students will understand the history of applied anthropology, critiques of anthropology coming from the global south, and critical epistemological approaches of contemporary engaged researchers and practitioners. Through studies of theoretical debates as well as case studies of engaged research and scholarly practice, students will leave this class with a foundation for thinking about their own work with diverse community-engaged projects. In addition to historical and theoretical foundations, this course will provide an introductory framework for thinking about ethics, evaluation, communication of research, and professional development in the field. Finally, this course will introduce methods and tools of community-engaged and applied research and action. Credit, 4.

614 CARE: Doing, Knowing, Being
What counts as care? For whom? In what contexts? And to what effects? In this course, we will draw on a range of ethnographic work, including cultural and linguistic anthropology, as well as feminist and indigenous theory, media, and activist literature to explore contemporary issues of care. In the three aspects of the class - doing, knowing, being - we examine care as a concrete everyday practice, one that is rooted in and shapes ways of understanding the world, and which has far-reaching implications that both reproduce and resist multiple intersecting inequalities. We will explore methodology. We will ask political questions. We will encourage a deeper consideration of care, not only through research and scholarship, but also in the interdependent ways in which we live our lives.

617 Feminist Ethnography
Through studies, testimony, and reflection, this course will examine the history, practice (or praxis), and challenges of feminist ethnography. We will also read examples not only of feminist ethnographies that are widely recognized, but also those that tend to be marginalized due to layers of economic, racialized, national, and global processes. Ethnographic projects and assignments will reflect tenets in feminist anthropology.

635 Qualitative Research Methods
Methods of studying cultures of homogeneous and heterogeneous societies among peoples of the world. Emphasis on various techniques of fieldwork.

638 Writing Ethnography
This graduate seminar takes writing ethnography as its object of analysis and its subject of practice. The seminar provides students a supportive environment to gain perspective on the politics of representation and practice the arts of noticing. We delve into whether we are committed to ethnography as a genre, and if so how and why? In addition to reading ethnographies that address urgent contemporary topics, the seminar explores a range of strategies for representing social life and provides students a space to practice their own ethnographic writing. In both our reading and writing, we engage conventional as well as unconventional forms of representation, including critical ethnography, narrative ethnography, cross-cultural memoir, and blurred genre experiments.

639 Ethnographic Data Analysis
This graduate seminar surveys methods of ethnographic data analysis. Students will become familiar with a range of approaches to analyzing qualitative data. The focus will be on developing skills to conduct systematic analysis of textual data in ways that honor what human participants have to say, treasure the stories and artifacts they create, and respect the complexity of social life as it is lived and represented. Skills can be extended to images, audio, and video. The course covers approaches that cut across traditions, including identifying themes, defining codes, developing codebooks, and collaborating in teams. Exposure to advanced traditions of text-based analysis include grounded theory, discourse analysis, and word-based analysis. Hands-on data analysis assignments will make use of computer software to facilitate learning (e.g., MAXQDA). Classes meet weekly and will be divided between lectures and labs where participants will analyze data.

641, 642 Theory and Method in Social Anthropology I, II
Two-semester sequence devoted to structural-functional analysis as developed in British social anthropology. Emphasis on method in the analysis of social and political theoretical issues. Credit, 6 (3 each).

652 Community-Based Archaeology
Hybrid seminar/service learning course examining theories, methods, and ethics related to Indigenous archaeology. Explores knowledge mobilizations methods to understand how research moves out of the academy in ways that are useful and meet community-defined needs. Prerequisite: Introduction to Archaeology of equivalent.

653 Indigenous Research: Theories and Methods
This course provides space for us to delve deeply into some of the key indigenous theoretical frameworks for doing research and methodologies of conducting research with indigenous peoples and/or utilizing indigenous modes of knowledge production in the research process. Our work together will provide you (both MA and Ph.D. students) with the theoretical breadth to formulate a research design, provide hands-on experience with research methods, and allow you space to explore, consider, develop, discuss, reflect, and write about the theories and methods you might draw from in your thesis or dissertation research, or in your post-graduate work.

654 Comics, Cartoons and Communicating Anthropology
In our hyper-visual culture, presenting research in a visually engaging way can be a powerful means by which to share your work, increase awareness and legibility of research, and generally make scholarship more accessible. Communicating research is critical for getting it into the hands and minds of public audiences, policy makers, community partners, and scholars in your own field and in other disciplines. At its core, research is about telling stories - whether writing grants, creating compelling presentations, or authoring books and articles, your research must tell a compelling story.

682 Advanced Quantitative Analysis in Anthropology
This course will focus on advanced quantitative methods used in anthropology, including ordination techniques, multivariate statistics, phylogenetic comparative methods, ecological modeling, and randomization approaches. Theoretical and philosophical issues related to hypothesis testing and inferential statistics will also be discussed. In collaboration with the instructor, students will design, implement, and write up a research project applying the methods learned in the course. The R computing environment will be used extensively, though no prior experience is needed. Credit, 4.

696 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

698 Practicum
Credit, 1-12.

699 Master’s Thesis
Credit, 1-9.

796 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

802 Research in Archaeology
Directed individual research in archaeology. Credit, 1-12.

803 Research in Physical Anthropology
Directed individual research in physical anthropology. Credit, 1-12.

804 Research in Cultural Anthropology
Directed individual research in cultural anthropology. Credit, 1-12.

805 Research in Linguistic Anthropology
Directed individual research in linguistic anthropology. Credit, 1-12.

896 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 10.