Courses

Fall 2009 Graduate Courses

Fall 2008 Undergraduate Courses

Spring 2010 Graduate Courses

Spring 2009 Undergraduate Courses

All Graduate Courses

All Undergraduate Courses

UB Course Schedule

         Fall 2009 Graduate Courses

* CORE COURSES : Only majors are allowed to register for these courses

501 - Teach. & Research Resources for Anthropology - Dr. Sirianni
Reg. #065881  – ARR– 158 Spauld.
Pedagogical aspects of instruction, including use of films, laboratories and field experience, bibliographic and archival materials, cross-cultural files and data banks.

502 – Anthropology Statistics – Dr. Zubrow
Reg. #368036 – Mon. 7-9:40 – 261 Film.
This course fulfills all statistics requirements of the Anthropology department and is a combination of a standard first year and second year statistics class.

"There are three kinds of lies--lies, damn lies, and statistics." Variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and Samuel Clemens.

"There are liars, outliers, and out-and-out liars." Robert Dawson

“One can lie with statistics but it is easier to lie without them.”  Reuben Zubrow

"A statistician always has something to say with numbers while a politician always has to say something with numbers."  Inspired James Stroud

"A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." Joseph Stalin.

"Why are the mean, median, and mode like a valuable piece of real estate? Location, location, location." ANON

"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now realize that half of them are dumber than that." George Carlin

"50% of all marriages end in divorce. Thus, if you don’t file for divorce your husband will."  ANON

"Most people, when asked if they would ever date a statistician, respond, 'Probably.'" ANON

"Two random variables were gossiping and thought they were discrete by whispering but I heard their chatter continuously."  Dan Hayden

"A statistician calculated that the probability of one person carrying a bomb onto an airplane was 1 in 350,000. The probability of two people carrying a bomb onto the same place was 1.6E-11. The next time the statistician had to fly, he immediately made a bomb." ANON

"Statistics means never having to say you're certain." ANON

"If you want three different opinions, ask two statisticians." ANON

"My life is an experiment I never had the chance to properly design." Diane Ballard

"Oneway ANOVAs are always jealous of twoway ANOVAs because they can have interactions with their variables." ANON

"Arguing with a statistician is like wrestling with a pig. After a few hours, you realize that the pig likes it." Steve Carlson

"A lottery is a tax on people who don't understand statistics." Alvaro Montenegro Garcia

"The most famous statistician is George Washington. He claims that he never told a lie and got away with it." ANON

"Smoking is the major cause of statistics." ANON

"Statistics say that if your parents don't have any children, you won't either." Hugh W. Graham

" A statistician is a professional who diligently collects facts and data and then carefully draws confusions about them. " ANON

"42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot." Steven Wright (although the actual quoted percent has a large sd)

 (quotes collected primarily but not all from Professor Carey)
 
This course will consist of a review of univariate statistics and cover multivariate statistical analysis.  In addition to the usual discussions of chi square, Fisher, Anova, analysis of means, linear and polynomial regression, parametric and non-parametric correlation analysis, probability and Bayesian probability, we also will cover trend analysis, forecasting, reliability, data reduction (principal components, factor analysis, and cluster analysis),  simulations, discrimination and classification (cluster analysis, discriminant analysis) and hypothesis testing (multivariate regression, multivariate analysis of variance, logistic regression).  Special anthropological examples and topics of interest will be taught.  

512 – Kinship and Social Structure – Dr. Banks
Reg. #449716 – Mon., Wed. & Fri. 12-12:50 – 354  Film.
A central goal of the course is to enable students to view kinship in this society.  We will look at some of the famous contributions to kinship studies of the past and relate these to recent developments.   Classes will be divided about equally between lectures and discussions and presentations.  We will also discuss problems of the kinship of marriage and of kinship related friendship.  Graduates will be asked to write a discussion of one society using two different approaches, that is, from two points of view.  They will also have an opportunity to lead the discussion of a related group in class.

