Department of Anthropology , Emory University
Graduate Program of Study
Overview
Coursework
Teaching
Methodology
Research Proposal
Qualifying Exams
Fieldwork & Write-Up
Dissertation Defense
Emory’s graduate program in Anthropology balances rigorous courses with a tutorial approach to advanced subjects and is designed to be intense and demanding for both students and faculty. We encourage a diversity of doctoral research agendas across the entire range of cultural and biological anthropology. It is exposure to alternative explanatory paradigms rather than a monolithic theoretical orientation that we think will prove both intellectually important and professionally successful in the anthropology of the future.
The core program is a series of courses and seminars that gives advanced training in cultural and biological anthropology, including a pro-seminar team-taught by cultural and biological anthropologists. As a whole, the educational program provides students with a graduate-level grounding in cultural and biological anthropology that is sophisticated and unique. Specialization within cultural or biological sub-fields is encouraged, as well as combinations and creative dialogues between them. The program requires three years of full-time course work, followed by dissertation research and write up.
Students in good standing receive full tuition and stipend support for four and a half years according to the guidelines discussed below. Students must successfully complete all courses from Year 1 before registering for Year 2. To receive stipend funding, students are required to register for 12 credit hours each semester, and Graduate Residency during the summer.
In their second and third years of study, graduate students intensify their individual research agendas and formulate in-depth research proposals. We give great attention to the research interests and needs of each student. Yearly review by faculty and careful monitoring of students developing research plans are prominent aspects of the program. Public presentation of research proposals for departmental review exposes students to the dynamics of constructive collegial criticism, as well as enhancing the probability of obtaining extra-mural research funding. Doctoral research, dissertation, and the dissertation defense complete the program. We emphasize attentiveness to students’ research and professional goals at each stage of their education, including help in the process of finding postdoctoral funding and employment.
In biological anthropology, students may participate in five fully equipped research laboratories housed within the Anthropology Department: the Laboratory of Reproductive Ecology and Environmental Toxicology, the Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology, the Human Osteology Laboratory., the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience, the Laboratory for Biogeochemical Anthropology. The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) , an interuniversity center located on the Emory campus, and the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, on the Emory campus and at the field station thirty miles from Emory near Lawrenceville, also provide potential research affiliation for students interested in behavioral biology. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide important collaborative opportunities in medical anthropology, and anthropology faculty members also have strong connections with the Rollins School of Public Health.
Resources are equally rich for students interested in cultural anthropology. The Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) focuses its research on the functions and significance of ritual and myth in dual wage-earner middle-class families in the American South. The MARIAL Center offers graduate fellowships for doctoral research on some aspect of ritual, narrative or mythology in middle-class American family life. The Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS)coordinates and promotes area studies and comparative and international scholarship. Cultural students may also participate in the Media Publics and Critical Discourse Laboratory.
The Anthropology department also has strong affiliations with the following institutes and programs: African Studies, African American Studies, Asian Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Post-Colonial Studies group, as well as the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, the History Department, the Program in Linguistics and the Psychology Department. Emory faculty associated with the University's Institute of African Studies comprise one of the largest groups of Africanist anthropologists in the United States, and Emory's Department of Women's Studies offers one of the only Ph.D. programs in Women's Studies in the countryAnnual themes at Emory's Center for the Study of Public Scholarship are often topics of anthropological relevance.
The Woodruff Library includes over two million volumes, major journals, the Human Relations Area Files, CD-ROM data bases, a highly efficient inter-library loan system, and on-line catalog services. The Pitts Theological Library houses excellent collections on issues of colonialism and religion. The Carter Center of Emory University, affiliated with the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, also offers potential research resources.
A wide range of computing systems, software, and services is provided by the University Computing Center, including electronic library resources, access to the World Wide Web, electronic mail, and LearnLink, a sophisticated on-line course conferencing and communication system.
The core courses provide a special kind of graduate training that eliminates the need for general examinations. It is expected that students will take one or two core courses a semester for a total of at least six core courses over their first two years.
