Faculty of Arts and Sciences

ANTHROPOLOGYGraduate Program

Anthropology explores the operation of culture in society through detailed studies of actual social worlds and their comparison. It provides students with rigorous training for coming to grips with the question of cultural difference in their personal and professional lives.

More than the other social sciences, anthropology works from direct immersion in social worlds to reveal the intricacies of social processes and the dynamics of everyday life. More than the other humanities, anthropology probes actual patterns of oppression, domination or discrimination, and provides tools for proposing to change them.

The AUB Anthropology MA program provides general training in socio-cultural anthropology while foregrounding our unique physical and intellectual location. Our faculty’s expertise in creative expression and arts production, mental health and well-being, ethical traditions, refugees, legal and historical anthropology,

offers students the opportunity to develop a strong foundation in classical anthropological paradigms and to relate them to emerging concerns of modern Arab societies.

Photo credit: Sylvain Perdigon

How can a fish know what “wet” is when it lives under water? Culture brings us together, as members of the same species with unique capacities, and it keeps us apart, as inhabitants of incommensurable social worlds and values. Anthropology can teach us how to approach and understand other people’s cultures, and how to become cognizant of our own culture.

Curriculum

The program is designed to sensitize students to their responsibilities as anthropologists, expose them to fieldwork, help them acquire an understanding of anthropological theory and history, and to inspire experimentation with ethnographic writing. Students have the opportunity to study the development of the discipline, while exploring classical and contemporary theories, by conducting original fieldwork or doing research on secondary sources.

Students must take seven courses and complete a thesis. In the first two semesters, students take foundational courses in theory, methods and ethnography. The remainder of the requirements may be selected from other offerings in the department or other schools and faculties on campus.

After completing coursework students design a research project which they conduct for 3-6 months, analyze, and present as their master’s thesis.

Within the broad umbrella of socio-cultural anthropology students are able to study and gain a critical understanding of some of the following research areas, with a focus on the Arab world (but not limited to):

• Gender roles and sexuality

• Nation-state, government, and non-governmental actors

• Kinship, community, and diasporic identities

• Aesthetics and art movements

• Medicine, health and bodily practices

• Violence, peace-making, and social movements

• Religion and identity

• War and displacement

Students should note that they will have the opportunity to study and collaborate with our department’s sociologists—Samir Khalaf, Sari Hanafi, Anaheed Al-Hardan, and Dina Kiwan—and other faculty who regularly teach our students such as Fawwaz Traboulsi and Rosemary Sayigh.

Photo credit: Kirsten Scheid

Sample Courses:

SOAN 310: Seminar in Anthropological Theory

SOAN 304: Anthropological Research Methods

SOAN 301: The Ethnographer’s Craft

SOAN 302: Culture and Mental Health

SOAN 303: Art, Aesthetics, and Social Change

SOAN 315: Seminar in Middle Eastern Culture & Society

SOAN 320: Performing Lebanon

SOAN 323: Semiotic Anthropology

SOAN 323: The Lives of Law in Islam: Anthropological Perspectives

SOAN 323: Medical Anthropology

SOAN 323: Ecologies of War

PPIA 404: The Global (from the) South

PPIA 304: Development and its Discontents

Faculty Profiles:

OMAR DEWACHIMBChB, PhD Harvard University Medical anthropology, history of medicine, global health, postcoloniality; Iraq

NIKOLAS KOSMATOPOULOSPhD University of ZurichPolitics, global policy, expertise, peace, crisis, violence, infrastructures of solidarity; Lebanon and Mediterranean sea

SYLVAIN PERDIGONPhD Johns Hopkins UniversityEthics, religion, kinship, refugee worlds and social abandonment, language and semiotics; Palestinian refugees

KIRSTEN SCHEIDPhD Princeton UniversityModern and contemporary Arab art, aesthetics, affect, elites, modernization and cosmopolitanism; Lebanon and Palestine

RICHARD SAUMAREZ SMITHPhD University of CambridgeProperty law, kinship, history; India, Ottoman Jordan

LIVIA WICKPhD MITScience, medicine, and society; birthing and fertility practices; colonized Palestine

Photo credit: The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: The Jonathan Ambache/ Richard Saumarez Smith Archive

Why choose AUB for your Anthropology MA?

The Anthropology MA program is designed to serve as an entry point for both:

• Students with a formal training in anthropology at the undergraduate level

• Students from other disciplines or a related discipline in social sciences or humanities who are seeking a pathway into anthropology

As one of the very few universities in the Arab world offering postgraduate studies in anthropology in English, our free standing MA degree opens the opportunity for students to pioneer production of anthropological knowledge in the Arab world—about the Arab world and about the world from an Arab perspective.

The West Asian location of AUB brings a unique angle to producing anthropology that can answer critical questions at the heart of socio-cultural debates riveting our world

today. Being based in Lebanon, AUB students benefit from having access to both the insider-outsider perspective on questions relating to peace and conflict resolution, migrants and refugees, human rights, environmental issues, transnational cultural production, and gender in the Arab world, to name a few hot topics.

AUB’s Anthropology MA program aims to provide students with a platform not only to contribute to these debates in an academic setup but also to bridge the gap between academia and policy-making.

