Ecological and Environmental Anthropology Concentration

Undergraduate Courses
This 12-credit concentration offers undergraduate students a wide range of perspectives and approaches in ecological and environmental anthropology. Ecological and Environmental Anthropology is one of five signature research strengths in the Department of Anthropology through which we seek to study human diversity through time, expand knowledge of human cultural processes, and address global grand challenges. The ways that we produce our food, the human-wildlife entanglements in our world, the deep history of human-environmental relationships, and even the ways that we talk and think about the environment have profound consequences for our diverse ways of being. Our ecological and environmental anthropology faculty explore primate nutrition and conservation, sustainable livelihoods, human ecology, equity, and probe our public discourse to understand how we shape and are shaped by the world around us. We anticipate that this concentration will help students be more marketable on the job market or advance to graduate school, especially those interested in fields that address human-environmental interactions and change. No additional courses, faculty, or staff are necessary to enact this Concentration.

The Anthropology major consists of 36 credit hours. All undergraduate majors are required to take a set of five core courses for 15 credits. Of the 21 remaining selective course credits, 12 credits for the concentration will be selected from the list below. One of the selected courses must be drawn from the Methods category to give students a foundation in Environmental Anthropology research techniques, and the remaining 9 units can be from a topical/theoretical focus of their choosing.

Learning Objectives
Students acquiring the Ecological and Environmental Anthropology concentration will be expected to achieve the following learning outcomes:  
1. Students will be able to identify key ecological and environmental approaches in the four/five subfields of anthropology: cultural, linguistic, archaeological, biological, and applied.
2. Students will be able to identify the history of ecological and environmental anthropology and diverse approaches to sustainability and the environment.
3. Students will enhance their scientific and scholarly literacy through critical discussion, production of research papers, and dissemination of research efforts.
4. Students will work individually and in teams to apply different approaches to longstanding and emerging ecological and environmental challenges.

Requirements for the Concentration
A. Methods (3 credits – select one course)
Anth 306 Quantitative Methods for Anthropological Research
Anth 405 Ethnographic Methods
Anth 418 Ethnographic Field Methods
Anth 592 GIS for Social Scientists
Anth 438 Biological Anthropology Field Methods

B. Topical/Theoretical Courses (9 credits – select three courses) 
Anth 212 Culture, Food, and Health
Anth 235 Great Apes and Conservation
Anth 313 Archaeology of North America
Anth 327 Environment and Culture
Anth 335 Primate Behavior
Anth 377 Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Anth 460 Contemporary Issues in Food and Agriculture
Anth 536 Primate Ecology and Conservation

Graduate Courses
Our graduate students engage a wide range of ecological and environmental questions, with opportunities for M.A. and Ph.D. students to explore socioecological relationships, encounter human-wildlife entanglements, and engage diverse ways of being and thinking with the environment across space and through time. Students can take advantage of faculty affiliations and many collaborations, including the American Studies Program, the Ecological Sciences and Engineering Program, the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, the College of Agriculture, the Center for Global Food Security, the Advanced Methodologies Cluster, and the Center for the Environment.

Our students and faculty pursue graduate coursework and research in advanced methodologies, agriculture, applied anthropology, conservation, climate change, environmental justice, ethnobiology, food and nutrition, human ecology, energy, indigenous rights, multispecies ethnography, policy and practice, feminist political ecology, primate ecology, science and technology studies, sustainable development, waste, and water.
 

See the full course list here