ANTH 290 - Special Topics in Anthropology

Credits: 3
When Offered: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisite: Permission of the department.A discussion of a series of topics of anthropological concern. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different. Topic for Winter 2010: Medical Anthropology. This seminar will offer students an introduction to the anthropological subfield of medical anthropology. It will first examine traditions of diagnosis and healing found among various non-Western peoples throughout the world. it will then examine the widely varying ways in which non-Western peoples have responded to the introduction of western health care, personnel, and institutions into their communities. Markowitz. Topic for Winter 2010: American Indian Ethnohistory. One of the major goals of modern ethnohistory is to use anthropological and historical methods to uncover the understandings that non-Western peoples have of their own histories. This seminar will introduce students to the theoretical and methodological principles of ethnohistorical research and their application to North American Indian peoples. Participants will first study American Indian conceptions of time and their relationship to the criteria by which tribal communities selected and comprehended the events comprising their histories. The seminar will then examine how Indian tribes from different parts of North America, including the Southwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Plains interpreted, evaluated, and responded to their encounters with colonial and the United States governments.Markowitz.