Department of AnthropologyCourses for Spring 2027
| Title | Instructor | Location | Time | All taxonomy terms | Description | Section Description | Cross Listings | Fulfills | Registration Notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | Course Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH 0030-601 | Human Origins, Evolution and Diversity | 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 0040-601 | The Modern World and Its Cultural Background | Aliyah M Bixby-Driesen | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | An introduction to the diversity of cultures in the world. This course is divided into two parts. The first briefly examines different models of understanding human diversity: ethnicities, religions, languages, political forms, economic structures, cultures, and "civilizations". Students will learn to think about the world as an interconnected whole, and know the significance of culture on a global scale. The second part is an introduction to area studies, in which we undertake a survey of the different regions of the world. We conduct the survey paying attention to the different aspects of human diversities, which we examine in the first part of this course. Students will acquire a greater appreciation and understanding of cultural differences in the more comprehensive social context. | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| ANTH 0050-001 | Great Transformations | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 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 0070-301 | Exploring Primate Behavior and Ecology | Caroline E Jones | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course explores the evolution, taxonomy, and behavior of primates – an order of mammals which includes human beings, and our closest living relatives. Engagement with Penn Museum specimens will showcase morphological differences among species which help explain patterns of locomotion, feeding/foraging, and reproductive and social behaviors. We will review relevant scientific literature about primates in the wild and captive environments, as well as human- non-human-primate interactions in different contexts. Using the comparative method, course discussions will include topics of aggression, cooperation, cognition, and conservation. Students will employ the scientific method to conduct their own observational study at the Philadelphia Zoo, and practice skills in information/scientific literacy to complete a literature review paper of their own. | Living World Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202710&c=ANTH0070001 | ||||||||
| ANTH 0120-401 | Globalization And Its Historical Significance | Kevin M Burke | MW 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | 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. | SOCI2910401 | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| ANTH 0330-001 | Language, Society, and the Human Experience | Andrew M. Carruthers | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Anthropology is the study of what it means to be human across space and time. In this introductory course, we explore how language is at the heart of what it means to be human, examining the constituting role of language in the human experience in societies across the globe. We address a number of questions: How is being a speaker being a member of a society? How do ways of speaking about the world shape ways of experiencing the world? What is linguistic diversity and why is it important? How does one's identity emerge through one's way of speaking? How are large-scale forces like globalization shaping languages and fashions of speaking around the world? Throughout, we explore how language reflects and shapes the ways in which human beings navigate the flux of everyday life. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 1040-001 | Sex, Gender, and Human Nature | Rachel Watkins | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course is an introduction to the scientific study of sex in humans and how it interfaces with cultural norms around sex determination, sexuality, and gender. Within an evolutionary framework, the course examines genetic, physiological, ecological, social and behavioral aspects of sex in humans. This will include examining the biological and cultural aspects of sexual development from birth to adulthood. Focused modules will also guide an exploration of the anatomical, physiological and cultural aspects of the ways that human social organization is influenced by norms related to sex, gender and sexuality across space and time. | Living World Sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 1171-401 | Devotion's New Market: Religion, Economics, and the City | Afsar Mohammad | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This graduate and undergraduate level course introduces students to the new forms of devotion as circulated in various urban centers in South Asia with a focus on growing market economy and urbanization. This course will particularly discuss case studies of how different modes of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and other minor religions operate in an urbanized middle-class and educated communities. We will read theoretical and ethnographical works of contemporary research in religious studies and anthropology that deal with the questions of modernity, reformism and economic developmentalism. Throughout the semester, we focus on 1) how does religious forms such as sainthood practices, private and public rituals, narrative modes and everyday life evolve in the background of growing politics of development; 2) we discuss the tensions between classical notions of devotion and their new transformations in the city life, and finally 3) theoretically, we analyze concepts such as reformism, fundamentalism, recent discourses on identity politics and gender implications as connected to urban religious life. | RELS1640401, SAST1171401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 1230-301 | Communication & Culture | Asif Agha | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The course looks at varieties of human expression -- such as art, film, language and song -- as communicative practices that connect persons together to form a common culture. Discussion is centered around particular case studies and ethnographic examples. Examination of communicative practices in terms of the types of expressive signs they employ, their capacity to formulate and transmit cultural beliefs and ideals (such as conceptions of politics, nature, and self), and to define the size and characteristics of groups and communities sharing such ideals. Discussion of the role of media, social institutions, and technologies of communication (print, electronic). Emphasis on contemporary communicative practices and the forms of culture that emerge in the modern world. | Society sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ANTH 1303-401 | The Material Past in a Digital World | Jason Herrmann | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | The material remains of the human past -objects and spaces- provide tangible evidence of past people's lives. Today's information technologies improve our ability to document, study, and present these materials. But what does it mean to deal with material evidence in a virtual context? In this class, students will learn basic digital methods for studying the past while working with objects, including those in the collections of the Penn Museum. This class will teach relational database design and 3D object modeling. As we learn about acquiring and managing data, we will gain valuable experience in the evaluation and use of digital tools. The digital humanities are a platform both for learning the basic digital literacy students need to succeed in today's world and for discussing the human consequences of these new technologies and data. We will discuss information technology's impact on the study and presentation of the past, including topics such as public participation in archaeological projects, educational technologies in museum galleries, and the issues raised by digitizing and disseminating historic texts and objects. Finally, we will touch on technology's role in the preservation of the past in today's turbulent world. No prior technical experience is required, but we hope students will share an enthusiasm for the past. | ARTH0127401, CLST1303401, HIST0871401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 1410-401 | Museums, Monuments, and Social Justice | Megan Crandal Kassabaum | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Monuments, museums, and heritage are all critical parts of the world that we have created and are shaped by. These institutions and sites often claim to represent our past, who we imagine ourselves to be today, and how we might define our futures. We often rely on museums and monuments to frame history and history’s relationship to our current social and cultural systems. However, in recent years, social, racial, and economic justice movements have pushed us to rethink the function of monuments, museums, and heritage. In particular, these social movements have helped us understand how racism, sexism, and colonialism are responsible for the creation of monuments and museums. This course examines the echoes and continuities of colonial representations in museums and monuments. In addition, we will examine how new ways of commemorating and representing the past can result in a new vision for our future. By visiting a variety of local monuments and sites and by engaging in conversations about accountability and social justice, this course will challenge us to rethink the tangible and intangible ways that we weave the past into the present for the creation of the future. | ARTH0141401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 1430-001 | Explorations in Human Biology | Theodore G Schurr | TR 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | This course is an exploration of human biology from a biocultural and evolutionary perspective. The class will provide you with a better understanding of what it means to be human, how humans came to exhibit such a wide range variation, and what biological anthropology can contribute to your understanding of the world. In this class students will learn to integrate the theory and methods used in human biology research through lectures, assignments, and lab sessions. This course will explore topics including human genetics, growth and development, nutrition, disease, and reproduction. We will also use the course as an opportunity to introduce you to the important contributions of biological anthropologists to the study of race, inequality, sex and gender, and health among others. | Nat Sci & Math Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| ANTH 1490-302 | Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies | Tina P Fragoso | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course offers a broad introduction to evolving scholarship in the combined fields of Native American Studies and Indigenous Studies worldwide. Students will examine the various ways that Indigenous peoples and academic researchers are currently engaging with Indigenous knowledges, while also exploring the lingering impacts of settler colonialism and the influence of decolonizing methodologies. Students will gain foundational understandings of the cross-disciplinary nature of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), by studying theoretical interpretations of Indigenous peoples in academic and historical contexts, and by examining practical approaches to Indigenous research in diverse worldwide settings. Students will approach topics from a variety of disciplinary traditions, utilizing historical texts, ethnological studies, oral literature, material culture, and modern media, including websites and databases produced by and for Indigenous communities. Readings will include the work of researchers who bridge the disciplines of anthropology, history, folklore, art, law, science, etc. Students will watch a selection of films by Indigenous filmmakers, and attend lectures by a selection of Indigenous guest speakers. NAIS faculty advisors from various schools at Penn (e.g., School of Arts and Sciences, Education, Law, Nursing) will also present several guest lectures to highlight their unique experiences and research projects with Indigenous communities. Special case studies will focus on: new directions in collaborative research; issues in museum representation and repatriation; heritage site protection and Indigenous archaeology; legal interventions and protections for Indigenous rights; and innovative projects in language restoration and cultural recovery. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 1500-401 | 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. | AFRC1500401, MUSC1500401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 1500-402 | World Musics and Cultures | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | 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 2024-401 | Dress and Fashion in Africa | Ali B. Ali-Dinar | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Throughout Africa, social and cultural identities of ethnicity, gender, generation, rank and status were conveyed in a range of personal ornamentation that reflects the variation of African cultures. The meaning of one particular item of clothing can transform completely when moved across time and space. As one of many forms of expressive culture, dress shape and give forms to social bodies. In the study of dress and fashion, we could note two distinct broad approaches, the historical and the anthropological. While the former focuses on fashion as a western system that shifted across time and space, and linked with capitalism and western modernity; the latter approach defines dress as an assemblage of modification the body. The Africanist proponents of this anthropological approach insisted that fashion is not a dress system specific to the west and not tied with the rise of capitalism. This course will focus on studying the history of African dress by discussing the forces