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.
