Adrianna Link (page 1 of 3)

History of Anthropology Panels at AAA – Updated

The annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association will be held online and in-person in Seattle from November 9-13, 2022.

The HAR News editors are please to share a selection of panels that may be of interest to our readers. Please note that all times are listed in Pacific Time (U.S.). Other panels and additional details, including registration information and room location, may be found in the full meeting program.

Continue reading

History of Anthropology Working Group with Matthew C. Watson, Wednesday, November 2 at 12pm ET

The next meeting of the History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 12:00pm ET via Zoom.

Matthew C. Watson joins us from Mount Holyoke College to workshop a chapter from his new book project, tentatively titled The Whiteness of Method: Racial Infrastructures of Harvard Ethnography and Mexican Sovereignty.
 
“The Ethnographic Drive: Interviews and the Racial Erotics of a Harvard Land-Rover in Chiapas”

In 1951, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) established a coordinating center for a pilot development project in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. INI administrators sought to draw Tzotzil- and Tzeltal-speaking indigenous communities that radiated around San Cristóbal into identification with the Mexican state and its political mythology of racial-cultural mixture, or mestizaje. To do so, the INI built roads. This essay stories the conjuncture of this state investment in the transportation infrastructure of indigenous Chiapas and the attendant geographical mobility of scores of U.S. anthropologists and students who used these roads to access “closed corporate communities” such as Zinacantán during the late-1950s and 1960s. I focus particularly on Harvard Chiapas Project founder Evon Vogt’s early project interviews conducted on these roads in a Land-Rover. Reading the Land-Rover as a space-making technology of ethnographic rapport, I ask how such vehicles have structured ethnographic forms of homosocial intimacy and attachment within a racial erotics of empiricism that renders the interview space a site of capitalist capture. Finally, through a cross-reading of mirror scenes reflecting encounters with Land-Rovers across the Harvard Chiapas Project and the Harvard Kalahari Project, I refract this critique of the interview form’s capitalist coloniality through a weak-theoretical evocation of the Land-Rover’s social, technological, and symbolic indeterminacy.
 
Discussants: Hilary Morgan Leathem (Maynooth University); Karin Rosemblatt (University of Maryland)

Additional details about the group, access to the readings, and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website.

History of Anthropology Working Group with Staffan Müller-Wille, Wednesday, October 5 at 12pm ET

The next meeting of the History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, October 5, 2022 at 12:00pm ET via Zoom.

Staffan Müller-Wille joins us from the University of Cambridge’s Department for History and Philosophy of Science to workshop his forthcoming paper, “Race and Kinship: Anthropology and the ‘Genealogical Method.’”
 
“Race and Kinship: Anthropology and the ‘Genealogical Method’”
Müller-Wille’s chapter recontextualizes the “genealogical method,” a way to map biological and social relations and processes, in late 19th century kinship studies. He presents this method as an important interface between the biological and sociological approaches to human inheritance, which are typically thought of as distinct, though they shared similar concepts of race, kinship, and blood. In this chapter, Müller-Wille examines classic works in the history of anthropology by Rivers, Francis Galton, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Franz Boas to explore the genealogical method’s role as an analytical tool.

Additional details about the group, access to the readings, and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website.

History of Anthropology Working Group with John L. Jackson, Jr., Wednesday, April 6, 2022

The next meeting of the 2022 History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, April 6 at 12:00pm ET via Zoom. The topic of the discussion will be “thin description” with John L. Jackson, Jr., Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Please join us for a discussion about the politics and poetics of ethnography, past and present.
 
Main Readings (included as PDF):

  • John L. Jackson, Jr., Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, Harvard University Press, 2013. Chapters 1-4 and 20 (“Thin”) (1-38, 149-155)
  • Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” 1973, 14 pp.
  • John L. Jackson, Jr. “Bewitched by Boas,” 18-22, in Hau- Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, no. 3 (2017): 18-22.

Additional readings (also included as PDF):

  • Jackson, Thin Description, Chapter 5, “Chicago.”
  • The rest of the special section of Hau which contains “Why do we read the classics?” with pieces by Fred Myers, Anastasia Piliavsky, Yarimar Bonilla, Adia Benton, and Paul Stoller. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, no. 3 (2017): 1-38.

Additional details about the group, access to the readings, and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website. Questions may be directed to John Tresch at john.tresch@sas.ac.uk.

