Anthropology

The study of human social and cultural behavior and the diversity and integrity of cultures around the world

www.bucknell.edu/anthropology

Related Student Organizations

Anthropology Club

Career Paths

Anthropology graduates have pursued careers in archaeology, law, public policy, planning, health, marketing, education and applied anthropology. Recent alumni have secured the following sampling of positions:

  • Recruitment Associate, Teach for America
  • Analyst, Goldman, Sachs & Co.
  • Data Entry Associate, Youngstown Community Health Care Center
  • Project Assistant, APCO Worldwide

Quick Facts

Number of full-time, core faculty: 5

Average number of majors per class year: 12

Undergraduate Research

Opportunities for students to become involved in research are available on campus, in the community or abroad. Departmental funds are available to assist with research expenses including travel. Recent projects include:

  • "Where Souls Linger: Death and Ritual among the Buryat of Mongolia"
  • "Protective Tradition or Harmful Practice? Exploring the Debate on “Breast Ironing” in Cameroon, West Africa"

Grants & Awards

An anthropology faculty member has recently secured the following grant:

  • 2010 Social Science Research Council Book Fellowship

Internships

Anthropology majors can gain career experience through summer internships. Recently, students have interned at:

  • The Fresh Air Fund
  • Youth Action International
  • Giorgio Armani

Graduate and Professional School

Many of Bucknell’s anthropology majors go on graduate study, enrolling in graduate programs in anthropology and related disciplines and professions. Recent graduates are studying or have completed advanced degrees at the following institutions:

  • University of Toronto
  • Drexel University
  • Rutgers University
  • University of Oregon.
  • University of Chicago

Program Details

  • Anthropology students learn the variety of economic, political and cosmological principles by which humans organize their societies.
  • Emphases within courses include studies of peoples of the Arctic, South Asia,Japan, North America, South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
  • Instruction in various theoretical topics (such as urbanization, ritual and religious symbolism, gender, consumption and material culture, foodways), the ways of life characteristic of particular world regions (such as Japan, Africa and South America) and applied anthropology.
  • An honors program is available for individualized study during the senior year.

Faculty

Bucknell’s anthropology faculty members have conducted research in Africa, Japan, Portugal, the Arctic, Latin America and North America. Colleagues in related disciplines have done work in the Caribbean, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, among other locations.

CORE FACULTY

Michelle Johnson
B.A.Washington; Ph.D. Illinois
Scholarly interests: transnational communities, Lusophone Africa, Africans in Europe, ethnicity, Islam

Paul Noguchi
B.A. Franklin & Marshall; Ph.D. Pittsburgh
Scholarly interests: material culture, urban culture, consumption, anthropology of loss

Clare Sammells
B.A. Harvard;Ph.D. Chicago
Scholarly interests: tourism, economy, foodways, indigenous politics, Bolivia, the Andes

Edmund (Ned) Searles
B.A. Bowdoin; Ph.D. Washington
Scholarly interests: indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar North, ecological anthropology, political anthropology, anthropology of Christianity

Allen Tran
Ph.D. UC San Diego
Scholarly interests: culture and emotion, subjectivity and experience, trauma theory, mental health and illness, psychological anthropology, medical anthropology, Vietnam, Southeast Asia

ASSOCIATED FACULTY

Coralynn Davis, women’s and gender studies
Ph.D. Michigan
Scholarly interests: Nepal, South Asia

Susan Reed, women’s and gender studies
Ph.D. Brown
Scholarly interests: Sri Lanka, South Asia, dance

Faculty affiliated with other Bucknell departments and programs (religion, classics and women’s and gender studies) expand the variety of coursework open to interested students.

Courses Offered

Advanced Reading in Anthropology
Advanced Seminar in Anthropology
Anthropological Perspectives on Human-Environment Relations
Dance and Culture
Economies and Societies
Environment in Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Field Research
Field Research in Local Communities
Folklore and Ritual
Food, Eating and Culture
Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
Honors Course in Anthropology
Interpreting Culture
Modern Africa
Native Americans, Past and Present
Peoples and Cultures of the Andean World
Performance and Culture
Religions in Africa
Ritual, Myth and Meaning
Sexuality and Culture
South Asian Culture and Society
Tourism
Women and Development
Women Writing Culture

Faculty Achievements

  • Michelle Johnson received a 2010 Social Science Research Council Book Fellowship to write her book, Re-encountering Religion:  Mandinga Custom and Global Islam in Portugal.  She is currently working on the book on sabbatical leave as a visiting researcher at Uppsala University in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology.

Selected Faculty Publications

Bucknell’s anthropology faculty members’ recent scholarship includes the following:

Michelle Johnson, "Death and the Left Hand:  Islam, Gender, and 'Proper' Mandinga Funerary Custom in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal," African Studies Review, 2009

Michelle Johnson, "Making Mandinga or Making Muslims?  Debating Female Circumcision, Ethnicity, and Islam in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal," in Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context, 2007

Clare Sammells (ed. with Helen Haines), Adventures in Eating: Anthropological Experiences in Dining from Around the World, 2010

Study Abroad

Anthropology majors in recent years have studied abroad in Morocco, Florence and Chile. They have conducted field research in Kenya, Botswana, Northern Ireland, France, Spain, England, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, South Africa, India and China.