Anthropological Theories by and for StudentsThe guides to anthropological theories and approaches presented here have been prepared by anthropology (and other) graduate students of The University of Alabama under the direction of Dr. Michael D. Murphy. This site was conceived as an introduction to some of the basic approaches that cultural anthropologists have pursued from the mid-19th century to the late-20th century. Its original goal was to help UA anthropology graduate students improve their performance on MA comprehensive examinations by directly involving them in composing study materials aimed at producing basic competence in some of the general contours of anthropological theoretical approaches since the inception of the discipline.
The first entries began to be put online in 1996 (five years before the appearance of Wikipedia), although it took several years to complete the series of sixteen modules. Over the course of subsequent years these modules were periodically updated by a succession of students in a graduate seminar on the history of theory in cultural anthropology; the last updates were posted in 2012.
