Heading to the AAAs? Here are some curated sessions and events of interest related to the history of anthropology!

Want us to include your session? Send us an email–We’d love to hear from you: news@histanthro.org.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Museum Methods (Reception, Council for Museum Anthropology)

Offsite: Museum of Anthropology, 6393 NW Marine Dr., Vancouver, BC

10:00 AM – 2:30 PM

Organizer: Sowparnika Balaswaminathan (University of California, San Diego)

Chair: Diana Marsh (Smithsonian Institution)

Presenters::

  • Jennifer Kramer (University of British Columbia)
  • Jen Shannon (University of Colorado Boulder)
  • Joshua Bell (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian)
  • Susan Rowley (Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia)
  • Cara Krmpotich (University of Toronto)

Between Theories and Research Fields

12:00 PM – 1:45 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 205, West Level 2

  • Developing the Anthropology of the New Country Church Growth Assessment Protocol in Paraguay and Chile (Henri Gooren, Oakland University)
  • Authority, Agency, and Conditions for Change Acceptance in Possession Rituals of Northern Kerala (Vincent Brillant-Giroux, University of Toronto)
  • Ethics and Agency: Alfred Gell and the Post-Foucauldian Anthropology of Ethics (Daniel Chen, University of Virginia)
  • Reading E.B. Tylor in Assam: Reflections from the Field on Animism, Magic and Epistemologies of Nonhumans and Nonlife (Shweta Krishnan, George Washington University)
  • Contextual Reenchantments: Relational Ontologies and Environmentalism Among Modern Pagans (Sabina Magliocco, University of British Columbia)
  • Moral-Ethical Change in Ice Hockey: An Alternative Approach to Sport as Religion (Patrick Bondy, Dalhousie University)

Chair: Henri Gooren (Oakland University)

On Race and Racialization: Corporality, Land and Borders

2:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 301,  West Level 3 (Summit)

  • Racism and Land: An Ignored History and the Need for Respectful Equity for African Americans that Live in Historical Oklahoma Black Towns (Suzette Chang)

Chair: Gayatri Reddy (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Warm Words in a Cold Climate: Curiosity and Cooperation in Cold-War Anthropology

4:30 PM – 6:15 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 112

  • Soviet-American anthropological conversations across the Cold War Divide (Sergei Alymov, Russian Academy of Sciences)
  • Circumpolar Imaginaries: Transnational Anthropological Collaboration in the Polar North (David Anderson, University of Aberdeen)
  • Global Stage of Local Stories: Indigenous Ethnohistories and Academic Diplomacy in the Soviet Arctic (Dmitry Arzyutov)
  • Urgent for Whom?: Revisiting the Postcolonial Contexts of Urgent Anthropology (Adrianna Link, American Philosophical Society)
  • Cold-War Conflicts: the Controversial Cooperations in Lithuania (Vida Savoniakaite, Lithuanian Institute of History)
  • The Moral Economy of Modernization: Eric Wolf’s Cold War Peasant Ethnography (Simon Torracinta, Yale University)

Chair: Joshua Smith (University of Western Ontario)

Discussants: Alex Golub (University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa)

Author-meets-Critics session on “Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder” by Robert Launay

4:30 PM – 6:15 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 207, West Level 2

  • This Author-meets-Critics roundtable considers the latest book by Robert Launay, Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Chair: Nurhaizatul J. Jamil

Presenters: Mariane Ferme, Elaine A. Pena, M. Bilal Nasir

Discussant: Robert Launay, Regna Darnell

The Post-Anthropological: Convergences Across Museums, Art, and Colonialism

4:30 PM – 6:15 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 116, West Level 1

Organizers/Chairs:

Margareta von Oswald (Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage)

Jonas Tinius (Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage)

  • Art/Anthropology Interventions in Post-Colonial Rome (Arnd Schneider, University of Oslo)
  • The Song of an Anthropology Museum: Post-colonial Aspirations, Multiversity and Contemporary Art (Nicola Levell, University of British Columbia)
  • Exceeding the Anthropological Museum: Overflows of Indigenous Identity in New Caledonia (Christopher Green, University of Pennsylvania)
  • The Postcolonial Nation and the Museum: Two Cases of Museum Disruption in India (Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, University of California, San Diego)
  • Fissured repairs. Remaining within the ‘cultures of the ethnological’ at the Humboldt Forum Berlin (Margareta von Oswald, Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage)
  • Art, Otherness, and the Curatorial. Fieldnotes on the negotiation of anthropology beyond itself (Jonas Tinius, Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage)

Discussant: Anthony Shelton (Museum of Anthropology)

