Courses for Spring 2026

Spring 2026  Native American and Indigenous Studies

Please see Professor Moore about attributes for these courses and using them in the NAIS minor. ANTH 1490 and HIST 1125 are Core courses for the minor; the others listed here may be arranged to fulfill NAIS Theme Course elective slots.

Core Course: ANTH 1490 Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies

This course offers a broad introduction to evolving scholarship in the combined fields of Native American Studies and Indigenous Studies worldwide. Students will examine the various ways that Indigenous peoples and academic researchers are currently engaging with Indigenous knowledges, while also exploring the lingering impacts of settler colonialism and the influence of decolonizing methodologies. Students will gain foundational understandings of the cross-disciplinary nature of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), by studying theoretical interpretations of Indigenous peoples in academic and historical contexts, and by examining practical approaches to Indigenous research in diverse worldwide settings. Students will approach topics from a variety of disciplinary traditions, utilizing historical texts, ethnological studies, oral literature, material culture, and modern media, including websites and databases produced by and for Indigenous communities. Readings will include the work of researchers who bridge the disciplines of anthropology, history, folklore, art, law, science, etc. Students will watch a selection of films by Indigenous filmmakers, and attend lectures by a selection of Indigenous guest speakers. NAIS faculty advisors from various schools at Penn (e.g., School of Arts and Sciences, Education, Law, Nursing) will also present several guest lectures to highlight their unique experiences and research projects with Indigenous communities. Special case studies will focus on: new directions in collaborative research; issues in museum representation and repatriation; heritage site protection and Indigenous archaeology; legal interventions and protections for Indigenous rights; and innovative projects in language restoration and cultural recovery. Attributes: AANI, AANA  Professor Tina Fragoso Schedule: Tu and Thursday, 3:30-4:59 pm 

Core Course: History 1125 Native American History

This course will introduce the history of North America’s Indigenous nations from the continent’s first peopling through the close of the twentieth century. We will analyze the basic sequence and consequence of events such as: pre-Columbian migrations; the development of settled North American societies; the establishment and spread of European colonies; the contestation of and alliance with imperial projects by Indigenous nations; the emergence of Indian racial and cultural identity; the formation of the United States, the process of “Indian Removal”; the creation of reservations; the growth of assimilative programs through residential schooling; and the rise of modern tribal bureaucracy. Particular attention will be paid to the various strategies employed by Indigenous nations across time to establish and uphold government-to-government relationships with Western powers. Throughout, we will assess the history of Native America as flowing through its own channels—ones now intertwined with, but discrete from, those of the United States. Attributes: AANI, AANA .  Professor Peter-Jacob Olsen Harbich.  Mon and Wed 1:45-3:14 pm

First Year Seminar (Elective Course):  SOCI 0012 Not Just Numbers: Navigating Tribal Nations the Federal/Tribal relationship, and Population Data

 “I am Hopi, and I count!” This 2020 Decennial Census slogan rang through Indian Country in the years leading up to the 2020 count. Advocates from national native organizations encouraged tribal citizens to respond to the decennial census and include the American Indian/ Alaska Native racial classification. Who are the Tribal Nations? Why was increasing response to the 2020 Decennial Census important? What is the difference between tribal ancestry, tribal enrollment, the American Indian/ Alaska Native racial classification, and Tribal Nations? Why did people have to be encouraged to identify the American Indian/ Alaska Native racial classification? Why does this even matter? Whether your knowledge of the Tribal Nations and indigenous peoples is limited or vast, everyone in this course will gain a richer understanding of the Tribal Nations and indigenous peoples of the United States in the 21st Century. This course provides a contextual background to the Tribal Nations in the current era and an introductory exploration of American Indian/ Alaska Native population data and research in the United States. You will be introduced to different ways of defining/measuring the populations, data collections (barriers and limitations), how to verify interpretation of data, and even how to download data from federal public sources. Students will learn a high-level overview of the relationships between the Tribal Nations and the federal government, examine how different fields—such as policy, journalism, and social/biomedical research—utilize data, and learn to critically assess the strengths and limitations of various data sources or interpretations. Attributes (AUCD, AUSo) Prof. Gwynne Evana-Lomayesva Tues, Thurs 3:30-5:00 

