Anthropology (PhD)

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Students may apply online for graduate study in the doctoral program at usc.edu/admission/graduate/apply. The PhD requires 60 units of course work. These include the 32 units required for the MA (16 units of required courses and 16 of graduate electives), 4 additional graduate units, plus a sequence of two graduate courses in an outside field. The additional required units for the PhD are ANTH 790 Research (8 units) and ANTH 794a Doctoral Dissertation , ANTH 794b Doctoral Dissertation (2-2 units). Before being admitted to PhD candidacy, the student must fulfill the language requirement, present an expanded version of the field statements at a qualifying examination, write a dissertation prospectus and pass the qualifying examination. Having completed this work, the student will conduct fieldwork and write the doctoral dissertation.

Degree Requirements

Required Courses

ANTH 501 History and Foundations of Anthropology Units: 4
ANTH 502 Contemporary Theory in Anthropology Units: 4
ANTH 562 The Practice of Ethnography Units: 4
ANTH 790 Research Units: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (minimum 8 units required)
ANTH 794a Doctoral Dissertation Units: 2
ANTH 794b Doctoral Dissertation Units: 2
4 anthropology graduate electives Units: 20

Note:

Completion of the program requires 60 units.

Additional Requirements

Foreign Language Requirement

A reading knowledge of a scholarly language (normally chosen from among Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish) is required before admission to candidacy. If some other field language is required for the dissertation research to be successfully completed (for example, Maya, Hebrew, Javanese, etc.), this will be communicated to the student upon submission of the field project required for admission to candidacy.