Anthropology @ USC

Large anthropology departments in major research universities traditionally have several faculty in each of four subdisciplines: social/cultural anthropology, biocultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. The USC Department of Anthropology has always strived to achieve high quality through a dovetailing of faculty research areas. The research niche thus created for the department means we can be very strong in a few areas at the expense of the traditional four-field approach of larger departments. We feel this strategy has worked well for us and for our students.

For many years the single unifying research thread was visual anthropology. In recent years, we have worked hard to maintain faculty interaction and a sense of intellectual cohesion between new emerging departmental strengths at a time when many anthropology departments are becoming irreparably fragmented and divided. The study of visual culture has replaced production, while visual methodology remains a key element of our faculty and graduate student research focus. We have shifted from offering a Master's in Visual Anthropology degree to the creation of the Certificate in Visual Anthropology in conjunction with a doctorate in Anthropology. We also have attained prominence in the field of biological anthropology, and have a growing program in medical anthropology.

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Bioanthropology

The biocultural program seeks to apply research perspectives on the great apes and human foraging societies to a better understanding of the human past. The program is housed in the Jane Goodall Research Center. The Center has two primary functions: archival research, directed by Boehm, and field research, directed by Stanford. We maintain an internationally recognized archive of visual and other data from Gombe Stream Research Centre, site of Jane Goodall's groundbreaking work on chimpanzee behavior. We also operate a field research site in southwestern Uganda - the Bwindi Impenetrable Great Ape Project (BIGAPE) - devoted to research on the behavioral ecology of chimpanzees and mountain gorillas in the only forest in Africa in which they occur together.

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Center for Visual Anthropology

The primary goals of the Center for Visual Anthropology (CVA) are: to promote the incorporation of visual modes of expression into the academic discipline of anthropology; to promote mutual understanding and collaboration between professionals in the visual media and in anthropology; to create an awareness of the anthropological perspective in documentaries produced for mass audiences; to improve the materials and techniques available for using film in teaching anthropology; to encourage the collection, archiving and analysis of visual documentation for anthropological research.

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Ethnographics Lab

The Ethnographics laboratory is a part of the Center for Visual Anthropology which provides archival and computer facilities for students and faculty who work with nonlinear editing systems and interactive media in anthropology. The primary mission of the Ethnographics Lab is to promote the integration of all forms of information, whether text, graphics of time-based media, into a new synthesis of anthropological knowledge. It provides support for research and representation in multimedia formats carried out in a new laboratory facility based on computer AV technologies and software.

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Jane Goodall Research Center

The Jane Goodall Research Center is the designated repository of field data from Jane Goodall’s work among the primates of Gombe National Park in Tanzania. A computer interactive multimedia rchive of these materials is being implemented to make them available to students, faculty and other interested scholars.

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Medical Anthropology

The medical anthropology program's goals include research and pedagogy that examines the body, illness and healing from a cultural perspective. This approach includes comparative studies of folk healing systems, curing rituals, reproduction and childhood, aging and the elderly, and western biomedical practices. It is the most recent initiative in the Department of Anthropology, facilitated by the addition of Cheryl Mattingly, who holds a joint appointment in Occupational Science and in Anthropology. The program currently consists of an undergraduate minor in medical anthropology developed in 1998, graduate seminars in medical anthropology taught since 1995, and graduate and post-graduate research projects. A third of our current dissertation students are doing projects related to medical anthropology, and we expect to be able to draw many more after the public recognition of two recent national book awards (the Victor Turner prize in ethnographic writing and the Basker Prize in medical anthropology) to Cheryl Mattingly and Gelya Frank. Lutkehaus and Mattingly, along with Professor Mary Lawlor in Occupational Science, have created an interdisciplinary faculty research initiative on the study of health, culture and humanities in conjunction with Aarhus University in Denmark. The medical anthropology initiative is also strongly involved in the new "Health and Humanity major."

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