Undergraduate
An introduction to the anthropological study of cultures, based on ethnographic descriptions and analyses of tribal, developing, and modern state societies. The course explores a variety of concepts and approaches to the study of culture, and participants acquire experience in critical reading, critical thinking, and analytic writing.
Large-scale post-1965 immigration to the U.S. has significantly reshaped national life. Immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe have radically altered the way we think about cities, race, ethnicity, nation, and politics. Key themes covered include history, politics, and processes of immigration; class and race dimensions; transnationalism; immigrants in the economy; and comparative group experiences.
A comparative study of the form and quality of urban life in the contemporary United States and in selected non-Western cultures. Through an examination of selected case studies, the course assesses the varying theories, methodological strategies, and research techniques that have been employed in anthropological analyses of cities; and considers their significance in the broader field of urban studies. Attention is also given to the cultural evolutionary processes leading to the origin and spread of cities and urbanized society, in both the ancient and modern worlds.
The Latino Leadership Opportunity Program (LLOP) is an academic enrichment and leadership development program offered by the Gastón Institute for UMass Boston undergraduate students. The LLOP offers undergraduate training in applied research and public policy analysis.
Graduate
Transdisciplinarity is an approach to addressing complex questions of broad societal concern through an integration of different disciplines at the highest level. Such integration leads to the transcendence of any one discipline and the emergence of new frameworks, concepts, and/or methods. Of central importance to transdisciplinarity is the integration of knowledge from non-academic stakeholders who are closest to the issues or problems of concern.
Course provides a survey of research methods and the use of evidence to build persuasive arguments. The course is divided into three sections; (1) quantitative methods; (2) qualitative methods; and (3) community-based participatory action research, providing an overview of each group of research methods. Throughout all three sections, the course will include feminist research methods and scholarly work. Each section of the course culminates int he submission of a policy brief on a topic of the student's choosing. Each policy brief will highlight the research methods from that portion of the course.
Other
Cultural domain analysis (CDA) consists of a set of methods for collecting and analyzing data about lists of things in a cultural domain. The goal is to understand differences in how people in different cultures (or subcultures) view a set of things in a cultural domain. CDA comes from anthropology and is used in research in that field, but it has wide application in marketing, public health, education, environmental science and other fields. (Self-paced online course)
Discourse analysis is the study of language in context and in action. Through discourse analysis (DA) researchers study what people do with language to accomplish social and communicative goals.