Anthropology

The Department of Anthropology is a vibrant intellectual community that seeks to advance knowledge of and respect for human cultures. Our faculty members have wide-ranging expertise, spanning the sociocultural, linguistic, biological, archaeological, and medical anthropology subfields.

Anthropology has been taught at the University of Oklahoma since 1905 and became its own department in 1927. We offer BA, BS, and MA degrees and have the only PhD anthropology program in the state of Oklahoma. Historically, the main focus of our department has been on the Americas, with a primary focus on Native North America and a secondary emphasis on Latin America. We also continue the historical relationship of anthropology to the larger international arena. Our Native North America focus reflects our location in a state with 39 federally recognized American Indian tribes, and includes undergraduate and graduate courses and mutually beneficial research partnerships among faculty members, graduate students, Native Americans, and tribal governments. Increasingly, our faculty also engage with other communities and populations in the state and region, offering a robust environment for collaborative research. 

Our comprehensive undergraduate and graduate curriculum is based on the traditional four-field approach in Archaeology, Sociocultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and Linguistics. In recent years, the department has developed unique degree programs in Human Health and Biology, leveraging anthropology's holistic perspective to understand how biological and cultural diversity shape experiences and outcomes of health and disease. This integrated approach of all our degree programs produces graduates who are critical and holistic thinkers, broadly trained, and prepared to positively contribute to today's multicultural and globalized society.