A seminar study of East African peoples from late pre-colonial times to the 1990's, emphasizing their rapid although uneven adaptation to integration of the region into the wider world. Transitions associated with migrations, commercialization, religious change, colonial conquest, nationalism, economic development and conflict, will be investigated. Student presentations are required.
Same as HISD52H3

This seminar course examines the First World War in its imperial and colonial context in Africa and Asia. Topics include forgotten fronts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, colonial armies and civilians, imperial economies and resources, the collapse of empires and the remaking of the colonial world.

Same as GASD53H3 and HISD53H3

An introduction to Biological Anthropology and Archaeology. Concentrates on the origins and evolution of human life, including both biological and archaeological aspects, from the ancient past to the present.
Science credit

How does an anthropological perspective enable us to understand cultural difference in an interconnected world? In this course, students will learn about the key concepts of culture, society, and language. Drawing upon illustrations of family, economic, political, and religious systems from a variety of the world's cultures, this course will introduce students to the anthropological approach to studying and understanding human ways of life.

This course examines human-environmental relations from an anthropological perspective. Throughout the semester, we explore how peoples from different parts of the globe situate themselves within culturally constructed landscapes. Topics covered include ethnoecology, conservation, green consumerism, the concept of 'wilderness', and what happens when competing and differentially empowered views of the non-human world collide.

An ethnographic inquiry into the culturally configured human body as a reservoir of experiential knowledge, focus of symbolism, and site of social, moral, and political control.

An overview of the range and diversity of African social institutions, religious beliefs and ritual, kinship, political and economic organization, pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial experience.
Same as AFSB05H3
Area course

How is culture represented through visual media, from ethnographic and documentary film, to feature films, television, and new media? How do various communities re-vision themselves through mass, independent, or new media? This course investigates media and its role in the contemporary world from a socio-cultural anthropological perspective.

This introduction to archaeology focuses on how societies around the world have changed through time from the earliest humans to the emergence of state-level societies. This course uses a global perspective to address key issues such as evidence of the earliest art, development of agriculture, and the origins of social inequality and warfare.

This course is about science fiction as a form of cultural and political critique. The course will explore themes that are central to both ethnography and science fiction, including topics such as colonialism, gender, and the climate crisis, while reflecting on the power of writing and myth-making to produce meaning and the future.

This course explores the synthetic theory of evolution, its principles, processes, evidence and application as it relates to the evolution of human and nonhuman primates. Lecture topics and laboratory projects include: evolutionary theory, human variation, human adaptability, primate biology, and behaviour, taxonomy and classification, paleontological principles and human origins and evolution.

Science credit

Basic to the course is an understanding of the synthetic theory of evolution and the principles, processes, evidence and application of the theory. Laboratory projects acquaint the student with the methods and materials utilized Biological Anthropology. Specific topics include: the development of evolutionary theory, the biological basis for human variation, the evolutionary forces, human adaptability and health and disease.
Science credit
Same as HLTB20H3

This course explores the creation or invention of a Canadian national identity in literature, myth and symbolism, mass media, and political culture. Ethnographic accounts that consider First Nations, regional, and immigrant identities are used to complicate the dominant story of national unity.
Area course

This course addresses Latin American systems of inequality in relation to national and transnational political economy, from colonialism to neoliberalism; how ideas of race, culture, and nation intersect with development thinking and modernization agendas; and how the poor and marginalized have accommodated, resisted, and transformed cultural and political domination.
Area course

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of ethnography, the intensive study of people's lives as shaped by social relations, cultural beliefs, and historical forces. Various topics, including religion, economics, politics, and kinship introduce students to key anthropological concepts and theoretical developments in the field.

How has the global flow of goods, persons, technologies, and capital reproduced forms of inequality? Using ethnography and other media, students examine globalization through topics like migration, race and citizenship, environmental degradation, and increasing violence while also discussing older anthropological concerns (e.g., kinship, religious practices, and authority). This course enhances students’ understanding of ethnography, as a method for studying how actors engage and rework the global forces shaping their lives.

