Featured Archived
Seasons Episodes
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
Announcement

After ten years of exploring humanity in all its diversity, SAPIENS has concluded its publishing chapter.

While the magazine has closed, its living archive endures—open to all and preserving the many ideas, voices, and discoveries that deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.

In Spain, Scapegoating Spikes During the Pandemic

An anthropologist and a Rroma activist investigate the rise in prejudice and abuse toward Rroma people during the COVID-19 crisis.…

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…

Peeling Back the Myth of a “White” Midwest

The popular image of the U.S. heartland as only a place of rural, hardworking white farmers has always been a…

We All Love Roses

SAPIENS Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong reflects on horrific cycles of violence—and highlights injustices that are often papered over. We All Love…

Wisdom From the Winding Path

An anthropologist dreams of his work with Songhay sorcerers in Niger and of French poet Edmond Jabès, fictionalizing conversations and…

Crystal Worl’s Countermural Tells a Different History of Alaska

Indigenous artist Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl’s new public mural honoring Tlingit activist Elizabeth Peratrovich places Alaska Native peoples’ resistance to colonialism at the center of Juneau’s history.

Indigenous Mapmaking, or Bringing a Dead Map to Life

In a new book, an anthropologist explores how oil palm plantations in West Papua are upending Indigenous Marind communities’ ways of life. In this excerpt, Marind villagers call upon their plant and animal kin to confront a map used by the oil palm industry.

What Kenya’s Killer Cops Reveal About Police Culture

Anthropologists studying police violence in Nairobi are uncovering systemic problems that shed light on brutal law enforcement tactics around the world.

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.

Predominantly White Institutions’ Overtures to Black Students OR This Is What They Tell You Without Telling You

A Black queer anthro-poet unveils the exploitative strategies of many predominantly White institutions that use BIPOC as a broom to sweep their racialized issues under the rug of “diversity.”