Job Opportunity: Assistant Professor, General Faculty, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

The University of Virginia’s Department of Anthropology invites applications for a three-year general faculty (non-tenure-track) position to teach regularly offered courses that serve our undergraduate major and graduate program, particularly in the history and theory of anthropology, ethnographic research and design, and ethnographic writing and representation. The successful applicant will be appointed as assistant professor, general faculty. This is a three-year, tenure-ineligible appointment with the possibility of renewal, contingent upon available funding, satisfactory performance, and need for the position. The successful candidate must have a PhD in anthropology. Preference will be given to candidates with at least five years’ university teaching experience (not including graduate school teaching assistantships), significant experience mentoring graduate students (advising, seminar, research design, and professional preparation) and a record of research and publication. Preference will be given to those who demonstrate commitment to teaching anthropology to diverse undergraduate and graduate audiences. Region and topic of specialization is open. Responsibilities of the position include teaching core courses in the undergraduate major and graduate program (as described above) and courses in the applicant’s area of interest (with a 3/3 load). The appointment start date is August 25, 2022.

Review of applications will begin on March 18, 2022 and the position will remain open until filled.

Additional details and instructions on how to apply may be found here.

History of Anthropology Working Group with Anand Pandian, March 2, 2022

The next meeting of the 2022 History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, March 2 at 12:00pm ET via Zoom.

As part of our ongoing series on the relations between current anthropological practice and the discipline’s history, we’ll be engaging with work from Anand Pandian (The Johns Hopkins University) and resonances with Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques.

Readings include:

Anand Pandian, “A Method of Experience: Reading, Writing, Teaching, Fieldwork,” pp.44-76, in A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (Duke, 2019).
 
Claude Levi-Strauss, from Tristes Tropiques (John and Doreen Weightman, trans., NY, Atheneum, 1975): “The Quest for Power” (37-45); and “The Making of an Anthropologist” (51-61). The full text of Tristes Tropiques is available here for borrowing.

Additional details about the group, access to the readings, and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website. Questions may be directed to John Tresch at john.tresch@sas.ac.uk.

2nd Notice – CFP: Seventh Annual Conference on the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS), Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, June 17-18, 2022

After a two-year pandemic delay, this two-day conference of the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS) will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, history, international relations, law, and linguistics. The conference aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences.

Submissions are welcome in such areas including, but not restricted to:

  • The interchange of social science concepts and figures among the academy and wider intellectual and popular spheres
  • Comparative institutional histories of departments and programs
  • Border disputes and boundary work between disciplines as well as academic cultures
  • Themes and concepts developed in the history and sociology of natural and physical science, reconceptualized for the social science context
  • Professional and applied training programs and schools, and the quasi-disciplinary fields (like business administration) that typically housed them
  • The role of social science in post-colonial state-building governance
  • Social science adaptations to the changing media landscape
  • The role and prominence of disciplinary memory in a comparative context
  • Engagements with matters of gender, sexuality, race, religion, nationality, disability and other markers of identity and difference

The two-day conference will be organized as a series of one-hour, single-paper sessions attended by all participants. Ample time will be set aside for intellectual exchange between presenters and attendees, as all participants are expected to read pre-circulated papers in advance.

Proposals should contain no more than 1000 words, indicating the originality of the paper. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 4, 2022. Final notification will be given in early March 2022 after proposals have been reviewed. Completed papers will be expected by May 13, 2022.

The organizing committee consists of Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay), Jeff Pooley (Muhlenberg College), Mark Solovey (University of Toronto), and Marga Vicedo (University of Toronto).

All proposals and requests for information should be sent to submissions@hisress.org.

