Harvard's Anthropology Department

Now that we have just established Harvard's relative weakness in South Asian studies is by no means unusual, let's turn our attention back to Harvard's departments, this time in the Social Science area. We have already looked at 2 of its 10 departments; namely, "African and Afro-American Studies" and "History". The 8 Departments we will look at here are: Anthropology, Economics, Government, History of Science, Pscyhology, Social Studies, Sociology, and "Women, Gender and Sexuality Stuides." But before we look at them, let me say that the (contemporary, social scientific) "Area Studies" are organized in Harvard as Research Centers, the details of which can be seen in this page: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/pages/academic-divisions. 

 

1. Language Requirements for Ph.D. programs:

- Anthropology -> Archaeology: "Proficiency in one modern scholarly language other than English;" "in addition, the candidate must attain proficiency in a second scholarly language or in a field language or in a laboratory skill."

- Anthropology -> Social Anthropology: "As a rule, students should demonstrate competence in two languages, other than their first language, one of them a language in which fieldwork will be conducted, and the other a language with an extensive scholarly literature relevant to the student's research."

 

2. Courses:

Archeology: 56

Integrated courses in Archaeology and Social Anthropology: 5

Social Anthropology: 111

Total: 172

Big Department!

 

3. Area focus: 

This is a department often focus outside of Europe. Geographies mentioned in course catalogs for Archaeology include:

- Mesoamerica, Maya, Amerindian, Native America, New World, Ancient Mexico,  Ancient Peru, South American, Harvard Yard

- Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia 

- Ancient China, Early China

- African, Giza

So for Archaeology, Harvard's focus is on the Americas, with some sprinkles of Near East, China, and Africa. No mentions of Europe at all. Again missing is South / Southeast Asia.

 

The geographic mentions for Social Anthropology are:

- Contemporary South Asia, Pakistan, Colonial and post-colonial South Asia

- America, Andes, Latin America, US

- Africa, Contemporary Africa

- Islam

- Korea, China, Japan

- Greece

- Bangkok

Bangkok, Islam and Greece only has one mention. Quite balance among South Asia, Americas (still the most classes), East Asia, and some Africa.

 

4. Some courses I find interesting from World Canonical Texts Perspectives:

Anthropology 1166: Amerindian Languages and Literatures

(Grad) Anthropolgoy 2062: Religions of Latin America