Mission Statement
Anthropology is the only academic discipline that studies the complete human experience; past, present, and future. Success in the 21st century requires an understanding of cultural diversity and evolutionary foundations of human behavior and biology within an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world.
Anthropology is especially well suited to provide this perspective through its holistic approach to understanding humanity across time and space.
The UNLV Department of Anthropology is committed to academic research and scholarship, the public interest, and graduate and undergraduate education in pursuit of this goal. With a comprehensive and well-integrated curriculum, we are committed to teaching and training students in a way that balances methodological and theoretical approaches in anthropology. Our department also significantly contributes to the mission of the university by offering courses and research programs that are relevant both locally and globally and by providing an understanding of our shared humanity while acknowledging the remarkable diversity of human cultures around the world.
Subdisciplines
The UNLV Anthropology Department offers teaching and training in three broad aspects of Anthropology.
Departmental Themes
Food and Nutrition
Topics under this concentration include subsistence patterns, consumption, production, exchange, origins and consequences of agriculture, health and reproduction, and maternal and child nutrition.
Professors working in these topical areas include Levent Atici, Daniel Benyshek, Alyssa Crittenden, Gabriela Oré Menéndez, Liam Frink, Karen Harry, Debra Martin, Barbara Roth, and Brian Villmoare
Adaptive Strategies
Topics under this concentration include arid lands, Arctic adaptation, land use, climate change, cooperation and conflict, decolonial and Indigenous responses, health and well-being, social systems, political economies, and urbanism.
Professors working in these topical areas include Levent Atici, Daniel Benyshek, Jennifer Byrnes, Alyssa Crittenden, Liam Frink, Karen Harry, Lisa Johnson, Debra Martin, Gabriela Oré Menéndez, Barbara Roth, and Brian Villmoare.
Parenting, Childhood, and Development
Topics under this concentration include fatherhood, cooperative breeding, childhood economics, evolution of childhood, and maternal and child health.
Professors working in these topical areas include Daniel Benyshek, Alyssa Crittenden, and William Jankowiak.
Sexuality, Romance, Gender, and Identity
Topics under this concentration include transnationalism; religion, love and intimacy; gender and health; identity formation; ethnicity/race; sexuality; intersectional, multivocal, and global queerization of academic research; and inequality; and intersectional, multivocal, and global queerization of academic research.
Professors working in these topical areas include William Jankowiak, Lisa Johnson, Debra Martin, Gabriela Oré Menéndez, Barbara Roth, Karen Harry, Levent Atici, Liam Frink, and Iván Sandoval-Cervantes.