CFP: “Collaborations and Confrontations in World Anthropologies during the Cold War and Beyond,” IUAES Congress, St. Petersburg, 25-31 May 2022

Abstract:

Anthropologists and historians of anthropology have discussed the embeddedness of anthropology in imperialism and Western colonialism for decades (Asad 1973, Kucklick 1993, Stocking 1991). Several “waves” of decolonizing anthropology have given birth to a vision of a world anthropology, in which the power hierarchies of center and periphery, “local” and “global”, indigenous “informants” and Western academics would be flattened or even erased (Pels 2018). At the same time, globalization of scientific knowledge production entails imposing presumably universal Western-centered academic standards. Current research of the “Cold War anthropology” may serve as a pertinent example. Due to the work of David H. Price and other scholars, this concept gained currency (Price 2004, 2008, 2016; Wax, 2009). Still, this concept remains remarkably USA-centered and rarely takes into account activity of scholars from rival Cold War camp. The study of geopolitics of Cold War knowledge production is a vibrant emerging field (Djagalov 2020, Engerman, 2009, Hazard 2012, Rupprecht 2015), but it rarely focuses on anthropology (but Verdery 2018). Conveners of this panel claim that now it is high time to take stock of our understanding of the nature of relations between various “national” traditions and ideological inclinations within world anthropology (Bošković, Hann 2013).

This panel seeks contributions from anthropologists as well as historians of anthropology, which reflect on historical, political, and epistemological contexts (Stocking) of production of anthropological knowledge, including but not limited to those of the Cold War epoch. We are interested in accounts of both confrontations and collaborations of anthropologists from different national traditions and ideological “camps”. These cases might include histories of international conferences, joint expeditions, transfer of ideas, or life-histories of individual scholars, involved in such activities. We are especially interested in still poorly researched histories of collaborations between scholars of the second and third worlds in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, one should not collapse ideological and geographical space: leftist anthropologists in the West and “revisionists” in the East encountered similar issues in dealing with establishment. Another important line of research we look forward to deals with similarities and differences of decolonizing tendencies in the East and West and the role anthropologists play in them.

Keywords: World anthropology, history, decolonization

The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2022. Apply online.

Please contact Sergei Alymov (alymovs@mail.ru) or David Anderson
(david.anderson@abdn.ac.uk) for any questions.

Additional information may be found via the links below:
https://iuaes2022.spb.ru/results/panel/11/
https://iuaes2022.spb.ru/userfiles/files/docs/guides/guide_papers.pdf

History of Anthropology Working Group, “HoA at HSS and AAA,” December 1, 2021

The next meeting of the 2021 History of Anthropology Working Group hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine will be held on Wednesday, December 1st at 12:00pm ET via Zoom. There are no advance readings: instead, we will be hearing and discussing the work of some of the editors of the History of Anthropology Review who presented papers at the 2021 American Anthropological Association (AAA) and History of Science Society (HSS) conferences this November.

They’ll summarize their work, discuss the conference reactions, and reflect on the state of History of Anthropology as shown in these two conferences:

PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE
Patricia Martins Marcos: Racialized Knowledges: Manipulating Nature, Blackness, and Epistemic Disciplining in the Portuguese Inquisition.
Tracie Canada: Vindication, Imagination, and Decolonization: African Americans and the Experience of Anthropology (George W. Stocking, Jr. Symposium).
Nick Barron: Cultural Islands: The Pluralistic Politics of Anthropology.
Cameron Brinitzer : Social Learning Mechanisms: The Evolution of Culture and Its Sciences.
Matthew Hoffarth: Interactions with the Rorschach: Anthony F.C. Wallace and Mel Spiro’s Criticisms of the Culture Concept.

Additional details about the group and information on how to attend may be found on the Consortium website. Questions may be directed to John Tresch at john.tresch@sas.ac.uk.

Call for Papers: Seventh Annual Conference on the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS), Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, June 17-18, 2022


After a two-year pandemic delay, this two-day conference of the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS) will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, history, international relations, law, and linguistics. The conference aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences.

Submissions are welcome in such areas including, but not restricted to:

  • The interchange of social science concepts and figures among the academy and wider intellectual and popular spheres
  • Comparative institutional histories of departments and programs
  • Border disputes and boundary work between disciplines as well as academic cultures
  • Themes and concepts developed in the history and sociology of natural and physical science, reconceptualized for the social science context
  • Professional and applied training programs and schools, and the quasi-disciplinary fields (like business administration) that typically housed them
  • The role of social science in post-colonial state-building governance
  • Social science adaptations to the changing media landscape
  • The role and prominence of disciplinary memory in a comparative context
  • Engagements with matters of gender, sexuality, race, religion, nationality, disability and other markers of identity and difference

The two-day conference will be organized as a series of one-hour, single-paper sessions attended by all participants. Ample time will be set aside for intellectual exchange between presenters and attendees, as all participants are expected to read pre-circulated papers in advance.

