Spring 2018 course offering
ANTH467: Researching Environment & Culture
This course could count as a Restricted Elective - check with your concentration advisor!
Class: Tues & Thurs 2pm - 3:15pm
ANTH467: Researching Environment & Culture
This course could count as a Restricted Elective - check with your concentration advisor!
How do humans shape their surrounding environment? How does the environment shape human communities and culture? In this applied and project-oriented course, students will explore conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services through the lens of the African vulture crisis. Coursework offers opportunities for ethnographic and mixed methods training while learning more about the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services as an ecological and environmental anthropology issue. Student work will contribute to a larger synthesis project conducted by an international, interdisciplinary team aimed at preventing the collapse of vulture populations across sub-Saharan Africa. The loss of these birds from the ecosystem could have significant impacts on ecosystem services, and livestock, wildlife, and human health, as well as cultural traditions for many people across the continent.
In this course, we use an anthropological perspective to study biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation. While some of the learning units allow for individual work, others require students to collaborate in small teams to collect and analyze data, and write up their results. Anthropologists often work on teams for research in government agencies, non-governmental organizations, corporations, academic institutions, and consultancies. So you will be learning and practicing skills with non-academic value. At the completion of this course, you should be able to…
- Demonstrate the ability to select, critically evaluate, and apply relevant areas of anthropological scholarship.
- Articulate the process required to bring about a successful outcome (i.e. project report) from planning, data collection, and data analysis, to writing, critiquing, and revising.
- Demonstrate an ability to collaborate in order to bring about a successful outcome.
- Recognize how applying anthropology to understanding a real world environmental issue affects or is affected by political, social, cultural, economic or ethical dimensions.
- Produce an original analysis that reflects anthropological scholarship related to human-environment interactions and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
- Effectively communicate what has been learned through written, visual, and oral materials.
Class: Tues & Thurs 2pm - 3:15pm