“Anthropologists study the complex diversity of lived human worlds as they play out on the ground, as they manifest in the lived experiences of those who make up those worlds; to do so, we take up perspectives that are immanent to those worlds, endeavoring to understand the experiences and behaviors of others from within. In so doing, we allow those worlds to transform us.”

Constantine V. Nakassis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, delivered remarks in celebration of the Division of the Social Sciences’ 2026 Spring Quarter Diploma and Hooding Ceremony.

Read the full address here . . .

Current Anthropology recently published a special issue, Populism: Anthropological Approaches, co-edited by University of Chicago Professor William T.S. Mazzarella, Robert Samet, and Kabir Tambar.  

This issue arises from a Wenner-Gren symposium organized by Mazzarella, Samet, and Tambar in March 2023. Wenner-Gren President, Danilyn Rutherford, said the work mobilizes allies “to cultivate an anthropological approach to populism that could serve as an alternative to those advanced by pundits and mainstream political scientists.”

Read the special issue here, starting with a foreword from Rutherford. 

Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Caribbean. Visit History on the Edges: Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Caribbean at The Joseph Regenstein Library through August 21, 2026. Curated by Ryan Cecil Jobson, Department of Anthropology, Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard, Department of English, and Rachel Chery, Department of Music, this exhibition traces a life in Caribbean letters from Trouillot’s earliest writings through his enduring scholarly contributions and legacy at the University of Chicago.

Learn more here . . .