Anthropology examines the diversity of human cultures across time and around the globe. By comparing societies, students learn to value difference and also to question assumptions in their own communities that usually go unexamined.
The department describes its method as cross-cultural and deliberately non-ethnocentric. It looks at how cultures meet, spread, change, and endure as global connections multiply, and it treats diversity as something constantly shifting rather than fixed. Looking at the unfamiliar as ordinary, and the ordinary as strange, gives students a lens for interpreting the human condition.
Anthropologists across the Five College network contribute to the wider offerings. The program awards a Bachelor of Arts and is administered with sociology. After the first year, students may request an independent study, which suit many kinds of research projects, may develop into an honors thesis, and can be supported by small grants.
