Program Description

Anthropology is the comparative, worldwide study of past and present peoples and cultures. Providing the core of a broad liberal arts education, the Anthropology Program at Purchase College introduces students to the enormous variety of cultures—and different cultural patterns—around the world.

The program encourages students to think independently and to develop important research and writing skills. Our students not only read about anthropology, they do independent fieldwork, collecting original materials for class and senior projects. Many students have done fieldwork in the New York area and, in some cases, in other cities and countries.

The anthropology major offers an excellent preparation for graduate work and careers in a wide variety of fields, including law, teaching, social work, and public administration, as well as in anthropology itself.

Program Faculty

Requirements for the Major

• Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Four anthropology electives, including a geographic area course and a theory course in a subfield of anthropology
• Classics in Anthropological Literature
• Fieldwork: Qualitative Methods
• Current Anthropological Literature
• Senior Project in Anthropology

Representative Elective Courses

Urban Life in Africa
Culture and Personality
Language, Culture, and Society
American Culture
Film and Anthropology
Performing Arts in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Anthropology of South Asia
Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion
Black Popular Culture
Critical Perspectives in Black Studies
New Black Ethnographies
Global Sexualities
Myth and Ritual
Global Media, Local Cultures
Urban Anthropology
Theatre and Performance in Africa
Culture and Values
Rebels, Freaks, and Prophets
Gender and Popular Culture in South Asia
Anthropology of Poverty
Sexuality in Western Culture
Women in Africa
Black Feminist Theory
The Caribbean

Representative Alumni

• Jay H. Bernstein ’80, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; author of Spirits Captured in Stone: Shamanism and Traditional Medicine Among the Taman of Borneo; assistant professor, Robert J. Kibbee Library, Kingsborough Community College
• David Graeber ’84, Ph.D., University of Chicago; senior lecturer in anthropology, University of London; author of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
• Lalena Howard ’05, case manager, SKIP (Sick Kids need Involved People) of New York
• Lisa Hoyes ’94, J.D. (Sinsheimer Public Service Scholar), New York University School of Law; attorney, The Bronx Defenders
• Ana Magdalena Hurtado ’80, Ph.D., University of Utah; associate professor of anthropology, University of New Mexico
• Steven Stapleton ’02, editor, The Nielsen Company
• Harvey Wang ’77, award-winning filmmaker and photographer

For more information, visit the Anthropology site in Academic Programs.

Updated May 27, 2008