Undergraduate Program Information
Anthropology is an exciting and interesting area of study for students at the University of Florida. Anthropology is the study of people in their cultural context and the examination of all aspects of patterned social behavior. The discipline is worldwide in scope encompassing all aspects of human biological and social life from the earliest times to the present. Anthropology is a broad, holistic field that seeks to understand human adaptation to natural and social environments. Anthropology includes the following four-subfields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistics. Undergraduates can concentrate their studies in one of these four subfields. All degrees granted to students are in the field of anthropology rather than the area of concentration.
An undergraduate major in anthropology prepares students to work in today's complex world where international activities characterize business, government, and education. Anthropology majors learn about different groups of people, their prehistory, and their diversity through a discipline that combines science and the humanities. Many undergraduate anthropology majors go on to graduate school in the social sciences, while others use Anthropology to prepare themselves for professional careers.
The Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida is ranked as one of the best in the country. There are over forty anthropologists on campus. In addition to the teaching faculty, anthropologists hold appointments at the College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the C. A. Pound Human Identification Lab. Anthropology at the University of Florida is especially strong in Latin American Studies, African Studies, Southeastern Archaeology, Applied Anthropology, and Forensic Anthropology. Course offerings reflect the diverse expertise of the faculty.
Some examples of course topics are:
Sociocultural Anthropology: urban and peasant societies,
medical anthropology, crisis and disasters, human rights, refugees, Diaspora
studies, sex roles, women and development, North and South American ethnography,
gender studies, environmental anthropology
Archaeology: African archaeology, Central and South American
Archaeology, Caribbean, Florida and North American archaeology, lithic technology,
ethnoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, pottery analysis, dietary
reconstruction
Biological Anthropology: paleoanthropology, bioarchaeology,
nutritional anthropology, primatology, human osteology, forensic anthropology,
molecular anthropology
Linguistics: Native literacy, language and gender, linguistic
theory
