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The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in October, 1997. Although some of the courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed in the meantime, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Anthropology Department. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the department's homepage.
Anthropology
Understanding human thought and behavior in the past, present, and future
Imagine that we are all wearing glasses with different colored lenses -- shades of blue or green or yellow -- and that these glasses represent our culture. Imagine that you are an anthropologist. It is your job to remove your glasses, to view the world unencumbered by your own cultural biases, and to see clearly how wearing different glasses affects people's perceptions and behaviors.
It's a whimsical analogy, but it addresses a concept that is central to the discipline of anthropology: perspective. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Anthropology Program Jane H. Nadel-Klein sums it up this way, "Once you study anthropology, you never view the world the same way again."
A most interdisciplinary discipline
For the past 10 years, Trinity's anthropology program has been exploring perspectives that are, fundamentally, interdisciplinary. Nadel-Klein points out that the program has formal links and cross-listed courses with international studies, American studies, women's studies, and public policy. She notes that students majoring in a number of other areas find anthropology courses to be relevant and complementary to their fields. Such wide-ranging student demand has helped anthropology to flourish at Trinity.
This academic year the relatively young program has begun the process of attaining full departmental status, which will include hiring for next year a professor who specializes in medical anthropology. Nadel-Klein says that adding a medical anthropologist to the faculty "speaks to student interest and also creates something of a bridge between anthropology and the sciences."
Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology Frederick K. Errington calls anthropology "the quintessential liberal arts subject." He says, "Anthropologists are interested in understanding the full extent of human thought and behavior -- past, present, and future. And that's in literature, political forms, economic behavior, and our views of the natural world."
As a senior last year, Amy E. Stephens '97 found a way to integrate her anthropology major with her minor in computer science. Taking her cue from the 1960 presidential election, in which television played a significant role for the very first time, Stephens did her thesis on how the 1996 presidential election was affected by the new medium of the Internet.
Anthropology major Ericka R. Lenz '99 has particularly enjoyed exploring the connections and interactions between anthropology and her minor, women's studies. Courses such as "Anthropological Perspectives on Women and Gender" have given her insight into how women behave and are perceived differently in different cultures, calling into question notions about women that we often take for granted, such as the concept of maternal instinct. According to Lenz, "Anthropology makes you think more about what is cultural and what is biological."
And when you are studying culture, she says, you can't beat anthropology's interdisciplinary approach. "It brings in sociology, psychology, religion, history, and it combines everything so you have to look at culture as a whole and from many different perspectives."
The methodological laboratory
As social scientists gathering information to support their hypotheses, anthropologists rely heavily upon fieldwork that involves face-to-face engagement, observation, interaction, receptivity to all of the subtle signals people give off, and careful listening to one's "informants." Fieldwork is a crucial requirement for Trinity's anthropology majors. They can choose to fulfill the requirement through a project on campus or in the city of Hartford, which Nadel-Klein calls "part of our methodological laboratory."
Caitlin Phelps '98 did her fieldwork at a city church, where she studied the interaction between the non-Hispanic English-speaking members of the historically white religious community and the Spanish-speaking members, who are now in the majority. Phelps attended church services on Sundays, went to youth-group activities, and talked to people in informal settings. "Sometimes you have certain questions," she says, "but other times you're letting people decide what they want to talk about. You have to recognize the importance of what they think is important."
Effective fieldwork, notes Errington, requires a certain degree of self-understanding as well as the ability to suspend one's judgment about other people and their practices. Moreover, he says, fieldwork helps to produce a very sophisticated, comparative analysis. "Attention to detail in ethnographic field research is such that one really does try to get an insider's view of what it means to be a person in any given cultural situation." Then, according to Errington, we step back and look at the broader picture of how that is similar to or different from situations of other people and other cultures.
Applied anthropology
Many students find that fieldwork helps them to home in on how anthropology can be applied to the real world. For Phelps, fieldwork and an internship with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in Hartford have solidified her desire to use the tools and methodologies of anthropology to effect change and to help people improve their communities. "I've always been interested in community service," she says. "Anthropology really gives me a good opportunity to do that as a career."
Lenz, whose fieldwork focused on volunteerism among Trinity students, also has an interest in community service and is considering law as a career, particularly law relating to discrimination cases. "I think anthropology will help me understand people's cultures, their stereotypes, and where they're coming from," she says. "Anthropology forces us to question our views of the world and understand other people, which I think can be useful in whatever field one chooses to go into."
Stephens now works at an investment management firm. She says she's using the research and interpretation skills she honed as an anthropology major to help her company make wise investment decisions. And, yes, she agrees, anthropology has changed her view of the world. It's almost a reflex now, according to Stephens. Wherever she is and whatever she's doing, she can't prevent herself from noticing the cultural assumptions and biases that color her daily life. "It's good and bad," she says. "It can be great at work, but it can be tough when you're just trying to enjoy an article in a magazine."
--Leslie Virostek