🐯 Princeton Anthropology unofficial reading list 2026
← Back to Fields of Study
Sophomore level
Violence ANT 264 (fa26)
- Righteous Dopefiend by Bourgois & Schonberg
- After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives by Edward W. Said
- Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman
- Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability & Political Violence in Turkey by Salih Can Aciksoz
- Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul by Deniz Yonucu
- Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War & the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani
- The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens by Bernard E. Harcourt
- Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon
- States of Terror: Begoña Aretxaga’s Essays
- Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America by Hansen et al.
- The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail by Jason De León
- Violence in War & Peace by Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois
- The Notion of Family by LaToya Ruby Frazier
- Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory & Storytelling in Palestine by Rana Barakat
- Leave If You Can: Migration & Violence in Bordered Worlds by Amelia Frank-Vitale
- Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod
- ✔️ The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- Illuminations: Essays & Reflections by Walter Benjamin
The Anthropology of Lying & Deception ANT 295 (fa26)
- How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austin
- The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption & Citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire by Sasha Newell
- Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money by Jacques Derrida
- Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City by Rihan Yeh
- Mistrust: An Ethnographic Theory by Matthew Carey
- Mules & Men by Zora Neale Hurston
- Defacement: Public Secrecy & the Labor of the Negative by Michael Taussig
People-Centered: Doing Anthropology ANT 299 (fa26)
- The Ethnographer’s Way: A Handbook for Multidimensional Research Design by Peterson & Olson
- Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice by Hilda Llorens
Junior level
Ethnography, Evidence & Experience ANT 300 (fa26)
- Leave If You Can: Migration & Violence in Bordered Worlds by Amelia Frank-Vitale
- Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene by Nayanika Mathur
- Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon
Food, Health & Justice ANT 311 (fa26)
- Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement by Hanna Garth
Japanese Society & Culture ANT 323 (fa26)
- Lost in Transition: Youth, Work & Instability in Postindustrial Japan by Mary C. Brinton
- Learning to Be Adolescent: Growing Up in U.S. & Japanese Middle Schools by Gerald K. LeTendre
- The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency & the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan by Amy Borovoy
- Food Safety after Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship & the Politics of Risk by Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna
Queer Becomings ANT 337 (fa26)
- The Struggle to Be Gay—in Mexico, for Example by Roger N. Lancaster
- Gay Fathers, Their Children & the Making of Kinship by Aaron Goodfellow
- Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance & Ballroom Culture in Detroit by Marlon M. Bailey
Art & Archaeology of Ancient Mesoamerica ANT 366 (fa26)
- The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec by Mary Ellen Miller
Ethnography of Schools & Schooling ANT 368 (fa26)
- Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School by Shamus Khan
- Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School by Kathleen Nolan
- Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools by Laurie Olsen
- Scripting the Moves: Culture & Control in a “No-Excuses” Charter School by Joanne W. Golann
- Up Against Whiteness: Race, School & Immigrant Youth by Stacey J. Lee
- Masculinity & Sexuality in High School by C. J. Pascoe
- Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom by Brian D. Schultz
- Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity by Ann Arnett Ferguson
- Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality by Armstrong & Hamilton
- Moving across Differences: How Students Engage LGBTQ+ Themes in a High School Literature Class by Mollie V. Blackburn
- Lives in Limbo: Undocumented & Coming of Age in America by Roberto G. Gonzales
Anthropological Theory ANT 390 (fa26)
- Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs by Paul Willis
- The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau
- Carnal Knowledge & Imperial Power: Race & the Intimate in Colonial Rule by Ann Laura Stoler
- Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu
- Live & Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt by Farha Ghannam
- Sweetness & Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney W. Mintz
- Capital, v.1 by Karl Marx
- Silencing the Past: Power & the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
- Colonialism & Its Forms of Knowledge by Bernard S. Cohn
- Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. Scott
Senior level
Visible Evidence: Wildlife Films & Multispecies Documentary ANT 455 (fa26)
- Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary & Ethnographic Films & Videos by Barbash & Taylor