Applied anthropology kul

I recommend an original article devoted to the understanding of man and social relations through the analysis of the concept of "dividual", Native American traditions and the meaning of participation and solidarity as understood by Karol Wojtyła:

Reclaiming the Dividual: Language, Solidarity, and Epistemic Decolonization - Topoi The article advocates for epistemic justice. It promotes knowledge inclusion and respect for Indigenous ways of knowing. To this end, it analyzes the impact that language has on the shape of thinking and human attitudes by addressing the neglected issue of the “dividual-individual” dichotomy. Th...

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We will send the final volunteer schedule to available individuals by 5/22 for confirmation. Thanks so much!

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Study Applied Anthropology in Poland | Admissions 2026/27 Opening Soon!
Are you interested in cultures, global diversity, humanitarian and business in an international context?
Applied Anthropology is a unique interdisciplinary programme combining anthropology and business, designed for students who want to build intercultural competence and practical skills for global careers.

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The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland

Step-by-step guide → Studiuj na KUL Step-by-step guide Before you select a programme from the programme catalogue in the online registration system e-Rekrut, please read the step-by-step guide and prepare the required documents: Bachelor`s degree How to apply Before applying, please read the educational requirements for the selected p...

Two different perspectives on Columbus Day (STOP and THINK):
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INDIGENOUS perspective:

We're Still Here: Why It's Still a Good Day to Be Indigenous

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day on Alcatraz Island. (Photo/Arthur Jacobs) By Levi Rickert , October 13, 2025

Opinion.
It’s a good day to be Indigenous.
Yes, even now. Even after what we witnessed this past week when the White House issued a proclamation for Columbus Day and failed to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Even with the return of a presidential administration that has made no secret of its disdain for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. And even though white nationalists continue to grumble at the idea of honoring Indigenous peoples at all—yes, it is still a good day to be Indigenous.

Being Indigenous doesn’t depend on who sits in the Oval Office. It doesn’t hinge on whether a president utters the words “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” or if federal websites decide to scrub Native achievements from their pages. Our strength is not defined by visibility in colonial spaces. Our strength comes from something much older, deeper, and more enduring.
We are still here.
Let’s talk about what happened. This past Thursday, the White House only released a proclamation for Columbus Day — nothing for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which has now been recognized in some form by more than 20 states and over 130 cities and towns. That silence was loud. But it wasn’t surprising.
After all, this is the same administration that stormed back into office declaring war on DEI initiatives. Federal agencies began purging mentions of contributions by people of color. Even the Defense Department — prior to renaming itself the Department of War — removed references to the Navajo Code Talkers from its website. It took serious backlash from Indian Country for them to quietly restore those mentions.
And just last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he would not rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who killed as many as 300 Lakota people — most of them unarmed women, children and elders — at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. The pattern is clear: This administration will honor those who committed atrocities against Native peoples while erasing the contributions of those who served with distinction.
So no, we weren’t shocked when Indigenous Peoples’ Day was erased at the federal level. But we’re also not deterred. We’ve always had to fight to be seen. And we’ve never needed permission to celebrate ourselves.
Let’s also be clear about something that gets twisted too often in this conversation: Being against honoring Columbus is not the same as being anti-Italian.
The criticism of Columbus is based on truth, not prejudice. His legacy is one of conquest, enslavement and genocide. He did not “discover” America — there were already thriving Indigenous nations across this continent thousands of years before 1492.
What Columbus did do was initiate a wave of violence that forever altered the lives of Native peoples across the Americas. This is not debatable; it is historical fact, documented by scholars, and acknowledged by many — including Italians themselves.
Some Italian Americans have come forward to say they don’t want their cultural pride tied to Columbus. And they shouldn’t have to. Italian heritage can and should be celebrated through figures who reflect the best of that culture — not through a colonizer whose name has become synonymous with suffering in Indian Country. Being against Columbus statues and Columbus Day is not an attack on Italian identity, just as opposing Confederate monuments is not an attack on Southern culture. It’s about aligning public honor with shared values — truth, justice, and respect.
Let’s also reject the false idea that opposing Columbus is anti-American. If anything, it's deeply American to confront the full truth of our history. To question who we celebrate, and why. That’s what “to form a more perfect union” is about. That’s what progress looks like.
Today, we celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day because it tells a more accurate story. It’s a day that recognizes the resilience of Native peoples — the original stewards of this land — and affirms our place in the present and the future, not just the past. But even if this day weren’t on the calendar, we would still be here, still celebrating our cultures, still fighting for our rights, and still loving our people.
Because every day is a good day to be Indigenous.
We carry forward languages that were nearly lost. We raise our children with teachings that go back generations. We protect sacred lands and sacred stories. We organize, vote, protest, create, lead, teach, and thrive. And we do it all while navigating the ongoing realities of colonization, invisibility, and erasure.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not just a counterpoint to Columbus Day—it’s a declaration. A refusal to be erased. A reminder that we are more than what happened to us. We are who we have always been.
So yes, even though the powers that be chose not to recognize us this year, we still recognize ourselves. We always have.
Today and every day, it’s a good day to be Indigenous.

