The presence of Latinxs has heavily influenced U.S. Southwest language and culture. This can be seen in our day to day through food, music, buildings, and street names. Additionally, language has been in the forefront of identity, cultural pride, and empowerment. This course will survey an array of cultural productions to evaluate how have Latinxs engage and overcome linguistic adversities. The course culminates with a digital humanities project centered on Latinxs in Colorado.

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological contexts. This is an inherently interdisciplinary field which utilizes a wide variety of methodologies and theories from fields such as chemistry, genetics, archaeology, biological and cultural anthropology, forensic sciences, and more. In this class we will cover the development of bioarchaeology as a field, excavation methods, laboratory work in osteological analysis (including both basic identification and more advanced assessment of paleopathology and trauma), the ethical issues surrounding excavating and studying human remains, the application of biomolecular studies in archaeological contexts (including organic residues, ancient DNA, and isotopic analysis), and interpretive theory and data integration. Case studies will be discussed throughout the course to demonstrate the application of different techniques and analytical frameworks to a number of broad sociocultural transitions that have occurred throughout human history (e.g. the development of agriculture, urbanization, and colonialism).

How has anthropology engaged with, produced knowledge about, and understood social conceptions of race and racism? Anthropology as a discipline has a unique relationship to this question as it emerged out of, and subsequently worked to debunk, nineteenth century race “sciences,” and their pernicious implications. This course approaches the question of race and racism in anthropology through the substantial influence Black scholars have had on the discipline, and emphasizes ethnographies that build on, intervene in, and contribute to the tradition of Black studies with a particular regional emphasis on the Americas.

This course will introduce and allow students to critically explore settler colonialism as a distinct and pervasive form of contemporary colonialism which reproduces white supremacy and social inequalities. The course critically examines anthropology’s participation in colonial discourses that have dispossessed and oppressed indigenous peoples. It further explores settler colonial discourses that manifest in popular culture forms including horror and science fiction narratives.