Anthropology Senior Theses

The Department of Anthropology provides motivated undergraduate majors with an opportunity to conduct research and/or independent study on a topic of their choice and to write an Undergraduate Thesis formally presenting the results. The option of writing an Undergraduate Thesis is available to any undergraduate Anthropology major. The Department of Anthropology encourages students to do original research for the Undergraduate Thesis, but a substantial library-based synthesis of an important theme in Anthropology is sufficient. Undergraduates have many opportunities to get hands-on experience in Anthropology courses, especially laboratory, field, computer, and Academically Based Community Service courses offered by the Department. Students also have opportunities to work on research projects directed by Anthropology faculty, curators at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum), researchers and staff, or advanced graduate students.

 

 

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  • Publication
    Wilderness Myth-Making and Indigenous Dispossession in Temagami, Ontario
    (2025) Avalon Hinchman
    Since time immemorial, the Teme–Augama Anishnabai have stewarded the lands and waters of Lake Temagami and ten–thousand square kilometers of surrounding territory in the modern–day province of Ontario. In the mid–nineteenth century, the colonial government initiated a series of legislative and policy maneuvers intended to disrupt traditional stewardship practices and remove the TAA from economically viable lands. By erasing the Indigenous presence in the Temagami region, the government symbolically transformed the ancestral homelands of the TAA into untouched wilderness ripe for the taking. Processes of commoditization and debt further eroded the TAA way of life into the early twentieth century. The operations of the Hudson's Bay Company Temagami Post encouraged the development of a material dependency among the TAA and reduced the supply of traditional subsistence resources. Several decades later, the Temagami region underwent re–naturalization through the creation of the Temagami Forest Reserve. White environmentalists, seeking to preserve the “wilderness” quality of the Temagami region, facilitated the dispossession of the TAA and undermined pre–existing Indigenous conservation principles. Collectively, I call these technologies of Indigenous dispossession. Drawing upon my personal experiences in the Temagami region as well as archival visits to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, this thesis will examine three such technologies, namely erasure, commoditization and debt, and sentimentalism, which collided in the Supreme Court case The Bear Island Foundation, et al. v. Attorney General for the Province of Ontario, with devastating repercussions for TAA land and conservation rights.
  • Publication
    An Egyptian Coffin of the Third Intermediate Period residing at the Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte
    (2025-05-19) Diego Federico Lope Córdova Rosado
    Now approaching its 70th year residing in the Museo de Historia, Antropología, y Arte of the University of Puerto Rico (MHAA), an Egyptian coffin has served as one of the most impressive artifacts exhibited in the only archaeological museum in the island. Since then, very little research has been done directly on it, with the most recent being a portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) pigment analysis done by undergraduate students in the Departments of Physics and Biology. The goal of this thesis is to elucidate this seldom studied coffin through analyses of its iconography and hieroglyphic text. This will be supplemented by material with analogous decorative styles and text of the same period to better understand the coffin’s significance in craft industry, scribal tradition, and religious belief.
  • Publication
    Swazi Indigenous Medicine: Beliefs, Practices, and Epistemes
    (2024) Aiyana Nosizwe Mate
    Swazi Indigenous medicine has long played a vital role in the culture and care practices of the Kingdom of Eswatini, and has evolved under the influence of processes such as colonialism, globalization, and the expansion of biomedicine. This thesis explores Swazi perspectives on the embodiment and knowledge-making practices of Swazi traditional healing. It draws from ethnographic interviews and participant observation, conducted across Eswatini and virtually. Building upon African relational research paradigms and postcolonial frameworks, the study findings reflect a vast ontological diversity in healing practices, encompassing healing that is embodied both physically and metaphysically. Similarly, Swazi medical epistemologies are diverse and encompass both human and more-than-human knowledge bases, including dreams, ancestors, and visions. The lived experiences of Swazi people illustrate the dynamic ways in which Indigenous healing practices synergize with and diverge from biomedical healthcare, and suggest possibilities for the integration and transformations of Indigenous medicine in changing contemporary contexts. Swazi Indigenous medicine is identified as experiencing colonial epistemic violence: aware of these harms, many study interlocutors work directly to combat epistemic and ontological erasure.
  • Publication
    It Takes a Village (and More): Collaborative Mobilization among the Kanawan Aytas in Post-IPRA Morong, Bataan, Philippines
    (2024-05-20) Wells, Vernon
    The Ayta Magbukún are an Indigenous cultural community (ICC) spanning and belonging to several villages across the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines. One of these villages today is located in Sitio Kanawan, Barangay Binaritan, Morong, Bataan, the site and community that serve as the focus of this thesis. Following the inauguration of the Philippines’ Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA), the recognition of Indigenous peoples (IPs) has incorporated Indigenous desires for self-determination within ongoing projects of state legitimation. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with community members conducted during June, July, and December of 2023, this thesis questions the nature of “indigeneity” as it operates in contemporary Kanawan. In mapping the Kanawan Aytas’ histories and place within the broader imagined Filipino identity, I analyze within a nested collaborative analysis (NCA) how challenges of the twenty-first century have spurred them to foster new collaborative networks of assistance, negotiation, and partnership. These emergent “collaborative mobilizations,” as I characterize them, have had shaping effects on the bureaucratic regimes governing ICCs and their land claims while inevitably transforming what it means to be Ayta Magbukún.
