Anthropology
Bachelor of ArtsMajorYear: 2025
Anthropology
Contact information
Coordinator
Professor Tamara Kohn
Email: tkohn@unimelb.edu.au
Currently enrolled students:
Future students:
Overview
Anthropology is the study of people’s common humanity as well as the extraordinary cultural and social diversity found around the globe. Its distinctive methodology, based on intense, long-term participation in people’s daily lives, allows for ideas to develop out of local experience and knowledge. Contemporary fieldwork is as likely to take place in an urban tower block or tourist resort or moving with migrants or refugees, as it would be in a remote village in Africa or an island community in Melanesia. This major invites participation in subjects on: diverse ideas about the body; belief and religious practices; the growth of consumption and commodification, ethnic and national identity, and constructions of nature, sex, family and gender. The course we offer will expand your horizons by challenging your taken-for-granted understanding of the world, and it will also provide you with the skills needed to work successfully with people, to listen, to think critically, and to be fully engaged in an ever more expanding world.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this major, students should be able to:
- Apply critical and comparative analytical skills to the identification and resolution of problems within complex changing social and cultural contexts
- Demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of selected fields and intellectual debates in social and cultural anthropology
- Articulate the relationship between diverse and contested forms of knowledge and practice and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them
- Articulate the relationship between diverse and contested forms of knowledge and practice and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them
- Communicate effectively in a variety of written and oral formats; and act as intellectually informed and ethically aware participants within a community of scholars, as citizens and in the workforce
- Work with independence, self-reflection and an appreciation of cultural diversity to meet goals and challenges in the workplace and personal life.
Last updated: 9 April 2025
Structure
100 credit points
This major requires the completion of:
- 25 credit points of Level 1 electives and Arts Discovery subjects including:
- A minimum of 12.5 credit points of Level 1 electives
- 25 credit points of Level 2 core subjects
- 12.5 credit points of Level 2 elective subject
- 12.5 credit points of Level 3 Capstone subjects
- 25 credit points of Level 3 elective subjects
*Notes:
Please note: Students must undertake an Arts Discovery subject as part of the course requirements and the Arts Discovery subject can be counted in one major only. For this major, you will need to complete two Level 1 subjects.
If you are completing a double major the correct enrolment for this major at level 1 is: An Arts Discovery subject and one Level 1 Elective subject for the first major and two Level 1 Elective subjects for the second major.
Level 1 elective subjects
| Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH10001 | Anthropology: Studying Self and Other | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH10002 | Anthropology & Food in Everyday Life | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
Level 2 core subjects
| Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH20015 | Melbourne: Urban Anthropology in Action | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH20017 | Anthropology: History, Theory, Practice | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
Level 2 elective subject
| Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH20001 | Keeping the Body in Mind | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| ANTH20008 | Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH20011 | Ethnic Nationalism and the Modern World | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| ANTH20013 | Diplomat, Soldier, Spy: The Deep State | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| DEVT20001 | Development in the 21st Century | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| GEND20001 | Gender, Sexuality, Power: Key Theories | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| GEND20008 | Feminist Futures: Theory and Activism | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH20012 | Self, Culture and Society | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH20016 | Crisis, Culture and Resistance | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
Level 3 Capstone subject
| Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH30013 | The Anthropological Imagination | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
Level 3 electives
| Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH30003 | Lived Religion in an Uncertain World | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH30005 | Power, Ideology and Inequality | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH30009 | Anthropology of More-Than-Human Worlds | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| MULT30017 | Australian Indigenous Public Policy | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| ANTH30019 | Innovation, Design, and Society | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| ANTH30024 | Money and Sweat: Economic Anthropology | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
| ANTH30025 | Extractive Legacies in Latin America | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
| ANTH30026 | Health and Illness in a Global Context | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
Links
http://ssps.unimelb.edu.au/study-areas/anthropology-and-development-studies
Last updated: 9 April 2025