Anthropology Mission Statement

Anthropology is a discipline that studies what it means to be human from every angle. Cultural anthropologists study people in all parts of the world by going to where they live and speaking the local language. Linguists examine the similarities and differences of the several thousand languages currently spoken. Archaeologists study the material culture of the past, usually by digging it up. Biological or physical anthropologists study human genetic variation, the fossil evidence of our evolution, human adaptation to different environments and the behavior of the great apes. As anthropologists, we see our work as a science in exploring human origins and adaptation to different geographical environments, a social science for our concern with past and present variations in human societies, and a humanity for our continuing critical engagement with the question of how we can best study our culturally invented selves. We teach our students to use their minds to cross the artificial barriers to our common humanity, barriers imposed by ethnocentric ideas of race, gender, class and assumed levels of "civilization." A Hofstra degree in Anthropology provides the student with experience in synthesizing diverse kinds of data about human beings, a skill increasingly valued in many career paths inside and outside academic settings.