Phennd Resources

Anthropology 211 - Social and Cultural Change - Temple University

2007-12-18T18:38:21-04:00

Anthropology 211/Urban Education 211: Social and Cultural Change
Instructor: Robert O’Brien, robert dot t dot obrien at gmail dot com

Course Description
This is a service-learning course. Service learning puts course material into action (and question). It is an experiential learning technique where students do community work that relates to course work and vice versa. If I were teaching a math course, students would be learning math skills, then doing something like tutoring middle school students, building a bridge, or helping senior citizens with their taxes.

This service-learning course is an exploration of theories of society and culture and explanations of change and development. The way it will work is that we will read and discuss ethnography and anthropological theory that deals with change at the same time we are doing work in community organizations. Part of what we will be doing over the course of the summer is figuring out whether or not these organizations are engaged in social and cultural change, and, if so, how. We will discuss how our empirical findings reflect on our theoretical perspectives. Ideally, this is a dialectical (we’ll discuss this) process that forces us to confront both our theories and practices in order to develop new ones.

Anthropology 216 - Reducing Alcohol Abuse on College Campuses: Addressing Student Health through Public Interest Anthropology - University of Pennsylv

2007-12-18T18:34:48-04:00

Anthropology 216: Reducing Alcohol Abuse on College Campuses: Addressing Student Health through Public Interest Anthropology

Faculty: Francis Johnston, PhD, fjohnsto at sas dot upenn dot edu (Dept. of Anthropology)
Kate Ward-Gaus MS Ed (Office of Health Education)
Stephanie Ives MA (Office of Health Education)

Alcohol abuse among college students is a serious problem across the United States. This seminar will combine anthropological tools and public health strategies to: 1) contextualize the phenomenon historically and culturally; 2) encourage students to critically analyze existing alcohol prevention and intervention approaches; 3) use the University of Pennsylvania campus as a local case study/field site to investigate the problem and generate solutions for it; 4) move from theory to action through drafting a feasible proposal addressing alcohol reduction on Penn’s campus or engage in the implementation of an existing proposal/project.

Anthropology 115 - Comparative Anthropology of Social Issues: Philadelphia, USA, the World - University of Pennsylvania

2007-12-18T18:28:51-04:00

Anthropology 115 - Comparative Anthropology of Social Issues: Philadelphia, USA, the World

Faculty: Dr. P.L.W. Sabloff, psabloff at sas dot upenn dot edu

This seminar course is designed to introduce students to the anthropological approach to social issues, problems and concerns that communities face and try to resolve. The issues studied this term include: cultural/physical survival, making a living, employer-employee relations, immigrants, the community vs. the nation, and socialization. We will read ethnographic accounts of communities around the world and in other parts of the USA, broadening our understanding of the issues and communities in the reading through film, University Museum collections, other readings, and class discussion. Students’ research projects on volunteer organizations/projects will then enable us to see whether or not the problems studied in other communities apply to Philadelphia.

Anthropology 210 - Biomedical Science and Human Adaptability - University of Pennsylvania

2007-12-18T18:25:18-04:00

Anthropology 210: Biomedical Science and Human Adaptability

Faculty: Dr. Penny Gordon-Larsen, gordon_larsen at unc dot edu

This course will deal with the issues of community health, its evaluation, and the implementation of strategies for effecting change. The perspective will be that of anthropology, the social sciences, and medicine, in which community health is seen as the interaction between biological, environmental, and sociocultural factors. The course deals with issues that involve interactions between these factors and the relation between these factors and health promotion.
The focus of the course will be on enhancing dietary intake and nutritional status, using as a model the approach of Participatory Action Research (PAR). Specifically, members of the class will participate in a PAR project at the Turner Middle School, located at 59th and Baltimore Avenue. The project is designed to measure the nutritional status of children attending the school, to teach principles of nutrition to 6th graders, and to evaluate the outcome.

Anthropology 310 - Fieldwork in Ethnography - Temple University

2007-12-13T12:33:55-04:00

Anthropology 310: Fieldwork in Ethnography

Faculty: Robert O’Brien, Anthropology, Temple University
email: robrien at unix dot temple dot edu

Course description
This is a methods course. We will learn how to conduct an ethnographic research project. Although there have been numerous critiques of ethnography from every imaginable theoretical perspective, in this course we will not engage significantly with any of those debates. Students should think of this as an introductory course. No single methods course will encompass all there is to know about ethnographic fieldwork. You will learn what options are available to you and how to think about putting them together in a research project.