that have impacted and influenced it overtime, such as socio-economic, colonialism, religion, aesthetics, politics, globalization, and popular culture. The course will also discuss the significance of the different contexts that impacted the choices of what constitute an appropriate attire for distinct situations. African dress in this context is not a fixed relic from the past, but a live cultural item that is influenced by the surrounding forces. | AFRC2324401, ARTH2094401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2060-301 | Cultures of Science and Technology | Kevin M Burke | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Science and technology figure centrally in the economic, political, and socio-cultural changes that impact our worlds. Happenings in the life sciences, including the discovery of new genes, pathways, and processes, are redrawing concepts of the body and human nature and refiguring social and political relations. The seminar starts from the premise that scientific facts are made, not things existing a priori in the world and that are merely picked up by researchers and consumed by lay audiences. Likewise, technologies are created through a process of intense negotiation between producers and their sophisticated users. Focusing on the biosciences, we explore the production of science and technology and how they 1)affect individuals, self-identities, subjectivity, kinship, and social relationships; 2)have interacted with or reinforced political programs, racial classifications, unequal access to knowledge, and patterns of social injustice; 3)inform contemporary institutional structures, strategies of governance, and practices of citizenship. We will combine methods and perspectives from social and cultural anthropology, and the social studies of science and technology, and will draw from historical case studies, contemporary ethnographies of science, scientific and medical journals, documentary films and media reports. | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| ANTH 2267-401 | Living World in Archaeological Science |
Chantel E. White Katherine M Moore |
TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | By focusing on the scientific analysis of archaeological remains from organic materials, this course will explore life and death in the past. Plant and animal remains from the archaeological record are studied from a variety of scales from landscapes and individual objects. The course uses laboratories in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) at the Penn Museum. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how organic materials provide key information about past environments, the domestication of plants and animals, and the evolution of human foods and their environmental impacts. We will integrate archaeological data through discussions of topics such as health and disease, inequality, and traditional ecological knowledge. We will also discuss current approaches in archaeological science, including molecular and genomic studies, to explore the complex ways in which humans have interacted with plants and animals over time. | ANTH5267401, CLST3303401, CLST5303401, MELC2950401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2332-301 | Medicine and the Language of Pain | Justin T Clapp | R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | Pain can be a particularly complex and morally charged object of biomedicine. The interiority of pain- the deeply private nature of pain experience- complicates its communication. Pain, particularly its chronic form, defies purely biological explanation, troubling fundamental biomedical distinctions between mind and body, subject and object. And decisions about analgesia are fraught, as doctors and patients pursue relief from pain amidst a widespread epidemic of opiate abuse that infuses their interaction with concerns about addiction, drug seeking, culpability, and responsibility. This seminar seeks to shed light on these issues by using concepts from linguistic and medical anthropology to explore how we experience, think about, and talk about pain. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, the course is of relevance not only to anthropology but also to medical sociology, medical ethics, public health, health policy, and science and technology studies. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 2404-001 | Archaeology of Sacrifice | Anne Tiballi | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course is introduces the practice of sacrifice among different ancient and historical contexts, incorporating archaeology, history, literature, and theology. Students will study archaeological site reports, historical texts, and material culture related to sacrifice, and consider the topic through different theoretical lenses. Over the course of the semester, there will be several visits to the Penn Museum galleries and collections to work with objects from the ancient Near East, Central America, South America, and the ancient Mediterranean. This course will contain images and discussions of sensitive topics, including human remains and death. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 2540-401 | Violence, Tolerance, Freedom | Jolyon Thomas | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This seminar examines how the adjective "religious" has been used to modify the nouns "violence," "tolerance," and "freedom." It traces the historical development of liberal ideas of tolerance and human rights, interrogates the common assumption that religion exerts a perverse influence on politics and vice versa, critically examines the concept of terrorism, and connects the neoliberal ideal of unfettered free markets to the idea of being "spiritual but not religious." | RELS2540401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2590-401 | Nutritional Anthropology (A) | Caroline E Jones | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The course is an introduction to nutritional anthropology, an area of anthropology concerned with human nutrition and food systems in social, cultural and historical contexts. On the one hand, nutritional anthropologists study the significance of the food quest in terms of survival and health. On the other hand, they also know that people eat food for a variety of reasons that may have little, if anything, to do with nutrition, health, or survival. While the availability of food is dependent upon the physical environment, food production systems, and economic resources, food choice and the strategies human groups employ to gain access to and distribute food are deeply embedded in specific cultural patterns, social relationships, and political and economic systems. Thus, nutritional anthropology represents the interface between anthropology and the nutritional sciences, and as such, can provide powerful insights into the interactions of social and biological factors in the context of the nutritional health of individuals and populations. Because food and nutrition are quintessential biocultural issues, the course takes a biocultural approach drawing