The Anthropology Department resides on the third floor of Plank Gym, though it’s classes are spread throughout campus. We met with Department Chair Amy Evrard to bring you some preliminary info about Anthro. Image via Professor Evrard
Hello! Can you give us a short overview of what Anthropology is about?
Anthropology is about people! It’s about humanity, what makes us human, how we express our humanity through different cultural or material forms. When we became “human” in the evolutionary record.
What major and minors are available through the department?
We just have one major and one minor, both Bachelor of Arts. And in the department we have, cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, but we don’t have a specific track. Students have to take both. But, we tend to have students who prefer one or the other and mostly take those classes and experience those opportunities.
What’s your favorite thing about the field of Anthropology?
I like how holistic it is. Like many Gettysburg College students, I’m sure, when I was a student I was interested in everything. So, one day I’d think, “I want to be a history major.” And the next day I’d think, “I want to be a religious studies major” and “I think I want to be a poli sci major.” I loved everything about human life. And I think Anthropology allows you to study and understand every aspect of human life because, you know, human life is holistic. You can’t really understand the religious system unless you understand the political system and the social system in which it’s embedded. And you can’t understand technology and innovations and what they mean to people unless you understand their family organization and their social organization. So I feel like when I found anthropology, I just thought, yes! I can study anything in this field, and I don’t have to pick.
Would you say that attracts a specific kind of student?
Yeah, definitely! Our students are a little bit funky and a little bit nerdy. Our students are generalists who love lots of things, who love people, who love to travel, and who really like to ask the big questions about who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? What does it all mean? Why do we do the things we do? What’s the relationship between the individual and society? And then they’re very good communicators. I would say our majors are the best writers on campus. I haven’t tested that empirically, but i can imagine that would be born out of empirical testing. It’s because I think our students, they love ideas and part of thinking through ideas is communicating them. And so they work hard to be good communicators, oral and written.
How easy or difficult would you say it is if you do have one specific interest within anthropology?
I think it can be hard because, for example the students who really just want to study archaeology, we might not have enough classes so they have to take cultural anthro classes. It’s also hard, we occasionally get a student who just wants to be a forensics anthropologist, and that’s very hard to do here with our course offerings. But, we also play well as part of an interdisciplinary major. We have a lot of globalization studies majors who mainly take anthropology courses. We have a lot of IDS majors. So, I think we can help facilitate student interest that way. But we’re not right for a student who just wants to study religion or just wants to study literature. They’d be better served finding other majors.
What do people usually do with an anthropology degree?
Well, we have, so um, there are three different directions graduates seem to take.
First of all, someone reminded me the other day, this is a new way of thinking about things, that no one gets and anthropology degree here. They get a Bachelor of Arts in a particular field. All degrees here can be in service of a variety of professions.
But, anyway, we tend to get three paths. Some of our students become anthropologists, so they go to grad school eventually or right away and either get a Master’s degree and go into fields such as museum work or public arachnology or they get a PHD and go into academia.
Or, another group goes into non-profit or education work like Peace Corps, Americ Corps, or Vista or work for NGO that work with, for example, refugees or marginalized communities.
And then, other students, I’d say, go into completely different fields, usually, in the corporate sector or insurance or financial planning. And what they tell us is that having an anthropology major helps them consider other ways of thinking. How they can better serve the public by thinking about them. So, for example, we had a recent graduate who was in financial planning. She realized that her financial planning company didn’t have any Muslim clients because Islamic finance is a separate way of thinking about finance and earning interest. And so, she realized that if she educated herself a little bit more then she could reach out to Muslim clients as a financial planner and bring them in. She had a great deal of success with that and was able to carve out a nice little niche for herself in the company.
So, even students who “don’t use” their anthropology degree end up using it because they’re in place where they are dealing with diverse groups of people, where they can show that they can critically think about other ways of looking at problems and other perspectives on human life. So, I’d say we get we’d get equal thirds in each path.
If you could change one thing about anthropology, what would it be?
Oh, good question. I think, this gets a little abstract and intellectual, but anthropologists are such critical thinkers that we almost critically thought ourselves out of having a field called anthropology. And there’s too much critique from within. So I think we’re losing to some degree a sense that we’re a coherent field with a coherent set of theories and a coherent method. And I feel that too many anthropologists feel that anthropology is just a method rather than its own discipline.
What’s your favorite class at Gettysburg to teach?
Oh, that’s hard. Aw, man! Can I pick two?
Yeah.
Ok. The first is the intro class, 103 Intro to Cultural Anthropology, and I like it because we get a lot of first years and sophomores, a lot of people just taking it as a requirement. So, they have fresh eyes and fresh perspectives. Yet, at the same time, everyone can talk about culture because we are all culture bound, so everyone comes to the class with expertise. And I always learn people from different backgrounds, people with different perspectives. I just keep learning about anthropology through their eyes. And that’s really fun.
Then my other favorite is a 300 level class, 304 anthropology of violence and conflict. And that I like just because the level of discussion gets so deep and so intense, and I mean even as a class about violence, I smile and laugh a lot because I’m learning so much from the students. We talk about some of the very hardest things to talk about in the human world, and, somehow, I don’t know, we make them interesting as intellectual problems. But, also, I see the way students are thinking through them and really focusing on how violence and conflict affect people and what people bring to violence and conflict. It really makes me feel hopeful in a way. That if you can see people at their worst and still find the ability to understand them and how they got to be perpetrators of violence then that’s a wonderful thing to be able to do – even if at the end of the day we condemn them for that violence, and we punish them for it. And also the way the students are able to humanize victims of violence and feel a deep sympathy for them is pretty incredible to see. So I love that class.
What class would you want to attend that you don’t teach?
Well, that’s hard because I like everything. I think the one thing I really lacked in my education as an anthropologist was a statistics class. So, I think my practical class would be statistics. But maybe, well this is also practical but would be more of a labor of love, I would also love to take some writing classes like the one about writing a public essay or writing a memoir, something like that. I think anthropologists, like all academics, could stand to be better writers and be able to express what they know in a way that really grabs their audience’s attention and entertains them at the same time as educates them.
If anthropology was a color, what would it be?
*laughs* Um, it would be, it would be red because, usually when societies recognize two colors, those colors are black and white. And when they recognize a third color, it’s red. So, I like to think that anthropology is about the red. Like, you can say the black and white is like the basics of a society, you know? The night and day, the basic structure, the basic relationships. But then the red would be all the other stuff that comes in: the ritual, the food, the clothing, the weapons, all that kind of stuff.
When did you know that you were interesting in anthropology?
We didn’t have it at my college; I was a history major, which I love. And I had never heard of anthropology. And then, I first fell in love with anthropology through Jane Goodall and her work with chimpanzees. That’s what I was most interested in. That’s was I was grabbed by: what’s the difference between humans and animals? I can answer that spiritually, as a Christian, but scientifically, if animals can communicate and you know they can exhibit violence and altruism and all these things she showed chimpanzees can do, then what fundamentally is different between them and us? And so, that kind of got me in and then eventually I kind of moved to people themselves and how different they are. I guess, it was that combined with a love for travel got me there.
Do you have any advice for a student looking to get into anthropology?
I would say, of course, take an intro class, but also just come talk to us. I always encourage students to spend more time visiting faculty during their office hours. You know, because we love to meet students and hear about their interests. For someone to just come in and sit down and say, “I don’t know in anthropology is right for me, but I love this and this and this and this and, by the way, what do you do?” Then I’d say that could be a great conversation for getting started. And we’re all open to that. We’d love that.
For more information about the anthropology department, you can visit their website to check out the classes, professors, and opportunities.