Three core courses are required for all graduate students:
ANT 500 Pro-seminar
ANT 50l History of Anthropological Thought
ANT 503
Evolutionary Processes
Three additional core courses are required, but students are encouraged to take as many as is feasible and consistent with their research interests. At least one course must be biological and at least one must be cultural.ANT510 and ANT520R can count as either biological or cultural.
BIOLOGICAL |
CULTURAL |
ANT 505 Primate Ecology and Social Organization |
ANT 504 Culture, Ecology, and Economy |
Theory In addition, the following methods courses are recommended, but not required:
ANT 560 Methods and Research Proposal Preparation
ANT 562 Ethnographic
Methods and Writing
ANT 575 Biomedical Methods in Anthropology
ILA
782 Proposal Writing and Research Design in the Humanities
Graduate
School Proposal Writing Institute
Graduate students specializing in Biological and Physical Anthropology are required to enroll in a 1-credit Research Seminar in Biological Anthropology (ANT 555) each semester of their first three years in the program.
TATTO – TEACHING ASSISTANT AND TEACHER TRAINING OPPORTUNITY
Serving as a teaching assistant and as a co-teacher provides invaluable experience and is important as a professional credential. Most of our graduate students find these rewarding and important experiences. During their three semesters of training, students take a normal course load and receive a regular graduate stipend while TAing.
During the second semester of the second year, criteria are established for satisfying a methodology requirement tailored to the individual student's research needs. The methodology requirement is designed by the student in close consultation with her/his advisor; it may stipulate language training, statistics, laboratory techniques, field methods according to the student's chosen area of interest, and/or a course identified as a methods class or workshop. In addition, all students are required to have training in ethical conduct of research, including IRB or IACUC certification.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH PROPOSAL
The department places high priority on refining students' doctoral research proposals, both to further students’ education and to maximize the chances that they can obtain extramural funding for doctoral fieldwork.
The student will meet periodically with his/her individual graduate advisor (or other committee member) in formulating their research design. Students are advised to develop the basic framework of their dissertation proposal during the second semester of their second year of coursework, and are required to attend departmental grant and funding workshops. Successful past proposals are kept on file for students to browse.
Students generally revise funding proposals over the summer of their second year, present them formally to the department in the early fall (October), and finalize them to meet funding deadlines for the following October and November. Students cannot fail a proposal defense; however, defenses are occasions at which a student’s ability to articulate and defend a research program is actively probed by the department at large. If a substantial or significant change in focus should occur during the course of developing their research, students are strongly encouraged to represent their research proposals in front of the convened department for additional comments and feedback.
Each student chooses two specialty areas upon which s/he completes written examinations. Normally, these areas will be identified in the second semester of the second year and exams completed in the spring of the third year. With the approval of their advisor, students may choose either two topical specialties or one topical specialty and one geographical specialty.
The student’s examination committee will be chosen in consultation with the advisor to reflect the specialty areas of interest. In the semester prior to taking their qualifying examinations, students will work with their advisors and other members of their committees to develop a bibliography for each specialty area. Development of an appropriate bibliography demonstrates competence in the specialty and will vary in length by topic. The bibliography must be approved by the advisor and other members of the examination committee. For students whose focus is largely or primarily within cultural anthropology, it is expected that ethnographic area concerns will figure significantly in at least one of the two specialty exams.
FIELDWORK AND DISSERTATION WRITE-UP
Students are expected to stay in regular contact with their doctoral committee and especially with their doctoral advisor during the period of fieldwork and dissertation write-up. The advisor should be informed of the schedule of fieldwork and write-up, including regular communication concerning progress and any changes of plan as they emerge.
The doctoral thesis defense and presentation consists of two parts (a) a public presentation of the thesis research, and (b) an oral defense of the thesis in front of the student’s doctoral dissertation committee. The oral defense cannot take place until the public presentation has been completed.
Upon completion of the final draft of the dissertation, and with the advisor's approval, the student will schedule a public presentation and an oral defense. Students must be registered in the semester in which they defend their thesis and receive their degree. Graduate Residence satisfies this requirement.
The department provides funds for three semesters (which equates one and one-half year of support) of dissertation write up. In order to qualify for these funds, the student must have begun collection of the main body of dissertation data by mid-January of the fifth chronological year in the graduate program.