on perspectives from biological, socio-cultural and political-economic anthropology. Course content will include: a discussion of approaches to nutritional anthropology; basics of human nutrition; food systems, food behaviors and ideas; methods of dietary and nutritional assessment; and a series of case studies addressing causes and consequences to nutritional problems across the world. | LALS2590401, URBS2590401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2630-401 | African Art and the Global Circulation of Objects | Vanicleia Silva Santos | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course offers an overview of the arts and visual cultures that used ivory in Africa, from insignias of power to utilitarian objects. This course covers raw and carved African ivory in the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1900. We will focus on historiography, sources, methodologies, and the process of collecting African ivories in the Atlantic world. We will also examine the importance of elephants for African societies. We will explore material culture through European records, museum collections, archaeology, and aesthetic and iconographic analysis of carved ivory pieces. Studying these objects may enhance our understanding of relationships among Africans and with people from outside Africa. We will pay special attention to critical moments of contact between different societies within Africa and between African and European people. We will focus on African ivory art produced on the Atlantic Coast and in the Penn Museum’s African Ivory Collection. | ANTH5060401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2730-401 | Global Health: Anthropological Perspectives | Michael B Joiner | W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | In some parts of the world spending on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. In others, people struggle for survival amid new and reemerging epidemics and have little or no access to basic or life-saving therapies. Treatments for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poor remain under-researched and global health disparities are increasing. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the biomedical sciences to explore 1) the development and global flows of medical technologies; 2) how the health of individuals and groups is affected by medical technologies, public policy, and the forces of globalization as each of these impacts local worlds. The seminar is structured to allow us to examine specific case material from around the world (Haiti, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, India, for example), and to address the ways in which social, political-economic, and technological factors -- which are increasingly global in nature -- influence basic biological mechanisms and disease outcomes and distribution. As we analyze each case and gain familiarity with ethnographic methods, we will ask how more effective interventions can be formulated. The course draws from historical and ethnographic accounts, medical journals, ethical analyses, and films, and familiarizes students with critical debates on globalization and with local responses to globalizing processes. | HSOC2382401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2805-001 | Ruins and Reconstruction | Lynn M. Meskell | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This class examines our enduring fascination with ruins coupled with our commitments to reconstruction from theoretical, ethical, socio-political and practical perspectives. This includes analyzing international conventions and principles, to the work of heritage agencies and NGOs, to the implications for specific local communities and development trajectories. We will explore global case studies featuring archaeological and monumental sites with an attention to context and communities, as well as the construction of expertise and implications of international intervention. Issues of conservation from the material to the digital will also be examined. Throughout the course we will be asking what a future in ruins holds for a variety of fields and disciplines, as well as those who have most to win or lose in the preservation of the past. | MELC2905001 | |||||||||
| ANTH 2970-401 | Nature Culture Environmentalism | Sita Mamidipudi | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Water wars, deforestation, climate change. Amidst many uncertain crises, in this course we will explore the emergent relationship between people and the environment in different parts of the world. How do people access the resources they need to live? How, when and for whom does 'nature' come to matter? Why does it matter? And what analytical tools we might use to think, mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change? Drawing together classical anthropological texts and some of the emergent debates in the field of climate studies and environmental justice, in this class we focus on the social-ecological processes through which different groups of humans imagine, produce and inhabit anthropogenic environments. | URBS2970401 | Society sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ANTH 3025-401 | Anthropology and Religion: Reason, Magic, Technology | Angelantonio Grossi | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Is religion a private matter? How does it differ from science and politics? Are there convergences between religious thought and current technological developments such as artificial intelligence? Is there still a place for magic and spirituality in today’s secular politics? Questions around the nature of religion, its boundaries, and transformations keep animating people’s lives and their imaginations. Situating the study of religion in the broader history of the Enlightenment and modernity, this seminar will introduce students to the study of religion beginning with its emergence as a comparative discipline during the rise of European Empires. Tracing the role of religion in the history of colonization, the course will examine the ways both science and politics seem to have parted ways with religious thought in what is usually understood as a process of secularization. At the same time, students will familiarize themselves with early ethnological accounts from West Africa, their receptions as discourses about the "Other” of Europe that prompted the genesis of concepts such as “fetishism,” “animism,” and questions of media and mediation. Tracing how modernity came to be associated with progress, rationality and scientific thinking, this course will illustrate how the differentiation between magic, religion, and science became a core feature of modern theories of the human and their entanglement with racialization, accumulation of wealth, disenchantment, and the ecological transformation of the Earth for resource extraction. Alternative approaches to the study of religion, spirituality and magical thought will be explored through close reading of ethnographies of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In parallel, addressing current interests in the materiality