|
![]() |
 |
Head of the Department: Paul A. Garber
Director of Graduate Studies: William Kelleher
109 Davenport Hall
607 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
(217) 333-3616
E-mail: anthro@uiuc.edu
Graduate Degree Programs
The Department of Anthropology offers graduate programs leading to
the master of arts and the doctor of philosophy degrees.
Admission
Students without the equivalent of the department’s undergraduate
concentration may be admitted to either degree program, but they will
be required to make up deficiencies in their anthropological backgrounds.
In addition to the Graduate College admission requirements, students
are required to submit Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Students
whose native language is not English are required to take the Test
of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and achieve a minimum score
of 550 on the paper-based test (213 computer-based test). Students
are admitted for the fall term only.
Graduate Teaching Experience
Although teaching is not a general Graduate College requirement, experience
in teaching is considered an important part of the graduate experience
in this program.
Master of Arts
The master’s degree can be a first stage toward the doctorate
or may be used by students wishing to apply knowledge of anthropology
to a related field. Candidates for the master’s degree must
complete at least 32 graduate hours of graduate credit and present
a thesis (or paper in lieu of a thesis) acceptable to their advisers
and another member of the graduate faculty within the department.
At least 12 graduate hours must be at the 500 level, and 8 of these
hours must be in anthropology.
Doctor of Philosophy
Requirements for the Ph.D. include 96 graduate hours of graduate coursework
or 64 graduate hours beyond the master’s degree, a preliminary
examination, a Ph.D. thesis, and a final defense of the dissertation.
The preliminary examination consists of a predissertation research
paper, a proposal for doctoral research, and a written examination
designed by the student’s doctoral committee followed by a two-hour
oral examination. The final examination is a defense of the doctoral
thesis. High proficiency in one, or reading ability in two, foreign
languages is required. Statistics, computer modeling, or similar expertise,
however, may be used in lieu of one foreign language. Fieldwork is
strongly recommended, although not required.
Research Interests and Facilities
Courses and individualized study provide broad coverage of sociocultural,
linguistic, archaeological, and physical anthropology. The department
provides special emphases in the analyses of state ideologies and
cultural transformations; complex societies in transition; kinship
and gender relationships; symbolism and cognition; cosmology, art,
and religion; politics, economics, and ethnicity; language and culture;
ethnomusicology; text and narrative analysis; formal analysis and
mathematical modeling; medical anthropology; human evolution; agricultural
origins and development; hunter-gatherer adaptations; diet and nutrition;
paleoecology and paleobiology; comparative and analytical osteology;
and nonhuman primate evolution, morphology, behavior, and ecology.
The department’s Laboratory of Anthropology has archaeological,
paleoethnobotany, faunal analysis, human biology, casting, stable-isotope
analysis, and ethnographic laboratories. The department is developing
visual arts and networked computer laboratories.
Departmental funds and a grant from the National Science Foundation
are available for graduate students’ summer field research.
An archaeology field school is held at various locations in Illinois
and occasionally elsewhere (location varies from year to year). Graduate
student programs are enriched by close departmental relationships
with the interdisciplinary area studies centers on campus (African,
East Asian and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, and Russian and
East European), and with the Afro-American Studies and Research Program,
Women’s Studies Program, La Casa Cultural Latina, Women and
Gender in Global Perspectives Program, Spurlock Museum, Museum of
Natural History, Krannert Art Museum, and the Program in Ancient Technologies
and Archaeological Materials.
Agreements between the University and various governments and institutes
facilitate research in many nations. Training is available in various
languages, including Quechua, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian,
Thai, Burmese, Swahili, Hausa, Lingala, Wolof, Arabic, and Shona.
Students have ready access to the extensive computer facilities of
the University and to the department’s facilities, which include
microcomputers, printers, software, and mainframe computer terminals,
a graphic digitizer and color printer, photographic and video equipment,
and other research-oriented hardware and software. The Journal of
the Steward Anthropological Society, edited by graduate students,
has been published since 1969.
Financial Aid
University fellowships, Graduate College fellowships for under-represented
minorities, and teaching and research assistantships provide variable
levels of funding for most graduate students who do not hold external
awards. Tuition and service fee waivers accompany fellowships and
assistantships. Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships
are available through various area centers. Extensive contract archaeology
programs in the department provide support and research employment
for graduate students, as does the U.S. Army Construction Engineering
Research Laboratory in Champaign.
|
|
|
