Extra Credit Assignment

Cultural Anthropology

This extra credit assignment is worth 10 points. The assignment should be double-spaced, with 12 point font and three pages in length. In the top, left-hand corner of your paper, place your name on the first line. Directly under your name, give the article title and underline it.

You will find one article entitled, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner on reserve at the library. You may need a valid student ID to have access to the article.

Read the article and answer the following questions:

1. Give a brief summary of the article.

2. What does Miner’s article tell us about the difficulty of describing another culture?

3. What other areas of U.S. culture could you write about in a fashion similar to this reading? Give an example.

4. How effective are the potions and magical cures found in the Nacirema charm boxes? Is this an important question for cultural anthropologists to answer?

The due date for this assignment will be given in class.