Cultural Anthropology
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The Anthropology Department does not offer a graduate program in cultural anthropology per se. The Department's curriculum includes an active cultural anthropology component, including advanced undergraduate courses that can be taken by graduate students.
RESEARCH EMPHASES
Cultural Program
Faculty members conduct qualitative and quantitative empirical research in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States. Our research and teaching emphasize materialist and behavioral approaches.
While there is no graduate program in cultural anthropology at Penn State, there are two related programs to which our faculty contribute:
anthropology and demography program and the behavioral ecology program.
Anthropology/Demography Dual-Degree Program
DEPARTMENT CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Stephen Beckerman, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Areas of Intrest: Human evolutionary ecology; conservation ecology; tropical forest subsistence systems; primitive war; human reproductive strategies, especially partible paternity; lowland South American peoples (stv@psu.edu)
E. Paul Durrenberger, PhD, Professor of Anthropology, Areas of intrest: Modern and Commonwealth (9th - 13th centuries) Iceland, highland and valley groups of Mainland Southeast Asia, agricultural policy in the mid-western United States, Icelandic populations in North Dakota, U.S. Gulf of Mexico fisheries and fishing policy, practices and consequences of industrial swine production, labor, U.S. labor unions. Noncapitalist and capitalist economic systems, stateless societies, states, cognitive anthropology, symbolism, religion, the relationships among political and economic forms and ideological and cognitive systems, economic anthropology, law, political anthropology, maritime anthropology, historical processes, applied anthropology, sustainable agriculture, and community supported agriculture. (epd2@psu.edu)
Patricia L. Johnson, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Areas of Intrest:socioeconomic change, particularly as it affects women in developing nations. Her interests include kinship and social organization, household structure, fertility, gender systems, women's labor, and the local effects of global systems. She has worked on these questions in highland Papua New Guinea, and more recently in Bangladesh, where she has explored the political economy of contraceptive choices and the quality of women’s well-being, and research in Orkney Scotland on household adaptation to economic change over time. Demography (plj2@psu.edu)
Stephen A. Matthews, Associate Professor, spatial demography, GIS, spatial analysis, health and well-being, Orkney Islands (sxm27@psu.edu)
Warren Morrill, PhD, Professor Emeritus (wtm@psu.edu )
DEPARTMENT FACILITIES AND RESOURCES
Population Research Institute (PRI)
Mattson Museum of Anthropology
COURSES
Recently offered courses:
241 Peoples and cultures of New Guinea
444 Primitive Warfare
446 Mating and Marriage
448 Anthropology of the U.S.
450w Comparative Social Organization
453 Anthropology of Religion
455 Global Processes and Local Systems
458 Ethnographic Field Methods
GRADUATE APPLICATION AND UNDERGRADUATE REGISTRATION INFORMATION
LINKS
Affiliated Programs
Anthropology/Demography Dual-Degree Program
Population Research Institute
Intercollege Graduate Program in Ecology
Gerontology Center
Center for BioDiversity Research
Center for the Study of Child and Adolescent Development
African and African American Studies
Women's Studies Program
