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

Care in a Frantic World

ANTH344

In this seminar, we engage with key scholarship in medical anthropology to explore the moral, gendered, bureaucratic, and technological complexities of care. Through readings, discussions, and assignments from diverse settings, we challenge simplistic views that reduce care to a warm and fuzzy practice. As we will discover, care often entails darker dimensions: it can be violent, isolating, and painful. Rather than offering a one-sided perspective, our materials invite us to critically examine what it means to care in a world that is becoming increasingly frantic. (ANTH 344 and WGST 344 are cross-listed courses.)

Anthropology Methods and Project Design

ANTH205

This course is intended to provide a theoretical framework as to how anthropologists construct questions, design research strategies, and produce anthropological knowledge. Students will discuss and explore major framing questions for anthropological methods while pursuing an independent project of their choice. Working with a faculty advisor, students will engage in independent research, while using the class as a workshop and discussion environment to refine their project. Students will be exposed to issues of positionality, ethical obligations in research, mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and writing for specific audiences. This course is required of all anthropology majors and will provide a bridge between introductory and advanced courses.
Who Lives, Who Counts, Who Cares: Global Health and Its Measures

WGST275

Global health systems reflect powerful assumptions about how life should be valued. Who and what counts as a health priority? How are disease and disability distributed? What responses are supported, and when? And how do people participate? Drawing together perspectives from historical and anthropological Science and Technology Studies (STS), this course examines the making of global health systems and the work that they do in a range of health contexts. Through lecture, discussion, and applied project work, students will learn to think critically about the deeply historical and human relationship between care, control, and participation in the name of health. The course will draw particular attention to intersections of data and stigma in health/care settings. (ANTH 275 and WGST 275 are cross-listed courses.)

Explore all courses

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, Americorps, and MIT.