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Seasons Episodes

Training

Table of contents

Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8

Table of contents

Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8

A person wearing a bright-pink jacket, brown slacks, tennis shoes, and a tan, brown, and black hat crouches on a patch of brown dirt with a small instrument in one hand and a bag in the other, collecting a sample from an archaeological site.

essay / Field Notes

Ancient Tools in East Asia Reveal Middle Paleolithic Innovation

An archaeologist explains his team’s insights into how Quina scrapers in southwest China overturn long-standing assumptions about the region’s humans more than 50,000 years ago.

A beige cylindrical object with lines and marks carved on its surface rests on a soft green surface.

op-ed / Viewpoint

When Wartime Plunder Comes to Campus

Petra M. Creamer

An archaeologist considers whether students should learn from antiquities looted from Iraq.

A statue of a woman clasping her hands in a prayer-like gesture, her head surrounded by a halo of illuminated stars, stands in front of a large stained-glass window featuring blue and purple shapes with accents of red and green.

Why Are People Worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Goddess?

Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden of patriarchy.

In a room with a chalkboard and bright-red walls, a woman stands next to a person wearing a white-colored device that covers the eyes and is strapped onto the head. A third person in a pastel green shirt looks on.

essay / Material Culture

How Virtual Reality Is Restoring Liberia’s Culture

Craig Stevens and Chrislyn Laurie Laurore

Traveling Treasures is a new project led by a team of anthropologists that puts Liberians directly in touch with their dispersed cultural heritage through immersive technologies designed to bridge continents and histories.

A man silhouetted against purple, red, orange, and yellow glass blocks bows with his hands clasped before a candle.

essay / Crossroads

In Japan, Rethinking What It Means to Care for the Dead

Facing an increasing aging population and other societal shifts, people are looking beyond traditional family-based mortuary practices.

In a bright white art gallery, plaques on the wall spell out interjections such as “Hmm,” “Pff,” and “Ach” in colorful block letters. To the side of the artwork, two people stand gazing into an adjoining room.

essay / Decoded

Huh? The Valuable Role of Interjections

Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing.

A shadow of a person in a baseball cap holding a smartphone is cast against a gray wall.

op-ed / Viewpoint

When Calls for Vengeance Go Online

An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors.

As the setting sun reflects on wet sand, a silhouetted figure runs on a beach surrounded by palm trees.

essay / Wayfinding

A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive

A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-resident at the magazine, she imaginatively reaches for new possibilities.

Situated on display in a spacious building is a large, illuminated sculpture of an ancient humanoid face with glowing neon lines highlighting its features.

essay / Uncanny Valley

The Hopes and Hazards for AI in Reconstructing Ancient Worlds

An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical innovation and avoid misrepresentations.

A winged insect with black, white, and red coloring descends out of a clear blue sky. Vicki Jauron/Babylon and Beyond Photography/Getty Images

essay / Field Notes

“Stop This Invader!”—The War on Spotted Lanternflies 

Stephanie Palazzo

An anthropologist reflects on the racist undertones of some U.S. efforts to eradicate the spotted lanternfly, an insect from Asia deemed invasive.

A portion of a multicolored woven shawl features people moving boats down a river, with houses, mosques, and other structures on either side.

poem / Counterpoint

Erasure I and Erasure VI

In two erasure poems, a poet-anthropologist imagines alternative futures using text from the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British “sold” Kashmir to a despotic Dogra ruler. The poems are from a six-part series titled Song of the First Spring.

Bathed in purplish-blue light, musicians with guitars, microphones, and a drum kit perform on stage. Behind them hangs a black, blue, and white flag adorned with the band’s name.

essay / Field Notes

How Heavy Metal Fuels Indigenous Revival in Patagonia

Erin Wheeler Streusand

An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization.

Green, leafy trees grow out of a swamp that has green growth in the center of it.

poem / Identities

Tallahassee Ghazal

Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place—and that “most of us are breathing.”

A person in sunglasses and a white N-95 face mask stands in a street holding a sign that reads: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Behind them, other demonstrators congregate.

op-ed / Viewpoint

Fighting for Justice for the Dead—and the Living

Sean D. Tallman, Ashley Smith, Ariel Gruenthal-Rankin, and Donovan Adams

A group of forensic anthropologists argues their field must reject the myth of pure objectivity and challenge systemic inequities through advocacy and activism.

A gray-haired man sitting in a chair outside hits a chunk of flint stone with a hammer. The black and white photo is from 1923.

poem / Reflections

Debitage

jade lomas-trejo

Using an original poetic form, a poet chips away at a difficult history—becoming an agent of her own remaking and more than just an estranged daughter.

Underneath a large orange tent, a man wearing a backward baseball hat, red handkerchief, and white shirt and apron uses both hands to fry flatbread on multiple burners. Behind him, a small group wearing dark clothes and black baseball hats congregates.

essay / In Flux

Tracing Roti’s Pasts, Presents, and Futures

Mariam Durrani and Nilosree Biswas

The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world.

