A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive
A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-residen…
A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-residen…
An anthropologist investigates the ongoing impacts of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company’s fraught 1940s preservation of an ancient Maya site in Guatemala. The United Fruit Company was a…
For the eighth season of the SAPIENS podcast, we’re meeting at a crossroads of cultures—past and present—in search of humanity’s collective destination. Culture is a force that makes…
In two erasure poems, a poet-anthropologist imagines alternative futures using text from the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British “sold” Kashmir to a despotic Dogra ruler.…
An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization. ✽ I FIRST HEARD…
The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world. THE PERFECT BITE Roti, an unleavened…
As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents. This piece is part…
https://www.sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/monuments-decolonized Sultan Doughan: There is so much material to mine and ask questions about in this wonderful book, Monuments Decolonized: Alg…
Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. Now anthropologists are advocating to pay similar respects to primates.…
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation. “Passing Notes” is part of the…
An anthropologist and poet reflects on a journey of return that tells a larger story about human connection, acts of Indigenous solidarity, and the potential for repair within…
An anthropologist takes a critical eye to a long-running holiday tradition: a U.S. military mission that drops toys and supplies throughout Micronesia. ✽ On a balmy December morning…
Black African women in former colonial centers such as London gesture to subversive ways of communicating with those imprisoned in archives across generations. ✽ despite the Maangamizi,( Maangamizi…
In early 2024, Spain’s culture minister announced that the nation would overhaul its state museum collections, igniting a wave of anticipation—and controversy. ✽ WHEN SPAIN’S CULTURE MINISTER, E…
A team of archaeologists working in Southeast Asia is pushing toward a deeper understanding of history that amplifies Indigenous and local perspectives to challenge traditional archaeological timeline…
A 19th-century prophetess reportedly bore a serious message from the ancestors to her Xhosa people amid British colonial assault. The written archives judged her—but much still remains unknown…
Archaeological evidence and Oral Histories show people in what is today Ghana lived sustainably for millennia—until European colonial powers and the widespread trade of enslaved people changed everyth…
At Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a new co-management plan brings together federal agencies and a consortium of Native American tribes—revealing deep tensions over land rights and…
SAPIENS’ 2024 poet-in-residence conjures the voices of those imprisoned in archives. ✽ when the writing is done reference room locked index cards slotted library doors bolted when the…
An anthropologist who works with deaf communities in the Arabic-speaking Middle East argues that ending Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation of Palestine is a matter of disability…
In a dystopian short story, an anthropologist imagines an alternate world in which Kashmiris are forbidden to dream. Republished by permission from English Language Notes, 61(2): 15–18. Copyright…
In a personal essay, a mixed-race and Native anthropologist draws strength from his ancestors. ✽ Who should I be today? I ask myself this question in the mirror…
In Speak Out!, Milo Miller curates a selection of writings by one of the first and most important Black radical organisations of the 1970s, the Brixton Black Women’s Group.…
A Brazilian archaeologist reexamines the way people treat ancestral Indigenous remains housed in museums—starting with one important encounter. Can museums and archaeology harm the dead? An Indigenou…