Cultural Anthropology

Study of peoples and their cultures

Syllabi (in Adobe Acrobat PDF format)

• Traditional semester course syllabus
• Cultural Anthropology course by arrangement
• Syllabus and all course materials for SNU's Bridge program

"I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb" - Revelation 7:9

This course will use a variety of learning resources, including videos and case studies.

• Interview assignment instructions
• Research paper
  • Writing tips
  • Traditional semester-long course
    • Interview assignment instructions
    • Need ideas for your research paper? [ more info ]
    • Want to see what somebody else has done? [ sample one ] [ sample two ]
• Outside reading report form
• Case studies
  • Ancestor feast
  • Bowing at ancestral tombs
  • Communal feast
  • Conflict during the Lord's Supper
  • How should Bashir be buried?
  • Neighborhood celebration
  • Obi's death
  • Onions and wives
  • Peacemaker or patsy?
  • U.S. president and his Shinto shrine visit
  • Case study guide to aid reflection, discussion and responses
• In-class worksheets
  • Cultural bingo - an in-class game to illustrate more diversity than we often expect
  • Gulliver's Travels, McDonald's restaurants and cultural anthropology
    • PDF sheet for use in class
  • ABCs of culture: Cultural anthropology alphabet worksheet
• Kwast's model of culture [ see diagram ]
• Worldviews and light bulbs A visual demonstration
• The perils of monoculturalism
• Ethnocentrism
• Christianity and culture: Niebuhr's classic analysis
• Continuously updated global statistics, including world population and number of languages
• Coping with culture shock (or cultural adjustment, as it has sometimes been called)
• Mini lecture on the encounter between gospel and culture (prepared for the course "World Evangelization") [ read lecture ]
• Milestones on the road to cross-cultural understanding
• Ten imperatives for Christian missionaries
• PowerPoint presentations
  • What now? -- Using case studies [ view online ] [ download PowerPoint ]
  • Definition of cultural anthropology [ view online ] [ download PowerPoint ]
  • Cultural Anthropology's big names [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
  • Drawbacks of cultural evolution models: A look at the flaws in the proposals regarding the evolution of culture by L.H. Morgan and others [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
  • The iceberg of culture [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
  • Religion and culture
• "Asian is not Oriental" (Word format)
• Readings
  • "Anthropological points of view" by Paul Hiebert
  • "Congregational responsibility for the Christian individual" by Walter Trobisch
  • "Ethics in change" by Charles Kraft
  • "Mission and anthropology" by Paul Hiebert
  • "Negative and positive value of anthropology to the missionary" by Alan Tippett
  • "Verbal and nonverbal communication" by David Hesselgrave
  • "Worldview and contextualization" by David Hesselgrave
• Exam study guides (Daytime course only) [ see guides]
• Videos
• Cross-cultural worship service [ more info ]
• Bwanda Fusa Challenge - a delightful cross-cultural simulation game from the British office of Wycliffe Bible Translators
  Download the game    Class discussion guide
• Assignment samples
  • Sample ethnographic reading report

"The musical "Fiddler on the Roof" made much more sense after reading chapter 7 of our cultural anthropology textbook."
     — Professional Studies student

Links to cultural anthropology resources on the Internet

   How to cite Internet sources in your papers [ click here ]

Writing Standards

Most courses at SNU contain a writing component. I expect students to produce written work that is focused, well developed, organized and relatively free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. Papers falling short of this standard will not be graded. That work will be returned to the students for further revision and resubmission. See my writing checklist.

How diverse are we?

Have you played cultural bingo? [ read more ]

SNU missions course materials and syllabi

Howard Culbertson, Southern Nazarene University, 6729 NW 39th, Bethany, OK 73008  |  Phone: 405-491-6693 - Fax: 405-491-6658
Copyright © 2002 - Last Updated: May 10, 2012 | URL: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/anthro.htm

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Article by Howard Culbertson. For more original content like this, visit: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert