Cultural Anthropology Minor
Program Code: U-CA-MIN
Plan Type: Minor
Department: Cultural Anthropology Department
Website: culturalanthropology.duke.edu/undergraduate/degree-options
Program Summary
Cultural anthropology is a comparative discipline that studies human social life across the world’s diverse peoples and cultures. Cultural anthropology is the science of contemporary life: it emphasizes how power, identity, inequality, and social justice shape everyday life and global processes. It uniquely bridges the social sciences and the humanities with its holistic approach. Cultural anthropologists at Duke conduct research on a wide range of urgent issues, including racism, digital media, science and technology, ethnic identities, environment and climate change, health and medicine, music and performance, gender and sexuality, economic inequality, migration, sports, religion and myth, food politics, human rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and design. What unites these varied topics is a research method called ethnography. Ethnography is an empirical social research method focused on an engaged and community-based inquiry into everyday practices and how people make sense of them. It can involve participant observation, interviews, life histories, and action-oriented research, and is a widely applicable career skill. Ethnography reveals local solutions to global challenges.
The department offers a wide range of courses that introduce the discipline's core concepts and topics and that train students in ethnographic thinking, research, ethics, writing, and application. Courses in cultural anthropology often draw on in-depth case studies from different world areas to explore a specific topic. Faculty integrate their ethnographic fieldwork into courses, and the Department has special strengths in Africa and the African diaspora, Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, the United States, and Native North America.
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Academic Requirements
At least 5 units total to complete the minor. At least 34 units total to earn a degree.
Foundation Course (1 unit)
CULANTH 101 or 101D
Additional Courses (4 units)
Any 3 CULANTH courses 100-level and above
Any CULANTH course at any level