This course will provide students with a general introduction to the behaviour and ecology of non-human primates (prosimians, Old and New World monkeys, and apes), with a particular emphasis on social behaviour. The course will consist of lectures reinforced by course readings; topics covered will include dominance, affiliation, social and mating systems, communication, and reproduction.
Science credit

What makes the Middle East and North Africa unique as a world region? This course considers the enduring impact of the past colonial encounter with the North Atlantic, as well as religious movements, nationalist histories, the impact of new communication technologies, and regional conflicts. Examples are drawn from a variety of contexts.

This course explores a pressing issue facing contemporary life: “the future of work.” It examines how work has been and continues to be transformed by automation, digital technologies, climate change, pandemics, the retrenchment of the welfare state, deindustrialization, global supply chains, and imperial and colonial rule. All kinds of media (e.g., academic texts, corporate publications, policy reports, activist literature, cinema) will be utilized to demonstrate how these transformations are not limited to work or labour but reverberate across social, political, and economic life.

Around the world, youth is understood as the liminal phase in our lives. This course examines how language and new media technologies mark the lives of youth today. We consider social media, smartphones, images, romance, youth activism and the question of technological determinism. Examples are drawn from a variety of contexts.
Same as MDSB09H3

A cultural and comparative study of apocalyptic thought, practice, and representation around the world. It explores the conditions that inspire end times thinking and the uses it serves. Cases may include: millenarian movements, Revelation, colonialism, epidemics, infertility, deindustrialization, dystopian science fiction, nuclear war, climate change, and zombies.

This course surveys central issues in the ethnographic study of contemporary South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). Students will engage with classical and recent ethnographies to critically examine key thematic fault lines within national imaginations, especially along the lines of religion, caste, gender, ethnicity, and language. Not only does the course demonstrate how these fault lines continually shape the nature of nationalism, state institutions, development, social movements, violence, and militarism across the colonial and post-colonial periods but also, demonstrates how anthropological knowledge and ethnography provide us with a critical lens for exploring the most pressing issues facing South Asia in the world today.

Same as GASB42H3

This course examines the social significance of food and foodways from the perspective of cultural anthropology. We explore how the global production, distribution, and consumption of food, shapes or reveals, social identities, political processes, and cultural relations. Lectures are supplemented by hands-on tutorials in the Culinaria Kitchen Laboratory.

Introduces the cultures and peoples of the Pacific. Examines the ethnography of the region, and the unique contributions that Pacific scholarship has made to the development of anthropological theory. Explores how practices of exchange, ritual, notions of gender, death and images of the body serve as the basis of social organization.
Area course

A comparison of pilgrimage in different religious traditions, including Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and those of indigenous communities (such as the Huichol of Mexico) will introduce students to the anthropology of religion. We will consider the aspirations and experiences of various pilgrims, while being mindful of cultural similarities and differences.

This course introduces students to the methods, theories, and practices used in Archaeology. Building on the course material presented in ANTA01H3, there will be a focus on important themes in Archaeology as a subfield of Anthropology, including: artefact analysis, dating methods, theories of the origins of social development/complexity, and careers in archaeology today. This course will include lectures and complimentary readings that will expose students to the important ideas within the field. There will also be an experiential component in the form of four hands-on workshops where students will get to interact with artefacts and gain experience using some of the methods discussed in class. There will be an extra workshop for students to get help with their essay outline.

A directed exploration of specific topics in Anthropology, based on extensive investigation of the literature.
These courses are available in exceptional circumstances and do not duplicate regular course offerings. Students are advised that they must obtain consent from the supervising instructor before registering. Individual tutorials, as arranged. A minimum B plus average is normally required to be considered for these courses. May be science credit or area course depending on topic.

A directed exploration of specific topics in Anthropology, based on extensive investigation of the literature.
These courses are available in exceptional circumstances and do not duplicate regular course offerings. Students are advised that they must obtain consent from the supervising instructor before registering. Individual tutorials, as arranged. A minimum B plus average is normally required to be considered for these courses. May be science credit or area course depending on topic.

This course explores the intersection of the social and the material by examining the role of objects in making worlds. We examine the relationship between people, culture, and 'things' through topics such as commodification and consumption, collecting and representation, technology and innovation, art and artifact, and the social life of things. 

This course explores Anthropological approaches to kinship and family arrangements. In addition to examining the range of forms that family arrangements can take cross-culturally, we also examine how kinship configurations have changed within our own society in recent years. Topics to be covered include trans-national adoption, "mail-order-brides", new reproductive technologies and internet dating.