Students in this course will attain an understanding of various primate groups and their evolutionary histories. This knowledge will enable them to critically evaluate contemporary hypotheses regarding the evolution of primate behavior. Through in-person data collection at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, students will gain insight into the environmental factors shaping primate behavior and produce a final project based on these findings. Students will also discuss conservation, threats to primates, and the primate traits that reduce or promote survival in human-altered habitats.

What does it mean to be human in the Anthropocene – a time when we know human-caused climate change challenges lifeways and ecosystems globally? This course brings anthropological lenses to the understanding of this epoch. We address such questions as how human pasts inform the present, how mitigation and adaptation guide resiliency, and how equitable social ecologies – of self, communities and systems, and interdependency beyond the human – require holistic strategies. Different versions of the course stress cultural or archaeological perspectives, yet all involve community-based learning, whether grounded in field study at the Baca Campus, engaging in UN climate negotiations, or convening dialogues on sustainability.

How do we know what happened in the past when we don't have any written or oral records of what occurred? The answer is archaeology – the scientific study of the past through the material traces of human activity. In this introduction to archaeology, students learn what archaeologists do and how they think through a combination of hands-on experiences in the classroom, on the CC campus, and during a one-day field trip to document an archaeological site. Students learn about the changing social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of the human past and the methods, theories, and ethics archaeologists rely on to uncover this past. The course is designed to develop critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method through the study of archaeology. These are essential skills students can use in any academic discipline, career, and in life.

This course will introduce students to and allow them to critically explore settler colonialism as a distinct and pervasive form of contemporary colonialism which reproduces white supremacy and social inequalities. The course critically examines anthropology’s participation in colonial discourses that have dispossessed and oppressed indigenous peoples. It further explores settler colonial discourses that manifest in popular culture forms including horror and science fiction narratives.