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ANTH 4811

Special Topic I

0.5 credits · Undergraduate

Winter 2026

Topics

  • Cypria
  • Spume: The Birth of the Great Goddess
  • Olive Culture: How Trade Began
  • The Lost Kingdom of Alashiya: Diving into the Bronze Age
  • Cypria: Survivors of Mycenaean Greece
  • The Purple Ones: Phoenicians and Their Philosophy
  • Apostle: The Cypriots Who Spread Christianity
  • Monk and Cats: St Helena’s Pilgrimage
  • Oasis: The Arab Conquest, the Empire of Cyprus and the Third Crusade
  • The Fairytale Castle: The House of Lusignan
  • Lala Mustafa Pasha: The Siege of Famagusta and the Battle of Lepanto
  • Linen Blend: The Turkish Influence
  • Cyprus, New York: How History Was Weaponized as “Civilization.”
  • Olympians: Religious and Secular Authority in Britain’s Christian Colony
  • The Philhellene: The Burning Down of Government House
  • Kafeneon: The Left- and Right-Wing Schism
  • Bitter Lemons: The Struggle for Enosis
  • The Battle of the Knife: The Militarisation of Cyprus
  • The Ledra Palace Hotel: The War on Neighbours
  • Drilling for Gods: Moscow on the Med
  • Epilogue: The Fort
  • Empire
  • Introduction: Three Telling Tales of Empire
  • Presentations
  • The Akkadian Empire

Readings

  • Required: Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean by Alex Christofi.
  • Required: Empire: A New History of the World by Paul Strathern.
  • Recommended: Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert Kaplan.
Fall 2025

Topics

  • Pre-Patriarchal Goddess-Worshiping Matriarchy?
  • The Neolithic Great Goddess
  • The Feminine Divine
  • Sumerian and Egyptian Goddesses
  • Greek Goddesses

Readings

  • Required: Campbell, Joseph. Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. New World Library, 2013.
  • Required: Recommended: Kinsley, David. The Goddesses’ Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West. State University of New York Press, 1988.
  • Required: Gimbutas, Marija. The Living Goddesses. University of California Press
Winter 2024 · Global Population Futures

Topics

  • Population history and projections
  • births, deaths and migration
  • demographic transition
  • regional differences
  • sex ratios and infant mortality
  • fertility policies
  • women’s education
  • demographic data visualization
  • social and cultural drivers of population change.

Readings

  • Named assigned resources include World Population Prospects, chapter 3 (edition unspecified), and the If Books Could Kill podcast episode “The Population Bomb.” Other website, video, podcast and academic readings are supplied through the course site; several schedule citations are incomplete.
Sources