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Contextualizing African Landscapes: Mobility in Space, Time and Identity

8:00 AM- 9:45 AM

 Vancouver CC WEST, Room 304 & 305, West Level 3 (Summit)

  • Too Little Space under the Sun: History as a Weapon in African Migrants’ Struggle for Social Space in the USA (Dmitry Bondarenko, Institute for African Studies Russian Academy of Sciences)
  • Haunted Properties: Colonial Striations and Cursed Resources in the Geographies of Small-Scale Mining, Uluguru, Tanzania (Jessie Fredlund, CUNY Graduate Center)

Chair: Mary Hallin (University of Nebraska, Omaha)

On Shifting Methods: Power, Collaboration, Decolonization

8:00 AM- 9:15 AM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 213, West Level 2

  • Decolonizing Our Conceptual Heritage Through Psychedelics (Joshua Falcon, Florida International University)
  • Caring for Eeyou Istchee: Protected Area Creation in Wemindji Cree Territory, Northern Quebec (Monica Mulrennan, Concordia University) 
  • Stitching Together the Canadian Identitarian Movement (Amy Mack, University of Alberta) 
  • The limits of participant-observation: reflections from fieldwork in West Bengal, India (James Bradbury, University of Manchester) 
  • Malinowski and the White Traders: Kula, Colonial Cultures, and the History of Anthropology (Maria Lepowsky, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
  • Doing Desi Ethnography in Manipur: Stories of Embodiment and Power Relationships During Fieldwork in India (Shruti Mukherjee, SUNY, Stony Brook University)
  • Talking About the Past: Differing Constructions and Conceptions of Time in the Tourist Space of Chichén Itzá (Sofia Vicente-Vidal)

Chair: Shruti Mukherjee (SUNY, Stony Brook University)

History of Anthropology Interest Group Business Meeting

12:15 pm – 1:45 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 116, West Level 1 

Business Meeting hosted by: General Anthropology Division 

Organizers/Chairs/Presenters: 

Joshua Smith (University of Western Ontario) 

Grant Arndt (Iowa State University

Hidden Presence: Franz Boas, James Teit and the Anthropology of South Central British Columbia, 1894-1930

2:00 pm – 3:45 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 116, West Level 1

Organizer: Wendy Wickwire (University of Victoria) 

Chair: Leslie Robertson (University of British Columbia) 

Presenters: 

  • cìmitíyt wíkc he séytknmx: Recontextualizing Nlaka’pamux Museum Collections (Angie Bain) 
  • Hidden from View: Waxtkwu, James Teit and the Ethnography of Interior Salish Rock Art (Chris Arnett) 
  • Boas and his Invisible Other: The Legacy of James A. Teit of Spences Bridge, British Columbia (Wendy Wickwire, University of Victoria) 
  • James Teit and Homer Sargent: Two Hunters — A Great Connection (John Haugen)

Changing Political Climates: The Relational Dynamics of Obligation in Urgent Anthropological Research

4:15 pm – 6:00 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 115, West Level 1 

Organizer/Chair: Joshua Smith (University of Western Ontario) 

Presenters: 

  • Standing Again, Standing Against. Politics, Economics, Research, and an Anthropology that Matters (Sebastian Brau, Iowa State University) 
  • Tracing Ancestry: Personalizing our Role in Decolonization (Danielle Gendron)
  • Burning the Land, Healing the River: The St‘ át‘ imc Salish Relational Politics of Fire and Water (Sarah C. Moritz, McGill University); co-author: Qwalqwalten John (St‘át‘imc Nation (Tsal’alh)) 
  • Individual Sovereignty as a Model of/for Tribal Sovereignty: A Sioux Case Study (David Posthumus, University of South Dakota) 
  • Claiming Solidarity in Algonquin Provincial Park: Food Sovereignty, Cultural Resurgence and Insurgent Research (Ian Puppe, University of Western Ontario) 
  • Talk to Me: The Relational Dynamics of Museum Collections and Their Communities (Maureen Matthews, The Manitoba Museum) 

Discussant: Regna Darnell (University of Western Ontario)

Friday, November 22, 2019

Bridging Geographic and Gender Gaps in Archaeology: Session in Honor of Janet Levy

8:00 am – 9:45 am 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 306, West Level 3 (Summit) 

Organizers/Chairs: 

Bettina Arnold (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) 

Katina Lillios (University of Iowa) 

Presenters: 

  • Taking Stock of Feminist Archaeology in the Southeast United States (Ramie Gougeon, University of West Florida) 
  • Janet Levy’s Feminist Archaeology — Tenacity and Grace (Sarah Nelson, University of Denver) 
  • Dual Citizenship in Archaeological Gender Studies: European and U.S. Perspectives (Bettina Arnold, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) 
  • Heterarchical practices in the 3rd millennium BCE of southwestern Iberia (Katina Lillios, University of Iowa) 
  • Heterarchy of Person-Community Relations in Neolithic Landscapes of Southern Germany (Matthew Murray, University of Mississippi) 
  • Gendered Images and Contexts of Viking-Age Metal in Scandinavia: The Impact of Metal-detecting (Nancy Wicker, University of Mississippi) 
  • Innovative Collaboration and Inspiration between the Schiele Museum and UNC-Charlotte’s Janet E. Levy: A Well Crafted Synergy (Alan May, University of North Carolina, Charlotte); co-author: (V. Ann Tippitt, Schiele Museum)

Museums as Sites of and for Research

8:00 AM – 9:45 AM

Vancouver CC East, Room 16

  • The Swazi clothing and adornment collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum: A transnational collaboration between Hilda Kuper and Thoko Ginindza (Abby Gondek, University of Florida)
  • Analysing the AMNH and “The Old New York” Diorama as Contemporary Decolonial Popularisation (Leonie Sophie Treier, Bard Graduate Centre)
  • Bill Reid’s Black Eagle Canoe: The Cultural Biography of a Replica Object (Bryan Myles, Simon Fraser University)
  • (In)Tangible: Indigenous Readings of ‘In a Different Light’ at the Museum of Anthropology (Amanda Sorensen, University of British Columbia)
  • On the Borders of Sorry: Changing Conversations in Vancouver Museums (Caitlin Gordon-Walker, University of British Columbia)
  • The Living Archive of Aboriginal Art (Sabra Thorner, Mount Holyoke College)

Chair: Caitlin Gordon-Walker (UBC)

Re-assembling the Social Organization: Franz Boas, George Hunt, and the Changing Climates of Collaborative Ethnography in British Columbia

10:15 am – 12:00 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 202, West Level 2 

Organizers/Chairs: 

Judith Berrman (University of Victoria) 

Aaron Glass (Bard Graduate Center) 

Presenters: 

  • Restoring Erasures in The Social Organization: George Hunt and the Chicago World’s Fair Troupe in Boas’s Early Kwakwaka’wakw Research (Judith Berrman, University of Victoria) 
  • “A Wealth of Thought”: Museum Collections, Indigenous Ontologies, and Franz Boas’s Anthropology of Art (Aaron Glass, Bard Graduate Center) 
  • Images in Site: Franz Boas, Photography, and the Creation of Ethnographic Authenticity (Ira Jacknis, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, University of California, Berkeley) 
  • A Book of Treasures: Utilizing Hunt-Boas texts in the Contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch (Andy Everson) 
  • Relating Boas’s Kwakwaka’wakw Field Notes and Music Records to The Social Organization (Rainer Hatoum, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main)

Discussant: Andrea Walsh (University of Victoria)

Re-Presenting Historical Legacies: A Decolonial Reckoning with Anthropology’s Ruins

2:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 304 & 305

  • Re-Presenting the People of Pascua: Ethnographic Debris and Imperial Repertoires in Southern Arizona (Nicholas Barron, University of New Mexico) 
  • Enrolling Researchers: Precarity, Affect, and Xavante-Scientist Relations under Brazilian Settler Colonialism (Rosanna Dent, New Jersey Institute of Technology – Rutgers Newark)
  • The Ethnographer’s Magic Revisited: Conjuring Histories of Indigenous Science from Egypt’s Anthropological Archive (Taylor Moore, Rutgers University New Brunswick)
  • On (Not) Studying Culture: Anthropological Pasts and Futures on Haida Gwaii (Joseph Weiss, Wesleyan University)

Chair: Hilary Leathem, University of Chicago

Discussants: Christien Tompkins (Rutgers University New Brunswick); Lee D. Baker (Duke University)

Honoring First Nations’ Anthropologists

4:15 – 6:00 PM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 101 & 102, West Level 1

  • Vi taqwsheblu Hilbert: Legend and Legacy
  • Traditional Knowledge in the Louis Shotridge Collection (Lucy Fowler Williams, University of Pennsylvania)
  • William Beynon’s First Person Accounts of Feasts as Contributions to the Revitalization of Sm’algyax (Margaret Anderson, University of Northern British Columbia)
  • Researching and writing about Secwépemc People, Land and Laws (Marianne Ignace, Simon Fraser University)
  • Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Her Unparallelled Contribution to the Study of Tlingit Ceremonial Oratory (Sergei Kan, Dartmouth College)
  • Robert Goodvoice, Preserving Dakota on the Frontier (Alice Kehoe, Boasian Anthropology)

