A general statement on teaching philosophy

Current Courses
This year I am teaching the following in the Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Denver.

• Fall, 2005
  • Archaeology of Inequality
  • Integrating Anthropology
    First Day's Readings
• Spring, 2006
  • World Prehistory
• Summer, 2006
  • World Prehistory

Past Courses
Below are several sample syllabi from courses I have taught, listed in order of complexity.

• Cultural Anthropology. Introductory course.
• Biological Anthropology. Introductory course.
• North American Indians. Upper division course, geared towards majors and non-majors. The ethnographic texts were not really my choice and desperately need updating, although the general text was alright, if dense.
• Native Peoples of North America. Upper division course, but without any required prerequisites. This is considerably updated from the course listed above, and is actually the first course I have taught where I have been given more than two weeks to prepare. For a general textbook I would have preferred to use Prentice Hall's book Native Nations, Cultures and Histories of Native North Americans.
• Latin American Societies. Upper division course, geared towards majors and non-majors. Today I would use Crossing Currents, by Whiteford and Whiteford, as an overall textbook and reduce the number of ethnographic readings. I was told that it was pretty brutal.
• Ancient Mesoamerican Civilizations. Upper division course, geared rather more towards majors.
• Archaeological Theory and Method. Originally intended as an upper division capstone course for majors focusing in archaeology, but realistically is more midway between that and a course for beginning graduate students. I have received some nice comments from people about the range of theory represented in this class.

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