The first area is population biology focusing on demography and the health and diseases of modern humans. The second area includes human adaptability, with concentrations in human growth and nutrition. Courses and seminars are available dealing with fossil man and human evolution, human osteology and paleopathology, human biology, human adaptability, and nutritional anthropology. Cognate courses are available in community health sciences, biology, and food and nutrition. The kinship practices, family life, social relations, economic transactions, rites, and ceremonies of societies of diverse types are examined in lecture courses.
Seminars are devoted to methodological and theoretical problems in the study of customary behavior.
Primary areas of interest offered in the department include the anthropology of religion and complex societies. Cognate courses are available in Religious Studies, Latin American Studies, Women's Studies, and other fields. Courses in anthropological linguistics integrate traditional anthropological concerns with the relations among language, culture, and meaning. Lecture courses center upon the phonological, syntactic, and semantic components of the languages used by widely separated speech communities. Courses and seminars which stress the social correlates of language and the suspected link between linguistic labeling practices, abstract forms of thought, and human behavior are available to the interested student.