ANTHRO GRADUATE STUDENT CORNER

YAYYYY to our new 2024-25 Grad Reps:

Sarah Stanley
Athenas Guerra
Abigail (Xue) Ma

Email: anthrogradreps@gmail.com

Program Requirements by Year

1. Students are required to take the following courses:
   • The six courses that comprise the first-year proseminar sequence: 202A (Prosem A), 202B (Prosem B), 202C (Prosem C) and the second-year sequence: 215A (Ethnographic Methods), 215B (Research Design), and 215C (Proposal Writing).
   • Six graduate-level, anthropology elective courses taught by core or affiliated faculty of the department.
   • Any additional courses you wish to take beyond these 12 courses. Given that graduate students usually take two courses each quarter, you should be able to take 3-9 additional courses, depending on how often you TA and other factors. These other courses can be anywhere on campus and can be a great way to get to know faculty in other departments. They can be Independent Study courses taken with core or affiliated faculty in the department or with faculty elsewhere on campus. (Note that an Independent Study course taken with a department core or affiliated faculty does not count as one of the six elective courses mentioned at (2) above; in rare cases an exception may be granted by the Graduate Director.) They can be courses taken on other campuses.
2. To continue in the program, students must pass a formal evaluation at the end of the first year. The evaluation will be made by the department on the basis of
   • The first-year course work; and
   • Examinations to be taken as part of the Proseminar.
3. Students should advance to candidacy during their third year in the program. In order to advance to candidacy, students must
   • Complete all course work requirements;
   • Initiate the formation of a candidacy committee of five members which shall include at least three members of the Department of Anthropology and one member from outside the Department of Anthropology but from the UC Irvine Academic Senate;
   • Submit a research proposal, review of the literature, and bibliography, which must be approved by the committee; and
   • Pass an oral examination by the candidacy committee, which shall include a defense of the proposal and the literature review.
4. Candidates for the Ph.D. in Anthropology will undertake extended fieldwork for their dissertation research. Students intending to conduct field research must present to the department, prior to the commencement of research:
   • Evidence of competence in the field language appropriate to the dissertation research project, or
   • A satisfactory plan for acquiring such competence in the field, where necessary. This field language requirement will in some cases be met simply by establishing that the appropriate field language for the proposed research is English.
5. The student must demonstrate competence to read one scholarly foreign language, in accordance with the requirements of the Ph.D. degree in Anthropology. Students who have not fulfilled the foreign language requirement will not be able to file their dissertations.
6. In the normative case, the student will advance to candidacy by the end of the third year, and will complete the program by the end of the sixth year.
7. Having advanced to candidacy, the student must initiate the formation of a dissertation committee and submit a satisfactory dissertation to this committee. The dissertation committee must be chaired by a member of the Anthropology department and consist of three members, at least two of whom are from the department.

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Student Progress Evaluation
At the end of every academic year the entire department will evaluate each student. The evaluation will be summarized in a letter written by the Graduate Director. The letter may contain suggestions to students regarding their progress and performance in the program. A copy of this evaluation will be given to the student, a copy to the student’s advisor, and a copy placed in the student’s file. Evaluations are based upon a broad range of criteria, including: development, GPA, class performance (with particular attention paid to proseminars and other required courses), TA evaluations, quality of written work, and relevant professional activities (if any) such as papers presented, grants, fellowships and awards received, or publications.

Independent Study 299s
Students are encouraged to take independent study courses to work closely with faculty on individual research projects. A 299 counts as course for full-time enrollment but does not count as towards fulfilling any program requirement. However, a student may petition the graduate committee to ask that a 299 be counted as an elective. Only one 299 can count as an elective.

Undergraduate Courses
Upon petition, upper division undergraduate courses taught by members of the department may count as anthropology electives.

Transfer of Credits
Students may petition the graduate committee to have courses taken at other universities or departments count towards their requirements. Only in exceptional cases the committee will grant these petitions and only when the contents of the courses as expressed in their syllabi are compatible with the program’s curriculum.

Summer Research Money
In the past, the department has been able to fund predoctoral summer research projects and we expect to continue to do so. We encourage students to use this opportunity to get field experience and to make contacts in the area they hope to conduct their doctoral research. Most students are best prepared to benefit from his opportunity at the end of their second year. Each year the graduate committee will solicit and review proposals for summer research.

Master’s Requirements

To obtain a Master’s degree within the Anthropology Concentration the student must:

a) Complete 2 years of course work.
b) Satisfy all of the course requirements for the Ph.D., except for two of the anthropology electives and the language requirement.

To put it another way, the student must have taken the three-quarter proseminar sequence, 2 quarters of statistics, research design, anthropological field methods, and 4 of 6 anthropology electives required for the Ph.D.

NOTE: A university requirement for this degree is that a student be advanced to candidacy for the MA in the quarter before it is granted.