Department: Anthropology

Executive Officer: Professor Jeff Maskovsky

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10016

Email: Anthropology@gc.cuny.edu

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Anthropology

FACULTY

Leslie Aiello, Andrea Baden, H. Arthur Bankoff, Alexander Bauer, Kevin Birth, Yarimar Bonilla, Anna Boozer, Avram Bornstein, Kelly Britt, Timothy Bromage, Jacqueline Brown, Jillian Cavanaugh, Melissa Checker, Stephen Chester, Shahrina Chowdury, Mike Church, Leo Coleman, John Collins, Vincent Crapanzano, Gerald Creed, Dana-Ain Davis, Roberto Delgado, Victoria Dominguez, Andrew Dugmore, Marc Edelman, Omri Elisha, Alyshia Gálvez, Ismael García Colón, Christopher Gilbert, Murphy Halliburton, William Harcourt-Smith, Katerina Harvati, David Harvey, Jon Ingimundarson, Laurel Kendall, Yukiko Koga, Jeffrey Laitman, Louise Lamphere, Louise Lennihan, Stephanie Levy, Mandana Limbert, Christopher Loperena, Setha Low, Elizabeth Macaulay, Ross MacPhee, Felicia Madimenos, Miki Makihara, Jeff Maskovsky, Patricia Mathews-Salazar, Colleen McCann, Thomas McGovern, Cameron McNeil, Sarah Muir, Michael Novacek, Astrid Ogilvie, William Parry, Ekaterina Pechenkina, Glenn Petersen, Thomas Plummer, Herman Pontzer, Timothy Pugh, Ryan Raaum, Matthew Reilly, Angela Reyes, Chris Robinson, John Robinson, Donald Robotham, James Rohlf, Jessica Rothman, Christa Salamandra, Victoria Sanford, Naomi Schiller, Jonathan Shannon, Irina Silber, Ian Simpson, Katherine St. John, Michael Steiper, Karen Strassler, Ajantha Subramanian, Ida Susser, Larissa Swedell, Karine Tache, Ian Tattersall, Miriam Ticktin, Patricia Tovar, John Van Couvering, Amy Vedder, Orri Vésteinsson, Peter Whiteley, Gary Wilder, James Woollett

THE PROGRAM

Graduate work in anthropology leading to the Doctor of Philosophy degree at CUNY Graduate Center is offered in the subfields of cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. The program is committed to excellence in training its students for careers in research and teaching, as well as nonacademic fields. In addition to coursework, students have opportunities for early fieldwork experience through faculty-directed practicums and summer research funding. With close faculty guidance, students in the program win external fellowships for their dissertation research at a high rate. Most students also acquire significant undergraduate teaching experience at the various colleges of the CUNY system and other colleges in the area while completing their degrees. The four-field requirement, together with these exceptional opportunities for fieldwork and teaching experience, provides CUNY anthropology graduates with credentials not commonly available from many other doctoral programs.

The program’s four subfields offer tutorials, enabling students to work on an individual basis with faculty members on any topic of mutual interest that is not offered within the regular curriculum. Students are also encouraged to take advantage of the course offerings of other disciplines at the Graduate Center. Attention is called to the interdisciplinary seminars in which the Anthropology program participates, covering such topics as the philosophy of the social sciences, urban studies, space and place, feminist social theory, and problems of public policy.

Through CUNY’s consortial arrangement with other institutions in New York City, doctoral students can take courses at Columbia, New York University, The New School, Princeton, Rutgers, Fordham, and SUNY Stony Brook. In pursuing their research, they are also able to take advantage of the great diversity of the city itself, and tap its rich resources, from the New York Public Library to the American Museum of Natural History and the Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo. The program is committed to encouraging diversity among its students, as well as applications from minorities, whose number in the program exceeds the national average.

The program maintains a website that contains news about faculty and student honors, awards, fellowships, presentations, and publications course offerings and course descriptions for the current semester; program events; and other information (see above for web address).

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology focuses on the material bases of inequality, analyzed in local/global contexts, combining historical and ethnographic approaches. It emphasizes the role of cultural interpretations in maintaining and reproducing power, as well as the role of identity politics, including nationalism, race/racism, diasporas, and social movements. Faculty interests include working toward a broad interdisciplinary synthesis of political-economic perspectives with insights from literary and cultural studies. Other strengths are medical anthropology, space and place studies, urban theory and ethnography, globalization, and human-environment relationships. Area expertise includes Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, the United States, and the Middle East.

Archaeology

Archaeology pursues major issues in anthropological theory while providing rigorous training in archaeological method. Faculty research specializations include studies of rise of the state, gender relations, historical archaeology, lithic analysis, prehistory, historical ecology, zooarchaeology, and the application of archaeological data and methods to global change research. Regional specializations include but are not limited to Mesoamerica, historical sites in the United States, and the North Atlantic. Faculty research ranges from urban New York to rural Iceland, with particular strengths in Mesoamerica, Ecuador, South Asia, Near East, Europe, and North America. The North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the international archaeological field school in Iceland (CUNY Archaeological Institute Iceland–Oslo) are managed from CUNY, providing students with a wide network of opportunities and professional connections.

Physical Anthropology

Physical (Biological) Anthropology emphasizes evolutionary approaches to human and nonhuman primate biology in four main areas: comparative morphology, paleontology, biogeography, and systematics of humans and other primates; primate ecology and its relationships to both social behavior and conservation; genetics and its relationships to systematics, population biology, and disease vectors; and the biology of modern and recent humans, with a focus on adaptation, osteology, and bioarchaeology. Faculty research in paleontology and in primate and human ecology includes sites and collections in France, several African countries, and South America. The subfield plays a leading role in the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology (NYCEP), a National Science Foundation–funded training program that gives CUNY students access to faculty, laboratories, and collections at New York University, Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo; a number of special courses in this program are jointly taught by CUNY, New York University, and Columbia faculty.

Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic Anthropology studies the role of language in culture and society, including its use in the manipulation of power, the production of ideology, and the deployment of speech genres in social interaction. Applications include language and communication in legal, medical, and educational settings, as well as in intercultural affairs. Specialists in Creole languages among anthropology and linguistics faculty allows a concentration on public education policies for speakers of such languages for whom English is a second language or, with even more subtle problems, a second dialect.

RESOURCES FOR TRAINING AND RESEARCH

The program maintains laboratories for archaeology and physical anthropology at the Graduate Center. Other labs and facilities utilized by the archaeology subfield include: the Hunter Bioarchaeology Laboratory, the Brooklyn Zooarchaeology Facility, the Hunter AMICA multipurpose imaging facility, and Hunter’s developing GIS facility. Physical anthropology maintains laboratories specializing in bone biology, paleontology, and the analysis of vocalization at Queens College (osteology and bioarchaeology), at Hunter College (multipurpose imaging facility), and at Lehman College (primate cognition and osteology/forensics). Other labs directed by the program’s physical anthropology faculty are located at the American Museum of Natural History (three-dimensional geometric morphometrics and computer visualization) and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (comparative morphology of the head and neck and speech origins).

The physical anthropology subfield is affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History, and students have access to the museum’s primate collections and facilities in museum techniques.

Students are strongly encouraged to do fieldwork in their area of specialization. The program provides training in field methods and research design, and assists students in the formulation of research proposals for submission to external agencies that fund anthropological fieldwork. Depending on the availability of funds, the program mounts an annual competition and makes small awards to students to make reconnaissance trips to potential field research locales.

Other training opportunities are available through the research centers located at the Graduate Center. Students may obtain teaching experience at CUNY through appointments as graduate assistants or as adjunct lecturers.