<p>Ok, I know one thing for certain and that's that I want to be a college professor. I've wanted to since my first day of Jr. High. I know the pay is poor, the hours are long, the system is frakked up, and I'll never be able to pay off my student loans. I don't care. I've wanted this for so long and after a lot of thought and contemplation I'm sure that it's still what I want. The problem is I'm not sure what area I want to teach in. </p>
<p>I have three big academic areas I'm passionate about: Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Archaeology. Those are huge parts of my life. I love them very much. If I could I would major in all of them. But I can't. I don't have enough time, and my DS and DRS have a limit on how big of a work load I'm allowed to take on. So which do I choose, or how do I choose? All three are my passions, all three are pretty bad when it comes to market value*, and my heart wants all three. So how do I decide? Which one would you choose? </p>
<p>I appreciate any and all you guys can give me. This has been driving me crazy for almost a year now. I've gone over the details and asked myself questions a million times, and the answer I come up with is always all three. So thank you. </p>
<p>*The marketability varies wildly depending on who you ask. All the divisions say theirs is the most marketable, and every science/math/engineering major laughs and asks me why I'm wasting my time on the humanities. Online, the numbers seem pretty inconsistent as well for the job I want.</p>
<p>To narrow down your choices, what language do you read and comprehend the best?</p>
<p>For archeology, Greek and Latin as well as languages in your specific area of study.
For anthropology, German, French, Spanish, Russian is useful.
For Religious studies, Latin, Hebrew.
Your fluency in classic languages may determine your future.</p>
<p>I don’t know about your school (or country?) but where I attend, archaeology and anthropology are in the same department and under the same degree, so you are educated in both cultural anthro and archaeo at the same time. Our department also has most of the religion courses (with some being in the philosophy department), so many students will end up taking several courses in religions, theories of religion, etc. Assuming you are an undergrad looking for an undergrad major in the USA, I would say to shoot for anthro as you should be able to take courses in all three things at once in the normal course of the degree program, unless your university segregates these three areas as some large schools sometimes do. Even then, I would still go for a degree in anthro as it is probably the best starting point for all three areas at a graduate level since, in the US, archaeology is one sub-field of anthropology and most of the people I know of who study religions in an academic, non-theological way are anthropologists. </p>
<p>With respect to the above two responses, a language is only going to be useful(as far as school and research go) if it somehow relates to the geographic/temporal/cultural area of focus and/or to countries producing a lot of papers relating to your topic(s) of study/research. Case in point, an archaeologist focusing on Native American cultures does not really need to know Greek; an anthropologist focused on religions of indigenous South Pacific island cultures does not need to know Arabic, Latin, or Hebrew. You may want to study one or more European language(s) since a lot of research is published by European researchers, but this is not entirely necessary. Many graduate programs require language proficiency, but it is required in a language pertinent to you research and some other language will not meet this requirement. In conclusion, if you want to study a language, either choose one because of the amount of research coming out in that language or wait until you know what your specific cultural/geo/temporal focus will be.</p>
<p>At UW they’re all in different places. In fact, one could study the same kind of subject with completely different courses through the Department of Anthropology, the Scoop Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.</p>
<p>DOUBLE MAJOR! Or Major and Double minor (what I’m doing…)</p>
<p>In any case, they’re all interesting. I’m like you-- I hate to exclude anything.</p>
<p>Batllo is (kind of) right in that you will need languages, particularly in RLST. My RLST professors have all drilled in the idea that you will probably know 5 languages (some dead) by the time you leave grad school. Yes Latin and Hebrew are important, but so is Ancient Greek, German (SO MANY rlst texts originally in German…), French, Arabic OR Asian languages if you are primarily interested in non-Western religion. </p>
<p>For example, my RLST adviser knows the following languages:</p>
<p>Modern: French (fluent), German (reading)
Ancient: Latin, Greek, Hebrew (biblical and rabbinic), Aramaic (Palestinian), Coptic, Syriac</p>
<p>Yes, languages are necessary, but one can usually learn all the languages they need while in grad school. If, while in undergrad, you really want to learn something that could be useful then you could look into German and/or French, but I would not worry about it, and I would not factor in languages when deciding which major to choose. Since you probably don’t yet know what you will have as a cultural, etc. focus, then you should not worry about languages yet as you won’t really know which ones will be of much if any value, especially the dead languages. Save all the dead languages until grad school when you have more of an idea of what your focus is. You may find you have no need for any dead languages depending on what you choose as you major and you grad degree(s).</p>