Proposals should contain no more than 1000 words, indicating the originality of the paper. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 4, 2022. Final notification will be given in early March 2022 after proposals have been reviewed. Completed papers will be expected by May 13, 2022.

The organizing committee consists of Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay), Jeff Pooley (Muhlenberg College), Mark Solovey (University of Toronto), and Marga Vicedo (University of Toronto).

All proposals and requests for information should be sent to submissions@hisress.org.

Job Opportunity: Supervisory Research Anthropologist, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

The Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History invites applications for an anthropologist to serve as Supervisory Research Anthropologist/Manager of the National Anthropological Archives (NAA), which includes the Human Studies Film Archives.

The NAA holds the largest known collection of historical and contemporary materials documenting the world’s cultures and the history of anthropology via a wide array of media types. Indigenous communities, anthropologists, folklorists, historians, film scholars and national and international researchers and filmmakers are the primary users of the collections. 

The Manager manages the NAA, and develops collections goals and plans, including preparation of annual budget in alignment with the Department and NMNH’s goals and plans. The position also oversees the processing of archival collections and preparation for digitization, including organization, arrangement, description (finding aids and inventories) and preservation, and the tracking of these activities. The Manager will also oversee the collections information systems used by the NAA, as well as the preservation, security and safekeeping of the archival and film collections.  The Manager will supervise staff and contract archivists as well as interns and volunteers. Additional duties include representing the NAA within NMNH and the Smithsonian, as well as being an active part of the collections management team at NMNH.

This position will be offered as a permanent Federal position and the position will be filled at the GS-13 level, which starts at $103,690 per year. U.S. citizenship is required.  College transcripts and proof of U.S. accreditation for foreign study must be submitted online by the closing date of announcement or your application will be disqualified.  For complete requirements and application procedures go to www.sihr.si.edu  or www.usajobs.gov and refer to Announcement #: 22A-JW-306791-DEU-NMNH (open to public candidates); or 22A-JW-306791A-MPA-NMNH (open to current/former federal candidates). 

All supporting documentation must be received online by 11/30/2021. Applicants will be notified by email when their applications are received.

To learn more about the Department of Anthropology, please view our website.

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum and research complex with over 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park, and nine research facilities. The Department of Anthropology is one of seven research departments at the National Museum of Natural History. The NAA Manager will join a large and diverse department with 52 full-time staff, including 12 curators in three research divisions: archaeology, ethnology and biological anthropology, along with the Collections Program  and the Repatriation Office.  The Anthropology collections hold over 3.6 million archaeological objects, over 200,000 ethnology objects, over 9,000 linear feet of archival documents, and 8 million running feet of ethnographic film and video. 

History of Anthropology Events at AAA

The annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association will be held online and in-person in Baltimore, MD, on November 17-21, 2021. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Truth and Responsibility”; a full schedule and additional details may be found on the Association’s website.

The News Editors at HAR are pleased to highlight several panels of interest to our readers. Event times are listed in Eastern Time (U.S.) and registration is required to attend in-person and online. Our thanks to Grant Arndt, co-director of the History of Anthropology Interest Group, for sharing news of these and other events related to the history of anthropology.

Thursday, November 18 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Session (2-1620) Anthropology at St. Louis and
Before

Location: In-Person, Baltimore, Convention Center 341

Sean O’Neill, “An Unfair Hearing for Global Cultural
Diversity: The Saint Louis World’s Fair as a Sounding Board for Primitivism, Racism, and Colonialism”

Christopher Lowman, “Imagining Asia Beyond the Exhibition”

Richard Warms, “Picture this: Boas, Photography and the Popular Presentation of Science”

Robert Launay, “Genealogies of the Secular and Sovereign State”

Discussant: Jon McGee

Thursday, November 18 2:00 – 3:45 PM ET

(2-1460) Entangled Histories and Bundles of Relations: Contemporary Ethnographic Work In and Around Collections

Location: In-Person, Baltimore, Convention Center 330

Panelists:

Catherine Nichols, Diana Marsh, Kristin Otto, Christopher Berk, Howard Morphy

Thursday, November 18 6:30 – 8:15 PM ET

Session (2-1621) Anthropology and Activism

Location: In-Person, Baltimore

Panelists:

