Department of AnthropologyCourses for Fall 2026
| Title | Instructor | Location | Time | All taxonomy terms | Description | Section Description | Cross Listings | Fulfills | Registration Notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | Course Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH 0020-001 | Anthropology, Race, and the Making of the Modern World | Deborah A Thomas | MW 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Anthropology as a field is the study of human beings - past, present, and future. It asks questions about what it means to be human, and whether there are universal aspects to human existence. What do we share and how do we differ? What is "natural" and what is "cultural"? What is the relationship between the past and the present? This course is designed to investigate the ways anthropology, as a discipline, emerged in conjunction with European (and later, American) imperialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the will to know and categorize difference across the world. We will probe the relationships between anthropology and modern race-making by investigating how anthropologists have studied key institutions and systems that structure human life: family and kinship, inequality and hierarchy, race and ethnicity, ritual and symbolic systems, gender and sexuality, reciprocity and exchange, and globalization and social change. The course fundamentally probes how the material and ideological constellations of any given moment shape the questions we ask and the knowledge we produce about human | Society sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 0030-001 | Human Origins, Evolution and Diversity | Caroline E Jones | TR 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | How did humans evolve? When did humans start to walk on two legs? How are humans related to non-human primates? This course focuses on the scientific study of human evolution describing the emergence, development, and diversification of our species, Homo sapiens. As a starting point, we discuss the conceptual framework of evolutionary theory as well as basic genetics and heredity as they relate to human morphological, physiological, and genetic variation. We then examine what studies of nonhuman primates (monkeys and apes) can reveal about our own evolutionary past, reviewing the behavioral and ecological diversity seen among living primates. We conclude the course examining the "hard" evidence of human evolution - the fossil and material culture record of human history from our earliest primate ancestors to the emergence of modern Homo sapiens - and also explore the new insights into modern human origins and dispersal provided by genetic studies. We will further examine the nature of human biological variation and discuss the history of scientific racism in physical anthropology. As part of this course, you will have the opportunity, during recitations, to conduct hands-on exercises collecting and analyzing behavioral, morphological, and genetic data on both humans and nonhuman primates and work with the Department of Anthropology's extensive collection of fossil casts. | Living World Sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 0050-601 | Great Transformations | Deborah I Olszewski | TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | This course explores the history and archaeology of the last 20,000 years from the development of agriculture to the industrial revolution. Why did people across the world abandon foraging for farming? How and why did cities and states develop? Why did societies succeed or fail? How have humans transformed themselves and the natural world, including the landscape and the climate? We will explore the methods that archaeologists use to consider these questions and analyze evidence for social and economic change from the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. In addition, students will have a chance to conduct hands-on exercises with artifacts from the Penn Museum during practicums. | History & Tradition Sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 0103-401 | Origin and Culture of Cities | Richard L Zettler | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | The UN estimates that 2.9 of the world's 6.1 billion people live in cities and that this percentage is rapidly increasing in many parts of the world. This course examines urban life and urban problems by providing anthropological perspectives on this distinctive form of human association and land use. First we will examine the "origin" of cities, focusing on several of the places where cities first developed, including Mesopotamia and the Valley of Mexico. We will then investigate the internal structure of non-industrial cities by looking at case studies from around the world and from connections between the cities of the past and the city in which we live and work today. | MELC0003401, URBS0003401 | History & Tradition Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 0120-601 | Globalization And Its Historical Significance | Aliyah M Bixby-Driesen | This course sets the current state of globalization in historical perspective. It applies the concepts of anthropology, history, political economy and sociology to the study of globalization. We focus on a series of questions not only about what is happening, but about the growing awareness of it and the consequences of this increasing awareness. In answering these questions we draw on a variety of case studies, from historical examples of early globalization (e.g. The Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, global flows of conspicuous commodities such as sugar, coffee, and tea, the rise and transformations of early capitalism), to issues facing our current globalized world (e.g. mass-mediatization and multilingualism, border regimes and international migration, planetary urbanization). The body of the course deals with particular dimensions of globalization, reviewing both the early and recent history of each. The overall approach is historical and comparative, setting globalization on the larger stage of the economic, political and cultural development of various parts of the modern world. The course is taught by anthropologists who draw from economic, linguistic, sociocultural, archaeological, and historical