According to the UN, by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities. Urban life -- whether or not that means living in close proximity to each other, interacting with infrastructure, or new experimentations with the built environment -- has an impact upon how we experience the world and our sense of place. In this class, we will discuss theory on urbanism, infrastructure, and urban anthropology, and we will conduct observations about the built environment in and around campus. This class should be of interest to those interested in urban theory, anthropology, or architecture.

This course will introduce students to the comparative study of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. We will take a broad hemispheric approach instead of focusing solely on the experiences of any particular native community, allowing students to both acquaint themselves with the diversity of indigenous communities and better understand the multitude of indigenous experiences--or, what it means to be indigenous--across regional contexts. How do processes of imperial expansionism and settler colonialisms shape the conditions within which indigenous Americans now live? How do native peoples relate to settler colonial governing bodies today?

This course introduces students to "doing" anthropology through the study and practice of fieldwork and helps them develop tools needed to define/design their own ethnographic research projects. We discuss and put into practice ethnographic techniques, exploring how ethnographers form their topics of study and deploy theoretical resources to develop research questions. We study different approaches to engaging with people, place and things in ethnographic fieldsites and examine social, political, epistemological and ethical dimensions of our research methods, our interpretations, and our representations of the cultures/subjects that we study.

Forensic anthropology involves medico-legal cases where human remains have lost "personhood" (an individual cannot be identified due to decomposition or destruction of unique personal features). We will learn techniques that biological anthropologists apply to these cases to identify certain social attributes. We will also blend both biological and social anthropology to analyze human variation and well-being in urban settings. Working with real-world data, students will identify and trace the intertwined physiological, social and environmental factors that have shaped the growth and development of Philadelphia-area children over decades.

This seminar engages the sensorium -- our apparatus of sense perception -- to explore the worlds people make and inhabit. How can our senses become avenues of learning, imagination, and connection with others? We study ethnographic texts and multi-modal works thematizing sensory faculties and synaesthesia, as well as movement, orientation, and temporality. We consider how "sensory impairment" and neurodiversity may and should affect cultural norms of personhood and well-being. We pay special attention to synergies between medical anthropology and sensory anthropology in research on pain, addiction, psychoactive substances, and ritual healing.

Social scientists use ethnographic methods to describe and analyze the range and variation of daily interactions in schools. Ethnographic study allows researchers the opportunity to examine power dynamics that influence the daily life of students, teachers, administrators and parents. Vivid, critical ethnography helps us discover how cultural traditions, expectations, and opportunities are passed down to the next generation and how they impact school outcomes. This class will explore educational ethnography and students will complete observations hours in local schools and prepare a descriptive, mini-ethnography of a school community.

How do anthropological theories generate and critique the production of knowledge? How do diverse orientations seek to illuminate and question fundamental concepts and categories of social life, such as culture, power, agency, subjectivity, collectivity, and consciousness? This course examines key theoretical approaches that anthropologists have innovated. It also draws upon signal writings from social theory more broadly, tracing the dynamic interplays and engagements of anthropology with work in related fields. We attend throughout to the broader social and political contexts of theoretical developments.

How do global engagements with nuclear things affect latent colonization in contemporary and future ecologies and generations? How are toxic effects of nuclear things (re)presented through scientific, technological, political or cultural intervention? We explore material, technoscientific, and cultural transmutations of nuclear things (radioisotopes, bombs, medical devices, energy) and the work of (re)making those transmutations (in)visible. The course draws from a variety of theoretical frameworks / case studies in science and technology studies, the social sciences, art and environmental and digital humanities to think with nuclear things.

First term of a year-long course on sociocultural anthropology, required of first-year graduate students in anthropology and open to graduate students from other disciplines with the permission of the instructor. The seminar focuses on innovations in anthropological theorizing through writings that have historically shaped the field or revealed its shape as a distinctive discipline.

Over the course of six weeks we wrestle with, and return again and again to the following question: How do anthropologists make use of narrative forms to displace the gaze of the voyeur by addressing people and groups that are implicated in the social problems they encounter? Drawing from critical ethnographic methodologies, this class opens up a space to think about ethnography as a series of purposeful exchanges in writing. The ethnographies that we grapple with in this class are not 'of and about peoples,' but 'with and for the people who are its subjects,' a future in ethnography that Michael Fischer (2018) pushes us toward.

During the latter part of the 20th century, Japan became the world's second largest economy and a highly technologized, wealthy, and ordered society. While Americans once regarded Japan as a land of "corporate warriors," in the 21st century, scholars are looking to Japan to understand global issues such as labor instability, environmentalism, longevity, and the demographic crisis related to rapid aging. We explore key social issues in Japan today including gender equality, labor, school-to-work transition, public health, and popular cultural critiques of modernity and technology.

The course concerns Japan studies in the context of theories of capitalism, personhood, democracy, gender, and modernity. We consider the emergence of Japan as a place to think with in the American social sciences after World War II and the development of ideas about area studies in the context of the Cold War and post Cold War conjunctures. Additionally the course considers topics in which Japan are relevant to thinking about global issues, including global capitalism, temporary labor, biopolitics, environmental consciousness, media culture and consumer culture, work-life balance, and the demographic crisis related to rapid aging.

South America continues to be an object of fascination for travelers from outside the continent, eager to encounter an exotic landscape of rainforests and hidden cities. This course pushes aside this romantic view to explore the true cultural and ecological diversity of a continent with over 15,000 years of human history. We will engage with the archaeology of South America as a dynamic field of discussion and controversy, examining topics such as the initial peopling of the Americas, social complexity in the Amazon, Inca and Spanish imperialism, and questions of decolonizing the discipline.

This seminar exposes participants to both canonical and cutting-edge work in ethnomusicology. By the end of the semester, students will have a thorough knowledge of key question animating the discipline. Topics covered include: music, race, and nation; the politics of representation; gender, media, and performance; the production of space through sound. Classes will be run in a seminar-style format emphasizing critical discussion and listening.