The School for Advanced Research (SAR) presents its next online salon: “Recognition in Unexpected Places: The Yaqui Indians and the 89th Wenner-Gren International Symposium,” with speaker Nicholas Barron. The salon will take place on Tuesday, December 8th at 2:00 pm U.S. Mountain Standard Time.

In November of 1981, an assortment of academics gathered in Tucson, Arizona for the 89th Wenner-Gren International Symposium. Organized in collaboration with the newly federally recognized Pascua Yaqui Tribe and local anthropologists, the symposium promised a public reenactment and interdisciplinary examination of Yaqui rituals and performances. A relatively forgotten event in a seemingly out-of-the-way place, the gathering served as an installment in a longstanding and mutually constructive history of Indigenous recognition and anthropological authority in the Southwest.  

Nicholas Barron is the 2020 William Y. and Nettie K. Adams Summer Scholar at SAR. Barron is associate faculty of anthropology at Mission College and managing editor at the History of Anthropology Review. In his talk, he will llustrate how the International Symposium became a consequential participant in the ongoing efforts to re-present the Yaqui as a newly recognized American Indian tribe. Yaqui intellectuals and activists strategically embraced and challenged anthropological institutions and authority in order to affirm their newfound political status—even in unexpected places such as an academic conference. 

Advance registration is required. To register for this event, please visit the SAR website here.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the History of Science Society (HSS) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) will not hold their planned in-person joint meeting this October, but will hold an online-only Virtual Forum, with a full schedule of talks, roundtables, social activities, flash talks, book presentations, and more. It will take place from October 8 through October 11, 2020.

The HAR News editors would like to highlight several events on the program related to the history of anthropology. Please note that the event times given are in Eastern Standard Time (U.S.) Registration for the Virtual Forum is required; a discounted registration rate is available for graduate students and unemployed and precariously employed scholars, and grant funding is available to fully reimburse graduate student registration fees. Please note that events are subject to change and it is best to check the program regularly for the events you are interested in.

History of the Human Sciences– an international journal of peer-reviewed research, which provides the leading forum for work in the social sciences, humanities, human psychology and biology that reflexively examines its own historical origins and interdisciplinary influences – is delighted to announce details of its prize for early career scholars. The intention of the annual award is to recognize a researcher whose work best represents the journal’s aim to critically examine traditional assumptions and preoccupations about human beings, their societies and their histories in light of developments that cut across disciplinary boundaries. In the pursuit of these goals, History of the Human Sciences publishes traditional humanistic studies as well as work in the social sciences, including the fields of sociology, psychology, political science, the history and philosophy of science, anthropology, classical studies, and literary theory. Scholars working in any of these fields are encouraged to apply.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research will host a webinar on September 23rd at 2:00 PM PST/5:00 PM EST on “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn? Race, Racism, and Its Reckoning in American Anthropology,” sponsored by the UCLA Department of Anthropology Race, Racism, Policing and State Violence Committee, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

To register for this event click here.

Moderators: Kamari M. Clarke & Deborah Thomas

Introduction by Danilyn Rutherford, President, Wenner-Gren Foundation

Lucia Cantero, Assistant Professor of International Studies, University of San Francisco

Ryan Jobson, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Chris Loperena, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Jonathan Rosa, Associate Professor of Education, Stanford University

Savannah Shange, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Zoe Todd, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Carleton University

The Indigenous Studies Seminar at the American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum provides a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in Native American and Indigenous Studies and related fields. Inspired by the work of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at the APS, we are particularly interested in work by Indigenous scholars and projects that highlight community-engaged scholarship, use of archival and museum collections in research, teaching, and learning, Indigenous research methodologies, language revitalization, place-based teaching and learning, and related topics.

We welcome proposals from individuals working in a broad range of academic fields and community settings, and are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches. The seminar is open to graduate students, faculty members, and independent scholars, whether campus- or community-based. To maximize time for discussion, papers are circulated electronically in advance. The seminar meets once a month on Fridays from 3-5pm EST from October through May. All meetings in 2020-2021 will be held on Zoom.

Any questions should be directed to the coordinators of the seminar, Kyle Roberts (kroberts@amphilsoc.org) and Adrianna Link (alink@amphilsoc.org) at the APS.

To submit a proposal, please email a one-page proposal, a brief statement (2-3 sentences) explaining how this paper relates to your other work, and a brief CV by August 21, 2020 to kroberts@amphilsoc.org and alink@amphilsoc.org.

Because of the ongoing pandemic, the 16th conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) will take place as a digital conference, from July 21 to July 24, 2020. The conference program includes a number of panels related to the history of anthropology.

The “Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future” conference is jointly organized by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), the Royal Geographical Society, the British Academy, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS-University of London, and the British Museum’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 September 14-18, 2020. It will feature a wide range of speakers on issues concerning the relationships between anthropology and geography, both past and present. Bruno Latour will deliver the keynote address.

The Global Digital History of Science Festival is a five-day online celebration run by the British Society for the History of Science featuring talks, discussions, workshops, performances, discussions, and more – free to everyone! The Festival will take place from July 6 through July 10, 2020.

The HAR News editors would like to highlight two lightning talks on the program related to the history of anthropology. Please note that the event times given are in U.K. time/UTC + 1:

Monday, July 6, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. (part of Lightning Talks A panel):

Francis Galton and Joseph Jacobs’ Co-Construction of the ‘Jewish-type’: A Critical Image Analysis  – Efram Sera-Shriar, King’s College London

Reflecting on Francis Galton’s anthropometric work in anthropology from the late Victorian period, his former student Karl Pearson remarked that ‘There is little doubt that Galton’s Jewish type formed a landmark in composite photography.’ These images, it was claimed, produced with ‘extraordinary fidelity’ what many of Galton’s proponents believed to be examples of genuine ‘Jewish physiognomy.’ Although Galton’s photographic research played a pivotal role in constructing a new conception of the ‘Jewish type’ in Victorian anthropology, he did not work alone. His composites of Jewish schoolboys were a collaboration with the Jewish folklorist, literary critic, and anthropologist Joseph Jacobs. In fact, it was Jacobs who initiated the idea, and contacted Galton for assistance in making the photographic images. Galton took the lead in assembling the composites, but it was Jacobs who provided the most sophisticated analysis of them at the time. Through an analysis of these images, which appeared in The Photographic News in 1885, this lightning talk will explore the processes by which Galton and Jacobs co-constructed a so-called ‘Jewish type.’

Ethnographic studies of Northeast Siberian peoples in imperial Russia c.1890-1917, their political context and international significance  – Ekaterina (Katya) Morgunova, PhD Candidate, Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine (CHoSTM), Department of History, King’s College London

This project aims to investigate studies of Northeast Siberian ethnic groups, conducted by the Russian Empire’s political exiles c.1890-1917. It considers their research against the backdrop of the Russian political context and the international landscape of anthropological research. I aim to shed light especially on the fascinating behind-the-scenes of scientific fieldwork. Using expedition diaries and correspondence alongside governmental and published sources, I investigate how ethnography was shaped by diverse actors including governmental authorities, philanthropists, and the less visible actors, especially the indigenous research subjects.

To get oriented and explore the many events taking place, as well as find details on how to access the events online, visit the Festival welcome page. You can also browse the full program. Please note that events are subject to change and it is best to check the program regularly for the events you are interested in.

The journal Horizontes Antropológicos has issued a Call for Papers for a special issue on the theme of “History of World Anthropologies.” This issue (no. 62) is slated to be published in January 2022.

This thematic issue intends to contribute towards a reassessment of the past of anthropology in a broad sense, by understanding the knowledge and ethnographic practices that precede or complement scientific institutionalization, including features of amateurism and experimentalism in varied and interconnected contexts. The editors seek not only a post-colonial criticism of the attempts to survey and analyze human variability, but rather to examine the contributions in their own time and place, in the historical dynamics of anthropology. This issue is open to case studies focused on peripheral, external or off-center anthropological traditions as compared to the so-called “major traditions.”

The editors seek to pay special attention to the Lusophone and Ibero-American contexts (including all of Latin America), considering not only their intersections, but also the fact that they are often excluded from hegemonic historiographic narratives. They hope to produce a comparative reflection on the historical antecedents of the current paradigm of World Anthropologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (up to the 1970s) and the dissemination of anthropological praxis. Interdisciplinarity between anthropology, history, history of science, and historical anthropology is encouraged, as is dialogue through a re-reading of ethnographic and anthropological texts from different places, times and dimensions.

The issue’s editors are Eduardo Dullo (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – Brazil), Patrícia Ferraz de Matos (Universidade de Lisboa – Portugal), and Frederico Delgado Rosa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Portugal). 

Submission of articles will be open from October 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021. Full details about the special issue can be found on the website of Horizontes Antropológicos, or obtained via e-mail at horizontes@ufrgs.br.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and SAPIENS will co-host a webinar on “Anti-Blackness: Readings on Violence, Resistance, and Repair” on June 17, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. EST. The discussion will feature books by Laurence Ralph (The Torture Letters), Savannah Shange (Progressive Dystopia), Christen A. Smith (Afro-Paradise), and Deborah A. Thomas (Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation) and a conversation with the authors on how their work speaks to our current moment. Discussion will be moderated by Danilyn Rutherford, Eshe Lewis, and Chip Colwell.

Participants should register in advance, as participation is limited to the first 1,000 individuals to sign up.

HAR is pleased to announce the latest release from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology. This article by João Leal (Centre for Research in Anthropology, NOVA University, Lisbon) presents the complex anthropological legacy of Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, who played a key role in the emergence of the anthropology of Afro-Brazilian religions (and especially the Candomblé studies) at the turn of the twentieth century.

Leal, João, 2020. “Nina Rodrigues e as religiões afro‑brasileiras”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Raimundo Nina Rodrigues (1862-1906) is a key figure – albeit a controversial one – in the history of Brazilian anthropology at the turn of the twentieth century. He was a major representative of the racialist theories that prevailed in Brazil at that time, but was also a pioneer in the study of Afro-Brazilian religions, to which he devoted his best-known work, The Fetishist Animism of Bahian Blacks (1896-97). Resulting from his own ethnographic fieldwork, this paradoxical work combines evolutionary and racialist ideas with a thorough first-hand description of candomblé. It launched several themes –  such as syncretism – that were to inspire later representatives of this subdisciplinary field, namely from the 1930s and 1940s, when Arthur Ramos (1903-1949) revitalized Afro-Brazilian studies.

HAR is happy to continue to draw readers’ attention to a remarkable and growing online source for History of Anthropology. BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology reflects the diversity of anthropological traditions and currents, whether hegemonic or pushed to the margins. BEROSE welcomes and fosters the pluralization of the history of anthropology and aims at recovering the dialogues or tensions between classical protagonists and forgotten, sometimes excluded and sometimes cursed figures.

Today, we are pleased to announce the latest release from BEROSE – an essay by Stafania Capone (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris) and Fernanda Peixoto (University of São Paulo) on the history of anthropology in Brazil. The article is available in both Portuguese and English.