perspectives, offering the opportunity to compare and contrast distinct disciplinary approaches. It seeks to develop a general social-science-based theoretical understanding of the various historical dimensions of globalization: economic, political, social and cultural. | SOCI2910601 | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| ANTH 0560-001 | Economy and Culture | Kevin M Burke | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course serves as an introduction to anthropological studies of economic life. Central to our discussions of “the economy” are questions of its entanglements with larger social, cultural, and historical processes. This approach emphasizes practices of meaning making, forms of classification and representation, histories and structures of institutions, and ways of thinking that shape patterns of behavior, cultivate desires, and constitute identities. What is the relationship between forms of economic life and the family? How do ritual and religion, questions of morality and law, and notions of beauty and justice intersect with forms of production, distribution, reciprocity, and consumption? What is money? How are social values produced, rejected, or acquired? In addressing these questions, this course will survey histories of markets, global networks of trade, and the ways that economic life varies considerably across time and place, becomes and object of study and debate, and opens or forecloses certain aspirations for the future. Prior economic coursework is not required, nor will this course entail much quantitative analysis. This is not a course in traditional economics or finance. Instead, we will examine socio-cultural, historical, and biological aspects of different economic arrangements, and discuss how anthropological approaches to the economy draw from larger theoretical perspectives. Students will be evaluated on short written responses to readings, a midterm and non-cumulative final exam, and a research paper. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 1002-401 | Introduction to Africa |
Ali B. Ali-Dinar Helen Michael Bezuneh Hosaena Tadele Tilahun |
TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course provides an introduction to the study of Africa in all its diversity and complexity. Our focus is cultural, geographical, and historical: we will seek to understand Africa s current place in the world political and economic order and learn about the various social and physical factors that have influenced the historical trajectory of the continent. We study the cultural formations and empires that emerged in Africa before European colonial invasion and then how colonialism reshaped those sociocultural forms. We ll learn about the unique kinds of kinship and religion in precolonial Africa and the changes brought about by the spread of Islam and Christianity. Finally, we ll take a close look at contemporary issues such as ethnic violence, migration, popular culture and poverty, and we'll debate the various approaches to understanding those issues. | AFRC1002401 | Society sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1219-301 | Archaeology in the City of Brotherly Love | Megan Crandal Kassabaum | F 10:00 AM-4:59 PM | This course introduces the archaeology of Philadelphia through the Heritage West Community Archaeology Project. Depending on the semester, we will focus on archaeological fieldwork, lab analyses, and/or guided visits to local sites, accompanied by readings, discussions, and guest lectures. Please check the section notes for further details. This is an experiential course in which students will explore local archaeology in an intensive, hands-on way by engaging with social scientific analysis of the material culture and landscape features that remain in the archaeological record. This course is open to all undergraduates, no previous archaeological experience is required. | Society sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 1238-401 | Introduction to Medical Anthropology | Adriana Petryna | MW 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Introduction to Medical Anthropology takes central concepts in anthropology -- culture, adaptation, human variation, belief, political economy, the body -- and applies them to human health and illness. Students explore key elements of healing systems including healing technologies and healer-patient relationships. Modern day applications for medical anthropology are stressed. | HSOC1382401 | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1300-401 | Introduction to Mediterranean Archaeology | Charles Brian Rose | MW 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | The cultures of Greece and Rome, what we call classical antiquity, span over a thousand years of multicultural achievement in the Mediterranean. This course tells the story of what it was like to live in the complex societies of ancient Greece and Rome. This story is told principally using the art, architecture, pottery and coins produced by these societies. We will examine both the bold and sexy, and the small and humble, from the Parthenon to wooden huts, from the Aphrodite of Knidos to the bones of a fisherman named Peter. | CLST1300401 | History & Tradition Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1340-001 | Making the Natural World: An Introduction to Political Ecology | Mark T Lycett | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | What are the limits of nature? When do natural systems become human or socio-natural systems? In this course, we examine the human construction of nature both conceptually, through ideas about environment, ecosystem, organism, and ecology; and materially, through trajectories of direct action in and on the landscape. Beginning with a consideration of foundational concepts in human ecology, we will discuss current problems and approaches, centering on political ecology. Readings and case studies are drawn from human-environmental contexts in Oceania, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America. We will also consider topics including a) the relationship between indigenous and technocratic knowledge and resource governance, b) environmental movements themselves as objects of ethnographic study; c) justice and sustainability as environmental goals; d) inequality, displacement and violence as environmental problems; and e) fair trade and food security or sovereignty. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 1480-001 | Food and Fire: Archaeology in the Laboratory | Katherine M Moore | MW 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | This course will let students explore the essential heritage of human technology through archaeology. People have been transforming their environment from the first use of fire for cooking. Since then, humans have adapted to the world they created using the resources around them. We use artifacts to understand how the archaeological record can be used to trace breakthroughs such as breaking stone and bone, baking bread, weaving cloth and firing pottery and metals. The seminar will meet in the Penn Museum's Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials. Students will become familiar with the Museum's collections and the scientific methods used to study different materials. Class sessions will include discussions, guest presentations, museum field trips, and hands-on experience in the laboratory. | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| ANTH 1500-401 | World Musics and Cultures | Carol Ann Muller | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | AFRC1500401, MUSC1500401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1500-402 | World Musics and Cultures | Hannah Marie Junco | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | AFRC1500402, MUSC1500402 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1755-401 | Listening in Troubled Times (SNF Paideia Program Course) | Aaron Levy | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | In this course, we will explore histories and theories of listening and the power of listening as a means to connect with other times and spaces. This course is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Paideia Program. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | ENGL0755401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2221-401 | Material World in Archaeological Science |
Deborah I Olszewski Marie-Claude Boileau Vanessa Workman |
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | By focusing on the scientific analysis of inorganic archaeological materials, this course will explore processes of creation in the past. Class will take place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in three modules: analysis of lithics, analysis of ceramics and analysis of metals. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how the transformation of materials into objects provides key information about past human behaviors and the socio-economic contexts of production, distribution, exchange and use. Discussion topics will include invention and adoption of new technologies, change and innovation, use of fire, and craft specialization. | ANTH5221401, ARTH0221401, CLST3302401, MELC2960401, MELC6920401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2230-401 | Storytelling in Africa | Pamela Blakely | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | African storytellers entertain, educate, and comment obliquely on sensitive and controversial issues in artful performance. The course considers motifs, structures, and interpretations of trickster tales and other folktales, storytellers performance skills, and challenges to presenting oral narrative in written and film texts. The course also explores ways traditional storytelling has inspired African social reformers and artists, particularly filmmakers. Students will have opportunities to view films in class. | AFRC2230401, CIMS2230401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2340-301 | Pharmaceuticals and Global Health | Michael B Joiner | W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | In some parts of the world, spending on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. In others, people do not have access to basic or life-saving drugs. Individuals struggle to afford medications; whole populations are neglected, considered too poor to constitute profitable markets for the development and distribution of necessary drugs. This seminar analyzes the dynamics of the burgeoning international pharmaceutical trade and the global inequalities that emerge from and are reinforced by market-driven medicine. Questions about who will be treated and who will not filter through every phase of pharmaceutical production --from preclinical research to human testing, marketing, distribution, prescription, and consumption. Whether considering how the pharmaceutical industry shapes popular understandings of mental illness in North America and Great Britain, how Brazil has created a model of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment program, or how the urban pooer in Delhi understand and access healthcare, the seminar draws on anthropological case studies to illuminate the roles of corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in relation to global pharmaceuticals. As we analyze each case and gain famliarity with tehnographic methods, we will ask how individual and group health is shaped by new medical technologies and their evolving regulatory regimes and markets. The course familiarizes students with critical debates on globalization and with local responses to globalizing processes; and it contributes to ethical and political debates on the development and access to new medical technologies. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 2460-401 | Molecular Anthropology | Theodore G Schurr | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | In this course, we will explore the molecular revolution in biological anthropology. In particular, we will examine how molecular data can be used to illuminate anthropological question concerning human origins, evolution and biological variation. Some of the specific topics to be covered in this course are the phylogenetic relationships among primates, kinship in apes and monkeys, the hominoid trichotomy, modern human origins and migrations, Neanderthal and Denisovan admixture with modern humans, biogenetics of skin color, and physiological, phenotypic and disease adaptations. | ANTH6460401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2545-001 | Health, Disease, and Human Evolution | Mallika Sarma | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course will explore the role of human evolution on our experiences of health and disease in contemporary populations. We will evaluate how the human evolutionary forces across the life course shape our experiences of health, wellbeing, as well as both infectious and non-infectious diseases using perspectives from human biology and evolutionary medicine. Related issues to be explored include life history tradeoffs, infectious agent spread in modern populations, and the impact of vaccination on pathogen evolution. In addition, we will discuss complex lifestyle diseases of modernization (e.g., diabetes, cancer) that have increased in prevalence in the past several centuries. Overall, the course will provide a broader understanding of how the processes of human evolution, interaction, and behavior shape disease and health outcomes and provide a novel lens to tackle disease and support human health. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 2620-401 | Anarchism: Theories and Ethnographies | Kristen R Ghodsee | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | "That we are Utopians is well known. So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure shelter, food, and clothes to all..." -Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread. Although born in the West through the works of William Godwin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, anarchism as a political theory was subsequently developed by a variety of Russian and Ukrainian theorists and activists, including Mikhail Bakunin, Lev Tolstoy, Pyotr Kropotkin, Nestor Makhno, and Emma Goldman (in exile in the United States). Anarchism fundamentally questions the need for political power and authority, particularly as embodied in a state. As a political theory, anarchism makes moral claims about the importance of individual liberty and presents a positive theory of human flourishing that is based on ideals of non-coercive consensus building. This course investigates the 19th century theoretical foundations of Russian and Ukrainian anarchist theory through a close examination of key texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries and includes ethnographic explorations of anarchist practices in eastern Europe in the 21st century. All readings will be in English. | REES1631401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2777-401 | Perspectives on Human Stress & Resilience | Mallika Sarma | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course explores the concepts of stress and resilience including the underlying psychophysiologic mechanisms that regulate them and the impacts they have in our current world. Shaped by evolutionary forces, human psychophysiologic, emotional, behavioral, and social performance continuously adapts to intrinsic and extrinsic stressors. The traditional topics are supplemented with current stress-related research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and current climate disasters. These core topics and processes are discussed in the broader context of (mental) health and understanding of the etiology of stress-related psychopathologies, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Contemporary findings from research studies conducted in laboratory (e.g., neuroimaging), occupational and extreme (e.g., spaceflight), and clinical (e.g., mental health clinic) environments are discussed in the context of history, systems, and research paradigms used to study the psychobiology of stress. Theoretical concepts and research findings are evaluated relative to their utility in developing prevention and mitigation strategies for stress-related psychopathologies, and translational implementation in clinical treatments. This course may feature expert guest lecturers (occupational health experts, and NASA and Antarctic researchers) and practical application of state-of-the-art experimental methodologies used in psychophysiologic research on stress and resilience. | ANTH5777402 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2840-401 | World Heritage in Global Conflict | Lynn M. Meskell | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Heritage is always political. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has almost 1200 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine, Armenia and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally yet has found its own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence. | ANTH5840402, CLST3319401, HSPV5840402, MELC2920401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3055-401 | Africana Sacred Communities in the U.S. | Vaughn A Booker | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This advanced seminar places contemporary Black spiritualities at the center of the study of African-descended peoples. Through recent books in the ethnography of Africana religions, spiritual communities in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America that have established communities in the United States will constitute the focus of our course readings and anchor our weekly discussions. As an advanced seminar, our meetings will allow participants to interrogate the authors of these ethnographies. We will assess how these accounts have conceptualized the African diaspora and the vantages (“insiders” and “outsiders”) from which they describe religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. Beyond considering the commonalities and distinctions in form and practice that characterize various African diasporic religious practices, participants will also work to understand the constructions of race and belonging, ethnic identity, gender, sexuality, class, and geographic location that affect the lives of Black religious adherents. | AFRC4052401, AFRC5052401, ANTH5052401, RELS4080401, RELS5052401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3090-401 | Psychoanalysis and Anthropology |
Joshua B Franklin Lawrence D. Blum |
