See
pictures from Career Night on November 3, 2005!
2005
Anthropology Honors Theses
See
the student web exhibit from Anthropology 125S, "Anthropology of
Money in Southern California" (Bill Maurer, Professor), Fall 2004.
Thinking
about a major or minor in anthropology? Worried about what your parents
and friends might think?
Well, fear no more!
The anthropology major provides students with a broad background in
the field as well as intensive knowledge about specific subfields and
geographical regions. It prepares students for a wide variety of jobs
in business, government and non-governmental organizations, as well
as training that may lead to advanced studies in Anthropology as well
as in professional schools (law school, medical school, etc.). Our undergraduate
majors have also gone on to the very top graduate programs in the country.
When most people hear the word "anthropology" they think bones
and stones, Indiana Jones, or "primitive" people in face paint.
Modern anthropology is actually comprised of four subfields: sociocultural
anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology.
(Outside the United States, the four fields often occupy different departments.)
While you might be more familiar with the "primitive people"
stereotype of anthropology from TV shows like "Third Rock from
the Sun" or National Geographic magazine, you should know that
anthropologists can be found studying every corner of the globe, every
culture, and every time period, from ancient kingdoms to contemporary
small scale societies to the shopping malls of Orange County.
The Department
of Anthropology at UC Irvine specializes in sociocultural anthropology,
the subfield of anthropology devoted to the comparative and in-depth
study of culture. Some of our faculty also have research interests and
expertise in linguistic anthropology, the branch of the field devoted
to the study of the relationships among language, culture and society.
Sociocultural anthropology emphasizes field research. In other words,
although we may use surveys or statistical data like other social scientists,
we also spend a lot of time “hanging out” with the people we study,
listening to them talk, attending carefully to their words, the worlds
they spin from them, and the rich texture of their everyday lives. We
offer courses that expose our majors and minors to the breadth of the
field as well as demonstrate the significance of anthropology to contemporary
society.
Our faculty do research on such topics as immigration and citizenship
policies and their effects on identity and belonging; population and
development; new technologies and new kinds of science that shape, and
are shaped by, culture; cultural factors in economic and political processes;
music, art, and expressive culture; the way people use language to express
identities; religion and society; ethnic and national conflict; gender
and political transition; globalization and modernity. We do fieldwork
in places as diverse as California, India, China, Indonesia, East Africa,
the Caribbean, and Central Asia (just to name a few). Our graduate students
pursue projects on how British and Italian archaeologists interpret
the things they dig up in Pompeii; Cambodian refugees' religious practices
in Long Beach; theater and politics in Brazil; the work of non-governmental
organizations in Africa; the interface between the Hollywood and Hong
Kong film industries; marriages and money among Indians in the United
Arab Emirates; oil development and national identity in Senegal; HIV
education and prevention among injection drug users in Los Angeles;
beliefs about organ donation in Mexico; war tourism and historical consciousness
in Vietnam . . . again, to name only a few. (See our About Us,
Faculty,
and Graduate
Student pages for more information.)
There are a lot of good majors at UC Irvine. Naturally, we think ours
is one of the best. Few students major in Anthropology, and we think
this is an asset, since it allows our faculty and graduate students
to give undergraduate anthropology majors individual attention and to
work closely with them, often in seminar-style settings or on their
own independent research projects. Our undergraduate majors have undertaken
independent research on children's conceptions of time; transformations
in the meanings of coinage and money; artists and art dealers in Udaipur,
India; beliefs about health among Asian-Americans in Orange County .
. . the list goes on. Anthropology is as broad as the wide world around
us, and as diverse as the communities and cultures occupying the globe.
Anthropology undergraduates develop a unique set of skills, dipping
into the tool-kits of both the humanities and the social sciences, and
marrying critical inquiry with empirical research and specialized knowledge
about the breadth of the world's cultures as well as in-depth knowledge
about particular world regions. It has been called the most humanistic
of the social sciences, and the most scientific of the humanities. You
can learn more about anthropology and the major by following some of
the links to the right.
So, why not stand out in the crowd and consider a major in Anthropology?
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