The Department of Anthropology offers a program of undergraduate and graduate study with specializations in socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics.
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 24 faculty, 3 associated scholars, 85 graduate students and 120 undergraduate majors comprise a uniquely close-knit and scholarly community in which to study, critique, and do 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 archaeology, we have particular strengths in Eastern and Southwestern United States, Africa (East, West, and South), the Caribbean, and the Near East. In socio-cultural anthropology, linguistics, and folklore our strengths lie in the study of Amerindians, Africa, the Caribbean, China and Taiwan, Indonesia, Melanesia, South Asia, and contemporary Canada and the United States. In the last decade, students of the Department have extended our research interests to Australia, Central America, 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 has a broad interest in the history of anthropology: the development of specific national traditions (American, British, French) and of theoretical orientations (symbolic anthropology, structuralism, culture theory, Marxist theory, political economy, historical anthropology, classic sociological theory, cultural ecology), and the ways in which these orientations crosscut and critique one another.
The 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)photography; from nationalism, ethnicity, and race to healing, medicine, and science; from kinship and exchange to gender and the body; from hierarchy and power to poetics and narrative. 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 five faculty whose research and teaching examine anthropological questions through the study of past societies. The interests of the faculty and graduate students are both diverse and complementary, spanning the Old and New Worlds, and the prehistoric, contact, and historic periods. In each of these areas we emphasize the integration of anthropological theory with archaeological field methods, artifact analysis, and analytical approaches. Shared interests include the emergence of complex societies; exchange; stylistic, symbolic, and structural analyses; material culture studies; ethno-archaeology; settlement pattern analysis; gender; and the study of colonialism. We encourage graduate students to work closely with socio-cultural anthropologists and linguists in addition to archaeologists.
Students who wish to focus upon language in its relation to culture and society have many resources available to them at the University. The current interests of the linguistics faculty in the Department include ethnopoetics, the ethnography of communication, history of linguistics and anthropology, pragmatics, discourse analysis and lexicography. 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 comparative and historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, 20th-century linguistic theory, and courses focusing on specific languages or language families.
The Department makes a special effort to sustain a creative and 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 faculty from other departments within the University. The University of Virginia also supports many outstanding research centers that provide opportunities for interdisciplinary scholarly interaction, advanced study, and financial support. These include the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, the Center for South Asian Studies, the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, the East Asian Language and Area Center, New World Studies, the Women's Studies Program, and the Women's Center.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Return 
to Anthropology's
Home Page.