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Catalog Year 2025-2026

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AnthropologyCredits

Language provides not only communication but identification of oneself and one's group. Humans are extremely sensitive to language, dialect, jargon, and slang. An understanding of language and its relationship to culture is basic to any understanding of human beings.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 5 - History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences | Goal Area 8 - Global Perspective | Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

What qualifies a word as bad? How does profanity, cursing, and swearing evolve across time and vary across cultures? Where does the power of these bad words come from? What relationship do these words have to issues of gender, race, and class? This course examines the historical evolution and modern usage of obscenities to answer these questions.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 9 - Ethical and Civic Responsibility | Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

Survey of human cultures through a variety of classic and contemporary anthropological writing and film. Students write weekly reflections. Written work is shared, discussed, and revised.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 5 - History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences | Diverse Cultures - Purple | Writing Intensive
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

Fear and how we depict it in popular culture. Course examines folklore traditions and how they translate in contemporary storytelling formats.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 5 - History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences | Goal Area 8 - Global Perspective | Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

People all around the world use tattoos, piercing, makeup and dress codes as symbolic tools to represent their ideas of self, or as a means of gender, ethnicity, and class control and domination. This course looks at how people express connection to and disconnection from culture through body art practices.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 5 - History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences | Goal Area 8 - Global Perspective | Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

Sex and our relationship with it. This course examines the topics of sex, sexuality, and gender by exploring the diverse range of sexual cultures of the world in the past and the present. Attention is given to the role of language, biology, culture, and the archeological record of societies's fascination with sex.

Graduation Requirements:
Goal Area 5 - History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences | Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

Courses to be offered just one time or on an irregular basis according to topic demand for a general interest, sophomore level course.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

Individual study at an introductory level on the topic of student's choice. Designed for students who wish to pursue independent study at the freshman-sophomore level rather than the more advanced level of the 499 individual study.

Prerequisites:
Consent
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

This course examines the methodologies of all four fields of Anthropology. Students will gain practical experience in various methods that professionals utilize on a regular basis within the discipline. Discussions of the issues surrounding various anthropological methods will be part of this course.

Prerequisites:
ANTH 101
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

An in-depth study of ancient Egypt, focusing on the relationship between cultural development and the unique Egyptian environment of the time. Emphasis will be placed on the interpretation of archaeological discoveries in the area.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

An examination of the ecology, behavior and biology of living primates.

Prerequisites:
ANTH 101 or ANTH 220 or consent
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

This course focuses on studying the diversity of human societies using environmental approaches such as evolutionary/ecological perspectives and systems modeling. Case studies will be drawn from Native American cultures.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

The variability and universality of human religious expression are explored in specific cross-cultural contexts.

Graduation Requirements:
Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

A survey of the people and cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa examining the rich sociocultural diversity of the continent over time.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

This class focuses on the application of anthropology in the business and organizational domains using a cultural lens. It will provide students with a clearer view of the culture of the business world as well as tools to aid in understanding the business culture and that of their clientele.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

Exploring culture through the foods we eat, preparation practices, and historic implications of food in daily life. We will examine a sampling from hunter-gathers, agricultural practices and animal husbandry, mass production, and the food industry to better understand cultural practices from around the globe.

Graduation Requirements:
Diverse Cultures - Purple
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

A detailed study of Minnesota archaeology from ca. 12,000 years ago to ca 1900, with a focus on diverse and changing Native American populations.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

A survey of current knowledge about the prehistoric Native American inhabitants of North America from ca. 15,000 years ago until ca. 1900. Topics will focus on the processes of cultural development, change, and disruption by Euro-American influences.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

A detailed study of Latin American archaeology from ca. 12,000 years ago to ca.1900, with a focus on diverse and changing Native American populations.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

A review of the history and philosophy of museums, the legal and ethical issues impacting museums, the nature and treatment of collections, creation, exhibition and exhibit design, the role of museums in education, museum personnel and financial management, and museums in the technological/electronic age.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

Review of how cultural resources are being preserved and managed under current laws and regulations. Emphasis on examination of conservation, preservation and rescue methods in modern archaeology, and problems and issues in historic preservation and resource management.

Prerequisites:
ANTH 101, ANTH 210 or consent
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

An intensive exploration of how to identify, catalogue, and curate archeological materials in a laboratory setting. Topics will include lithics, pottery, faunal, floral, metal, and other materials as well as data structure and recordation.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

An interdisciplinary investigation into Quaternary environmental/climatic change and the impact of change on the behavior and evolution of humans. This course has three segments: 1) an examination of natural systems responsible for climatic change, the impact climatic fluctuations have on Earth systems, timing of Quaternary changes, evidence of climatic/environmental change from spatially distant, climatically distinct environments; 2) investigation into worldwide evidence of human evolution, global dispersion, and adaptation to environmental systems; introduction to various methodological approaches in Quaternary archeologic, geomorphic, and climatic studies. Focus is on proxy records used for climate/environmental reconstruction, archeolgic/geomorphologic field methods, geochronologic dating methods.

Prerequisites:
GEOG 101, ANTH 210; Students are strongly encouraged to take Geog 315 or 4/515 before enrolling. Geol 121 can be substituted for Geog 101 with instructor permission.
Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

This course examines the history of agricultural systems in world wide perspective, with an emphasis on understanding their social and environmental contexts and the effects on them of climate change. Case examples will highlight the conditions under which agricultural systems emerge, thrive, and fail, and the impacts of these processes on human populations.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures
Programs:

An advanced examination of the human skeletal system and the application of this information in the fields of bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology and forensic anthropology. This course features hands-on identification and analysis of human skeletal material, with an emphasis on laboratory techniques.

Areas of Interest:
People and Cultures

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