Martin Schoenhals, Carol Mukhopadhyay, Yolanda Moses, Kathleen Fine-Dare, Linda Seligmann, Raymond Schwartz, Jeanne Simonelli

Session (2-0740) The World-Builders

Location: Live virtual session

Panelists:

Andrew Foster, Mariel Gruszko, Llerena Searle, Keith Murphy, Lee Cabatingan, Britt Van Paepeghem, Matthew C. Watson

Session (2-1190) Making Historical Truth: Material Engagements with the Past and the Politics of Responsibility after Mass Violence

Location: Live virtual session

Panelists:

Hilary Leathem, Chris Green, Dominic Bryan, Damani Partridge, Jonathan Evershed, Sultan Doughan, Michal Ran-Rubin, Jonah Rubin

Friday, November 19 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Session (3-2520) Alfred L. Kroeber: The Man, His Work and His Legacy

Location: In-Person, Baltimore, Convention Center 331

Herbert S. Lewis, “Alfred L. Kroeber: The Man, His Times, and His Work”

Stanley Brandes, “Alfred Kroeber and the Forging of a Discipline”

Paul Shankman, “Kroeber, Mead, and the Perils of Public Anthropology”

James Stanlaw, “Alfred Kroeber and the Development of Linguistic Anthropology”

Jack Glazier, “The Kroeber-Ishi Story: Cinematic Versions”

Nicholas Barron, “Anthros, Agents, and Federal (Un)Acknowledgment in Native California”

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Goodbye Kroeber, Kroeber Hall, and the Man Called Ishi”

Session (3-2330) Enduring Legacies of Ethnographic Field Schools, Part 1

Location: In-Person, Baltimore

Panelists:

Natalie Bourdon, Linda Easley, A Katherine Lambert-Pennington, Suzanne Kent, Keri Brondo, Tim Wallace, Quetzil Castaneda, Douglas Hume

(3-2122) Native Americans and Museums: International Perspectives and Collaborative Prospects.

Location: Live virtual session

Panelists:

Robert Collins, Justin Richland, Alaka Wali, Markus Lindner

Friday, November 19 2:00 PM – 3:45 PM ET

Session (3-2320) Enduring Legacies of Ethnographic Field Schools, Part 2

Location: In-Person, Baltimore

Panelists:

Tim Wallace, Keri Brondo, Bill Roberts, Walter Adams, James McDonald, Sharon Gmelch

Friday, November 19 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM ET

Session (3-1750) Vindication, Imagination, and Decolonization: African Americans and the Experience of Anthropology (The George W. Stocking, Jr. Symposium)

Location: Livestreamed and In-Person, Baltimore, Holiday Ballroom

Abstract: As we commemorate 50 years of the Association of Black Anthropologists, it is incumbent to recognize that African Americans have been bearing witness, taking action, and holding scholars accountable to the truth since the very beginning of anthropology in North America. Frederick Douglass, for example, wrote a critical response to Josiah Nott’s Types of Mankind in 1854. During every twist and turn in the history of anthropology, African American scholars have taken on the responsibility to insist that anthropology be a holistic social science that combats racism and oppression and leads to a more responsive and inclusive understanding of what it means to be human. At the same time, anthropologists throughout the African Diaspora have described and analyzed how violence, power, and oppression lead to atrocities and the worst forms of inhumanity. In this panel, we take a look at a sample of African American intellectuals who were leaders in the vindication struggle, were creative and imaginative describing culture, and worked hard towards achieving a decolonized anthropology.

Panelists:

Deborah Johnson-Simon, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Lee D. Baker, Riché Barnes, Irma McClaurin, Rachel Watkins, Tracie Canada, Michael Blakey

Saturday, November 20 4:15 PM – 6:00PM ET

(4-3290) Clinical Encounters Across Difference: (Ac)countability and the Politics of Representation

Location: Live virtual session

Panelists:
Molly Fitzpatrick, Allison Odger, Adrienne Strong, Margaret MacDonald, Hatice Nilay Erten, Thandeka Cochrane, Cal Biruk

Sunday, November 21 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM ET

(5-0010) Historical Consciousness and Historicist Reckonings with the Anthropological Present

Location: Live virtual session

Panelists:
David Dinwoodie, Jim Weil, Kathryn Kozaitis, Nicholas Barron, Grant Arndt, Olga Glinskii, Paul Mitchell

