Singing with Pippa Bacca
In noughties Italy, the Bubble Gum choir performed a liberatory counterimage of the feminine. Today, Bacca’s chorus breathes new life into the ensemble of characters and an impermanent…
Tag: In Focus
All Things Ape
One illustrator’s approach to conveying the multidimensional lives of apes with particular focus on their anatomy. *This essay includes scientific illustrations as well as descriptions of the observin…
The Human Cost of Border Enforcement Policies
A participatory pop-up exhibition breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries between art and anthropology to inform wider audiences about the humanitarian crisis occurring at the United States–Me…
The Anthropologist as Artist
A deeply interdisciplinary visual artist creates objects that are both art and ethnography. Her installations produce space for immersive, social forms of understanding. As a visual artist and…
Beer Can Photography
In an age of digital technology, an experiment with pinhole cameras reveals a striking record of the sun’s daily path and a changing landscape in northern Sweden. Uffe…
Cuban Food Security in a Time of COVID-19
The pandemic has created new opportunities and barriers to food access in Cuba’s two largest cities. Even before Cuba’s first case of COVID-19 was detected on March 11,…
When Brazil’s Voters Became Followers
Politics on social media may be exciting and even fun. But is it good for democracy? Jair Bolsonaro’s sweeping victory in the 2018 Brazilian elections took many people…
Getting Out the Vote in South Asian Chicago
Language access provisions to expand language minority voters’ access to the polls are not only about political participation. They also reveal the reproduction of white public space and…
Ten Things about Black Women Suffragists through a Black Feminist Lens
Irma McClaurin is a Black feminist anthropologist and consultant who conducts research on the social construction of inequality and its impact on African diaspora communities through an intersectional…
Talking about Elections in Northern Kenya
An anthropologist recalls a conversation with three older women as they reflected on their experiences of electoral politics past and present. “What politics have people of nowadays seen;…
Call for Pitches: FOOD
Image description: Four yellow doughnuts with pink frosting and multicolored sprinkles rest next to one another. One is whole; next to that is an apparently half-eaten doughnut with…
Black Masculinity in the United States
What a passionate exchange at a protest for civil rights tells us about the performance of Black masculinity as sincere investment in the Black community. In a viral…
Articulating Anthropology’s Value to Business
Businesses want and need anthropologists. It’s time we claimed our skills and told industry leaders what our training and expertise can do for them. Anthropological concepts, methods, and…
Monuments to Hate
We do not sit outside of the world in which we live. The current fight over the fate of Confederate monuments in US life is a direct struggle…
Ten Film Scenes Every Stay-At-Home Cinephile Should Know
Ted Gideonse is a medical anthropologist who studies the effects of public health discourses about HIV and drugs. As people with more than a passing understanding of biology…
Imagining Rural Immunity
Political myth-making about America’s rural “heartland” is doubly pernicious, increasing rural vulnerability to COVID-19 and ignoring the disintegration of rural health services. In March 2020, Fair…
How to Start a Meditation Practice
I came to meditation because my brain is always running. The part of an academic’s job that requires me to think and theorize sometimes grows much larger than the…
Saving Anthropology from COVID-19
Higher education is at a crossroads. Can we adapt to the ongoing challenges and create transformative educational courses for an uncertain future? As colleges and universities started shutting…
Sign Languages as Disaster Entertainment
Sign language interpreters have become social media celebrities of our coronavirus moment. But signing is not a form of light entertainment; it should be lifesaving information. Dutch health…
The Funny Wrath of Italy’s Viral Mayors
In March 2020, a video of Italian mayors scolding citizens for failing to stay at home went viral. Only ostensibly insignificant, these clickable white men reveal new forms…
Coloring for Anthropologists
Get creative with our coloring page produced in collaboration with March Mammal Madness. Image description: A gorilla stands in mid-stride. Charon Henning March Mammal Madness is a bracket-based tourn…
Social Inequality in Times of Pandemics
We should not expect COVID-19 to behave in the same way as historical pandemics of plague. But both show how inequalities exacerbate mortality outcomes. It’s a gorgeous, warm…
On Living through Plagues and Wars in Lebanon
In much of the Global North COVID-19 is wreaking existential havoc. For the war-seasoned Lebanese in the throes of an economic meltdown and ongoing protests, it is yet…
Engaging the Pandemic
How one medical anthropologist is boosting our capacity to understand and contend with COVID-19. In late February 2020, I traveled back to the United States from India and…