Rolling hills feature elongated human-made rows in the landscape covered by green grass, with a bright blue sky and scattered white clouds above.

essay / Pastimes

In Iron Age Britain, Descent Was Matrilineal

New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles and social structures in ancient Europe.

The silhouette of a person shows against the deep magenta and red hues of a sunset, with the sky otherwise dark. An island rests in the distance.

poem / Counterpoint

Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene

Sneha Subramanian Kanta

The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene.

A black-and-white photograph depicts three people ascending the steps of a brick building. At the foot of the stairs, a small crowd mills about.

interview / Reflections

David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism

Josh Reno and Holly High

When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy.

essay / Field Notes

Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya

Kirsten Jenkins, Kieran McNulty, Joshua Siembo, and George Umoja

On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history.

A yellow-leafed tree stands among others that have lost their leaves. In front, a field of brown grasses stretches. A blue sky with fluffy white clouds is above.

poem / Dwelling

Pequi Winds

Jacqueline Ferraz de Lima

A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations.

A landscape of tall grasses is silhouetted beneath a reddish night sky studded with innumerable stars that form a rippling trail in the sky.

essay / Field Notes

Launching Starship in South Texas

An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world’s largest rocket—and the wide range of responses it elicited from people.

Large billows of white smoke and a fiery tail of exhaust are emitted from a white cylinder as it lifts off into a gray sky.

essay / Field Notes

A Spacecraft’s Dance From French Guiana to Jupiter

Karlijn Korpershoek

As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents.

Against a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a hand holds aloft a hollow cube filled with white, black, red, green, and yellow electronic components.

essay / Field Notes

The First Space Launch for Mauritius

An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.

A bright arc of orange light carves across a deep blue night sky.

essay / Wayfinding

How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth

In a series of essays, a collaborative research project brings together “space anthropologists” to investigate how communities around the globe are grappling with the current boom in outer space exploration.

A pane of glass blurs pink, red and white, and other colored tulips that appear behind it.

poem / Standpoints

Emic/Etic

A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.

A woman in a blue sweater, tan dress, and tall brown boots pushes a dolly loaded with a great ape skeleton through a white room full of taxidermic animals.

op-ed / Standpoints

Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains

Alexandra Kralick and Stephanie Canington

Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. Now anthropologists are advocating to pay similar respects to primates.

Three small animals with tufts of white fur around their ears and gray, tan, and black fur on their bodies huddle together looking toward the camera.

essay / In Flux

Were Twins the Norm in Our Primate Past?

Tesla Monson and Jack McBride

New research uncovers how the last common primate ancestors typically birthed twins until evolutionary pressures began to favor singletons—likely driven by the advantages of birthing larger, brainier offspring.

White orchid flowers catch the light streaming in from the right-hand side of a photo, with the rest of the image in darkness.

poem / Expressions

Passing Notes

Melanie Hyo-In Han

The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.

Buffalo stands in water that reaches to the animals’ chests. The sun sets on the horizon, illuminating the rippling surface of the water. Trees are visible in the background.

essay / Dwelling

How a Megadam Disrupts the Flow of Water—and Money

Parag Jyoti Saikia

In Northeast India, a controversial hydropower dam moves toward completion—causing great uncertainty for downstream dwellers whose livelihoods depend on the river.

Búfalos de pie en el agua, que les llega hasta el pecho. El sol se pone en el horizonte, iluminando la superficie ondulante del agua. Se ven árboles al fondo.

essay / Dwelling

Cómo una megarrepresa interrumpe el flujo de agua —y dinero—

Parag Jyoti Saikia

En el noreste de la India, una controvertida represa hidroeléctrica avanza hacia su finalización —provocando una gran incertidumbre entre los habitantes de las zonas situadas aguas abajo, cuya subsistencia depende del río—.

A mountain looms beyond a green field of palm trees.

essay / Field Notes

The Vanishing Traces of Our Earliest Ancestors in Indonesia

A paleontologist journeys through Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago in search of Homo erectus remains, but uncovers how environmental devastation has erased much of the region’s history.

Podcast

Listen to anthropologists around the globe explore where cultures collide.

Open Podcast

Video

The Emotional Logic of a Black Poetics: Truth, Metaphor, Beauty, Joy

SAPIENS poet-in-residence for 2020–2021, Justin D. Wright, celebrated the end of their residency with a discussion of Black poetics and anthropological poetry.

9 Dec 2021

✽

Check out the video to hear a conversation between Poetry Editor Christine Weeber and SAPIENS Public Anthropology Fellow Eshe Lewis and Justin D. Wright, a doctoral student in sociocultural anthropology at American University and SAPIENS poet-in-residence for 2020–2021. Justin shone a light on their poetic methodology, what it means to them to be a poet and an anthropologist, and the emotional logic of poetic craft and what that has to do with truth-telling, metaphors, beauty, and crafting joy.

Check out all of Justin’s SAPIENS work here.

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