Best UC For Anthropology?

Trypster
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:37:53 +0000

I too have a dream of studying transpersonal anthropology at the graduate level. I’d like to one day do fieldwork in the Amazon with shamans and indigenous tribes. For my undergraduate education I’ve chosen San Francisco State, for the price, the location, and for some of the specific anthropology classes they offer, like visual anthro, film and anthro, ethnology of dance, anthro of religion, anthro internship, and many others. A lot of the other schools I looked at in California offer (in my opinion) very general somewhat boring anthro classes. I had considered Berkeley, but decided I didn’t want to spend the money and their undergrad anthropology program didn’t look like anything special. SFSU is also the only school in the nation to offer a Holistic Health minor/certification, and that’s what I want to do along with my Anthro major, so that was another big factor in choosing the school. Like someone else said, it’s not going to matter much where you get your Bachelors in Anthro - go somewhere that offers classes that interest you the most for your undergraduate studies, and then transfer to a good school for your graduate degree.

Have you looked into the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco? It’s one school I’m looking into to study cultural anthro at the graduate level. They offer graduate degrees in philosophy, religion, cosmology, consciousness, and anthropology, among other things. I was going to see how open they would be to combining curriculum so I can study sociocultural anthro with an emphasis in consciousness and transpersonal anthro. But I haven’t even transferred to SFSU yet (next fall), so I’ve got a while before deciding where I’ll go for graduate school. If I don’t go to CIIS, I’ll probably go to UCB, University of Hawaii, or look somewhere out of the country. (UH has an ecological anthro grad program that focuses on indigenous forest environments and spiritual ecology, looks interesting.) I haven’t decided if I want to focus on cultural, visual, or ecological anthropology in my graduate research, but whichever I do choose I want to incorporate transpersonal studies as well.

By the way, there aren’t a lot of job openings in the cultural anthropology field these days, at least not ones that require travel and fieldwork. Most jobs are in teaching. It’s difficult to get true “anthropological” work, but it will definitely help to have a masters or PhD, and a lot of dedication. I plan to write for the Journal of the Anthropology of Consciousness, and would like to write some books on the subject as well, so I can potentially be taken more seriously in the field. If you stay in urban areas you could most likely get some social work or urban anthropological work with your degree, but it sounds like you want to study more indigenous tribal societies like me. I’m taking a chance with this degree, I really don’t even know if it will end up supporting me. That’s why I’m doing the Holistic Health certificate, so I can have back up career in counseling and therapy. But I love cultural anthropology so much, especially transpersonal, there’s nothing else I can imagine studying for a degree.

I know I didn’t really answer your initial question - just wanted to express my thoughts, since I’ve never actually met anyone else who is interested in studying transpersonal anthro. :)