543 – Cognitive Anthropology – Dr. B. Tedlock
Reg. #009281  – Tues. 9:30-12:10 – 351 Film.
Cognitive anthropology is a field that considers human thinking as a cultural and social, as well as a psychological (or computational) phenomenon.  It regards cognition as closely interconnected with cultural forms, social systems, and everyday activities.  It also takes the very notion of "cognition" itself as a cultural product whose social and historical origins require investigation.  

544 - Animal Communication – Dr. Berman
Reg. #327366 – Thurs. – 3:00-5:40 – Spauld. 158
This seminar course provides a survey of communication systems among animals, including humans.  We will focus on the diversity of complex communicative systems, on the ways in which they are associated with particular social systems and on theoretical explanations of their causes, development, functions and evolution.  In addition to the seminar, students must also attend the lectures for APY 344.

545 – Dental Anthropology – Dr. Sirianni
Reg. #269489 – T ues.2:30-5:10 – 158 Spauld.
This seminar covers topics such as Embryological Development and Growth of Primate Jaws and Teeth; Basic Craniofacial Anatomy; Theories of Dental Evolution; Basic Dental Anatomy; Nonhuman and Human Dental Variation; Forensic Odontology, and Dental Pathologies.  Students will be required to make presentations on various dental topics, e.g., Dental adaptations to diet, Evolutionary trends in hominid tooth size, Ethnic differences in tooth morphology and size.

548 – Human Genetics-Legal Ethics – Dr. Duggleby
Reg. #064186  – Wed 2-4:40 – 158 Spauld.
Recent advances in genetic technology have presented the scientific and lay community with ethical and legal problems, yet to be resolved.  The objective of this course is to provide an opportunity for informed discussions of such issues relating to contemporary human/medical issues.

549 – Mayan Civilization – Dr. B. Tedlock
Reg. #356532 – Thurs. 12:30-3:10- 354 Film.
An exploration of Mayan civilization from its earliest beginnings to the current situation.  The seminar begins with the preclassic roots of Mayan culture than moves through classic splendor, postclassic turbulence, European invasion and into the current period of rebellion, migration and ethnic resurgence.

550 – Evolution Colloquium – Dr.  Berman/Lasker
Reg. #113448  – Tues. 12:30-1:50 – 435 Cooke
This seminar is a focal point of the Graduate Group in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology.  Students and faculty will review recent research in evolutionary processes by discussing topics in evolutionary theory, ecology, ethology and paleobiology.  This will also be a forum for students to present their research ideas and topics.

554 - Applied Cultural Analysis – Dr. McElroy
Reg. # 434151 - Tues. 3:30-6:10 -  351 Fillmore
Applied Cultural Analysis, is a course on research design, field methods,  data analysis, proposal writing, and ethical regulations primarily related to cultural and medical anthropology research but also suitable for students in other behavioral disciplines.

Students will carry out a series of exercises, in and out of class, involving observation, mapping, taking and analyzing field notes, household census and inventory, survey construction and administration, sampling techniques, and other ethnographic methods.  A variety of structured interview techniques will be covered, including taxonomies, geneaologies, Likert-type scales, semantic analysis, life histories, and grounded theory development.  Anthropological ethics and ethical regulations imposed by human subjects review boards will also be reviewed. 

567 – Adv. Areal Arch. Mesoam – Dr. Barbour
Reg. #418582-ARR-ARR -- Spauld. 278
This course traces the emergence of Mesoamerican civilization in four major
regions:  The Valley of Oaxaca, the Mava Lowlands, and West Mexico, devoting time to
archaeological, ethnohistoric, and linguistic sources.  Issues addressed include the origins of
agriculture, the advent of sedentism, trade and exchange, conquest and colonization, ethno
genesis, linguistic change, and collapse.  The course is in seminar format, and a paper is required.

572 - The Archaeology of Work – Dr. Brunton
Reg. #201912 – Fri. 2-4:40-354 Film.
This seminar explores the idea of ‘work’ in social theory and in the archaeological record.  The course will start with the basics; including the labor theories of Adam Smith, Marx and Durkheim and anthropological economics.  Then we will cover archaeological interpretations and applications like the relationship between craft specialization and social complexity.  We will discuss various forms of labor organization before tackling issues such as domination and resistance, worker’s identities, praxis and habitus.

