Episodes
In our latest episode in this series What Concepts Do we welcome guest producer Nazlı Özkan, who leads us through a discussion of New Media. How has newness been produced as a feature of media in different political and historical contexts, and how can anthropological approaches help us understand how technological novelty becomes a part of statecraft, activism, and everyday life?
Published 04/09/24
Published 04/09/24
In this episode, Dr. Willi Lempert discusses anthropology of outer space, focusing on historical and ongoing forms of colonialism on and off of Earth, as well as indigenous futurisms and alternative imaginations of outer space. Our interview with Dr. Lempert was conducted in May 2023. For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/astro-colonialism-conversation-with-willi-lempert
Published 03/26/24
AnthroBites: Disability with Dr. Arseli Dokumaci. AnthroBites is a series from the AnthroPod team, designed to make anthropology more digestible. Each episode tackles a key concept, text, or theme, and breaks it down into manageable, bite-sized chunks. In this episode, Dr. Arseli Dokumaci discusses disability, ethnography, and her recent book Activist Affordances. Our interview with Dr. Dokumaci was conducted in May 2023. Show notes: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthrobites-disability
Published 02/29/24
Anthropology can be presented in various forms - what does it mean to share anthropology through podcasts? In the latest episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, we explore anthropological podcasts as method and as output. This episode features Dr. María Eugenia Ulfe Young (from the Nuestras Historias desde Cuninico podcast), PhD Candidate Anuli Akanegbu (creator of BLK IRL®), and Dr. Dominic Boyer (co-creator of the Cultures of Energy podcast). Find the transcription and...
Published 02/16/23
In this AnthroPod episode, we provide a retrospective on the Virtual Otherwise conference from the perspective of the local node in Agria, Greece. Touching on matters of accessibility, engagement, and multimodality, we ask: Whither anthropology conferencing?
Published 12/08/22
This episode is devoted to thinking through the specificity of the United States as a place in which to conduct fieldwork. For show notes, please visit : https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod
Published 09/15/22
In this episode, Professors Sophie Bjork-James, Carolyn Sufrin, and Elise Andaya share what the anthropology of abortion looks like in their fieldsites and how those sites will change in a post-Roe world, and we break down this topic with the help of other scholars of reproduction. For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropod-talks-abortion
Published 06/30/22
In part 2 of our series on sound and borders, cultural geographer Tom Western talks with Nick Smith about the work of the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (SGYF) in Athens, Greece. Featuring sound clips created by the SGYF team, the discussion unpacks the concept of active citizenship and the ways that sound can challenge the static character of border regimes in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean. For show-notes visit
Published 04/19/22
This is the second episode in the series "What Concepts Do." In this episode, Contributing Editor Sharon Jacobs unpacks the concept of solidarity, alongside anthropologists Darryl Li, Amahl Bishara, Lesley Gill, and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos. What is solidarity, and who can practice it? Is solidarity something we do within communities, or beside allies? What are some of the shortcomings and challenges of solidarity? For show-notes and resources, visit...
Published 04/05/22
In this episode, anthropologist and artist Alex Chavez talks about performance, migration and nationalism in the United States. For show-notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-sound-of-borders-a-conversation-with-alex-chavez
Published 03/25/22
Cassandra Hartblay, Cristiana Giordano, and Greg Pierotti discuss performance as ethnographic medium in the third installment of What Does Anthropology Sound Like, an Anthropod Series. For transcriptions, visual content, and other resources related to this episode of Anthropod, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-performance
Published 03/08/22
In this episode, Contributing Editors Joyce Rivera-González and Michelle Hak Hepburn unpack the concept of resilience, alongside anthropologists Roberto Barrios, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, and Jason Cons. Where did the concept of resilience originate from, and how is it so widespread? What are the benefits and shortcomings of the concept? And how do anthropologists engage with resilience ethnographically? For show notes, please visit...
Published 02/17/22
Professor Kamari Clarke reflects on her ethnographic work in Africa, her thinking on the legacies of colonialism in the discipline of Anthropology, and her recent work with the Radical Humanism Initiative. For the transcription and show-notes of this episode, please visit:
Published 02/03/22
The Ottoman archives contain just over a hundred photographs that look like old family portraits, but they were created for an entirely different purpose. They document the renunciation of Ottoman nationality, "terk-i tabiiyet," by Armenian emigrants bound for the US and elsewhere. As our guest Zeynep Devrim Gürsel explains, the photographs were "anticipatory arrest warrants for a crime yet to be committed"--the crime of returning to the Ottoman Empire. Gürsel's research goes far beyond the...
Published 06/09/21
Katherine Verdery reflects on working through her Securitate file and ethnographers' positionalities, her research in Eastern Europe prior to the fall of communism, and what anthropology offers at moments when the episteme shifts.
Published 11/15/20
Writing ethnographic poetry with Darcy Alexandra and Ather Zia. This is the second installment in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, in which we ask anthropologists to share their work and insights with us on the different forms their anthropological practice takes. In this episode, the theme is poetry.
Published 10/24/20
The "Anthropology and/of Mental Health" series is a two-part exploration of anthropologists' experiences with mental health. In this episode, Anar expands the conversation about mental health in anthropology through conversations and contributions about attention, grief, and unexpected changes to our plans for fieldwork and research.  For more information, as well as a transcript of the episode, visit the shownotes page at:...
Published 06/25/20
Hunleth and Yount-André discuss Hunleth's research on children's caregiving amid Zambia's tuberculosis (TB) outbreak and trace parallels with today's COVID19 pandemic. They look at the role of proximity, recognizing the different ways children offer care, how to discuss disease with children and problematize the idea of disclosure, and the moral valences that become attached to disease and the people who suffer from them - particularly around privilege and vulnerability.
Published 05/15/20
Jonathan Rosa discusses raciolinguistic ideologies, a framework developed by Rosa and Professor Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania) to critique the racialization of various speaking subjects and their linguistic practices. The interview begins with a focus on this concept and related themes in Rosa’s book, then turns to a consideration of broader implications of this work for academia, anthropology in particular. A common thread throughout this interview is the issue of coloniality,...
Published 02/17/20
Sophie Chao and Bianca Williams discuss activism, organizing, and anthropology in the first installment of a new Anthropod series: What Does Anthropology Sound Like.
Published 01/20/20
In this episode, AnthroPod Contributing Editor Anar Parikh talks to Prof. Beatriz-Reyes Foster and Prof. Rebecca Lester about their blog series "Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork" on Anthrodendum. For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod
Published 11/14/19
Ruth Behar speaks with Kristen Ghodsee about how anthropologists can be public intellectuals: They discuss how can anthropologists maintain credibility as scholars within the academy while also speaking to broader audiences; the necessity of patience and thinking of a career over the long duree; the productive spaces and possibilities within the discipline to reach out; and tips and suggestions for how to write in ways that appeal to non-academic audiences.
Published 08/15/19
Guests Camilla Ida Ravnbøl and Marie Kolling explore the impact that digitalizing economies have on communities that are poor and highly cash dependent. The episode features Ravnbøl's research with Roma migrants at the Roskilde Festival, a music festival in Denmark that went cashless in 2017 but has developed accommodations for cash-dependent Roma migrants who collect bottles for refunds. Rich soundscapes anchor the listener in the ethnographic context of this research.
Published 06/27/19
AnthroBites: Anthropology of NGOs by Society for Cultural Anthropology
Published 05/02/19