War and its absurdities
When Nadja was evacuated from the bomb shelter in eastern Ukraine, she took her cheese with her. She took the cheese from Luhansk to Kharkiv and almost to…
When Nadja was evacuated from the bomb shelter in eastern Ukraine, she took her cheese with her. She took the cheese from Luhansk to Kharkiv and almost to…
A poet-historian in Tanzania remembers those who have passed but who are still nearby. “Bila Mwili” is part of the collection Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones…
A poet-historian from Manipur, India, shapes tensions between violence and beauty into an allegory, calling residents and readers alike to stay awake. “Fishing for Dust” is part of…
In a California gym, people living with Parkinson’s practice noncontact boxing to redefine their experience of the disease and maintain a sense of self. ✽ The smell of…
A Kashmiri poet-anthropologist records the restless despair many feel under Indian occupation. If you missed the introduction to “Earlier I Had Nightmares, Now I Have Insomnia,” you can…
A poet-anthropologist conveys her life when she was coming of age under the increasing mobilization of military forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir. If you missed the introduction to “This…
The Mead-Freeman controversy reaches its climax. Scientists, scholars, and Samoans debate the nature of sexuality, culture, and truth. After anthropologist Derek Freeman publishes Margaret Mead and S…
Christianity and colonization deeply reshaped Samoan culture starting in the 1830s, complicating how anthropologists Margaret Mead and Derek Freeman saw the Pacific Islands. The first Christian missi…
In the controversies swirling around Margaret Mead’s work in American Samoa, one set of voices has too often been left out: that of Samoans. Sparked by a provocative…
A young anthropologist named Margaret Mead journeyed to American Samoa in 1925 and claimed she found a culture where teenagers were sexually free. Fame and controversy followed. In…
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…