WELCOME
The Department of Anthropology, established by Franz Boas in 1902, is the oldest in the United States and remains a center of disciplinary innovation and theoretical leadership. The department’s faculty members are actively engaged in research and writing about issues of both pressing contemporary relevance and historical significance. Our scholars work in regions and language traditions around the globe and in the United States, as do our students. We operate doctoral degree programs in both sociocultural anthropology and archaeology, and host two distinct MA programs, one in sociocultural anthropology and the other in museum anthropology. In addition, we offer rigorous undergraduate training toward both the major and the concentration, and welcome students from other disciplines into our classes.
Upcoming Events
BOAS Seminar: Juan Carlos Mazariegos
BOAS Seminar: Ismail Alatas
BOAS Seminar: Asanda-Jonas Benya
News
Two new essays by Rosalind Morris explore the politics of accusation and the crowd
In a contribution to the festschrift for James T Siegel and an anniversary volume devoted to Freud's Group Psychology, Rosalind Morris takes up the question of accusation, in history and in the academy ("Allegories and Algorithms of the Purge: Thinking with James Siegel, Once Again," in Indonesia), and the different itineraries of white melancholia in the US and South Africa ("The Lessons of an Absent Teacher: Freud's Massenpsychology und Ice-analyse, and the Losses of White Melancholia in Sout
Claudio Lomnitz's book, Sovereignty and Extortion, reviewed in Times Literary Supplement and other venues
Claudio Lomnitz's recent book, Sovereignty and Extortion: A New State Form in Mexico, was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (by Benjamin T.
Focaal includes Mahmood Mamdani's and Xenia Cherkaev's books in its list of “One Hundred Indispensable Works for Thinking in Our Times.”
The journal, Focaal, listed Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton UP, 1996) and our alumna Xenia Cherkaev’s, Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice (Cornell UP 2023) among its list of most important works. Congratulations to both!
OUR RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
The research interests of our faculty and students cover a broad range of theoretical and empirical questions, and our scholarly and personal engagements traverse an equally wide range of geopolitical and territorial domains. Broadly speaking, these interests can be grouped under the thematic headings indicated by the icons below. On the pages linked to the icons, you will find: a brief description of the issues and the Department’s historical relationship to them; a list of faculty members whose research and writing addresses these themes; a list of courses covering related questions and problems; and select publications on these subjects by our faculty members.
DEPARTMENTAL STATEMENT ON ETHICS OF RESEARCH AND STEWARDSHIP OF ANCESTRAL REMAINS AND CULTURAL MATERIALS
The Department of Anthropology at Columbia University is committed to the ethical pursuit of knowledge, and the responsible stewardship of that which is entrusted to us in the course of our research, including diverse materials of cultural value and significance. As heirs to a lengthy history of anthropological research, we are also committed to the ethical stewardship of ancestral remains, objects and collections that were generated or acquired by our predecessors. To that end, we are engaged in an ongoing process of identifying and inventorying materials on site, consulting with relevant professional and cultural organizations and authorities to determine provenance, and working to ensure the well-being and, where appropriate, repatriation of ancestral remains, objects and materials of cultural value and significance to the communities whence they originated.
We are guided in our efforts by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and by international treaties, professional protocols, and our own commitments to just and responsible research practice. In 2024, the Department of Anthropology began taking steps to comply with new NAGPRA regulations, which went into effect on January 12, 2024.