Department of Anthropology

LECTURES/EVENTS

Practice Job Talk
You are invited to attend a talk by Professor Rania K. Sweis, Ph.D.and Qatar Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

The talk entitled "Taking Care of Wounds: Transnational Humanitarian Medicine and Child Homelessness in Cairo" will take place in the CCAS boardroom on Tuesday January 17th, from 12:15-1:45.

Feel free to bring your lunch and Rania will supply drinks and snacks. Please let her know if you can make it: rks49@georgetown.edu.

Terms of Art? Cultural Diversity and the Study of Arts Audiences
Carole Rosenstein
George Mason University
Wednesday, February 15: 12-1:30 p.m., Car Barn 317

Arts audiences in the United States don’t look like the general population – they are better educated, wealthier, whiter, and older than most Americans. This presents a challenge to cultural policymakers, who must justify why public resources should be spent to support the preferences of the privileged and who, ultimately, must figure out ways to serve the whole population. The National Endowment for the Arts faces just this problem, and has recently commissioned several new studies examining arts audiences with new depth. These studies suggest that education is the most important predictor of arts attendance, trumping income, race or ethnicity. Based on analysis of national data on audiences for arts festivals, this paper argues to the contrary that race and ethnicity matter in cultural consumption choices, and so must be considered in the decision-making of cultural policymakers. Further, the paper suggests that the lasting importance of race and ethnicity has been overlooked because of an over-dependence on quantitative measures. Contemporary global shifts in the organization of culture demand that cultural policy research be informed by deep, qualitative investigation of participant understandings and assumptions about art, participation, community and culture.

Bio
Carole Rosenstein was a lead researcher on the 2010 National Endowment for the Arts’ Live From Your Neighborhood: A Study of Outdoor Arts Festivals in the U.S. She is an assistant professor of Arts Management at George Mason University and an Affiliated Scholar at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. Trained as an anthropologist, her research investigates intersections between art, culture and public policy. Dr. Rosenstein’s most recent policy brief, Cultural Development and City Neighborhoods, examines how city-level cultural policy infrastructure underserves urban communities. It was developed during a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship in cultural policy at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Currently, she is writing a book about John Dewey’s influence on the founding of progressive arts organizations.

KALMANOVITZ INITIATIVE

Day Laborer Exchange Program and the Worker Justice DC Alternative Spring Break Program
Applications now open for the Day Laborer Exchange Program and the Worker Justice DC Alternative Spring Break Program
Worker Justice DC Alternative Spring Break Program
PARTICIPANT Applications Due January 22.
Application available here.

Georgetown University’s Alternative Spring Break gives students the opportunity to learn through immersion. In the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s Worker Justice DC trip, students visit workplaces, day labor meeting spots, rallies, and picket lines, and learn how workers organize, from traditional unions to more informal networks, and how these organizations protect workers’ rights. Students also meet leaders in labor policy, from local DC advocates to national and international policy makers. We hope this experience will inspire students to engage meaningfully and take action on issues relevant to workers, their advocates, and the communities to which they belong. The trip is a joint collaboration between Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice and the Initiative. The trip will run from March 3-10, 2012. To see a video from last year's trip, click here.

Day Laborer Exchange Program
PAID STUDENT COORDINATOR Applications Due January 15.

PARTICIPANT Applications Due January 20.

Applications for both participant and student coordinator positions available here.

For ALL Applicants: If selected, you must be available on Saturday, January 28th from 8am-noon for orientation. Rain date: Saturday, February 4th.

Now in its third year, the Day Laborer Exchange Program connects students trained by the Kalmanovitz Initiative to day laborer hiring sites, or "corners" where day laborers congregate in hopes of finding work. Using a curriculum developed by DC Jobs with Justice, students teach "survival English": the words and phrases workers need to promote their job skills and to protect themselves against wage theft. Over a period of ten weeks, working in partnership with local day laborer organizers, students learn from and exchange experiences with day laborers while exploring structural issues affecting the day laborer community. In addition to weekly trips to the corner, students engage in reflection sessions throughout the semester. The experience is an opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of the complex issues day laborers face while at the corner. Check out the September 20, 2011 feature article highlighting the DLE program, "Students, Laborers Share Experiences" from the Georgetown student newspaper, the Hoya.