T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course will introduce students to the rich literature that has grown up around the encounter between psychoanalysis and anthropology, from totem and taboo, to studies of the Oedipus complex, child-rearing practices, ritual symbolism, mythology, and dreams. The class will also look to the future, endeavoring to examine as well such issues as the role of computers (are they self objects?) and the internet (including such online games as "Second Life"), dreams in space alien abduction narratives, sexuality in advertising, political psychology, and other contemporary issues. This course counts towards towards the Psychoanalytic Studies (PSYS) Minor. | ANTH6090402 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3307-401 | Intro to Digital Archaeology | Jason Herrmann | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science. | AAMW5620401, ANTH5220401, CLST3307401, CLST5620401, MELC3950401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3444-401 | Human Growth and Development | Caroline E Jones | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | In this course we will examine key issues and the processes involved in human growth and development. By their very nature, growth and development are biocultural processes that require an integrated analysis of social construction and biological phenomena. As such, we will incorporate insight from evolutionary theory, ecology, developmental biology, psychology, human biology, and cultural anthropology in our study of growth and development. Such an integrated perspective will help students to see that development is not just a biological unfolding from birth through adolescence and adulthood. Rather, development is best understood as process that is deeply intertwined with the environment within which the organism develops. Additionally, we will apply these biocultural and socio-ecological insights to emerging health challenges associated with various developmental stages. The study of human growth and development is useful to all students in biological, health-related, and social sciences. Course enrollment is restricted to juniors, seniors, and graduate students only. | ANTH5444401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3454-001 | Quantitative Analysis of Anthropological Data | Mark T Lycett | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of how to work with and present quantitative data. Topics include graphical display of numerical data, probability, sampling, descriptive and inferential statistics (parametric and non-parametric two-and three group tests, regression and correlation). Using examples drawn from the social sciences and anthropology, the focus is on teaching the logic behind quantitative arguments and statistical tests, rather than on the mathematical formulas, making the course especially relevant for students who do not have a strong background in mathematics. This course fulfills the Colleges Quantitative Data Analysis requirement. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 3672-401 | Seeing Is Believing: The American Music Documentary | Guthrie P Ramsey | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Students will engage with sound as a creative ethnographic research practice, guided by a special visiting fellow at the Center for Experimental Ethnography who is a master of the craft. Sections differ in content and focus, and involve a production component as well as a final exhibit/showcase/screening. | ANTH6672401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 4000-301 | Research Seminar in Anthropology | Kevin M Burke | F 8:30 AM-11:29 AM | ANTH 4000 is a Research Seminar for anthropology majors. It defines the Penn anthropology major by bringing together and inter-relating major threads from the different subfields of the Penn anthropology curriculum. Each session includes contributions from members of the standing faculty and seminar discussions of a research theme in which anthropological knowledge is currently progressing. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 5026-401 | Material & Methods in Mediterranean Archaeology | Charles Brian Rose | R 1:30 PM-4:29 PM | This course is intended to provide an introduction to archaeological methods and theory in a Mediterranean context, focusing on the contemporary landscape. The class will cover work with museum collections (focusing on the holdings of the Penn Museum), field work and laboratory analysis in order to give students a diverse toolkit that they can later employ in their own original research. Each week, invited lecturers will address the class on different aspects of archaeological methodology in their own research, emphasizing specific themes that will be highlighted in readings and subsequent discussion. The course is divided into three sections: Method and Theory in Mediterranean Archaeology; Museum collections; and Decolonizing Mediterranean Archaeology. The course is designed for new AAMW graduate students, though other graduate students or advanced undergraduate students may participate with the permission of the instructor. | AAMW5260401, CLST6300401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5052-401 | Africana Sacred Communities in the U.S. | Vaughn A Booker | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This advanced seminar places contemporary Black spiritualities at the center of the study of African-descended peoples. Through recent books in the ethnography of Africana religions, spiritual communities in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America that have established communities in the United States will constitute the focus of our course readings and anchor our weekly discussions. As an advanced seminar, our meetings will allow participants to interrogate the authors of these ethnographies. We will assess how these accounts have conceptualized the African diaspora and the vantages (“insiders” and “outsiders”) from which they describe religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. Beyond considering the commonalities and distinctions in form and practice that characterize various African diasporic religious practices, participants will also work to understand the constructions of race and belonging, ethnic identity, gender, sexuality, class, and geographic location that affect the lives of Black religious adherents. | AFRC4052401, AFRC5052401, ANTH3055401, RELS4080401, RELS5052401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5220-401 | Intro to Digital Archaeology | Jason Herrmann | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science. | AAMW5620401, ANTH3307401, CLST3307401, CLST5620401, MELC3950401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5221-401 | Material World in Archaeological Science |
