Aim and Scope of Course:

This is a three field (cultural, biological, and archaeology) course designed to acquaint advanced undergraduate and graduate students with current and sometimes controversial issues in anthropology. At the close of their graduate or undergraduate careers students often specialize in particular areas of study and seem to forget that anthropology is an interdisciplinary field. While it is impossible for anyone to keep abreast of all new developments across all fields of anthropology, students should be aware of basic research and contentious issues within the broad discipline of anthropology. In addition, many of these issues receive widespread publicity in the press and it is always interesting for an insider like yourself to judge whether it is accurately portrayed. The aim of this course is to make you knowledgeable and conversant in some of these issues.

All the readings present at least two sides of an issue (e.g., peopling of the Americas, the ecologically noble savage debate) focusing on original initial views, counters, new data, methodological critiques, and alternative explanations.  A major goal in this course is to allow you to become more familiar with the relationship between theory and hypothesis formation, how hypotheses are tested, research methods and design, and how new data is incorporated.  At times these debates are heated and partisans frequently resort to logical fallacies in order to make their points. You will learn how to spot such tactics such as ad hominem ("If you had a PhD you would not have made such an ignorant statement.") ad popularum ("The majority of anthropologists do not take this position, therefore you are wrong."), and the naturalistic fallacy ("That theory cannot be correct because it is immoral.").  Visit Brian Yoder's Fallacy Zoo for a humorous examination of widely used logical fallacies.  Unfortunately, the page is not fully functional.  An even better source on logical fallacies can be found at Fallacy Files.  Throughout the seminar I hope to give you some tips on evaluating theory, methods, research design, and data analysis that will help you determine the strengths and weaknesses of what you read.
 

Weekly Plan
Each week you will read the assigned articles all of which are locally on-line (usually in PDF format) or in other places on the Internet. Please print them or have them available on your computer for each meeting.  When you come to the seminar to discuss the assigned readings you should have made notes on each of the articles and have prepared a provisional outline that will eventually become a reaction paper of at least 3 pages (undergrads) or 5 pages (grad).  You will email your papers to me by the following Saturday morning after our Tuesday class.  I will return them via email with my comments and your grade before the next meeting.  When writing please either use MS Word, RTF (most text editors handle this format), or HTML.  Let me know if you have problems with these formats.  The reaction paper should generally follow the guide below.  In seminar I will unpredictably ask to see your preliminary notes and outlines, so bring them with you.  You will be graded on your reaction papers and seminar participation. There will be no final, term paper, or extra-credit work.

Guide to Writing Summaries