3.0

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This course begins with reading the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin’s monumental work that was published some 150 years ago. We then build on this foundation to survey biological anthropology as a Darwinian historical science, with an emphasis on human evolution, variation, and biocultural histories. This allows us to understand how Darwin’s theory was misunderstood and misrepresented within social and scientific circles for more than a century. In the early 1950s, Sherwood Washburn called for a “new physical anthropology.” His approach shifted away from static, descriptive typology towards a dynamic, biocultural history of the human species. Recently, the “biocultural” approach is being revitalized to challenge disciplinary practices that consider the body as either a constructed cultural symbol or a natural anatomical specimen. We conclude with scholars’ creative attempts to decolonize knowledge production within ecologies of beings that are historical, relational, and multiple. This course requires the student to have taken at least one Anthropology course previously.