Vassar Moodle

This full-semester course is divided into two sections and includes a 2 hour lab throughout its entirety. The first six weeks are dedicated to learning the anatomy and physiology of the human skeleton, with students (1) identifying individual bones (complete and fragmentary), (2) identifying bone landmarks, (3) describing normal and abnormal bone growth processes (including common mutations), and (4) assessing bones for signs of pathology at the macroscopic level. Topics will be introduced through Dame Sue Black’s Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, and then supplemented by more technical readings. The second half of the course will introduce students to the basic methods of forensic anthropology, focusing on how age, sex, race, and height of an individual can be determined from their bones. Students will also gain an understanding of how forensic anthropologists function within the legal framework of crime investigation and prosecution. Finally, students will explore current debates in forensic anthropology, such as the ethics of race and gender classification and the repatriation of remains. Students will be tested through two practical exams and a graded seminar activity.

Landscapes hold the tangible remains of cultural heritage in preserved buildings, erected monuments, and documented archaeological sites. But the ignored places are often those with the most interesting stories to tell. To an archaeologist, ruins are places where the past permeates into the present and asks to be remembered. Every town has its own ruins, whether it be the abandoned buildings of a once-bustling downtown or industrial district, an overgrown cemetery, or a road that simply ends. Such places may hold the more subversive histories of a place. This course considers the sanctioned and unsanctioned histories of places through intentionally preserved sites, persistent ruins, local lore, and ghost tourism. We use the National Register of Historic Places criteria of significance to evaluate such heritage sites within the Hudson Valley.