Sociocultural anthropology at UNLV is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, both in research opportunities and in undergraduate and graduate courses offered. Some of our faculty and graduate students focus on biocultural approaches to nutrition and health (particularly childhood development, global health disparities, and complementary and alternative medicine); others adopt sociocultural approaches for the study of gender, romance, sexuality, migration, identity, colonialism, institutional designs, and the evolution of sociocultural systems. The Department of Anthropology at UNLV emphasizes cross-cultural comparisons grounded in quantitative and qualitative ethnographic fieldwork.
Faculty
Sociocultural Anthropology faculty at UNLV includes Jiemin Bao, Daniel C. Benyshek, Alyssa Crittenden, Liam Frink, William Jankowiak, Pierre Lienard, and Iván Sandoval-Cervantes
Research and Teaching
The sociocultural faculty are committed to integrating methodological and theoretical approaches to simultaneously explore the diversity and universality of human cultures extends to research and instruction. Our course offerings include an array of undergraduate and graduate courses in cultural anthropology, including those concerned with ideologies, representational systems, environment and landscapes, economic and political systems, migration, evolutionary psychology, nutrition, and health.
Our comprehensive courses reflect our wide-ranging research interests which seek to investigate identity, gender, sexuality, romantic love, indigeneity, social ecology, political ecology, kinship, design anthropology, social movements, evolutionary and cognitive frameworks of group formation, and the reproduction of social and cultural systems.
Fieldwork
Sociocultural Anthropology faculty and graduate students conduct ethnographically grounded and experimental research in the US, Mexico, China (Inner Mongolia), Europe, Thailand, Tanzania, and Kenya. The Department fosters interdisciplinary research and has an active connection with Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and with the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies.