All stories

A crowd watches a parade float shaped like a building with rainbow-colored windows and a heart made of rainbow handprints. Text reads, “justice community equality” and words on a blue roof read, “United Church of Christ, UCC.org/lgbt.” A small sign propped up against the float reads, “Amen. Advocate for Marriage Equality.”

Being LGBTQ+ in U.S. Protestant Churches

As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric sweeps the U.S., some churches are increasingly welcoming LGBTQ+ parishioners who participate in religious life and help reconcile Christianity with a spectrum of sexual and gender identities.
A photograph features a landscape with a large body of blue water in the foreground encircled by trees, small homes, and a few roads. The hills on which the latter sit ascend into mountains in the distance against blue skies.

a love letter to my qáqnaʔ

A sqilxʷ poet and artist who currently lives in Mohkínstsis, Treaty 7 in Canada speaks to their grandmother of longing and connection, wanting to wake up the medicine she planted within.
An illustration features a person with a protruding forehead, long brown hair, and a beard wearing an animal skin over their shoulders and holding a wooden spear. A child with similar long brown hair and clothing sits on the person’s shoulders.

The Family Lives of the Last Neanderthals

Two anthropologists explain a novel genetic analysis of ancient DNA and artifacts that suggests Neanderthals in Siberia lived in close-knit communities.
A photo shows a statue of cast metal figures resembling several human beings in a line, most from the chin up, and the center one from the bust up. They all have their eyes closed and arms raised.

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

A researcher delves into her family’s oral history and local archives to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era South Carolina.
A person with many small, long, black braids tied up and flowing down their back looks out onto the water.

Maize and Okra

A poet-anthropologist recollects when Muscogee (Creek) people offered his formerly enslaved ancestors refuge, extending the bonds of kinship.
A person with their back to the camera looks at two large photos of Korean American adoptees against white backgrounds on a dark wall.

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.
A young child in a blue and yellow winter jacket and red hat sits on the shoulders of an adult in a black jacket as they walk across a bridge next to cars.

Lessons We Learn

An anthropologist-poet of the African diaspora holds close family lessons on identity, freedom, and relationship in the midst of an anti-Black society.
A dilapidated dark, wooden barn stands in a dandelion field surrounded by grass and trees.

Elder

A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora travels from a northern city to his ancestral home in the rural U.S. South—both as a memory and a belonging.
An oil painting shows a man kneeling in a garden with his arms open and a woman supporting a small child who is standing and reaching out to him.

Did Dads Evolve?

Most male mammals are not involved in raising their offspring. Anthropological observations of fatherhood can provide insight into how—and why—humans are so different.
white feather floats on clear water with rocks at the bottom.

Matrilines

An Indigenous anthropologist-poet searches for ancestors while acknowledging the need to adapt.
the cookout justin wright

The Cookout (and All Other Manners of Heavenly Black Things)

An anthropologist's poem crafts a dream of freedom, peace, and joyous celebration for Black folks who have died as a result of anti-Black and anti-queer violence.
Chinese workers with the Central Pacific Railroad camped close to Brown’s Station, Nevada, in the 1860s.

Remembering the Forgotten Chinese Railroad Workers

Archaeologists help modern descendants of Chinese railroad laborers commemorate their ancestors.
A group of hard-working young market traders in Antigua, Guatemala, take a break to smash cascarones over each other’s heads.

On Fat Tuesday, Break an Egg Over Someone’s Head

A colorful custom that began centuries ago in Asia has spread through various countries and evolved into a celebration of joy and friendship.

What did intermarriage have to do with the creation of colonial nations such as the United States and Australia? Quite a lot.

Making Love—and Nations

Why was love across ethnic boundaries in colonial nations so dangerous? For one thing, it threatened to wrench nations apart because it risked binding them together.