Thayék gde nwéndëmen - We are all related.
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And the different perspective on Columbus Day:

Yes, Christopher Columbus
by Robert Royal, MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2025

Today is Columbus Day, or (among the alternatively oriented) Native Peoples’ Day, both displaced in any case, as even major Catholic feasts now are, to a different date, so that people will have long weekends, or not be inconvenienced, or something. In any event, it’s a day now redefined in terms that make it unclear what, if anything, we are celebrating, or deploring, in this booming, buzzing confusion that we still (kind of) think of as the twenty-first Christian century.
So let us seek a little clarity.
For most of subsequent history following his voyages, Columbus’ reputation was strong and settled. It began to change, in the nineteenth century, in the United States, of all places. Washington Irving got the idea that Columbus must have been a Protestant and a Progressive – he opposed the council of learned theologians, you see, who told him (rightly) that the distance from Spain to China was greater than he was saying. But in an expanding and confident America, El Almirante became, in Irving’s imagination, the precursor of American initiative and vision.

Medieval Europe, another Columbus myth notwithstanding, knew the world was a ball (see Dante), not flat – what the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell rightly mocked as “the pizza theory.” Columbus didn’t “prove the earth was round” and no one thought so until ignorance of pre-modern times became widespread.
The 19th-century American progressives, however, had still other plans for the Genoese Catholic sailor. Andrew Dickson White, a founder and president of Cornell University, enlisted him in the Darwinian cause – for reasons similar to Irving’s, as a maverick who broke with religious obscurantism to “follow the science.”
Other appropriations and mis-appropriations followed.
The Knights of Columbus, mostly Irish, around the same time, saw the explorer as a model Catholic American. And the growing number of Italian immigrants – well, just look at Columbus Circle in Central Park.

In recent decades, of course, all that has become the case for the prosecution. A significant swath of American elites has chosen to repudiate its own history, ironically based on cherry-picked Christian principles that Columbus helped bring to the Americas.
He’s now also often charged with bringing all the evils that have allegedly plagued the Americas since 1492 – slavery, genocide, racism, inequality, patriarchy, r**e, torture, war, environmental degradation, disease, etc.

Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn, 1847 [Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.]
Contrary voices have asked (e.g., the present writer): if we’re going to attribute all these evils to that man, doesn’t he also deserve credit for the many good things that have also followed on these shores?
Besides, he didn’t have to bring those bad things here because they already existed among the various native peoples also being “remembered” today. Few ever really look at native cultures and practices, which also included colonialism, imperialism, territorial conquest, a warrior ethos, human sacrifice, and – dare one say to our LGBT-ified elites – overwhelmingly, binary views of human s*xuality.
Prior to the Great Columbus Reversal, in 1892, Pope Leo XIII praised Columbus in Quarto abeunte saeculo: “For the exploit is in itself the highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he who achieved it, for the greatness of mind and heart, can be compared to but few in the history of humanity.” Leo added: he brought Christianity to “a mighty multitude, cloaked in miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain gods.”
Amidst all these vagaries, the man himself has largely been lost. The Dominican missionary Bartolomé de las Casas, the well-known – almost fanatical – “defender of the Indians,” noted the “sweetness and benignity” of the admiral’s character. And even while criticizing some things that he did, remarks, “Truly I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions were good.” Las Casas attributed Columbus’ shortcomings to ignorance about how to handle an unprecedented situation.
The explorer’s religion, for instance, was real. Columbus deeply believed that the Gospel had to be preached to all nations before Christ could return, and left money in his will for a crusade to retake the Holy Land.
Sincere Christian. Great sailor. Poor governor. When he was arrested and taken back to Spain in chains during his Third Voyage, it was because of his harshness towards both natives and Spaniards. The type is not unknown: an easy-going man who overcompensates when things get tough.
And also a sharp observer. He noted subtle differences among the Caribbean tribes. And with only rudimentary technologies, made amazing discoveries in addition to the new-found lands. Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto puts it thus:
his decoding of the Atlantic wind system; his discovery of magnetic variation in the Western hemisphere; his contributions to the mapping of the Atlantic and the New World; his epic crossing of the Caribbean; his demonstration of the continental nature of parts of South and Central America; his apercu about the imperfect sphericity of the globe [the earth bulges in the Atlantic near Brazil]; his uncanny intuitive skill in navigation. Any of these would qualify an explorer for enduring fame; together they constitute an unequaled record of achievement.
Let it also be said: The world as we know it began in the fifteenth century. Not the world in the sense of human life or civilizations which had existed for millennia, but the world as a concrete reality in which all parts of the globe came into contact with one another and began to recognize themselves as part of a single human race – a process still underway.
It’s because of a small expedition by a few men and ships, led by Columbus, the real one not the myth, driven by a mishmash of personal ambition, the search for profit, and religious idealism, praying the Salve Regina together every evening at sea, that made the Old and the New Worlds into one, great, human thing.
A Spanish chronicler a few decades after 1492 called it “the greatest event since the creation of the world (excluding the incarnation and death of Him who created it).”

So Happy Columbus Day.
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STOP and THINK ...

About PERSON: "Key themes in Anthropology: Culture, Society, Ethnicity, Identity" (Photo: lecture at KUL, Applied Anthropology KUL)

The Strange Power of Laughter !?

An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt.
By Kirsten Bell, 21 Jan 2025 READ:

The curious qualities of laughter can surprise, delight, or even silence.
paseven/Getty Images
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WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I tended to fall into bouts of uncontrollable laughter. Basically, once I started laughing, I found it very difficult to stop. The problem was particularly acute in contexts where I wasn’t supposed to laugh, when the urge to laugh would become utterly overwhelming—to the extent that I quickly acquired the moniker “Giggling Gertie.”
One of the best descriptions I have seen of this phenomenon is the “giggle loop.” This phrase was coined by a character named Jeff in the early 2000s British sitcom Coupling.
“Basically, it’s like a feedback loop,” Jeff says. “You’re somewhere quiet. There’s people. It’s a solemn occasion: a wedding. No! It’s a minute’s silence for someone who’s died. … Suddenly, out of nowhere, a thought comes into your head: The worst thing I could possibly do during a minute’s silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do laugh—automatic reaction!”
There’s nothing like getting caught in a giggle loop, where the desire to laugh builds until it bursts out at a disastrous moment. Only then do we often realize that laughter is a rather strange phenomenon. Although we usually think of laughter as a response to something funny, sometimes laughter is no laughing matter!

“The Laughing Audience” is a 1733 etching by British artist William Hogarth.
William Hogarth, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain
As an anthropologist specializing in health and medicine, laughter isn’t really in my professional wheelhouse—unless you subscribe to the view that laughter is the best medicine. My interest in the topic is more personal, not just because of my history as a former Giggling Gertie, but because it’s a behavior that is much less straightforward than it seems.
Ideally, laughter is something we share. According to anthropologist Munro Edmonson, laughter is sociable; it ideally invites a similar response. Indeed, it has contagious qualities: When we hear someone laugh, we often laugh, or at least smile, ourselves—an effect consistently shown through psychological research. This is how we ended up with canned laughter on sitcoms. Studios realized that the sound of laughter made their shows seem funnier to their audiences, while also giving them a degree of control over when people laughed.
But laughter is rather different when you’re the only one doing it. Consider actor Natalie Portman’s awkward chuckles after delivering a bad joke during her speech at the Golden Globe Awards in 2011. The 4-second laugh quickly became the subject of endless looped videos. As the cultural studies scholar Fran McDonald shows in her analysis of the incident, “laughter without humor appears to render us mechanical, terrifying, monstrous.”
WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
According to the anthropologist Munro Edmonson, the central feature of laughter is aspiration: We release a forceful puff of air as we laugh.
But laughter is also characterized by repetition. In fact, given the extraordinary variability in the sounds people make when they laugh, repetition is what makes laughter universally recognizable. This is why writers conventionalize laughter as “he-he-he,” “ha-ha-ha,” and “ho-ho-ho” (well, at least if you’re Santa Claus). Notably, this feature isn’t exclusive to English representations. Edmonson observed that laughter is represented in Russian as xe, xe, xe; in Tzotzil—a Mayan language spoken in Mexico—it’s ‘eh ‘eh ‘eh.

An illustration of “Moderate Laughter and Smiling” shows photos from Charles Darwin’s 1899 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Project Gutenberg
We don’t fully understand why humans make this sound when we laugh. When 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin set out to explore the biology of feelings in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, he wrote, “why the sounds which man utters when he is pleased have the peculiar reiterated character of laughter we do not know.” However, the response seems to occur well before culture is embedded in our behaviors: Recognizable laughter is evident in babies from 4 months old.
Nor is laughter unique to humans. Great apes respond to being tickled in much the same way that humans do. Of course, because chimps, bonobos, et cetera have a different vocal apparatus than humans, it sounds more like a dog panting or a person having an asthma attack or energetic s*x. However, these primate sounds have the same “peculiar, reiterated character” that Darwin highlighted in humans. This is why laughter is characterized by scientists as a cross-species phenomenon.
Yet, while laughter is evident in the play of other primates, it’s unclear whether they have a sense of humor. Recent research provides evidence of a capacity for teasing through nonverbal behavior. But, as the evolutionary psychologist Robert Provine noted, “there is no evidence that they respond to apparently humorous behavior, their own or that of others, with laughter.”
Giving meaning to laughter seems to be distinctively human.
LAUGHTER AND “CIVILITY”
While some laughter is deliberate, much of it is outside conscious control—an attribute that goes a long way toward explaining the widespread Euro-American ambivalence toward the act. According to the literary scholar Sebastian Coxon, a growing anxiety about mirth is evident in the European historical record from the late Middle Ages. For example, the 16th-century Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, better known for advising children to “replace farts with coughs,” also warned against “loud laughter and immoderate mirth.”
Notably, Erasmus singled out the “neighing sound that some people make when they laugh” for particular opprobrium—an impulse evident in the contemporary tendency to compare unrestrained laughter with the cries of animals: “howling” with laughter, “hooting” in delight, “snorting” with amusement, and so on. Indeed, while the term “guffaw” might not be borrowed from animal noises, it certainly sounds like it could be.

“Laughter” is a drawing by British artist Thomas Rowlandson from 1800.
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Public Domain
These characterizations reveal an attempt to draw laughter into the realm of taste and civility—categories that are strongly tied to gender and class strictures. For instance, in an 1860 etiquette guide titled The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness: A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society, readers are counseled to moderate their laughter during a dinner party so that it’s neither too loud nor too soft: “To laugh in a suppressed way, has the appearance of laughing at those around you, and a loud, boisterous laugh is always unlady-like.”
Social judgments abound not just in relation to how we laugh but what we laugh at—as an early 19th-century artwork attests. “Laughter,” etched by British artist and social commentator Thomas Rowlandson, depicts a man laughing at his cat adorned in a bonnet and cloak. The caption reads:
“Laughter is one of the most pleasing of the Passions and is with difficulty accounted for, as risibility is frequently excited from the most simple causes—as is the case with the Countryman and his Cat.”
The implication is that “unsophisticated” countrymen lack “class” and are therefore easily amused. (For the record, I am equally unsophisticated, because I will never not find cats pictured with human props funny.)
LAUGH AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU?
Still, despite the association between humor and taste, it’s often physical comedy that gets the most laughs. It’s not a coincidence that the first truly global hit comedy was The Gods Must Be Crazy, whose sublime “Tati-like slapstick routines” drew audiences from New York and Caracas to Tokyo and Lagos, despite being widely condemned by film reviewers as apartheid propaganda.
Indeed, screenwriters have long predicted that physical humor will become increasingly prominent in Hollywood comedies because it “transcends dialogue and even most cultural differences,” and movies must increasingly appeal to a global market to produce reliable returns. (As far as I can tell, the future of Hollywood films is basically Marvel movies and slapstick comedies.)
This also helps explain the success of shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos and Total Wipeout, which largely fall into the genre of comical mishaps. “This is unbelievably stupid,” I used to declare whenever my husband watched the latter, where contestants completed ridiculous obstacle courses in the hopes of winning 10,000 pounds, and audiences tuned in to see them repeatedly being hit by objects, falling off objects, and falling onto objects. But I would laugh despite myself, because I simply couldn’t help it.
As McDonald observes, laughter disrupts the notion of a stable, coherent self—reflected in terms like “cracking up” and “bursting.” Moreover, unrestrained laughter doesn’t just signify a lack of personal control; it can be politically dangerous as well. The literary historian Joseph Butwin writes of “seditious laughter” as a weapon of the oppressed that can serve to destabilize hierarchies and power relations.
In the end, it’s clear that laughter is a deeply curious thing. It’s simultaneously the most social of human expressions and the one most disruptive of social edifices and rules. Shared, sanctioned laughter might bring us together, but unsanctioned laughter shows the cracks, revealing that we’re not quite who we think.

Editors’ note: This essay was adapted from “The Sheer Strangeness of Laughter,” published on the author’s Silent but Deadly Substack on October 23, 2023.

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WHAT OUR Applied Anthropology KUL students say:
Vadim:
I chose the Applied Anthropology course hoping to better understand who I am, where I am from, and how I view the world. Among professors specializing in different fields, practitioners in social work, students of different origins, I was, perhaps ironically, challenged to face myself again and again. Through the constant challenges I think I have found answers to my initial questions and also learnt how this knowledge can be applied not only in getting to know myself, but also in being more compassionate and in working with other people.

Vladyslav:
I chose Applied Anthropology as the most interesting option among other subjects. What I like about it is the diversity of topics to be learned and discovered. The KUL itself was a pleasant place to study, with teachers who share their expertise with passion.

Loraine:
The Applied Anthropology course has taught me how to accept and appreciate diverse perspectives in an extensive and dynamic environment. Through engaging discussions and practical experiences, I have learned to navigate cultural differences with empathy and understanding. Additionally, it has given me the opportunity to extend my volunteer work as a foreigner in Poland, allowing me to apply my knowledge in real-world settings. Overall, this course has been an enriching experience that has broadened my knowledge and enhanced my ability to connect with people from different backgrounds.

Amanda:
As I near the end of my studies, I can confidently say that the Applied Anthropology program at John Paul II University in Lublin has been an incredible experience for me as an international student. Over the past two years, I've had the chance to learn from passionate professors who bring real-world knowledge into the classroom, making every lesson both relevant and engaging. The university’s welcoming environment and diverse student body have allowed me to connect with peers from all over the world, enriching my understanding of different cultures. Looking back, Lublin has become a place where I’ve not only grown academically but personally, and I’m excited to carry these experiences forward into my future career.

Omotoyosi:
It’s a life changing opportunity and applied anthropology opened my eyes to many charity work and also some aspect of philosophy

Viktor:
I love that it introduced me a bit deeper into different philosophical aspects, I chose the course to understand what Man is on a deeper level, and Anthropology made me gain general knowledge not only about what makes us Human but about our history of both Europe and the world, and thought me how unique each and every one of us are.

Ruth Muskrat Bronson (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, 1897–1982) was a poet and public speaker.

Sahara unveils mysteries of unknown human lineage...

Sahara desert, once lush and green, was home to mysterious human lineage, study says Researchers studied the DNA of two 7,000-year-old naturally mummified individuals excavated in the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya.