Have you ever wondered how to interact with all the diverse people you encounter in your daily life, or how you would manage to understand what was going on if you traveled abroad in a place very different from where you grew up? Do you find yourself daunted by unfamiliar situations and wish you knew how to begin to understand what’s going on? What if you didn’t even know how you were supposed to eat?
If you are looking for the right toolbox to help you figure out how to positively engage with the world around you, consider taking Understanding Cultures (our introductory cultural anthropology course), which counts as a social sciences core class at UA Little Rock. It is also one of the foundation classes for the anthropology major.
In what ways are you similar to people all over the world? In what ways do culturally diverse perspectives and practices actually make us a stronger, more resilient and sustainable planet? How can we understand how seemingly ‘strange’ practices actually work and what they mean in their cultural context?
Students often find learning about how cultural anthropologists interpret the world not only valuable, but transformative. The course explores how anthropologists study human cultural diversity and commonalities worldwide and locally. The Understanding Cultures class challenges students to learn how to understand and live in the very culturally diverse world that we inhabit, including right here locally in central Arkansas. In the course, you will discover how anthropological methods and perspectives can benefit you in your life and career no matter what future path you pursue.
At UA Little Rock, we have two full-time professors who specialize in cultural anthropology, Dr. Juliana Flinn and Dr. Simon Hawkins.
Cultural anthropology is one of the four subfields of anthropology as a whole.
