The Program

Anthropology is an integrative field that both derives from and critiques the history of Western theory about humanity and cultural difference. Global and interdisciplinary in orientation, it encompasses the subfields of sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological, and applied anthropology. As taught at Bard, anthropology is a humanistic, comparative social science with an emphasis on social and cultural theory, ethnography, and fieldwork. It places emphasis on the dynamics of the modern nation-state, modernity, and postmodernity alongside the study of small-scale societies. Anthropology provides a rigorous grounding in the principles and methods of social and cultural analysis and political economy that demystifies essentialist and racial modes of thought. By interrogating the cultural and historical processes involved in the creation of social categories, anthropology applies its perspective toward an understanding of environmental transformation, performed cultural identities, and the dislocation or cultural continuities of communities in the contemporary world.

The core of the program consists of topical courses that examine human life in relation to global debates about cultural identity formations, through language, religion, gender systems, racial categories, class dynamics, and popular culture. In addition, anthropology productively challenges dominant understandings about development and the environment. Comparative in scope, the discipline is concerned with how individuals and communities produce social and cultural meanings within a transcultural world created by an international division of labor, the wide proliferation and consumption of media, and the commodification of culture. Strengths of the faculty span across a wide variety of areas: Africa; Latin America and the Caribbean; South and Southeast Asia; Australasia (the Pacific); and the United States.

Students concentrating in anthropology can design a course of study in varied topical, areal, and theoretical orientations or pursue a more specialized program. Prior to Moderation students should have completed an introductory course and at least two 200-level courses in anthropology. In consultation with their Moderation board, students shape their plan of study in the Upper College to include at least two 300-level courses, two additional courses in anthropology, and the Senior Project. With this program, students will be more than adequately prepared for graduate study in anthropology or a related discipline. Students intending to pursue postgraduate study are encouraged to fulfill Bard's distribution requirements with the study of a foreign language to the 200-level.

Anthropology encourages and maintains crucial ties to other disciplines across campus. Many anthropology students complement their interests with courses that explore similar theoretical and topical themes in historical studies, religion, literature, political sciences, sociology, environmental studies, and history and philosophy of science, and the Human Rights Program. Anthropology students also enhance their study of identity formations with courses in gender and sexuality studies, Jewish studies, and the comparative and critical studies of race. Courses in African and African diaspora studies, Asian studies, and Latin American and Iberian studies provide students with increased historical and cultural depth in a particular area of the world.