of information, the class will explore the convergence between technoscientific materialism, generative AI, and spiritual traditions such as Vodu and mysticism. | ANTH5025401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3368-301 | Anthropology of Museums | Vanicleia Silva Santos | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course examines museums as sites where issues of Indigenous identity, memory, place and power intersect. Museums have long been engaged in the selective preservation, representation, and contextualization of Indigenous objects, cultures, and histories. We will examine antiquarian impulses that inspired the collecting of curiosities, scientific studies that drove the collection of biological specimens, and nationalist ideals that shaped monuments to house imperialist memories. Museums are now sites for complex, often contentious discourse around Indigenous collections. Students will review histories of local and national collecting processes, with a particular focus on Native American collections and concerns. We will also consider how Indigenous curators and new kinds of museums have developed innovative displays and interpretations. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 3620-401 | Agroecology: Farming & the Planet | Kathleen D. Morrison | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Food production, essential to life, is also today a major contributor to climate change. In this course, we examine farming and food through the rubric of agroecology, an approach that integrates biological, cultural, and historical factors to develop understandings of farming and food history as well as agriculture's multiple contemporary forms, industrial and non-industrial. We will cover basic aspects of crop evolution and growth, soil, water, and nutrients, with a special focus on the historical global diversity of farming systems, especially in terms of potential alternatives to industrial agriculture. This review forms the foundation for a broader consideration of the impacts of food systems on the planet, and ways to address challenges of climate change, food security, and food sovereignty. | ANTH5620401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3670-401 | Experimental Ethnography: Performance, Ethnography, Possibility | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Students will engage with performance 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. | ANTH6670401, THAR3670401 | ||||||||||
| ANTH 3673-401 | Experimental Ethnography: Visual Media | Angelantonio Grossi | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Students will experiment with film and/or photography 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. | ANTH6673401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 3750-401 | Latin American Environmentalisms: Ecological Conflict and Cuidado (Care) across the Americas | Kristina M Lyons | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course thinks with and from Latin America to consider the environmental and ecological conflicts and politics of cuidado (care) emerging across the hemisphere in times of climate crisis and deepening socio-environmental injustice. Latin American thinkers and practitioners have provided innovative conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing, organizing, and acting in defense of territory and life. In this course, we will consider how legacies of colonialism and (neo)extractivism are not only an ongoing curse of the Americas, but also a a condition of possibility for feminist, decolonial, Indigenous, and ecological proposals, such as degrowth, buen vivir, cuerpo-territorio (body-territory), rights of nature, ontological politics, and participatory action research, among other ways of knowing, being, and doing. What can we learn from engagement with the historic and contemporary socioenvironmental challenges occurring across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas? How are diverse urban and rural communities, technoscientific actors, researchers, and ancestral knowers understanding and responding to the region’s emerging climate and environmental scenarios? What are the possibilities for dialogue, exchange, and problem solving between such diverse actors and their multiple ways of knowing and being that span millennial, colonial, and modernizing temporalities? Throughout the course, we will interrogate and reflect on these questions from the situated perspectives of Latin America and its many territorial realities, ecological relations, and social worlds. | ANTH5750401, LALS3750401, LALS5750401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5025-401 | Anthropology and Religion: Reason, Magic, Technology | Angelantonio Grossi | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Is religion a private matter? How does it differ from science and politics? Are there convergences between religious thought and current technological developments such as artificial intelligence? Is there still a place for magic and spirituality in today’s secular politics? Questions around the nature of religion, its boundaries, and transformations keep animating people’s lives and their imaginations. Situating the study of religion in the broader history of the Enlightenment and modernity, this seminar will introduce students to the study of religion beginning with its emergence as a comparative discipline during the rise of European Empires. Tracing the role of religion in the history of colonization, the course will examine the ways both science and politics seem to have parted ways with religious thought in what is usually understood as a process of secularization. At the same time, students will familiarize themselves with early ethnological accounts from West Africa, their receptions as discourses about the "Other” of Europe that prompted the genesis of concepts such as “fetishism,” “animism,” and questions of media and mediation. Tracing how modernity came to be associated with progress, rationality and scientific thinking, this course will illustrate how the differentiation between magic, religion, and science became a core feature of modern theories of the human and their entanglement with racialization, accumulation of wealth, disenchantment, and the ecological transformation of the Earth for resource extraction. Alternative approaches to the study of religion, spirituality and magical thought will be explored through close reading of ethnographies of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In parallel, addressing current interests in the materiality of information, the class will explore the convergence between technoscientific materialism, generative AI, and spiritual traditions such as Vodu and mysticism. | ANTH3025401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5060-401 | African Art and the Global Circulation of Objects | Vanicleia Silva Santos | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course offers an overview of the arts and visual cultures that used ivory in Africa, from insignias of power to utilitarian objects. This course