All students will be expected to present and lead a discussion on a course topic as well as write a term paper that will allow students to relate course topics to their own research.

575 – Cult. Anthro. Topics – Bourdieu, Anthropology, and Law - Dr. Reed-Danahay  Reg. #358578 – Mon. 2-4:40 – 352 Film           
This course considers the implications of Pierre Bourdieu’s work for political and legal anthropology. We will read and discuss key texts of his in that regard as well as secondary literature.  Bourdieu’s work has been influential in many fields.  Here we will focus in particular on habitus, field, symbolic capital and symbolic violence.  This course is being co-taught by Deborah Reed-Danahay in Anthropology and Rebecca French in Law. 

587 – Anthro. Arch. Topics: Arch. In the Digital Age – Dr. Biehl
Reg. #425514 – Mon. 10-12:40 – 351 Film.
In this seminar we will discuss “Open Knowledge” in the digital age and evaluate different conceptions of open knowledge and different approaches to digital archaeology and digital archives. We will also explore new tools for sharing knowledge and creativity across the disciplines of anthropology, classics, history, linguistics, art history and computer sciences. In small hands-on projects you will identify, evaluate and discuss existing key projects and websites relevant in the field of open knowledge and digital archives.

NB. The course is open to undergraduate students with the consent of the instructor.
           
600 - Master Project or Thesis Guidance – variable credit
ARR  ARR---PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
Graduate students should register for 3 credit hours of their major professor’s section of this when they are writing their MA Project. Register for 6 credit hours of their major professor’s section of this when they are writing their MA Thesis. This must be of publishable quality and must be defended by the student before their committee.

601 - Individual Readings—Archaeology – variable credit
ARR  ARR---PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
If, after speaking to the Instructor and he/she agrees to work with you, the graduate student must fill out an Independent Study Form (form available outside the Anthropology Graduate Office), have the instructor and the Director of Graduate Studies sign it then give it to Margaret to put in your file which becomes part of your Application to Candidacy. Then the student may register for the appropriate number of credit hours.

602 - Individual Readings —Cultural – variable credit
ARR  ARR---PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
If, after speaking to the Instructor and he/she agrees to work with you, the graduate student must fill out an Independent Study Form (form available outside the Anthropology Graduate Office), have the instructor and the Director of Graduate Studies sign it then give it to Margaret to put in your file which becomes part of your Application to Candidacy. Then the student may register for the appropriate number of credit hours.

607 - Individual Readings - Physical – variable credit
ARR  ARR---PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
If, after speaking to the Instructor and he/she agrees to work with you, the graduate student must fill out an Independent Study Form (form available outside the Anthropology Graduate Office), have the instructor and the Director of Graduate Studies sign it then give it to Margaret to put in your file which becomes part of your Application to Candidacy. Then the student may register for the appropriate number of credit hours.

* 651 - Graduate Survey Physical Anthropology – Dr. Duggleby
Reg. #093363 – M 1:00- 3:40 – 158 Spauld.
Comprehensive review of physical anthropology for first year graduate students.

* 652 - Graduate Survey Archaeology –Dr.  Biehl
Reg. #427174 – W 10:00-12:40 – 261 Fillm.
The aim of this course is to provide:  1) a broad overview of the development of human societies in the Old World from ca. 2.5 million years ago to 2000 B.C.; 2) an examination of controversies concerning the subsistence strategies of the earliest humans, the transition to farming, explanations for the transition to farming, the origins of state societies and urbanism, and the explanation of state formation; and 3) main theoretical trends in Anglo-American archaeology: culture history, processual archaeology, and postprocessual explanations.

