Undergraduate Courses
Human Evolutionary Biology 1260: Human Nature
This course will examine the evolutionary origins, biological foundations, and psychology underlying human behaviors including kinship, sexuality, incest, parental love, xenophobia, status, homicide, warfare, culture, cooking, language, and religion. Using a comparative approach, we will contextualize human behavior by examining both studies of non-human primates, especially chimpanzees, and the full breadth of human diversity, including both ethnographic and experimental data from hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, and the most unusual of all: people from industrialized societies. (Fall 2018 Syllabus)
Human Evolutionary Biology 1290: Cultural Evolution: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Unlike other species, humans are heavily reliant on learning from others to acquire many important aspects of their behavior, and this cultural transmission has created a second system of inheritance that has driven much of our species' genetic evolution. In addition to having shaped our species' anatomy and physiology, cultural evolution has important implications for understanding human nature, and for how to tackle basic problems in psychology, economics and anthropology. The first third of this course will develop the basic principles and lines of inquiry while the remainder will apply, hone and refine them by exploring economic development, the history of modern institutions, and global inequality. (Fall 2015 Syllabus ; Fall 2016 Syllabus)
Graduate Courses
Human Evolutionary Biology 2480: Human Nature
This course will examine the evolutionary origins, biological foundations, and psychology underlying human behaviors including kinship, sexuality, incest, parental love, xenophobia, status, homicide, warfare, culture, cooking, language, and religion. Using a comparative approach, we will contextualize human behavior by examining both studies of non-human primates, especially chimpanzees, and the full breadth of human diversity, including both ethnographic and experimental data from hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, and the most unusual of all: people from industrialized societies. This version of the course is for graduate students only. Undergraduate students interested in this course should enroll in HEB 1280. Graduate students enrolling in Human Evolutionary Biology 2480 will be required to attend a weekly two-hour graduate discussion section.
Human Evolutionary Biology 2390: Cultural Evolution
Humans are a cultural species. Unlike other species, we are heavily reliant on learning from others to acquire many important aspects of our behavior, and this capacity for cultural transmission has given rise to a second system of inheritance that not only explains much of our contemporary behavior but has driven our species’ genetic evolution over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Humans are products of culture-gene coevolution. In addition to having shaped our species’ anatomy and physiology, cultural evolution has important implications for understanding human nature, and for tackling basic problems and questions in psychology, economics and anthropology. The first half of this course will develop the basic principles and lines of empirical inquiry in the field of cultural evolution, while the remainder will apply, hone and refine them by examining the origins of global inequality, the emergence of modern institutions, and the nature of psychological differences among populations.
This course is run in conjunction with HEB 1290. Students must regularly attend all HEB 1290 lectures and then the seminar component of this course. Students must do ALL of the reading for HEB 1290 as well as the additional reading assigned for the seminar. (Fall 2019 Syllabus)