An upper-division seminar course that serves as an in-depth exploration of the ways in which humans have altered, decorated, and shaped their bodies through time. This course takes a biocultural as well as a material culture approach to the study of body arts. Topics covered include dress and fashion, jewelry and cosmetics, body modification practices, scarification and tattooing, body painting, dieting, and plastic surgery, among others.

This course explores what it means to be human from evolutionary and biocultural perspectives.  Course participants learn the basic principles of evolutionary theory. We further explore the ecology and behavior of living  primates. This includes addressing the biological adaptations in our monkey and ape relatives and across the human species.  We also focus on what we have learned and can learn from the skeletal and fossil records, exploring the behavioral and biological characteristics of the human past and our evolutionary relatives.

An upper-division, hands-on, lab-based course meant to come after The Human Skeleton that introduces students to the field of paleopathology and the identification of disease and trauma in the skeleton. The course covers the process of differential diagnosis in skeletal remains, infectious disease, metabolic and endocrine disease, trauma, dental disease, and neoplastic disease. It also covers a number of important theoretical debates in the field and encourages students to think about the experience of disease in the past.

This upper-division seminar courses introduces students to the material culture and biological evidence for healing and medicinal practices in the archaeological past. It focuses heavily on Indigenous cultures and archaeological cultures outside of the greater Mediterranean world that are often excluded from broader discussions of the history of medicine and medical practice.

Taught at Pitt, Fall 2024 (no longer part of course rotation)

This course explores the breadth of human biological diversity through an anthropological lens. Students will examine how genetics, environment, and culture interact to shape human variation and adaptation to stressors. The class also investigates how inequality, racism, and structural violence influence health and biology, challenging misconceptions about race as a biological reality. Combining lecture, lab, and discussion, students will analyze scientific data on human variation, assess how it is represented in research and media, and develop critical thinking and writing skills while gaining a deeper understanding of what truly drives human biological diversity.

Taught @ Brown University, Spring 2022

An introductory, hands-on, lab-focused course in human osteology. While methods-based, this course is a fundamentally anthropological one and as such emphasizes a biocultural and evolutionary perspective in the study of the human skeleton. Students learn all of the bones in the human body, their important landmarks, and their ossification processes. Students are also introduced to bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and forensic anthropology.

Co-Taught at Brown University, Spring 2023

This is an Introduction to Biological Anthropology course that focuses heavily on human evolution. It introduces students to evolutionary theory and its history, the genetic basis of evolution, primatology, paleoanthropology, and covers important and current issues in the field such as the peopling of the Americas, the ethics of genetic research and human remains research, and the biological race concept.

Taught at Summer@Brown Pre-College Program, Brown University, Summer 2024

This course examines how humans have understood, experienced, and treated disease throughout history. Students will explore major health problems from cavities and fractures to infections and nutritional deficiencies through the lens of archaeology, paleopathology, and history. Emphasizing a biocultural perspective, the class investigates how biology and culture shape one another in illness and healing. Through hands-on activities and a collaborative research simulation, students will learn how scholars study health and disease in the past and why these investigations matter for understanding medicine today. This is an introductory, interdisciplinary exploration of humanity’s long relationship with disease and the drive to heal.