New Elective Course: ANTH 1254 (LALS 1254) Archaeology of the Inca

The Inca created a vast and powerful South American empire in the high Andes Mountains that was finally conquered by Spain. Using Penn's impressive museum collections and other archaeological, linguistic, and historical sources, this course will examine Inca religion and worldview, architecture, sacred temples, the capital of Cuzco, ritual calendar, ceque system, textiles, metalworking, economic policies and expansionist politics from the dual perspectives of Inca rulers and their subjects. Our task is to explain the rise, dominance, and fall of the Incas as a major South American civilization. (Atributes AANI, ALSS, AAAR)  Professor Anne Tiaballi.  Tues Thurs 12-1:30. 

New Elective Course: ANTH 2710 Indigenous Media 

(Special course! One time only!)  This course introduces students to the active participation of Indigenous peoples across the globe in media technologies and the creation of media objects. We will critically explore how Indigenous peoples have engaged with media technologies—both adapting Western technologies and developing distinctive practices—to express their identities, contest stereotypes and systemic erasure, and grapple and expose pressing issues affecting their communities. This course starts by analyzing how Indigenous peoples have been represented in Euro-American media and considering the effects of these portrayals. Building upon this foundation, we will examine how Indigenous groups have used film, radio, and digital technologies to create their own modes of storytelling and self-representation. In the second half of the course, we will explore the complex relationships that have emerged with the rise of digital technologies. We will consider how Indigenous groups interpret and respond to the roles of these technologies in their communities. Importantly, we will examine how Indigenous peoples are not only users but active producers of digital technology—for example, by looking at a Diné reservation labor site involved in semiconductor manufacturing. Throughout these discussions, we will grapple with the ethical issues that arise from these technologies and their effects among Indigenous communities. Through close analysis of case studies, media artifacts, theoretical readings, and guest speakers, students will explore how media objects are not neutral or autonomous, but rather shaped by local ways of knowing, by the possibilities and limitations of technologies, and by the goals and values of societies. We will challenge the idea that media technologies are automatically good or empowering. Instead, we will examine technology as “ambivalent”—capable of helping, hindering, and creating unexpected outcomes. Students will grapple with the diversity of Indigenous groups and how differing groups go about media usage. While there are more than 5,000 distinct Indigenous groups across the world, this course will primarily focus on media participation emerging from the Americas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Students will gain critical skills in media analysis and thoughtfully engage with issues of media, technology, and Indigeneity. Professor Jennnifer Sierra, 2026 Wolf Humanities Fellow. Attributes: AANI, AANA/. Mon, Wed. 3:30-5:00. 

 

Also consider for NAIS credit:  

 

ANTH 3360 Peopling of the Americas The peopling of the Americas is a question that has intrigued scholars and laymen for over 500 years. The origin of Native Americans was also a seminal issue during the emergence of American Anthropology as a discipline at the turn of the 20th century, with research on this topic animating current studies of ethnohistory, indigenous archeology, post-colonialism and repatriation. The proposed course will review the scholarship dedicated to describing this long history from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will explore their roots in the expansion of modern humans into Eurasia, evaluate the new archeological and genetic research that has fundamentally altered our understanding of the migration history and diversity of indigenous peoples in the American continents, and examine issues of identity, ethnicity and cultural heritage in contemporary Native populations that extend from this knowledge. The course will further draw on the instructor’s fieldwork experience working with indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada, the Lower 48, Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as native Siberians in Russia, where the cultural and biological roots of ancestral Native American populations lie. Prof. Theodore Schurr MW 10:15am-11:44am

 

MUSC 1500  World Musics

This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. Lectures MW 8:30-10 or Tues Th 10:15-11:45. 

 

QUEC 0200 Elementary Quechua II

Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire and still spoken by approximately 6 million people throughout the Andes, is the most popular indigenous language of South America. The program focuses on the development of written and oral communicative abilities in Quechua through an interactive activity-based approach. Course includes an introduction to Quechua and Andean culture. Students will participate in pair, small-group and whole-class activities. Assessment is based on both students ability to use the language in written and oral tasks and understanding the language and culture. This beginning level Quechua course is designed for students who have little or no previous knowledge of the language. Lectures will be delivered in English and Quechua. Professor Jesus Rivera Guzman,  T, TH 5:15-6:44 pm