Chair: Sergei Kan (Dartmouth College)

Pedagogies of Culture

4:15 PM – 6:00 PM

Vancouver CC EAST, Room 15, East Meeting Level

  • The Origin of Culture Andre de Vinck (Andre de Vinck, Cultural Theory)
  • Identity — The Unknown History of a Concept (John Eidson, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Chair: John Eidson (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Rethinking Colonization in New Guinea

4:15 pm – 6:00 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 202, West Level 2 

Organizers/Chairs: Alex Golub (University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa) 

Courtney Handman (University of Texas at Austin) 

Presenters: 

  • Were the Highlands ‘Pacified’?: Discipline and Punishment in Enga Province, 1952–2015 (Alex Golub, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa) 
  • Is Independence Enough? Reconsidering Colonialism and the Papua Besena Movement (Jordan Haug, University of California, San Diego) 
  • Cannibals and Parasites: Managing the Circulation of Information in Colonial New Guinea (Courtney Handman, University of Texas at Austin) 
  • Colonial Returns: Encounters and Imaginaries in the Papua New Guinean War Tourism Industry (Victoria Stead, Deakin University) 

Discussant: Barbara Andersen (Massey University)

History of Anthropology Review (HAR) Happy Hour

4:30 pm  – 5:30 pm

mahony|Burrard Landing (Convention Centre, West)

Dr. Sydel Silverman: A Celebration of Her LIfe and Work 

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Vancouver CC WEST,  Room 220, West Level 2 

Organizers/Chairs: Jeff Maskovsky (CUNY, Graduate Center) 

Danilyn Rutherford (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) 

Presenter: Rayna Rapp (New York University)

Saturday November 23, 2019

Convivir con la Comunidad: Ethnographic Encounters in and with Mexican Communities

8:00 am – 9:45 am

Vancouver CC WEST,  Room 212, West Level 2

Organizers: W Warner Wood (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) 

Jayne Howell (California State University, Long Beach) 

Chair: Jayne Howell (California State University, Long Beach) 

Presenters: 

  • Re-victimizing research or convivencia? Weaving and living with gender violence (Catherine Whittaker, University of Edinburgh) 
  • Of Mules and Ethnographic Espionage: When Ethnographers and Fields Schools are Enlisted in the Policing of World Heritage (Quetzil Castaneda, Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology) 
  • Close Enough? Proximity and the Personal in Ethnographic Field Work (Ronda Brulotte, University of New Mexico) 
  • Collaborative Anthropology in the Age of Deep Adaptation: PAR on the Coast of Oaxaca in the Face of Pending Climate Catastrophe (W Warner Wood, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) 
  • Enduring Friendships, Emic Perspectives, and Evolving Fieldwork Foci in Southern Mexico (Jayne Howell, California State University, Long Beach) 

Discussant: Walter Little (SUNY, Albany)

Collaborative Practices and Decolonizing Anthropology

8:00 AM – 9:45AM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 110, West Level 1

  • Displaying Truth and Reconciliation: Experiences of Engagement between Alberni Indian Residential School Survivors and Museum Professionals Curating the Canadian History Hall (Bradley Clements)
  • Honouring Indigenous Voices and Relationship in Cultural Memory and Archival Praxis (Camille Callison)
  • Unfolding Stories (Evadne Kelly)
  • Le programme d’alphabétisation ArrowMight au Canada: un exemple de coopération pour contribuer à la décolonisation? (Marie Michèle Grenon, Universite Laval)
  • Penser la collaboration : Entre points de contacts disciplinaires et travail collaboratif (Andrée-Ann Métivier)
  • “The ties that bind”: Researching Indigenous Relations Specialists in Alberta’s Aboriginal Consultation Office (Tiffany Campbell, University of Alberta)
  • Anthropologists orchestrating collaboration: insights from anthropological leadership of a six country transdisciplinary research partnership on the social economy of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia (Derek Johnson, University of Manitoba)

Chair: Derek Johnson (University of Manitoba)

Indigenous and Local Collecting: Remembering what Museum History Forgets

8:00 AM – 9:45 AM

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 115, West Level 1

  • Traces of Local and Indigenous Curation in Archaeological Museum Collections (Rosemary Joyce, University of California, Berkeley)
  • Routes and Roots: The Intersection of Museum Anthropology and Cultural Heritage Practice (Carolyn Smith, University of California, Berkeley)
  • From Puerto Rico to the Peabody: Puerto Ricans as Architects of the Samuel Kirkland Lothrop Collection (Amanda Guzman, University of California, Berkeley)
  • Re-curating Indigenous diplomatic and religious gifts across the Atlantic. Wendat and Abenaki wampum belts in French Catholic churches (Lise Puyo, University of Pennsylvania)
  • Miqqutiit: Revitalizing Traditional Knowledge among Inuit Through Local Knowledge and Museum Collections (Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, Government of Nunavut)
  • Legacy Collections and Enduring Obligations: The E. Pauline Johnson Collection at the Museum of Vancouver (Emily Leischner, University of British Columbia)

Chair: Rosemary Joyce (University of California, Berkeley)

Discussant: Jennifer Kramer (University of British Columbia)

History of Anthropology Interest Group Luncheon 

11:45am, Tap and Barrel (located by the Convention Centre)

Note: There is a booking for 20 people.  

Sustainable Future?: Heritage, Community, and Ethical Engagements

2:00 pm – 3:45 pm

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 116, West Level 1 A 

Organizers/Chairs: Hilary Leathem (University of Chicago) 

Christopher Hernandez (University of Illinois, Chicago) 

Presenters: 

  • Sustainability’s (Im)Proper Relations: Ghostly Monuments and Admonishments in Oaxaca (Hilary Leathem, University of Chicago) 
  • Sustaining Community-Driven Heritage Management: Ethics, Development, and Community in Puerto Bello Metzabok (Christopher Hernandez, University of Illinois, Chicago)
  • Possibilities for Sustainable Livelihoods and Diverse Heritage Narratives in Community-Based Projects (Maia Dedrick, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • Local Work and National Heritage at the Chinese site of Yinxu (Lauren Ledin)
  • Ambiguous Relations: Ethnographic insights on archaeological practice and looting in Egypt (Robert Vigar, University of Pennsylvania) 

Discussants: 

K. Anne Pyburn (Indiana University) 

Lisa Breglia (George Mason University)

How Things End

4:15 pm – 6:00 pm 

Vancouver CC EAST, Room 16, East Meeting Level 

Organizer/Chair: Talia Dan-Cohen (Washington University in St. Louis) 

Presenters: 

  • Living in the “End of History”: War and Time in Cyprus (Elizabeth Davis, Princeton University) 
  • Biomaterial Beginnings and the Ends of the Organism in Regeneration Research (Gabriel Coren) 
  • The Extinction of Chimpanzee Cultures: A Plea for Fatalism (Nicolas Langlitz, The New School for Social Research) 
  • Life is All Over (Talia Dan-Cohen, Washington University in St. Louis) 
  • Durable Cultures and Intertwined Ends (Cameron Brinitzer, University of Pennsylvania)

Discussant: James Faubion (Rice University)

Tipping Toward Extinction: Confronting Climate Change and Indiegnous Language Loss

4:15 pm – 6:00 pm 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 211, West Level 2 

Organizer/Chair: Bernard Perley (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) 

Presenters: 

  • Speaking as an Indian/Talking like a State: Collaborative multivocality in A’uwe-Xavante discourse at the United Nations (Laura Graham, University of Iowa) 
  • Indigenous Languages as Antidotes to Climate Change (Belinda Daniels, University of Saskatchewan) 
  • The Years of Living Dangerously: Precarious Climate Change in the Village of Tewa Language Community (Paul Kroskrity, University of California, Los Angeles) 
  • Confronting Climate Change and Language Loss in California: the Weje-ebis Maidu Collaboration (M. Eleanor Nevins, Middlebury College) 
  • Keepers of the Fire, Keepers of the Water: Language, loss, and regeneration through geothermal practices on Indigenous lands (Andie Palmer, University of Alberta) 
  • Arctic Indigenous Languages: Resilience & Adaptation in a Time of Rapid Change (Lenore Grenoble, University of Chicago)

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Intersections between Anthropology of Science and Technology and Science & Technology Studies in Canada 

8:00 am – 9:45 am 

Vancouver CC WEST, Room 221, West Level 2 

Organizers: Brian Noble (Dalhousie University) 

Mascha Gugganig (Technical University Munich)

Chairs: Christina Holmes (St Francis Xavier University) 

Johanna Pokorny (University of Toronto) 

Presenters: 

Mascha Gugganig (Technical University Munich) 

Amy Donovan Jennifer Liu (University of Waterloo) 

Antony Zelenka (University of Toronto) 

Udo Krautwurst (University of Prince Edward Island) 

Discussants: 

Gabriela Vargas-Cetina (Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan) 

Janice Graham (Dalhousie University)