Anthropology Magazine

Middle Ground

Violence

  • Poetry

    The image shows the dark bottom of a boat floating on the water and the outline of small fish.

    Middle Ground

    A poet-bioarchaeologist of the African diaspora confronts echoes of the Middle Passage in contemporary anti-Black environments.

  • Viewpoint

    A composite image shows quadrants of four people’s faces combined to make one face. Next to it, the word “race” is written in white letters on a black background.

    Are We So Different?

    A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora responds to anti-Black racism and the question of race.

  • Fiction

    The image shows a wide shot of tire tracks going straight down the sand on a beach underneath a bright blue sky.

    They’ll Steal Your Eyes, They’ll Steal Your Teeth

    In a fictionalized story based on long-term ethnographic research, an anthropologist of the African diaspora interrogates a history of colonialism, exploitation, racial inequality, power, and types of local talk in Madagascar.

  • Poetry

    A black sign with white letters is on the left beside a grove of tall trees and the moss-covered ruins of a building.

    When Asked if the World Would End They Answer No

    An Indigenous anthropologist-poet visits Woody Island in Alaska, formerly the site of the Kodiak Baptist Orphanage in the early 20th-century, where her great-grandfather lived before being sent to the Carlisle Indian School.

  • Poetry

    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.

  • Poetry

    Four painted Russian dolls of different sizes lined up from largest to smallest frozen in a block of ice.

    Matryoshka Song

    An Indigenous anthropologist-poet speaks to the Russian colonization of Alaska from 1784–1867 and how stereotypes and histories shape the lives of Indigenous women.