Center for

Experimental
Ethnography

University of Pennsylvania

CURRENT FELLOW

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CURRENT FELLOW *

DR. GUTHRIE RAMSEY

MUSIC HISTORIAN, COMPOSER, PIANIST

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is a music historian, pianist, composer, and the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. 

A widely-published writer, he’s the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (2003), and The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop (2013). 

As a producer, label head, and leader of the band Dr. Guy’s Musiqology, Dr. Ramsey has released five recording projects and has performed at venues such as The Blue Note and Harlem Stage in New York, and the Annenberg Theater of the Performing Arts and Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia, and other venues worldwide. 

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CALENDAR

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CALENDAR *

Charting Oceanic Connections

THURSDAY OCT 15 12:00 PM

To kick off our year of Pan-Solidarities, we invite you to “Charting Oceanic Connections” where CEE Director Deborah Thomas and CASI Director Nikhil Anand will think tidalectically about the material technologies of empire, the repetition of the fantasies these technologies enable, and the waves of extraction and abandonment that follow in their wake.

Rethinking Our Political Inheritances

WEDNESDAY OCT 21 5:00 PM

Join us at Public Trust for Rethinking our Political Inheritances, a conversation on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 from 5-6:30pm about listening at the edges of history and the political resonances of non-alignment. This event will feature filmmaker Mila Turajlić and scholar Kristen Ghodsee in conversation, and has been organized in conjunction with A General Assembly, an archival installation on display at Public Trust though December 1, 2026.

PAST EVENTS

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PAST EVENTS //

The Empty Grave Screening

This last March, we were treated to a screening of The Empty Grave and a visit by activist-artist Konradin Kunze, who joined in conversation with Associate Professor of Bioanthropology at Penn, Dr. Rachel Watkins, about the film “The Empty Grave”. The film followed the mission of Tanzanian John Mbano, whose great-grandfather, Songea Mbano, a leader of the Ngoni people, was executed by the German colonial army. His head was taken to Germany for racist research, hauntingly similar to the fate of the Kaaya family, whose ancestors' remains have been found in a museum in New York. The film captures how both families battle institutional bureaucracy and resist top-down calls for symbolic reconciliation efforts.

SSMF 2026 Portals

SSMF explored and experimented with the idea of Portals: spiritual, virtual, historical, (meta)physical, and technological. Embodying the act of crossing boundaries, shifting perceptions, and navigating between worlds, portals act as gateways between what is and what might be. We understand Portals not just as literal doorways or entry points, but as intersections where multiple realities, experiences, and dimensions converge. As such, this theme encompasses a range of projects and perspectives that explore the notion of portals across diverse mediums, disciplines, and traditions.

Imagining Publics

This May, we screened five rough cuts of films made in community with Philadelphia organizations, thinkers, and creatives.  The first screening was at the Joseph E. Coleman Library in Germantown, and the second public screening was held at Natural Creativity, both subjects of two class films.

Penn News also spotlighted the year-long class Ethnographic Filmmaking with Alissa Jordan, also the Associate Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography.

The featured films include:

  • “One Day You’re Five” tells the story of Queen Lane Montessori School through members of the Calzadilla family, who have run the Germantown early childhood education center since its opening in 1984.

  • “Towards” spotlights Natural Creativity, a Germantown-based, self-directed learning community that serves as a resource center for homeschooling families.

  • “One Frame at a Time” highlights the afterschool animation program at William L. Sayre High School in West Philadelphia, which Penn alumni Ejun Mary Hong and Jack Nicholas Roney expanded this past year through a President’s Engagement Prize.

  • “This City is Worth Fighting For” follows the efforts of the grassroots group 215 People’s Alliance in organizing around the environment, transit funding, immigrant rights, and education in Northeast Philadelphia.

  • “Gather(in) Memory: Archiving Hyperlocal History in Germantown” documents how every day neighborhoods redefine history amidst top-down celebrations of 250th.