Reflections from the 2020-2021 History of Anthropology Reading Group on Race, Racism, and White Supremacy

On October 7, 2020, nearly fifty participants convened via Zoom for the first in a yearlong series of discussions organized by members of the editorial collective of the History of Anthropology Review (HAR). Hosted in collaboration with the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the History of Anthropology Review Reading Group (HARRG) was created as an outgrowth of the content published by HAR, intended as a space to discuss anthropology both as a topic of historical inquiry and as a contemporary discipline and practice. For its inaugural year, the group’s conveners—John Tresch, Tracie Canada, Allegra Giovine, and Patrícia Martins Marcos—identified a series of topics and readings focused on anthropology’s relationships with race, racism, anti-racism, authoritarianism, as well as on the anthropology of policing. These topics and readings focused the group’s attention on the different ways that anthropology, as both an object of inquiry and a disciplinary practice, has contributed to legacies of colonialism and white supremacy.

Continue reading

Job Opportunity: Native American Scholars Initiative Engagement Coordinator, American Philosophical Society

The Library & Museum of the American Philosophical Society seeks to hire an Engagement Coordinator for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) and Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR). This position will assist in implementing the Native American Scholars Initiative by developing and executing innovative programs at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research as well as providing mentorship for fellows and interns; work with Native American communities and community-based scholars to provide access to the Library & Museum’s Indigenous-related collections from reference request onward; as well as cultivate new and steward existing partnerships.

Continue reading

Reminder: History of Anthropology Working Group, “Visualization,” June 2, 2021

The next meeting of the History of Anthropology Working Group, hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, will be held on Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. ET. The topic for the discussion will be “Visualization.” This meeting was rescheduled from April 7, 2021.

The discussion will be led by Abigail Nieves Delgado and Iris Clever, and will take a broad view of visualization from the 18th to 20th centuries across a range of traditions. It will focus on the following readings:

  • Keevak, Michael. 2011. “Taxonomies of Yellow: Linnaeus, Blumenbach, and the Making of a ‘Mongolian’ Race in the Eighteenth Century.” In Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton University Press.
  • Qureshi, Sadiah. 2012. “Peopling the landscape: Showmen, displayed peoples and travel illustration in nineteenth-century Britain.” Early Popular Visual Culture 10(1): 23-36.
  • Evans, Andrew. 2020. “‘Most Unusual’ Beauty Contests: Nordic Photographic Competitions and the Construction of a Public for German Race Science, 1926–1935,” Isis 111(2): 289-309.
  • Stinson, Catherine. 2020. “Algorithms Associating Appearance and Criminality Have a Dark Past.” Aeon, May 15, 2020. https://aeon.co/ideas/algorithms-associating-appearance-and-criminality-….

The readings are available for download via the Working Group home page. Additional details about the group and information on how to attend may also be found on the site.

Event Reminder and Invitation: History of Anthropology Interest Group organizational meeting, May 14, 1pm ET

This is a reminder and invitation for an organizational meeting for the American Anthropological Association’s History of Anthropology Interest Group co-convened by Grant Arndt and Mindy Morgan. The meeting is open to all those interested in discussing preparations for this year’s meeting as well as future HOAIG activities.

The meeting will be held virtually on Friday, May 14 from 1-2 PM Eastern Time.

Please contact Grant Arndt (gparndt@iastate.edu) know if you are interested in attending.

Reminder: History of Anthropology Working Group, “Visualization,” April 7, 2021

The next meeting of the History of Anthropology Working Group, hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, will be held on Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. ET. The topic for the discussion will be “Visualization.”

The discussion will be led by Abigail Nieves Delgado and Iris Clever, and will take a broad view of visualization from the 18th to 20th centuries across a range of traditions. It will focus on the following readings:

  • Keevak, Michael. 2011. “Taxonomies of Yellow: Linnaeus, Blumenbach, and the Making of a ‘Mongolian’ Race in the Eighteenth Century.” In Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton University Press.
  • Qureshi, Sadiah. 2012. “Peopling the landscape: Showmen, displayed peoples and travel illustration in nineteenth-century Britain.” Early Popular Visual Culture 10(1): 23-36.
  • Evans, Andrew. 2020. “‘Most Unusual’ Beauty Contests: Nordic Photographic Competitions and the Construction of a Public for German Race Science, 1926–1935,” Isis 111(2): 289-309.
  • Stinson, Catherine. 2020. “Algorithms Associating Appearance and Criminality Have a Dark Past.” Aeon, May 15, 2020. https://aeon.co/ideas/algorithms-associating-appearance-and-criminality-….

