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Mission Statement 

Anthropology challenges universal claims across time and space about the nature of the individual and group behaviors, beliefs, and biology. We use multiple lenses and methods to investigate humans’ pasts, presents, and futures. Our students gain the analytical tools to examine power, confront inequality, and engage in social change in their local and global communities. 

Learning Outcomes 

1. Cultural Relativism 

   Students should be able to define ethnocentrism and explain the power and limitations of cultural relativism in counteracting its effects. 

   
   

2. Four Fields (Breadth and Collective Application) 

   1. Students should be able to explain how the major subfields of anthropology in combination allow an exceptionally broad view of humankind.
   2. Students should be able to explain how the tools and ideas used by anthropologists across multiple subfields could be applied to analyzing aspects of the human experience.
   
   

3. Theory and Method 

   1. Students should be able to explain the dialectical relationship of ideas in the history of anthropological thought.
   2. Students should be able to explain the reciprocal relationship between theory and method in anthropology.
   3. Students should be able to identify, collect, and analyze data using anthropological methods.
   
   

4. Applying Anthropological Research

   1. Students should be able to apply appropriate anthropological theories and methods (including ethics) in the investigation of a research topic.
   2. Students should be able to communicate the results of anthropological research in a way that is appropriate to the audience.
   
   

5. Power and Applied Anthropology 

   1. Students should be able to explain multiple ways that power is used both to sustain and contest cultural practices and belief systems.
   2. Students should be able to explain how anthropology can be used to confront inequality and engage in social change in their local and global communities.

Updated 3/15/2024