* 655 - Graduate Survey Social Anthropology – Dr. Lanz
Reg. #150261 – Thur. 9:30-12:10 – 351 Film.
This course is designed to give first year graduate students a basic grounding in "classic" social theory as it was developed in that important modernist period between the mid-19th century and the end of the first World War, along with the subsequent development and refinement of social theory through this modernist lens, and the break with modernism in the late 1970's.  Throughout, our emphasis will be on the ways in which social theoretical issues informing contemporary anthropology may be illuminated by foundational work in classic social theory, or where contemporary theoretical problems represent a more radical split with "classic" discourses.  This course, in concert with APY 654, will also help to prepare first year Cultural Anthropology graduate students for the Cultural Qualifying Exam in the spring.

694/ENG 699/AMS 580 – Ethnopoetics – Dr. Dennis Tedlock
Reg. #337766 – Thurs. 12:30-3:10 - 538 Clemens
Ethnopoetics is a decentered poetics, an attempt to hear and read the poetries of distant other, outside the Western tradition as we know it now. To have any hope of getting outside we must set aside any notion we may have that these poetries will necessarily come from a distant time, or from present-day peoples who are somehow living in the past, or that they will necessarily resemble Homer, or that they will be less complex that Western or metropolitan poetries, or that they will have been produced in some kind of isolation from other languages or cultures.

Ethnopoetics does not merely contrast the poetics of “ethnics” with just plain poetics, but implies that any poetics is always an ethnopoetics. Our main interest will indeed be the poetics of people who are ethnically distant from ourselves, but it is precisely by the effort to reach into distances that we bring our own ethnicity, and the poetics that goes with it, into fuller consciousness.

Ethnopoetics originated among poets with an interest in anthropology and linguistics and among anthropologists and linguists with an interest in poetry, such as David Antin, Stanley Diamond, Dell Hymes, Jerome Rothenberg, Gary Snyder, Nathaniel Tarn (E. Michael Mendelson), and myself. The emphasis has been on performances in which the speaking, chanting, or singing voice gives shape to proverbs, riddles, curses, laments, praises, prayers, prophecies, public announcements, and narratives.

Practitioners of ethnopoetics treat the relationship between performances and texts as a field for experimentation. Texts that were taken down in the era of handwritten dictation and published as prose are reformatted and/or retranslated in order to reveal their poetic features. In the case of sound recordings, transcripts and translations serve not only as listening guides but also as scripts and scores for other performances. An ethnopoetic score not only takes account of the words but silences, changes in loudness and tone of voice, the production of sound effects, and the use of gesture and props. Whatever a score may encompass, the notion of a definitive text has no place in ethnopoetics. Linguists and folklorists tend to narrow their attention to the normative side of performance, recognizing only such features as can be accounted for by general rules. Ethnopoetics remains open to the creative side of performance, valuing features that may be rare or even unique to a particular artist or occasion.

Special attention will be given to the dialogical dimension of performances. At the simplest level this means that in many genres an audience response may be required, or there may be a division of roles among two or more speakers or singers. But it can also mean that a single speaker produces multiple contrasting voices. A poet, instead of settling on just the right words, may give voice to multiple ways of saying something, thus treating language itself as fundamentally dialogical. It is simply not true that multivocal discourse is an invention of novelists, or that poetry must be monological.

Readings will include translations of verbal arts in various African, Asian, and Ameridian languages. There will also be listenings covering a wide range of recorded performances. As an alternative to a term paper, a transcription and/or translation, and/or performance may be acceptable.

700 - PhD Dissertation Guidance – variable credit
ARR  ARR---PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR
Graduate students should register for at least 1 credit hour of their major professor’s section of this (every semester until the dissertation is complete) when they are writing their PhD dissertation.

730 – Adv. Prob . in Areal Arch. -- Old World – Dr. Milisauskas
Reg. #148187 – Wed. 3-5:40 – 261 Film.
This is a required course for students specializing in archaeology.  This course will deal with the prehistoric archaeology of Africa, Asia and Europe.  It will be taught in a seminar format; students are expected to be active participants. Requirements: A number of articles or chapters will be assigned for reading on archaeology of the various regions or countries. You are expected to read all the assigned articles or chapters.   Class sessions will consist of presentations of assigned articles or chapters and discussion of the material.