  • Publication
    Mental Health in the Age of Social Media: The Role of Digital Aesthetics and Displays of Vunerbility in the Experiences of Women of Color
    (2024-05) Asif, Maira
    In our hyper-connected yet isolating digital age, social media emerges as an intersection of digital and physical realms. It acts as a communal square where identities are formed, movements ignited, and cultural patterns woven. This project investigates the nature of mental health dialogues on social media such as TikTok and Instagram. Employing digital ethnography and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, it discusses how the aesthetics shaped by the attention economy are critical in drawing or deterring user interaction. Specifically, it highlights how women of color utilize social media platforms to forge new bonds of solidarity and mount challenges against entrenched societal systems. It also marks the advent of a novel style of authority characterized by relatability and authenticity, upending the traditional, distant expert image. This human-centric authority underscores the importance of displays of vulnerability, transforming social media into a stage for both empowerment but also potential oversimplification of mental health discourse.
  • Publication
    Landscapes of Belonging - Narratives at a Student-Run Free Clinic in Philadelphia
    (2024) Jacqueline Chan
    University City Hospital Coalition (UCHC) medical clinic is a student-run free clinic (SRFC) largely run by undergraduate, medical, and nursing students from the University of Pennsylvania. This thesis explores the role of the UCHC medical clinic’s role in patients’ lives and healthcare landscape of Philadelphia. Using narrative inquiry and semi-structured interviews, the research uncovers the lived experiences of patients from the broader Philadelphia community who sought care at the UCHC medical clinic. These narratives trace their healthcare journeys and the clinic’s unique place within the social fabric of the city. The stories also underscores the clinic’s significant role in providing consistent care and a space of belonging for underserved populations. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how identity and belonging is constructed in medical spaces, such as through reciprocal performances of labor of belonging, treating patients as active partners in their care management, and the sharing of space with community meal programs. The implications of these findings suggest a model for healthcare delivery that emphasizes human connection, empowerment, and fostering welcoming spaces of belonging.
  • Publication
    Critical Evaluation of Sustainable Monitoring in Philadelphia Museums
    (2024-05-19) Mac Mckillip
    Sustainability needs to be a prioritization of museum maintenance moving forward in order to protect cultural heritage, the structure of the museum, and its integrity. This means being aware of and improving upon shortcomings that prevent museums from being sustainable. This work acts as a case study for evaluating the extent to which museums in Philadelphia meet sustainable goals outlined by an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment framework. While the word sustainability is commonly associated with the environment, various social and administrative assets are also considered in evaluating how each museum interacts positively (or negatively) with its community, which ultimately contributes to museum longevity. These data are evaluated by in-person museum visits, where monitoring is performed based on an ESG-based sustainability metric checklist. As a result of this monitoring, it can be inferred that some museums operate more sustainably than others, though there is great variation in performance aspects. Even if some museums have shortcomings in some metrics but strengths in others, Philadelphia museums must be aware of and respond to sustainable needs, especially to protect both cultural heritage and the visitor audience. Many of the weaknesses these museums face rely on lack of transparency in interpersonal relations with societal and political stances as well as data clearance; in addition, many systems infrastructures should be upgraded, especially since emissions and energy data are not available to analyze.
  • Publication
    Orangutan Osteobiography: Surviving Broken Bones
    (2023-12-21) Sarah Caminito
    Orangutans are usually considered a solitary species, but they are able to survive severe broken and re-healed arm bones. This is remarkable as they are reliant on their arms for suspensory locomotion. We predict that orangutans survive on their own with broken and re-healed arm bones by compensating for their handicaps with a heavier reliance on their other limbs to climb. We identified how five particular orangutans compensated when bones were broken using osteobiography as our investigative method (n= 30). CT scans of long bones were taken to assess asymmetry in cross-sectional areas of humerus, radius, ulna, femur, and tibia and trabecular bone density at the femoral neck. We looked for one-sided weakness corresponding to the injured side of the body by calculating directional asymmetry (%DA) and absolute asymmetry (%AA) and using 95% confidence intervals in Excel. Writing osteobiographies for these individuals revealed their unique characteristics and strength. Osteobiography is an underutilized method in animal studies and this study indicates that there is a lot to be learned from considering the entire body holistically.
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