covers raw and carved African ivory in the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1900. We will focus on historiography, sources, methodologies, and the process of collecting African ivories in the Atlantic world. We will also examine the importance of elephants for African societies. We will explore material culture through European records, museum collections, archaeology, and aesthetic and iconographic analysis of carved ivory pieces. Studying these objects may enhance our understanding of relationships among Africans and with people from outside Africa. We will pay special attention to critical moments of contact between different societies within Africa and between African and European people. We will focus on African ivory art produced on the Atlantic Coast and in the Penn Museum’s African Ivory Collection. | ANTH2630401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5087-401 | Race, Nation, Empire | Deborah A Thomas | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This graduate seminar examines the dynamic relationships among empires, nations and states; colonial and post-colonial policies; and anti-colonial strategies within a changing global context. Using the rubrics of anthropology, history, cultural studies, and social theory, we will explore the intimacies of subject formation within imperial contexts- past and present- especially in relation to ideas about race and belonging. We will focus on how belonging and participation have been defined in particular locales, as well as how these notions have been socialized through a variety of institutional contexts. Finally, we will consider the relationships between popular culture and state formation, examining these as dialectical struggles for hegemony. | AFRC5087401, GSWS5087401, LALS5087401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5211-401 | Petrography of Cultural Materials | Marie-Claude Boileau | W 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | Introduction to thin-section petrography of stone and ceramic archaeological materials. Using polarized light microscopy, the first half of this course will cover the basics of mineralogy and the petrography of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. The second half will focus on the petrographic description of ceramic materials, mainly pottery, with emphasis on the interpretation of provenance and technology. As part of this course, students will characterize and analyze archaeological samples from various collections. Prior knowledge of geology is not required. | AAMW5120401, CLST7311401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5215-001 | Archaeology of Animals | Katherine M Moore | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course introduces the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. Faunal analysis is an interdisciplinary science which draws methods from archaeology, biology, and paleontology. Bones, shells, and other remains yield evidence for the use of animals by humans, and evidence for the biology of animals and for past environments. The course will focus on research approaches to important transitions in human-animal relationships: the development of human hunting and fishing, animal domestication, early pastoralism, and the emergence of market economies in animal products. Class presentations will include lectures and discussion concerning research design and archaeological case material, with additional videos, slidework with field and laboratory equipment, and supervised work identifying and describing archaeological materials from the University Museum's collections. This class is taught in the Zooarchaeology Laboratory of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials | ||||||||||
| ANTH 5267-401 | Living World in Archaeological Science |
Chantel E. White Katherine M Moore |
TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | By focusing on the scientific analysis of archaeological remains from organic materials, this course will explore life and death in the past. Plant and animal remains from the archaeological record are studied from a variety of scales from landscapes and individual objects. The course uses laboratories in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) at the Penn Museum. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how organic materials provide key information about past environments, the domestication of plants and animals, and the evolution of human foods and their environmental impacts. We will integrate archaeological data through discussions of topics such as health and disease, inequality, and traditional ecological knowledge. We will also discuss current approaches in archaeological science, including molecular and genomic studies, to explore the complex ways in which humans have interacted with plants and animals over time. | ANTH2267401, CLST3303401, CLST5303401, MELC2950401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5330-401 | Literary Ethnography from the East: A Qualitative Writing Workshop | Kristen R Ghodsee | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Although little known in the West, there exists a rich history of ethnographic research and writing which emerged in nineteenth and twentieth century Eastern Europe. From Lev Tolstoy’s Caucasian cycle and Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island to Waldemar Bogoras’s “Chuckchee Tales” and sections of Pyotr Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, the eastern ethnographic tradition has always been intricately intertwined with literature, folklore, and politics. In this graduate seminar, we explore ethnography as a creative practice through a close reading of primary texts and the critical analysis of secondary sources on the unique trajectories of this understudied East European ethnographic tradition. This seminar will also be offered as a writing collective for graduate students aspiring to write dissertations or articles using ethnographic data. The course will be of interest to graduate students in anthropology, sociology, or any other discipline who wish to read and experiment with literary ethnographic styles of writing. To think about ethnography as a form of writing, a method of witnessing, and as storytelling, students will collectively work through a series of exercises and mini workshops. The course will explore strategies for describing characters, scenes, subjectivity, and the relationship between theory and narrative. The course will also interrogate the relationship between writing, fieldwork, and fieldnotes, and consider the ethics of ethnographic writing in an academic context. Over the course of the semester, students will work on an ethnographic chapter of their own dissertations or an ethnographic article in preparation for journal submission. | REES6690401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5467-401 | Community Youth Filmmaking (A) | Alissa M. Jordan | W 9:30 AM-12:29 PM | This course focuses on how the filmmaking medium and process can provide a means for engaging youth in ethnographically grounded civic action