Wendy Fonarow

Office Hours

Fall 2025

Call division office for Office hour info ext.5743

Education:

Ph.D. Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles

M.A. Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles

B.A. Anthropology University of California, San Diego

Wendy Fonarow, PhD, is a professor of Cultural Anthropology. She is the Chair of the Anthropology Department. In addition to teaching at Glendale, she has been a visiting Associate Professor at UCLA and CSUN and given guest lectures nationally and internationally. Her research areas are ritual, performance, live music, audiences, and the music industry. Her masters focused on Halloween and her current work extends to other autumnal holidays including Thanksgiving, Guy Fawkes, and Dias de Los Muertos. Her latest work is examining cross-cultural attitudes towards the dead. In 2018, she received the Senate Innovation Grant for coordinated research on Halloween and related international celebrations and in 2020 the Senate Grant for the Dias de Los Muertos display in the Sierra Vista building. Her recent How to Do Fieldwork in the Music Industry is available for use in Cultural Anthropology courses as an Open Educational Resource.

The Halloween History You Don't Know with Professor Wendy Fonarow and Haunted History of Halloween

Dr. Fonarow is the author of Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Wesleyan University Press 2006).

She is widely regarded as an expert on concert audiences. She has been invited to share her work at universities including Cambridge University, Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Oslo, University of Milan and at professional conferences such as SXSW, CMJ and Festival Marvin (Mexico City). She has been a contributor to The Guardian and Rolling Stone.

Dr. Fonarow’s Guardian column Ask the Indie Professor.

She has spent most of life moving between Los Angeles and London where she has pursued her passions for music, the music industry and food. These are recurrent themes in her classes on Culture Anthropology, Magic, Religion and Witchcraft, and Culture and Communication. Professor Fonarow is the advisor for Club Anthro; the Undergraduate Anthropology Association at Glendale. She has taught the Anthropology department’s religion course for Study Abroad in Bali in 2013, 2016 and 2017 and Anthropology Field Studies for Study Abroad in London/UK in 2024.