Deborah I Olszewski Marie-Claude Boileau Vanessa Workman |
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | By focusing on the scientific analysis of inorganic archaeological materials, this course will explore processes of creation in the past. Class will take place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in three modules: analysis of lithics, analysis of ceramics and analysis of metals. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how the transformation of materials into objects provides key information about past human behaviors and the socio-economic contexts of production, distribution, exchange and use. Discussion topics will include invention and adoption of new technologies, change and innovation, use of fire, and craft specialization. | ANTH2221401, ARTH0221401, CLST3302401, MELC2960401, MELC6920401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5240-401 | Plants and Society | Chantel E. White | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Interactions between humans and the living landscape around us have played - and continue to play - a fundamental role in shaping our worldview. This course is designed to introduce students to the diverse ways in which humans interact with plants. We will focus on the integration of ethnographic information and archaeological case studies in order to understand the range of interactions between humans and plants, as well as how plants and people have profoundly changed one another. Topics will include the origins of agriculture; cooking and plant processing; human health and the world of ethnomedicine; and poisonous and psychoactive plants. We will examine ancient plant material firsthand at the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will handle botanical ecofacts from the Penn Museum's collections. Students will also carry out a substantial research project focused on an archaeological culture and plant species of their own interest. | CLST5316401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5244-001 | Introduction to Human Osteology | Rachel Watkins | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course introduces students to the human skeleton as a biological and sociocultural product of lived experience. Main objectives of this course include: 1) learning to identify all 206 bones in the adult human skeleton at their various stages of development; 2) learning to identify skeletal landmarks associated with muscle attachment; and 3) learning the major muscle groups associated with shoulder, elbow, hip and knee joints. Students will also explore historical, methodological and theoretical developments in bioanthropology that help us to understand how empirical observation of the skeleton is a social process. Finally, students will be introduced to the process of constructing biological profiles based on skeletal and documentary analysis, including age-at-death, sex, and pathological conditions. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 5320-301 | Medical Anthropology in the Anthropocene | Adriana Petryna | M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | Ongoing climate crises, militarization, racial injustice, and mass migration have torn apart social fabrics and have further exposed the unequal structures of power that have defined health, how it is realized, and for whom. The massive human toll of COVID-19 and demands for reparations from communities around the world confront health institutions and expose their colonial, scientific, and epistemic underpinnings. From colonial histories of medicine to movements to decolonize global and planetary health, this seminar charts how anthropological and trans-disciplinary forms of research can help shift knowledge claims about injury and vulnerability away from hegemonic centers to frontline communities. This shift implies tracking the lived aspects of health both in and beyond clinical spaces and into multiple environments (from low-wage work to toxic exposures and militarized zones) that perpetuate human/nonhuman vulnerabilities and unequal exposures to disease. As we consider multi-faceted efforts (including traditions of mutual aid and care, de-occupation and, more recently, abolition medicine) to reverse such trends, we probe innovations, forms of resistance, and ethical and political potentials unleashed by diverse justice struggles, and through which diverse planetary futures are imagined and realized. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 5410-301 | Critical Engagements with Science(s) and Justice(s) | Kristina M Lyons | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course places science studies in conversation with counterforensic and ethnographic methodologies, decolonial and feminist approaches, data and environmental justice, critical race and disability studies, and conflict medicine, among other topics. We will be looking at the ways that the arts, natural and social sciences, and community-oriented research agendas come together, and what tensions and possibilities these emergent alliances, intersectional modes of thinking, and practical collaborations may produce. This class offers a unique opportunity for graduate students from engineering, the medical school, natural and social sciences, humanities, and the arts to learn to converse and collaborate around pressing socio-environmental and public health issues. Emergent transdisciplinary fields, such as the environmental and medical humanities, reflect a growing awareness that responses to the environmental and public health dilemmas being faced require the collaborative work of not only diverse scientists, but also more expansive publics, including artists, urban and rural communities, and their relationships with nonhumans and materialities. Aspirations for justice and the possibilities for evidence making require translation across different practices, temporalities and scales; negotiations with the forces of extractive economic structures; and endurance within racist and colonial legacies as well as situations of everyday militarization and social and armed conflict. Throughout the course we will collectively explore moments of newly shared insight, mutual incomprehension, and partial connection between disparate actors and potentially unlikely allies. The idea is not for us to necessarily give up our disciplinary orientations, but rather to learn how to approach shared matters of concern without canceling out our differences and the generative agonisms they produce. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 5444-401 | Human Growth and Development | Caroline E Jones | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | In this course we will examine key issues and the processes involved in human growth and development. By their very nature, growth and development are biocultural processes that require an integrated analysis of social construction and biological phenomena. As such, we will incorporate insight from evolutionary theory, ecology, developmental biology, psychology, human biology, and cultural anthropology in our study of growth and development. Such an integrated perspective will help students to see that development is not just a biological unfolding from birth through adolescence and adulthood. Rather, development is best understood as process that is deeply intertwined with the environment within which the organism develops. Additionally, we will apply these biocultural and socio-ecological insights to emerging health challenges associated with various developmental stages. The study of human growth and development is useful to all students in biological, health-related, and social sciences. Course enrollment is restricted to juniors, seniors, and graduate students only. | ANTH3444401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5470-401 | Anthropology and Education | Linda Pheng | R 11:45 AM-1:44 PM | An introduction to the intent, approach, and contribution of anthropology to the study of socialization and schooling in cross-cultural perspective. Education is examined in traditional, colonial, and complex industrial societies. | EDUC5495401, URBS5470401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5500-401 | Critical Ethnography | Jasmine Johnson | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | "This graduate course introduces students to theories, practices, and critiques of critical ethnography. Ethnography -- an approach to the study of culture which anthropologist James Clifford described as a process that "translates experiences into text" - will have our full attention. This process of translation, although seemingly straightforward, requires layers of interpretation, selection, and the imposition of a viewpoint or politics. While ethnography is often narrowly conceived of as a methodology, this course considers ethnography as a mode of inquiry, as a philosophy, as an ongoing question and performance. We wrestle with notions of "the self" and "the other" at the intersection of imbricated cultural and performance worlds. Together we'll ask: How is ethnography both critical and performative? What is the relationship between theory and method? How can we evaluate ethnographic work? And finally, what kinds of ethnographers do we want to be? This course considers a range of ethnographic examples in order to analyze both the craft and the stakes of "translating experiences into text." | AFRC5500401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5777-402 | Perspectives on Human Stress & Resilience | Mallika Sarma | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course explores the concepts of stress and resilience including the underlying psychophysiologic mechanisms that regulate them and the impacts they have in our current world. Shaped by evolutionary forces, human psychophysiologic, emotional, behavioral, and social performance continuously adapts to intrinsic and extrinsic stressors. The traditional topics are supplemented with current stress-related research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and current climate disasters. These core topics and processes are discussed in the broader context of (mental) health and understanding of the etiology of stress-related psychopathologies, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Contemporary findings from research studies conducted in laboratory (e.g., neuroimaging), occupational and extreme (e.g., spaceflight), and clinical (e.g., mental health clinic) environments are discussed in the context of history, systems, and research paradigms used to study the psychobiology of stress. Theoretical concepts and research findings are evaluated relative to their utility in developing prevention and mitigation strategies for stress-related psychopathologies, and translational implementation in clinical treatments. This course may feature expert guest lecturers (occupational health experts, and NASA and Antarctic researchers) and practical application of state-of-the-art experimental methodologies used in psychophysiologic research on stress and resilience. | ANTH2777401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5830-401 | Ethnographic Filmmaking |
Alissa M. Jordan Paula Helene Rogers |
W 9:30 AM-12:29 PM | This ethnographic methodology course considers filmmaking/videography as a tool in conducting ethnographic research as well as a medium for presenting academic research to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences. The course engages the methodological and theoretical implications of capturing data and crafting social scientific accounts/narratives in images and sounds. Students are required to put theory into practice by conducting ethnographic research and producing an ethnographic film as their final project. In service to that goal, students will read about ethnography (as a social scientific method and representational genre), learn and utilize ethnographic methods in fieldwork, watch non-fiction films (to be analyzed for formal properties and implicit assumptions about culture/sociality), and acquire rigorous training in the skills and craft of digital video production. This is an ABCS course, and students will produce short ethnographic films with students in Philadelphia high schools as part of a partnership project with the School District of Philadelphia. Due to the time needed for ethnographic film production, this is a year-long course, which will meet periodically in both the fall and spring semesters. | EDUC5466401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5840-402 | World Heritage in Global Conflict | Lynn M. Meskell | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Heritage is always political. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has over 1200 properties with many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine, Armenia and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally yet has found its own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence. | ANTH2840401, CLST3319401, HSPV5840402, MELC2920401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6000-301 | Contemporary Archaeology in Theory | Lauren M Ristvet | T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This graduate seminar addresses contemporary anthropological archaeology and considers the varied ways inferences are made about past and present human behavior from the archaeological record. It reviews such fundamental topics as the use of analogy, Middle Range theory, symbolism and meaning, social and cultural evolution, ideology and power, feminism and gender, and indigenous (non-Western) perspectives. It also foregrounds basic issues regarding heritage, looting, and ethics. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6030-301 | Language in Culture and Society | Asif Agha | MW 9:45 AM-11:44 AM | First-year anthropology graduate students or Instructor Permission. Examination of properties of human language which enable social persons to interpret the cultural world and to act within it. Topics include: principles of lexical and grammatical organization; the role of language structure (grammar) and linguistic context (indexicality) in discursive activity; referential uses of language; social interaction; markers of social role, identity, and group-belonging; criteria by which models of linguistic form and function are formulated; the empirical limits within which different models have explanatory value. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6090-402 | Psychoanalysis and Anthropology |
Joshua B Franklin Lawrence D. Blum |
T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course will introduce students to the rich literature that has grown up around the encounter between psychoanalysis and anthropology, from totem and taboo, to studies of the Oedipus complex, child-rearing practices, ritual symbolism, mythology, and dreams. The class will also look to the future, endeavoring to examine as well such issues as the role of computers (are they self objects?) and the internet (including such online games as "Second Life"), dreams in space alien abduction narratives, sexuality in advertising, political psychology, and other contemporary issues. This course counts towards towards the Psychoanalytic Studies (PSYS) Minor. | ANTH3090401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6280-301 | Language in Culture and Society: Special Topics | Asif Agha | T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | The course is devoted to a single research topic of contemporary interest in linguistic anthropology. Topics vary from year to year. Readings locate current debates in relation to longstanding assumptions in the literature and new directions in contemporary research. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6460-401 | Molecular Anthropology | Theodore G Schurr | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | In this course, we will explore the molecular revolution in biological anthropology. In particular, we will examine how molecular data can be used to illuminate anthropological question concerning human origins, evolution and biological variation. Some of the specific topics to be covered in this course are the phylogenetic relationships among primates, kinship in apes and monkeys, the hominoid trichotomy, modern human origins and migrations, Neanderthal and Denisovan admixture with modern humans, biogenetics of skin color, and physiological, phenotypic and disease adaptations. | ANTH2460401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6672-401 | Sound | Guthrie P Ramsey | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Students will engage with sound as a creative ethnographic research practice, guided by a special visiting fellow at the Center for Experimental Ethnography who is a master of the craft. Sections differ in content and focus, and involve a production component as well as a final exhibit/showcase/screening. | ANTH3672401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6859-640 | Cultural Diversity and Global Connections | Kathleen D. Hall | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course considers the intensification of global connections and what anthropologist Anna Tsing has referred to as the "zones of awkward engagement" that emerge within the contemporary global capitalist order. Social problems, such as environmental change, the welfare of refugees, human rights abuses, or poverty in the Global South, have increasingly come to be seen as global issues best solved through multinational or international cooperation. Efforts to address these problems bring together diverse stakeholders, international experts, policy makers, politicians, civil servants, activists, international and local volunteers as well as local people, each interpreting "the problem" from different cultural perspectives and possessing varying degrees of power to affect change. Ethnographic analysis is particularly well suited to examining the diverse and conflicting social interactions, misunderstandings and multiple perspectives, cultural politics and power dynamics that arise locally within these zones of awkward engagement and that ultimately shape the outcomes of social change efforts. The course will emphasize the close and critical reading of ethnographic accounts of a range of social improvement efforts --environmentalist, human rights, refugee relief, and fair trade economic efforts-- across different regions of the world to gain a better understanding of how cultural diversity and power relations shape social interaction within these globalizes zones of awkward engagement. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the nature and practice of ethnographic research and of the challenges faced in engaging globally. |