projects where they learn about, reflect on, and communicate to others about their issues in their schools and communities. Students receive advanced training in film and video for social change. A project-based service-learning course, students collaborate with Philadelphia high school students and community groups to make films and videos that encourage creative self-expression and represent issues important to youth, schools, and local communities. Stories and themes on emotional well-being, safety, health, environmental issues, racism and social justice are particularly encouraged. A central thread throughout is to assess and reflect upon the strengths (and weaknesses) of contemporary film (digital, online) in fostering debate, discussion and catalyzing community action and social change. The filmmaking medium and process itself is explored as a means to engage and interact with communities. This course provides a grounding in theories, concepts, methods and practices of community engagement derived from Community Participatory Video, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and Ethnographic methods. For the very first time, Penn students will be trained to operate a state-of-the-art TV studio at PSTV (Philadelphia Schools TV). At the end of the semester approved films will be screened with an accompanying panel discussion at an event at the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). These films will also be broadcast on Comcast Philadelphia's PSTV Channel 52 and webcast via the district's website and YouTube channel. 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. EDUC 5466 Ethnographic Filmmaking (or equivalent) is a pre-requisite or permission of instructor. | EDUC5467401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5470-401 | Anthropology and Education | Tyler Hook | R 9:30 AM-11:29 AM | 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 5580-401 | Monument, Memory, and Place in South Asia | Mark T Lycett | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | Drawing on the archaeology and landscape history of South Asia, this seminar explores place-making and social geographies as they play out through a series of inter-related themes: situated history, embodiment, monumentality, social memory, and appropriation. We consider approaches to site, monument, and image as experienced and construed through audience, circumstance, and politics; and how these conditions both inform and transform the meaningful construction of place, commemoration, and heritage. This discussion sets the stage for a broader consideration of the politics of heritage in contemporary South Asia. | SAST5580401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5620-401 | Agroecology: Farming & the Planet | Kathleen D. Morrison | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Food production, essential to life, is also today a major contributor to climate change. In this course, we examine farming and food through the rubric of agroecology, an approach that integrates biological, cultural, and historical factors to develop understandings of farming and food history as well as agriculture's multiple contemporary forms, industrial and non-industrial. We will cover basic aspects of crop evolution and growth, soil, water, and nutrients, with a special focus on the historical global diversity of farming systems, especially in terms of potential alternatives to industrial agriculture. This review forms the foundation for a broader consideration of the impacts of food systems on the planet, and ways to address challenges of climate change, food security, and food sovereignty. Graduate students will prepare a research paper. | ANTH3620401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5750-401 | Latin American Environmentalisms: Ecological Conflict and Cuidado (Care) across the Americas | Kristina M Lyons | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course thinks with and from Latin America to consider the environmental and ecological conflicts and politics of cuidado (care) emerging across the hemisphere in times of climate crisis and deepening socio-environmental injustice. Latin American thinkers and practitioners have provided innovative conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing, organizing, and acting in defense of territory and life. In this course, we will consider how legacies of colonialism and (neo)extractivism are not only an ongoing curse of the Americas, but also a a condition of possibility for feminist, decolonial, Indigenous, and ecological proposals, such as degrowth, buen vivir, cuerpo-territorio (body-territory), rights of nature, ontological politics, and participatory action research, among other ways of knowing, being, and doing. What can we learn from engagement with the historic and contemporary socioenvironmental challenges occurring across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas? How are diverse urban and rural communities, technoscientific actors, researchers, and ancestral knowers understanding and responding to the region’s emerging climate and environmental scenarios? What are the possibilities for dialogue, exchange, and problem solving between such diverse actors and their multiple ways of knowing and being that span millennial, colonial, and modernizing temporalities? Throughout the course, we will interrogate and reflect on these questions from the situated perspectives of Latin America and its many territorial realities, ecological relations, and social worlds. | ANTH3750401, LALS3750401, LALS5750401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 5805-001 | Ruins and Reconstruction | Lynn M. Meskell | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This class examines our enduring fascination with ruins coupled with our commitments to reconstruction from theoretical, ethical, socio-political and practical perspectives. This includes analyzing international conventions and principles, to the work of heritage agencies and NGOs, to the implications for specific local communities and development trajectories. We will explore global case studies featuring archaeological and monumental sites with an attention to context and communities, as well as the construction of expertise and implications of international intervention. Issues of conservation from the material to the digital will also be examined. Throughout the course we will be asking what a future in ruins holds for a variety of fields and disciplines, as well as those who have most to win or lose in the preservation of the past. | CLST7317001, HSPV5850001, MELC5950001 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6010-301 | Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Culture and Society | Kristina M Lyons | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | A critical examination of recent history and theory in cultural and social anthropology. Topics include structural-functionalism; symbolic anthropology; post-modern theory. Emphasis is on major schools and trends in America, Britain, and France. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6020-301 | Evolutionary Anthropology | Mallika Sarma | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course will explore various subfields of biological anthropology to better understand what it means to be human. Special attention will be paid to current issues and problems in these subfields, and the different ways in which researchers are attempting to understand and uncover the details of human evolution. Among the areas that are explored in this course are paleoanthropology, primatology, human biology, molecular anthropology, evolutionary medicine, epigenetics, and human life history. Specific issues to be explored include the primate roots of human behavior, brain and language evolution, new fossil hominins, the origins of anatomically modern humans, and modern human migration history. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6260-301 | Intensity | Andrew M. Carruthers | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course examines the manner in which humans encounter the continuous and gradable features of phenomena in social life - sensory qualities of objects, people's aspirations and affect, pitch movement during voiced talk, monsoons and sea breezes, biological growth and environmental degradation, migratory flows in transnational settings - and attempt to evaluate or convert them into discrete dimensions of social life. We examine how intensities and gradients are managed in everyday life as well as in institutional settings - through government policies, scientific protocols, surveillance regimes, infrastructural agendas - and we survey the ways in which everyday and institutional practices reflect and shape each other in societies across the world. In particular, we explore the question of what an anthropology of intensity might look like, and how it may reconfigure approaches to the ethnographic study of human affairs. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6550-301 | Methods and Grantwriting for Anthropological Research | Kathleen D. Morrison | T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This course is designed for third- and fourth-year graduate students in anthropology who are working on their dissertation research proposals and submitting grants. Graduate students from other departments who will be submitting grant proposals that include an ethnographic component are also welcome. Students will develop their proposals throughout the course of the semester, and will meet important fall submission deadlines. They will begin by working with various databases to search funding sources relevant to the research they plan to conduct. In class sessions, they will also work with the professor and their peers to refine their research questions, their methods, the relationship of any previous research to their dissertation fieldwork, and the broader theoretical and "real-world" significance of their proposed projects. Finally, students will also have the opportunity to have live "chats" with representatives from funding agencies, thereby gaining a better sense of what particular foundations are looking for in a proposal. | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6552-401 | The State, Civil Society, and Democracy in Africa | Michael G. Hanchard | CANCELED | This course examines the nature and dynamics of the state and civil society in Africa and how these determine the career of democracy, democratization and democratic rule in the continent. It considers different accounts of the state in Africa (or the African state), civil society and democracy in elaborating an informed understanding of the political, economic and social processes in the continent. How does the nature of the state in Africa account for the nature of the civil society and vice versa? How can the career of democracy in the continent illuminate our understanding of the nature of state-society relations? How robust is the relationship between civil society and the state? How can we account for the relationships among civil society, the state and democratic institutions and processes? What are the local, regional, and global forces that nurture and/or hinder democratic practices, including electoral democracy? These questions are confronted in light of their implications for, and complex interactions with, different social formations, institutions, groups, and social practices including gender, ethnicity, nationalism, race, religion, social protest, political institutions, economic formations, etc., etc. | AFRC6552401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 6552-402 | The State, Civil Society, and Democracy in Africa | CANCELED | This course examines the nature and dynamics of the state and civil society in Africa and how these determine the career of democracy, democratization and democratic rule in the continent. It considers different accounts of the state in Africa (or the African state), civil society and democracy in elaborating an informed understanding of the political, economic and social processes in the continent. How does the nature of the state in Africa account for the nature of the civil society and vice versa? How can the career of democracy in the continent illuminate our understanding of the nature of state-society relations? How robust is the relationship between civil society and the state? How can we account for the relationships among civil society, the state and democratic institutions and processes? What are the local, regional, and global forces that nurture and/or hinder democratic practices, including electoral democracy? These questions are confronted in light of their implications for, and complex interactions with, different social formations, institutions, groups, and social practices including gender, ethnicity, nationalism, race, religion, social protest, political institutions, economic formations, etc., etc. | AFRC6552402 | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6670-401 | Experimental Ethnography: Performance, Ethnography, Possibility | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Students will engage with performance 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. | ANTH3670401, THAR3670401 | ||||||||||
| ANTH 6673-401 | Experimental Ethnography Visual Media: Circulation, image-making, and ethnographic reservoirs | Angelantonio Grossi | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Students will experiment with film and/or photography 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. | ANTH3673401 | |||||||||
| ANTH 7030-301 | Readings & Research In Linguistic Anthropology | Asif Agha | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | The course is designed for students and faculty interested in discussing current research and/or research topics in any area of linguistic or semiotic anthropology. The primary intent of the course is to familiarize students with the literature on selected research topics and to develop their own research agendas in the light of the literature. Students may enroll on an S/U basis for 0.5 CU per semester. The course may be repeated for credit up to 4 times. |