Photo credit: Omar Dewachi

“More than half of all anthropologists now work in organizations outside the university.... building research partnerships, assessing economic needs, evaluating policies, developing new educational programs, recording little-known community histories, providing health services, and other socially relevant activities... Addressing social and cultural consequences of natural disasters, equitable access to limited resources, and human rights at the global level.”

www.americananthro.org/AdvanceYourCareer

What can anthropologists DO?

Anthropologists help others understand the complexities of social worlds. They give insights into the dynamics of everyday life. They link local and global processes to show how they are intertwined. Today such skills are needed in all fields and professions.

Employment opportunities are as flexible as your imagination

Who wants to HIRE anthropologists? Community organizations seeking social change. Media outfits that want to report on international issues. Private businesses that want to market products or improve employee relations. Health-care providers that want to control disease spread. Software companies that want to understand UX. Banks that operate abroad. Museums. The WHO. UNESCO. CDC.

Want to TEACH anthropology?

At AUB anthropologists teach in the Health Sciences, Political Science, and American Studies Programs, in addition to the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department. Anthropologists are at the heart of interdisciplinary fields such as international studies, religious studies, and gender studies. Our MA graduates have the opportunity to teach an introductory anthropology class to enhance their portfolios.

See why employment in anthropology is expected to grow 19% in the coming decade http://www.americananthro.org/AdvanceYourCareer/

See where in the UK anthropologists get hired http://www.prospects.ac.uk/options_anthropology.htm

See The Guardian's report on jobs in anthropology http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/aug/21/anthropology-degree-career-options

Job Placement & Further Education

UK• University of Manchester, Anthropology

Professor

• University of East Anglia, PhD Candidate

• University of Oxford, PhD Candidate

• University of Cambridge, MPhil student

• Edinburgh, NGO Consultant

USA• Seattle, Washington, Seattle Community

College, Anthropology Professor

• New York, New York Program Officer at Africa in World Education

• New York, City University of New York, PhD Candidate

• Charlottesville, Virginia, University of Virginia, PhD Candidate

• Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, PhD Candidate

Canada• Vancouver, University of British Columbia,

PhD Candidate

Lebanon• American University of Beirut, Professor

• IFI Program Coordinator

• Dean's Office, Grants Officer

China• Beijing, Elementary School

Assistant Principle

Map credit at: https://www.welovesolo.com/simple-world-maps-vector-material-03/

Research Opportunities

Contemporary anthropologists examine how cultural values and expectations operate in any complex system of social relations, including modern institutions such as schools, hospitals, art movements, or government.

As a larger project, anthropology raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human and how human lives come to be valued or devalued. By systematically expanding students’ awareness of the plurality of cultures in the world and in their own society, anthropology helps them recognize how their cultural assumptions shape and sometimes limit their interactions with others. By examining the webs of significance that make human behavior meaningful, it expands their capacity to interpret the world around them and to act in it in a creative and positive fashion.

Recent Research Projects by Our Graduates

• “Where the Sidewalk Ends: Reimaging Care in the Lives of Ten Children Working on Beirut’s Streets”

• “Children in Preschool: Embodiment, Agency and Disciplined Childhood”

• “Technologies of Enchantment: Art and Abduction in Two Museums of Islamic Art Today”

• “What’s Cooking and What’s Not: Hybrid Arab Women Artists and Their Challenge to Art Networks through Food”

• “In the Shadows of Secularism: the Druze Case in Contemporary Lebanon”

• “Understanding Nature in an Armenian Village in Lebanon”

• “Negotiating Women: Female Centered Support Networks in Abidjan”

• “Migrants in Beirut: Parallel Infrastructures and the Right to the City”

• “Working in an NGO in a Refugee Camp: Commentaries on Life, Labor and the Aid Enterprise”

• “Deliberating Doctorhood: Liminality, Self-reflection, and Humor among Medical Students in Beirut”

• “Iraqis Seeking Medical Care in Lebanon: War, Cancer, and Mobility”

• “Adopting Kin, Adapting Kinship: Transnational Adoption within the Context of Lebanon”

• “Performing the Nahda: Science and Progress in the Nineteenth-Century Muqtataf”

• “Merchants and Memory: Remembering the Old Beirut Souqs”

• Yoga Practices in Lebanon

Photo credit: Livia Wick

Department of AnthropologyWeb www.aub.edu.lb/fas/sbs/soan/Pages/grad_programs.aspx

Faculty of Arts and SciencesTel +961 1 343 002 Fax +961 1 744 460 Web www.aub.edu.lb/fas Email fas@aub.edu.lb

Admission requirements:

Students with a BA degree in Anthropology, Sociology, or a related field from any accredited institution may be admitted directly to the program. Those in high standing are admitted as regular graduate students. Personal interviews with candidates unknown to the department are recommended before admission. Tuition support is available: Apply for a a Graduate Assistantship to cover most of your fees.

Applicants should submit a personal statement, BA transcript, and two letters of recommendation. Please see the Online Graduate Application for the AUB Office of Admissions at https://graduateadmissions.aub.edu.lb

Applicants for the MA in Anthropology are not required to submit GRE scores with their application.

Photo credit: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos