Anthropology

Academic Department Introduction

Anthropology explores the diversity and commonalities of the human condition across the world, throughout time. Anthropologists work in faraway places and at home, examining the contemporary moment as well as the distant past. The field is inherently multicultural and multidisciplinary. It covers history, archeology, biology, and social and cultural studies. Our students gain a profound understanding of human nature and the role of culture in everyday lives, including their own. Our faculty carries out research in Nepal, the Balkans, Bolivia, Sudan, Iceland, Central Asia, and Wellesley, Mass.

Learning goals

Learn the basic features of human prehistory, as represented through material and fossil remains.
Practice methods used in anthropological field research, including the excavation of archaeological sites and the construction of ethnographies.

Programs of Study

Anthropology major and minor

Students will gain an understanding of how human cultures vary in their social institutions and practices across time and space.

Major requirements

Minor requirements

Course highlights

Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology

ANTH101

A comparative approach to the concept of culture and an analysis of how culture structures the worlds we live in. The course examines human societies from their tribal beginnings to the postindustrial age. We will consider the development of various types of social organization and their significance based on family and kinship, economics, politics, and religion.

Land Grabbing in Latin America

ANTH340

The struggle for land has been a central axis of internal conflicts in Latin American countries, which have the greatest inequality in land access and distribution. While land grabbing was initially studied in the context of the Commodities Boom and the multiple economic, environmental and health crises that emerged after 2008, this course will analyze land grabbing as a historical-political process of control over land and natural resources, as well as capital accumulation. Drawing on case studies from South and Central America, the course will delve into various dimensions of this phenomenon: the role of the State, the specific modalities through which appropriation is carried out, the drivers behind land grabbing, and the consequences of and resistance to this process.
Seminar: The Lives of Disability

ANTH308

In this seminar, we examine key debates surrounding disability through the lenses of cultural and medical anthropology. We explore a wide range of topics, including the politics of cure, prosthetics, intimate relationships, and human-animal interdependencies, while also considering how people living with disabilities navigate their everyday lives. Given the ongoing global challenges such as the long-term effects of COVID-19 (or “long COVID”), climate change, and war, the seminar encourages us to question the traditional binary between “normal” and “abnormal” and rethink our notions of what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. (ANTH 308 and WGST 308 are cross-listed courses.)

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Research highlights

In collaboration with Wellesley colleagues, Professor Adam Van Arsdale is constructing a virtual reality (VR) evolutionary anatomy lab, which enables students to access, explore, and interact with human skeletal anatomy and the human fossil record in ways that are not possible in the “real” world.
Professor Susan Ellison’s research links debates about democracy, foreign aid, justice, and trust to lived experiences of violence and financial insecurity. Ellison’s book, Domesticating Democracy: The Politics of Conflict Resolution in Bolivia (Duke University Press, 2018), received the Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association and the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology book prize in critical anthropology.

Beyond Wellesley

Careers of anthropology graduates include health care, K–12 education, and higher education. Recent employers include Massachusetts General Hospital, Cornerstone, and MIT.