Archaeology at the Borders of the Refugee Crisis

Archaeological methods, which are typically used to study the past, can also illuminate the experiences of today’s displaced people. This…

What’s Behind the Backlash to Lightyear’s Animated Kiss?

What do Twitter debates over Disney-Pixar’s recent family film tell us about today’s parenting politics in the U.S.? ✽ On…

An Archaeology of Personhood and Abortion

Opinions about fetal personhood and abortion have fluctuated enormously throughout history and differ in surprising ways between cultures. ✽ After…

Stop Projecting Nationalism Onto Stonehenge

Two archaeologists respond to the portraits of Queen Elizabeth II beamed onto Stonehenge—the latest attempt to appropriate the monument for nationalist messages.

We Should Talk More About the Abortion Pill

The abortion pill revolutionized activists’ fight for reproductive rights in Ireland in the 2000s—but in the U.S., cultural narratives have been slow to catch up to how medication has transformed abortion access.

Unmasked: Illustrating COVID-19 in Okoboji

An anthropologist and comic artist collaborated to bring to life the cultural squabbles and social complexities of the first pandemic year in Okoboji, a tourist town in northwest Iowa.

Was the Acropolis a Harem? A Myth of Orientalism

New research makes a case for reexamining the way 15th-century Turks used the Acropolis of Athens—and the role of Western beliefs in exoticizing the people of the Ottoman Empire.

Transracial Adoption and the Limits of Love

A Korean adoptee and anthropologist reflects on how studying kinship made her rethink her own fraught family bonds.

How Dr. Li Wenliang Went From a Whistleblower to a National Hero

The Chinese doctor who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus but was silenced by authorities—and soon died of the virus—has become a protagonist in a nationalist tale about the Chinese Communist Party’s successful pandemic response.

#MeToo Anthropology and the Case Against Harvard

When anthropologist John Comaroff at Harvard University was put on unpaid leave for allegations of sexual misconduct, a network of colleagues rallied to support him—revealing how entrenched systems in academia often allow sexual violence and other power-based abuse to continue.