INTERNSHIPS/JOBS

Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program
The Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seeks to prepare talented and motivated college rising juniors and seniors from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, or those with a proven commitment to diversity, for graduate study and academic careers in fields in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts. The 10-week residential program, held this year from May 27 to August 2, 2012, provides participants with a rigorous research experience under the guidance of a UNC faculty mentor. Each student will receive:

• Stipend
• Campus Housing
• Meal Allowance
• Weekly seminar and Writing, Communication Skills,
and Graduate Professional Development workshops
• Intensive GRE review course
• Reimbursement for domestic travel expenses (up to $500)

The application deadline is February 3, 2012. For more details about the program please see the attached announcement. To access an application and for additional information about MURAP please visit our
website at http://www.unc.edu/depts/murap/ or contact Elizabeth Moore, Program Coordinator, murap@unc.edu.

Summer teaching Opportunities
The Institute of Reading Development is seeking candidates for summer 2012 teaching positions. We seek applicants with an undergraduate degree or higher from any discipline. We provide a paid training program and comprehensive on-going support.
Summer teaching positions with the Institute offer the opportunity to:
• Earn more than $6,000 during the summer. Teachers typically earn between $500 and $700 per week while teaching.
• Gain over 300 hours of teacher-training and teaching experience with a variety of age groups.
• Help students of all ages develop their reading skills and ability to become imaginatively absorbed in books.
The Institute is an educational service provider that teaches developmental reading programs in partnership with the continuing education departments of more than 100 colleges and universities across the United States. Our classes for students of all ages improve their reading skills and teach them to experience absorption in literature.
We hire people who:
• Have strong reading skills and read for pleasure
• Have a Bachelor's Degree in any discipline
• Are responsible and hard working
• Have good communication and organizational skills
• Will be patient and supportive with students
• Have regular access to a reliable car
We invite you to submit an online application and learn more about teaching for the Institute at our website:
http://instituteofreadingdevelopmentteachingjobs.com/

Paid Research Assistantship position in DC area
Research Assistant. $15/hour, approximately 15 hours per week, beginning January 19, 2012, for a one-year, joint Smithsonian George Washington University project on cell phone usage in the Washington DC area. Strong background in social science, especially ethnographic research methods, interviewing skills, and proposal writing, highly desirable. Language skills in Spanish or Vietnamese a plus. Send cover letter and resume to Joel Kuipers Kuipers@gwu.edu and to Joshua Bell BellJA@si.edu. We will begin evaluating applications on January 1st 2012, and will continue until the positions are filled.

STUDY ABROAD

SUMMER STUDY ABROAD IN GUATEMALA
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 15 FEBRUARY 2012
PROGRAM: June 1, July 10, 2012

COURSES OFFERED: Literature About Mayas, Literature by Mayas

The Revolutionary Imagination in Central American Literature

PLACE: Casa Herrera, Antigua Guatemala

Built in 1680, the Casa Herrera is a new research, conference and teaching facility located in Antigua, Guatemala, operated by the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with the Fundación Pantaleón. As an extension of the university’s Mesoamerica Center, the Casa Herrera focuses on disciplines that contribute to the study of Mesoamerican opportunities for education and research. It facilitates learning and dialogue in many fields of study, among scholars and students from many institutions and nations in Central America and beyond.

RATIONALE FOR COURSE: The courses will be taught with the specificity of Guatemala and Central America in mind. The history of Central America/US relations represents one of the most effective, and most extensively documented, subjects for a pedagogical examination of basic moral issues. A structuredinquiry into El Salvador’s “Matanza” in 1932, the US’s invasion of Guatemala in 1954, Central American civil wars in the 1980s, the construction of the Panama Canal, and similar episodes marking the 20th century yields critical lessons for an investigation of human behavior. Their study also addresses one of the central tenets of education in the United States, which is to examine what it means to be a responsible citizen. Literary texts codify social behaviors. Different socio-historical experiences codify social imaginaries present in literary texts. Thus, through a study of Central American literature, students can come to realize that:

* Democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained, but need to be appreciated, nurtured, and protected;

* Silence and indifference to the suffering of others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society, can - however, unintentionally - serve to perpetuate the problems;

* The Central American civil wars were not an accident in history - they occurred because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices that not only legalized discrimination against indigenous peoples, but which allowed prejudice, hatred, and ultimately mass murder to occur.

Visits will emphasize Maya culture and society. They will include a visit to the market in Chichicastenango, one to Lake Atitlán as well as a visit to the K’iche’ town of San Francisco El Alto. Classical Maya sites such as Tikal may be visited as well in the near future. The idea is to sensitize students to the millenarian richness of Maya culture, a culture with over 2,000 years of history, and to connect the classical past with present-day oppression.

Dr. Arturo Arias directs the program. Dr. Arias is a native Guatemalan scholar and award-winning novelist who visits Guatemala regularly. He has taught on study abroad program in both Guatemala and Spain.

