Anthropology at Colby

The human social world--past and present--consists of a myriad of distinct social, ethnic, religious, and cultural groupings with profoundly different ways of life and understandings of the world. Anthropology takes this human diversity as its point of departure, and seeks to understand its scope and significance.
 
The department offers a varied curriculum of lecture and discussion classes, as well as opportunities for study abroad, internships, and original research, including our honors program. Students engage the disciplinary project of cross-cultural comparison and analysis, a process that requires them to reflect carefully about the cultural sources of their own “taken-for-granted” understandings about the world. Equally important to this anthropological learning is an exploration of the profound interconnections (historical, cultural, political, and economic) among the world’s diverse societies and cultures and the varied consequences that these points of intersection have for people’s lives both far away and close to home. Our majors and minors learn to recognize and to analyze how particular cultural beliefs and practices (their own and others’) are inevitably intertwined with broader economic, political, and social structures including links to local and global relations of power, hierarchy, and privilege.
 
In addition to grappling with these substantive issues, students learn the process of doing anthropological research--the process of fieldwork. Ethnographic feldwork--sustained exposure to and participation in distinctive cultural contexts or communities--is anthropology's signature contribution to the human sciences. Students familiarize themselves with these anthropological methods and forms of research design by practicing tehm: through projects carried out in and around the Colby community, through independent research opportunities, and through opportunities for summer or January term internships. In addition anthropology students are strongly encouraged to take advantage of Colby's many opportunities for study abroad, where fieldwork skills can be applied and broadened in diverse cultural settings.
 
Studying anthropology at Colby is an excellent preparation for any professional field. The program promotes holistic and critical thinking, qualitative data collection and research design, awareness of complex cultural differences, and a sophisticated understanding of contemporary global realities. The intensive study of anthropology offers essential training in skills that today’s employers value highly including: excellent communication skills (both oral and written), sensitivity to complex patterns of diversity both at the individual and community level, an ability to research and analyze real world problems and social experiences both at home and abroad. All these analytical and conceptual skills are invaluable in the contemporary workplace. Students leave the program fully prepared for graduate school or for professional employment in a wide range of public and private sector fields. Regardless of their life course, students of anthropology will have learned a powerful new way of understanding themselves and the world in which they live.
 
Department faculty specialize in many different geographic regions of the world: Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. Similary, course offerings cover a range of topics: environmental anthropology, cross-cultural gender and sexuality, post-socialist transitions, violence and war, historical memory, nationalism, globalization, commodities and media cultures, diaspora studies, among others.

Contact Prof. Mary Beth Mills at memills@colby.edu with your question regarding Anthropology at Colby.