The readings are available for download via the Working Group home page. Additional details about the group and information on how to attend may also be found on the site.

Red Power, Black Lives Matter, (Historians of) Anthropology and Other Friends: Thinking with Vine Deloria in 2021

David Martínez. Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement. New Visions in Native American and Indigenous Studies. 480 pp., notes, bibl., index. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

I discovered David Martínez’s biography of Vine Deloria, Jr. a few years ago while looking for books that might offer some background on the Red Power Movement and its impact on developments in mid-twentieth century American anthropology. An enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Deloria advocated for Native American rights throughout his life and became (and remains) one of the most prominent and influential voices on the subject of Indigenous sovereignty. Martínez, who teaches American Indian Studies and is of Akimel O’odham and Mexican descent, notes Deloria’s seeming omnipresence within discourse on Native American activism from the book’s start. As he reflects: “I am uncertain of how I first heard of Deloria. He is one of these figures who seems to have always been a part of my life as an Indigenous person” (11). As a historian of anthropology interested in the discipline’s “period of crisis” during the 1960s and ’70s, I was aware of the way Deloria and his well-known critique of “anthropologists and other friends” likewise had embedded themselves in my mind as critical markers of this historical moment. I realized, however, that despite my passing familiarity with Custer Died for Your Sins—his first and probably most famous book—I knew relatively little about Deloria beyond what had coalesced alongside the now iconic images of the American Indian Movement’s takeovers of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in 1972.

Continue reading

Online Event: “Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico”

On Wednesday, February 17 at 1:00 pm ET Dr. Rafael Ocasio will be presenting on his new book Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico (Rutgers University Press, 2020).

The event will be hosted by the American Philosophical Society and held via Zoom. The event is free of charge but registration is required. Additional details and registration may be found on the event website.

Continue reading

Reminder: History of Anthropology Working Group, “Antiblackness and Indigeneity,” January 6, 2021

The next meeting of the History of Anthropology Working Group, hosted by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, will be held on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. ET. The topic for the discussion will be “Antiblackness and Indigeneity.”

Continue reading

Introducing the History of Anthropology Reading Group, in collaboration with the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

The editorial collective at the History of Anthropology Review (HAR) is pleased to announce the launch of a new reading group, hosted in collaboration with the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM). The “History of Anthropology Working Group” will allow anyone interested in the history of anthropology to take part in monthly discussions about topics of vital interest to the field. We warmly invite all HAR readers to join us for these online conversations. This year, spurred by Black Lives Matter protests, the reading group’s focus will be anthropology’s relationships to (and studies of) racism, racial science, white supremacy, anti-racism, and policing.

Continue reading

Conference: “Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future,” September 14-18, 2020

“The Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future” conference is jointly organized by the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Geographical Society, the British Academy, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, and the BM’s Department for Africa, Oceania and the Americas. The conference was originally planned as a face to face conference to be held in June 2020, but it will now be an online conference to be held 14-18 September 2020.

Continue reading

Event: “At the Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging”–A Virtual Discussion with Wendy Wickwire

Every once in a while, an important figure makes an appearance, makes a difference, and then disappears from the public record. James Teit (1864-1922) was such a figure. 

Join Dr. Wendy Wickwire in conversation with Brian Carpenter, Curator of Native American Materials at the American Philosophical Society, as they discuss Teit’s life and work and the continued impact of the records he left behind.

Continue reading

CFP: “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” American Philosophical Society, September 24-26, 2020

Building on the collaborative, community-engaged work of the American Philosophical Society’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), the APS Library & Museum launched The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) in 2016 to foster the development of the next generation of Indigenous and allied students and scholars. 

Continue reading

CFP: Panel on “Historical Consciousness and Historicist Reckonings with the Anthropological Present,” American Anthropological Association, November 18-22, 2020

Grant Arndt, Iowa State, is seeking a few more participants for a panel on the relationship between research into the history of anthropology and the modes of historical self-consciousness evident in contemporary anthropological work.  

Continue reading
Older posts