About Us

The Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago has a long and proud tradition of scholarly excellence and leadership in the discipline. We are intent on maintaining the traditional strengths of the Department while developing emerging theoretical interests in the discipline and beyond. Some of the areas that are currently enjoying particular attention by faculty and students in archaeology as well as linguistic and sociocultural anthropology include semiotic approaches to culture; postcoloniality; human rights and indigenous rights; globalization; critiques of neoliberalism; the politics of race, gender and sexuality; the analysis of place and space; mass media and visual culture; history and the historical imagination; and the anthropological study of science and technology. These research areas are enhanced by the Department’s longstanding commitment to training students in the history and foundations of social and cultural theory. In our research seminars, workshops, conferences, and weekly colloquium we strive for free-ranging and serious investigation of the material and imaginary forms of socio-cultural experience. The diversity of the intellectual conversation in the Department of Anthropology is evidenced by the work of current faculty and graduate students.