Class name: “Anthropology of Empire”
Taught by: Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor Ezgi Guner
What Guner has to say about her class:
This advanced seminar is an anthropological exploration of empire, both as an analytical category and a historical phenomenon. In the first half of the course, we focus on the historical entanglements between the discipline of anthropology and empire. This exploration ranges from early modern travel writing to the colonial practices of collecting, classifying, and exhibiting objects as well as humans and human remains, for instance in world’s fairs or anatomy museums.
The second half of the course examines the anthropological critiques of this epistemological legacy. Each week, we engage with ethnographies of empire from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and North America. Through this global examination, students deepen both their regional knowledge and conceptual understanding of race, settler colonialism, empire, museums, and restitution.
Guner on why she wanted to teach this class:
This course emerged from my own research interest in the intertwined histories of empire in the Middle East and Africa and their ongoing legacies in the present.
As an anthropologist, I also have an interest in the history of the discipline, which is inseparable from the formation and consolidation of ideas around race and racial difference, as well as from imperial conquest, chattel slavery, and colonial domination. In merging these two interests, I developed “Anthropology of Empire” to share my passion for historicizing and critiquing systems of oppression with students. By asking students to develop their own final projects, this course also allows space for everyone to pursue their own intellectual passions. In turn, I learn a great deal from students as well!
Guner on what makes this class unique:
This course provides a unique and immersive learning experience that is rooted in hands-on experience. We start from day one by watching a sci-fi video essay to explore the connections between science and empire. Next, we read a 17th-century Renaissance utopia to further examine the relationship between para-ethnographies and fiction as a non-scientific genre. These are open-ended explorations, shaped by students’ contributions.
In an in-class exercise, students engage in archival research and visual analysis by studying the Quaker Special Collection at Lutnick Library. Finally, students write a critical museum review as their midterm after a field trip to a Philadelphia museum, such as the Mütter Museum or the Africa Galleries at the Penn Museum. These are all examples of experiential learning, where students learn by engaging directly with various literary, artistic, and ethnographic materials and practices themselves and actively co-create meaning.