An applicant without the requisite languages has as much chance of getting into a reputable graduate program as an icicle has of surviving in hell. There is very little time to pick up languages in grad school, and applicants without languages are usually the first ones cut in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I do agree that the area of interest determines which languages (if any) need to be learned.</p>
<p>At least from everything I have ever seen, that is not at all true, warblersrule. An applicant may be at a disadvantage to someone who has the requisite languages for their research, but I know many people who learned necessary languages after getting into grad school, particularly the indigenous languages necessary for their ethnographic field work. I am coming from an anthropology perspective, so perhaps it is different if one is taking a different approach, such as religious studies from a historian’s perspective. I do agree with your last statement, but I doubt that most people can pin down their specific area of interest in time to learn a language before leaving undergrad. That is why most PhD programs in anthro that I am aware that have language requirements for all of their students have a the demonstration of proficiency at the 2 year mark. As an example of what I am talking about, I had a prof who needed to learn the Ese Ejja language. She learned this in graduate school and did not speak any prior to matriculation. This is not a dead language, but is definitely not something you find just anywhere or could learn from Rosetta Stone. She had to find someone AFTER she figured out that this would be her focus. I can’t say for certain, but I doubt that she settled on this particular culture as one of her foci while still in undergrad. In fact, had she not be studying them, I doubt I would have ever heard of them.</p>
<p>It may be beneficial to show grad school that one has the wherewithal to be able to pick up foreign languages, but worrying about which ones is useless if you don’t have any area of focus chosen, hence my statement that German or French might be good if learning a language is something Dorbonic wants to do while in undergrad, but, personally, I would not worry about that until an area of focus is chosen. Use the time to take more classes in the subjects of religion, anthro, arch, and try to find out where your greatest interest is, what are you want to focus on in grad school, and then look at applicable languages. The language issue will become obvious once your focus is found and really should not be worried about until then. Also, the language issue should not be a big part of your choice of major, unless you really don’t want to learn any foreign languages, of course, though I am guessing that is not the case given the three possible majors listed.</p>
Yes, anthropological archaeology is different. Because it primarily focuses on so-called scientific techniques rather than textual sources, students often come from a broad range of backgrounds. Few anthro-arch programs put significant empasis on languages, and even PhD graduates are rarely nearly as competent in languages as they should be. </p>
<p>If a student wants to do something like North/Central American or African archaeology that requires little language training, yes, it’s not a big deal. Disciplines like biblical, classical, Egyptian, and Chinese archaeology? You’d better have those languages down as an undergrad.</p>
<p>The emphasis on language is still strong in historical archaeology, but it does not have as significant a place as in history due to a difference in the primary material of study used in each field. Archaeology investigates past peoples directly through their material and physical remains while history uses written records. The two are complimentary, but the difference in these emphases means that language proficiency has a different place. Archaeologist are often familiar with or even quite proficient in languages relating to their area of focus, but since their work is not reliant on their analysis of written documents from that group and time, reading documents in the original language often, though I suppose not always, plays less of a role in their research. Historians usually work with the written documents and the archaeologists work with the material and physical remains. One does not always have to be able to do both jobs. </p>
<p>Since anthropology and archaeology were listed as the two other majors in addition to religious studies, I am assuming an archaeological and/or anthropological approach to religion is the interest of this individual rather than a purely historical, document oriented approach. With respect the last comment on the various regions of focus in historical archaeology, this brings back the same issue of having chosen one’s area of focus. Some people know before they start undergrad, and some don’t. If one is the latter, it is better to be focusing on other courses than languages until one knows what focus is right. Then the language issue becomes obvious and one can start working on that. Given that the one who start this thread is still trying to decide which major to choose, the topic of pertinent languages to learn is not yet applicable and is certainly not helpful for making the choice of major.</p>
<p>While this does not require anything near what a previous commenter said their professor had for language abilities(6 ancient and 2 modern), it does make the point that language proficiency is not absent or, in my opinion, under-emphasized in archaeology programs, at least at the graduate level.</p>
<p>I would say major in Anthro. Archaeology is a subfield of Anthro and Religious Studies is a joke. Major in whatever language you want but a lot of school emphasize Spanish, Italian, or French as the choices (all the UCs do this).</p>