Coming of Age … Today
Does the transition from childhood to adulthood have to be so difficult? This question sent famed anthropologist Margaret Mead to American Samoa in 1925—and ignited decades of controversy.…
Does the transition from childhood to adulthood have to be so difficult? This question sent famed anthropologist Margaret Mead to American Samoa in 1925—and ignited decades of controversy.…
A famed anthropologist’s controversial research in American Samoa reveals the biggest questions about growing up and being human. This special SAPIENS podcast season, co-hosted by Doris Tulifau and…
In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting. Excerpted from An Ordinary Future: Margaret…
Many people around the world fear spiders. But in the Philippines, the tradition of spider wrestling often brings people and arachnids in close proximity. ✽ A fear of…
The following curated collection of fragments outlines two main strategies used over the last ten years in the creation of contemporary artworks to memorialise events: subtraction and accumulation.…
A poet exuberantly gives thanks for the Munay-Ki rites enlivened across the ages and shared by the Q’ero people in the Peruvian Andes. “A Love Letter to the…
A poet-anthropologist from Indian-occupied Kashmir speaks of hope as inherited through memories of resilience in the past and present. “When I See Spring in Your Eyes” is part…
From your backyard to a hill by the ocean, you can come upon an archaeological find just about anywhere. But what happens when that object was a keepsake…
A sociocultural anthropologist from Pakistan speaks to how women in asylums in a patriarchal culture are in a battle between their realities and their lost dreams. Yet those…
One day, a woman in Baltimore received a text message from her mother wishing her a happy holiday. But something didn’t feel quite right. Jeri Hutton Green is…
An anthropologist journeys to the Arctic Circle and finds a surprising story about the human remains that end up in museum collections. “Prime harvest”—that’s how one early 20th-century…
A sqilxʷ poet and artist who currently lives in Mohkínstsis, Treaty 7 in Canada speaks to their grandmother of longing and connection, wanting to wake up the medicine…
A Quechua poet and linguist speaks to the conflicting feelings some Indigenous groups experience when non-Native paleoarchaeologists and others visit their communities for research projects. “Se…
A Nigerian poet-anthropologist witnesses the powerful rising up of ancestors through the revival of a tree in the Igbo village of Ogbodu. “A Tree’s Tongue” is part of…
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience. ✽ Anthropology’s fraugh…
A poet-anthropologist speaks to the labyrinthine experiences of domestic violence—the entrapment, the hope for freedom. ✽ During the final week of domestic violence awareness month in October, I…
In England and Wales, a multiyear investigation has uncovered decades of pervasive child sexual abuse in schools, churches, and other institutions. An anthropologist on the project weighs in…
Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities by Aaron J. Jackson is a self-described “meditation on fathers’ everyday lived experiences surrounding care…
On a chilly afternoon in April of 2016, Lana and I were about to embark on a ride through Saint Petersburg’s bustling downtown, so she was instructing me…
Trust exposes and discloses the social. But the heterogeneity and even excessiveness of meaning in the concept—its overdetermination, its multifariousness and multiformity, its downright fuzziness—sug…
An archaeologist speculates about how to uncover evidence of depression, anxiety, and neurodiversities in ancient humans. ✽ Hi, my name is Paige, and I have generalized anxiety and…
What do Twitter debates over Disney-Pixar’s recent family film tell us about today’s parenting politics in the U.S.? ✽ On June 17, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation…
SAPIENS’ poetry editor and inaugural poet-in-residence break down what makes certain poems anthropological and explore how poetry has the potential to transform ways of thinking and being in…
For deaf people in the U.S., accessibility has become synonymous with provisioning professional sign language interpreters. But in everyday life, deaf people’s experiences of “access” often include mo…