Rate My Professor Glenn Petersen

Petersen's academic interests center on Micronesian ethnography, including adaptation, integration, political organization, chieftainship and hierarchy, constitutional government, warfare, peace, violence, decolonization, sovereignty, and postcolonial states. His extensive fieldwork in Pohnpei and other Micronesian islands has produced seminal works such as War and the Arc of Human Experience (Hamilton Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), which draws on his Vietnam War experiences; Traditional Micronesian Societies: Adaptation, Integration, and Political Organization (University of Hawaii Press, 2009); and One Man Cannot Rule a Thousand: Fission in a Ponapean Chiefdom (University of Michigan Press, 1982). Other notable publications include articles in Anthropology & Humanism (2019), Journal de la Société des Océanistes (2015), and Pacific Studies. He has received numerous honors, including multiple PSC-CUNY Faculty Research Awards (2000, 1993, 1990, etc.), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships (1983-1984, 1981), a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant (1983), and a Senior Research Fellowship at the Australian National University (1989-1990). Petersen has testified before U.S. House and Senate subcommittees on the termination of the U.S. Pacific Islands Trusteeship, advised the Permanent Mission of the Federated States of Micronesia to the United Nations (1999-2002), and organized symposia for the American Anthropological Association. His influence extends through editorial refereeing for the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania and participation in professional organizations.