Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course provides an in-depth examination of anthropological theories and ethnographic approaches in the Anthropology of Christianity. With a focus on ethnographic texts and films, students are challenged to think about the relationship between culture, power, and diverse kinds of Christianity that shape gender, sexuality, kinship, social inequalities, social movements, […]
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course explores how gender relations have been deployed in sites of militarized conflict to incite, exacerbate and fuel violence; the reasons for and the ways in which war is increasingly waged on the bodies of unarmed civilians; the massive scale of displacement and the gendered experience of both conflict […]
Course Offering Fall 2026: Course Director - Zulfikar A. Hirji - zhirji@yorku.ca Speculative FuturesWhat might the future look like?In this course we engage with impossible, extraordinary, unimaginable and speculative futures envisaged by people who are dreaming, composing, conjuring, striving, challenging the future yet-to-be.The main course assignment is a zine made of pictures and words based […]
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course provides students with the opportunity to engage critically with and apply qualitative research methods toward the production, individually and collectively, of ethnographic analyses.
Not Offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course addresses the 'stuff of life' - the material things and constructed places around us. As the physical manifestations of culture, things and places both reflect and affect social relationships. Full of meaning, they can be 'read' with archaeological techniques.
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course focuses on the anthropology of human migration. Through online modules and in-person seminars, students undertake an ethnographic investigation of various humanitarian, social, and political dimensions of human movements across national borders. The course culminates in a virtual service-learning project in which students will develop and apply critical and […]
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This upper-year seminar course explores sociocultural perspectives on the brain, self, and society. Drawing on anthropological theories and methodologies, we will investigate how the brain and the self are understood, experienced, and transformed in global and local contexts. The brain, mind, and soul are often considered fundamental elements of defining […]
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: Some of the biggest questions in biological anthropology are about how humans came to be and what defines us as a species. This course is a broad introduction to humanity’s evolutionary history and the methods used to explore our place in the natural world. Evolution moves slowly, but research on […]
Course Offering Winter 2027: Course Director - M. MacDonald - maggie@yorku.ca Global health is a multidisciplinary field that endeavours to improve health and work towards health equity for all people worldwide. This course explores the field of global health from a critical anthropological perspective. It will provide students with an understanding of the deep historical and […]
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27: This course seeks to develop cross-cultural perspectives on weddings, marriage, the formation of domestic groups, extended kinship ties and social networks, the kindred and various forms of descent groups, and many other topics. The stress will be on the importance of kinship as an ideology and set of symbols for […]