This course is the easiest of the first year anthros. I found a lot of what was learned was simple common sense.

The prof who taught me is no longer at Mac, as she has moved on to chair a program at U Ottawa. The prof who replaced her (Rodman) I think has since now retired.Click here to read the entire review

I had this class in Fall 2010 with Professor Geer
It was a fairly easy class with an essay, 2 assignments, midterm and a final exam
Lecture notes were very useful when studying for midterms/exams

did you have a tutorial? because now it's just listed as 3 hours of lecture

no tutorial for this class, just 3 lectures a week very fun class i enjoyed it!

was the course load heavy?? were the assignments and essays time consuming??

is the textbook really necessary for this course?
was there any online components (requiring an access code)?
are there any other books besides the main textbook that we need to buy for this course (ethnographies, etc)?

The textbook was necessary, as everything was testable and expected to have been read before lecture (not that I did that).

We also had to get access to MyAnthroLab, which was an online series of quizzes and resources used for our essay thing (I can't remember what it was called right now). In MyAnthroLab though, there was an online copy of the textbook, so if you're okay with using an online version you can save yourself a little bit of money buying a physical copy (though they were all used this year and it was < $30, so it wasn't too bad anyway).

Hey all,

I took Anthro 1A03 (Cultural Anthropology) this past summer with Professor Bryan Cummins.
I absolutely loved the course; both the textbook for the class and the courseware were extremely well written and fun to read. It doesn't even feel like you're studying.

Professor Cummins has had over 20 years of field work experience. His stories and recounting of time spent with the First Nations astounded me and may me fall in love with the subject even more. He didn't use any powerpoint or overheads, preferring speech and occasional blackboard writing but he did show films of topics related to what we were learning that week.

All in all, it was a very fun course and the prof was super enthusiastic. However, like all courses, this does require studying. I wouldn't say it's a bird course nor any easier than any other course that I've taken because each course has its own values. I do certainly recommend anyone interested to take this course!

Great info, Thanks!

The course was very interesting and thought provoking on many different fronts and the course load is really light

make sure you keep on top of your readings

so far its interesting looking forward to it

Does anyone know if Sorge is good for teaching this course? (2011 fall)

I'm planning to take it in the winter 2012 day course.

is anyone thinking of dropping this course (anthro 1a03) for the next semester?

the course itself had interesting material, but the professor in the night section had difficult tests.

Personally i really did not enjoy this course but it was mostly because i did not like the teaching style/personality of the prof...I didnt do poorly in it or anything, i'm just not really interested in most of the topics that were learned in this class and to me i thought the profs lectures were really dull because all he did was read of slides (not to mension they werent very detailed) and they were exactly what was in the text book.. Reasons as to why i didn not like the prof was because he told us barely anything about the final exam in lecture and his exams either "make you or break you"...if you do poorly on both midterms you're basically screwed because each is worth 20% and then the final is worth 35% and also there is an essay worth 25%... i thought the first midterm was really easy because there were like fill in the blanks with a word bank (which is great obviously) and he gave us essay questions in advance (which is also great however as the quantity of esssay questions increased on the second midterm and the final it because difficult to write 15 essay questions in advance on top of all your other exams your studying for and let alone remeber all that)...i got a 90 on the first midterm but then he increased the number of essay questions he gave since the first midterm (on the second one) and i ended up getting a 50% on this midterm! i felt this class was challenging for me because i really had to push myself to be interested in the content while studying and studying for these exams took great preparation due to all of the essay questions there were to prepare for in advance.. Again this is only MY OPINION and i have a lot of friends who really enjoyed this class.