Anthropology Course Textbooks
For anthropology courses, the pages and posts of Living Anthropologically can be integrated with four-fields textbooks like Anthropology: What does it mean to be human? to create an Introduction to Anthropology. The category of Living Anthropologically titled “Anthropology Courses” features related blog posts.
Introduction to Anthropology Courses
Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?, Lavenda & Schultz
Lavenda and Schultz, Anthropology: What Does it Mean to be Human? has been my preferred textbook in four field Introduction to Anthropology. See Intro to Anthro 2021 to follow along with my most recent course. I also have a course outline with the 4th edition, Introduction to Anthropology 2018. I previously taught Anthropology 2017 and Anthropology 2016 using the 3rd edition. I have preferred the Lavenda and Schultz textbook series because of its academic sophistication, manageable length, and reasonable price. Check out the YouTube playlist for all the lectures!
Through the Lens of Anthropology, Muckle & González
In 2019-2020, I used Through the Lens of Anthropology by Robert J. Muckle and Laura Tubelle de González. I have been impressed with the co-authors public anthropological work (they are both on Twitter). The textbook is accessible, readable and not very expensive in comparison to other comprehensive textbooks. I’ve also very much appreciated their focus on Food and Sustainability as unifying themes. Getting Muckle’s perspective as a Canadian archaeologist lends a slightly less US-centric approach to the text, while González is very helpful for promoting a diversity of voices within anthropology. For a 2020 course outline, see Intro-to-Anthropology 2020. The YouTube lecture playlist is here:
Cultural Anthropology Courses
For Cultural Anthropology 2021 I tried out the second edition of Introducing Anthropology: What makes us human? Here is the YouTube playlist:
Although many anthropologists teach cultural anthropology as a standalone anthropology course that can function as an introduction to anthropology, I prefer to teach it as a follow-up on a more general anthropology course. My Cultural Anthropology 2016 course used Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Global Transformations. For Cultural Anthropology 2020, I used the third edition of Guest’s Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age. Here’s the YouTube playlist:
Cultural Ecology
I’ve been especially happy to have been able to develop courses in Environmental Anthropology or Cultural Ecology. From 2005, I began using Tim Ingold’s The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill as the backbone of the course. I’ve put up two versions of the course online, Cultural Ecology 2017 which is the more philosophical version, and Cultural Ecology 2020 which attempted to reground the material and explore issues of race and navigating the Anthropocene. Ingold’s Perception of the Environment is hardly an introductory text! However, it can function as a renewal and appreciation of some of the root issues in anthropology. Many of the issues Ingold wrote about in Perception reemerge in his 2018 Anthropology: Why It Matters.
History of Anthropological Thought
In 2022 I had my first chance to teach a history of anthropological thought course. I definitely did not want to do a “one anthropologist after another” course and so I used the Ingold book from Cultural Ecology as a backbone. Here is the YouTube playlist:
Anthropology of Latin America & the Caribbean
I have not taught many courses in my research area, but I do teach a one-month overview of the Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean. The most recent Latin America & Caribbean Anthropology 2021 blogs through the second edition of The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean by Harry Sanabria. The YouTube playlist is:
In fall 2021 I taught Upstate Latinx, a related course as a first-year seminar. For that course I used Latina/o Studies by Ronald Mize. Here is the YouTube playlist: