Dr. Ricardo Perez

| Dept. of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

My courses are designed to examine critically major anthropological theories, methods, and discourses. I strongly believe that students must develop learning and analytical skills that foster critical thinking and allow them to understand socioeconomic, political, and cultural processes at their deepest levels. In class lectures and discussions, I also challenge them to question anthropology’s limitations to grasp the complexity of human cultures. I am committed to enhance anthropology’s potential as a discipline that can help understand and look for solutions to current social problems such as poverty, racial and economic segregation, and environmental degradation (among  many others). I can accomplish this goal by stressing the applicability of anthropological theories and methods to contemporary life and by making clear that anthropology is much more than the study of exotic cultures in faraway places. As students eventually realize, anthropological research can be conducted in their own communities and its outcomes can have practical applications to the social problems that they may encounter.

Click on the following titles to read a description of the courses that I normally teach:

Cultural Anthropology 

Urban Anthropology

Latinos in the United States

Contemporary Puerto Rican Culture and Society