The Department of Anthropology offers a program of undergraduate and graduate study with specializations in socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
Faculty and graduate student research often overlaps these subdisciplinary boundaries, and the Department encourages an integrative, historical, and theoretical approach to the study of social life. Together, the 30 faculty, 7 associated scholars and emeritus faculty, 75 graduate students and 200 undergraduate majors comprise a uniquely close-knit and scholarly community in which to study, critique, and practice anthropology.
The Department is committed to the study of global and historical cultural diversity. Faculty and graduate students pursue research both abroad and in the United States. In socio-cultural anthropology and folklore our strengths lie in the study of Africa, the Caribbean, China and Taiwan, Tibet and the Himalayas, Indonesia, the Pacific (Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia), South Asia, the Andes, and contemporary Canada and the United States. In archaeology, we have particular strengths in the Eastern and Southwestern United States, East and West Africa, and the Near East. And in linguistics we have special strengths in East Africa, Central America, the Middle East, and New Guinea. Over the last decade, students of the Department have extended our research interests to Australia, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and inner Asia.
Our theoretical interests are varied and eclectic, extending from the major developments in the field since the 1950s to the more recent critical reconstruction of anthropological knowledge that is occurring at the interdisciplinary borders of the social and physical sciences and the humanities. The faculty also has a broad interest in the history of anthropology: the development of specific national traditions and theoretical orientations (symbolic anthropology, structuralism and post-structuralism, culture theory, Marxist theory, political economy, feminist and gender theory, historical anthropology, classic sociological theory, cultural ecology), and the ways in which these orientations crosscut and critique one another.
The eighteen socio-cultural anthropologists in the Department are engaged in research on a broad range of topics from the politics of culture to the politics of religion and ritual; from (ethno)history to (ethno)botany and (ethno)photography; from transnationalism, nationalism, ethnicity, and race to healing, medicine, and science; from plantation economies and (post)colonial politics to development and globalization; from kinship and exchange to gender and the body; from hierarchy and power to poetics and narrative; and ritual and violence. This ongoing research brings us into dialogue not only with other disciplinary fields (demography, environmental science, history, law, literary studies, medicine, and science studies) but also with a range of recent postmodern theoretical developments (cultural studies, postcolonial theory, gender studies, feminist theory, critical race theory). In these engagements, we attempt to exploit anthropology's "traditional" strengths—its systematic and longterm exploration of social and cultural theory, its attention to cultural and historical diversity, and its array of field research techniques—while drawing critical insights from these new developments and cross-disciplinary involvements.
The archaeology section of the department includes eight faculty whose research and teaching examine anthropological questions through the study of past societies. The interests of the faculty and graduate students span the Old and New Worlds--specifically North America, Africa, and the Near East—and the prehistoric through historic periods. In each of these areas we emphasize the integration of anthropological theory with archaeological field methods, artifact analysis, and analytical approaches. Current research in the Department includes the emergence and nature of complex societies (medium-range, large-scale); exchange; stylistic, symbolic, and structural analyses; craft specialization; settlement pattern analysis and regional networks; gender; zooarchaeology; the study of contact and colonialism in different times and places; violence and warfare; and public archaeology. Graduate students work closely with socio-cultural anthropologists and linguists in addition to archaeologists.
The current interests of the the linguistic anthropology faculty in the Department include sociolinguistics, verbal art, the ethnography of communication, history of linguistics and anthropology, pragmatics, discourse analysis, lexicography, the semantics of grammatical categories, language and cognition, intonation and prosody, and phonology and morphology. There are many areas of overlap with the interests of faculty in other subfields, such as the relation of language to symbolic systems in general, the role of language in defining social groups and social relations, the analysis of narratives, prayers, and other texts, and the use of linguistic evidence for prehistoric reconstruction. In addition to the linguistics faculty of the Department of Anthropology, there are faculty in several other departments who teach courses in the interdepartmental Program in Linguistics. This Program regularly offers courses in general linguistics, psycholinguistics, and courses focusing on specific languages or language families.
The Department makes a special effort to sustain a productive dialogue not only among its sub-disciplines but also across disciplines at the University. As it suits their interests, graduate students are encouraged to take courses and work with anthropologists and other faculty from other departments and schools within the University. The University of Virginia supports many outstanding interdisciplinary programs and academic centers that provide opportunities for scholarly collaboration, advanced study, and financial support. Those of special interest to socio-cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguistic anthropologists are listed below.
The Department and the University are also proud to host a number of journals, archives, collections, and field schools that are central to anthropological research of faculty and graduate students in the Department. These are also listed below.