CALL FOR PAPERS

CFP, Columbia Religion Graduate Student Conference
The Religion Graduate Students' Association of Columbia University is now accepting paper proposals for its Eighth Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference:
Pray, Kill, Eat: Relating to Animals across Religious Traditions
Friday, April 20, 2012, 9 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Columbia University, New York, NY

The keynote speakers for the conference are:

Professor Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School

Professor Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School.

Humans have always had complex and intimate relationships with animals. Animals have been feared, revered, hunted, sacrificed, eaten, utilized, domesticated, and worshipped for thousands of years. Religious traditions have been instrumental in both reflecting and constructing humans' notions of animals and have integrated such notions into comprehensive mythical, symbolic, and ritual frameworks of meaning and action. In recent decades, however, many earlier forms of such relationships have been radically transformed in the face of rapid development. At the same time scholars like Kimberley Patton and Wendy Doniger have led efforts to rethink animals and religion from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. This conference, therefore, engages both the shifting complexity of the modern world and a growing body of scholarship in religious studies. We seek papers that explore animals as both religious objects and subjects, and probe the myriad ways in which religions reflect, shape, and re-shape the relationship between humans and animals.

We welcome papers that address contemporary as well as historical articulations of this topic, drawing on diverse methodologies and sources. Papers may be on any topic related to animals and religion. Suggested themes include:

- Sacrifice
- The use of animals (or animal parts) in festivals, rituals and other religious contexts
- The deification and demonization of animals
- Religious dietary practices (e.g. prescriptions and proscriptions regarding animals)
- Transgressive practices involving animals
- Animals as the paradigmatic Other
- Blurred categories: hybrids, half-animals, shape-shifting, etc.
- Possession of/by animals
- Animals in religious narratives
- Animal symbolism
- Religion and animals in the 21st century (urbanization, technology, industrialization of animal husbandry)
- Animal rights and the treatment of animals
- Religion, animals, and political discourse
- Evolution and creationism
- Reincarnation

Please submit paper titles and abstracts (300 words or less) to columbiareligion@gmail.com.
Please include name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and a contact email address.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 27, 2012
All proposals will receive a response by mid-February, 2012

Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies
Greetings from Princeton! My name is Jenna Song, and I am writing on behalf of the Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies (PJEAS). PJEAS is a student academic journal with the official support of the East Asian Studies Program at Princeton University. We publish works of scholarship written by both undergraduate and graduate students from around the world on political, economic, social and cultural issues pertaining to the East Asian region. PJEAS aims to foster both an intellectually rigorous student discourse and an atmosphere of mutual enhancement of knowledge and development of leadership in these fields.
We are currently inviting all interested students to submit their academic work for publication in our Inaugural Issue, scheduled to be published in March 2012. Upon submission, your paper will be reviewed under a double-blind process. A member of our operational staff will contact you within a short period of time to confirm that your paper is under review.
Please refer to the submission guidelines below, and send all submissions to pjeassubmissions@gmail.com by January 31, 2012. If you have any general inquiries, please email prjeas@princeton.edu. Thank you for your time and consideration, and we hope to hear from you soon!

Submission Guidelines
PJEAS invites original contributions to East Asian studies that meet the journal’s aim and scope from both undergraduate and graduate students in the United States and abroad.

Submissions should relate directly to at least one of the countries or sub-regions in East Asia, i.e. People’s Republic of China (and its autonomous regions), Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Republic of China.

A publishable article should explain the significance of its topic, make a clear and convincing argument through balanced analysis, and employ an effective writing style.

Articles submitted to PJEAS should not have previously been accepted for publication or review at another undergraduate- or graduate-level publication.

Submissions should be 15 – 30 pages in length, excluding the abstract, subheadings, and citations.

Submissions should contain complete citations and references, which must follow the “notes and bibliography” system as presented by the Chicago Manual of Style.

The article should include on its first page a short abstract that concisely summarizes its main arguments and findings. The abstract should be no less than 150 words and no more than 200 words in length.

The document should be formatted for “US Letter” size, with 12-point font, single-spaced lines, and one-inch margins on all sides, and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document.

To ensure anonymity of the evaluation process, any information identifying the author should be removed from the Word document that contains the article, and the cover sheet [hyperlink] should be submitted as a separate document instead.

Authors will be informed of whether their article has been accepted for review no more than 3 weeks after initial submission. Should their article be accepted, part of the responsibility falls upon the authors to communicate promptly with their respective editor to allow for effective and efficient revision process. The assignment of editor(s) will be specified in the initial acceptance e-mail.

At any point during the process of evaluation, revision, and publication, the PJEAS Executive Board reserves the sole right to publish an article or refuse publication.
 

OTHER

Smithsonian Anthropology Collections
Interesting stories about 19th century collections and collectors, told by anthropology staff members, in newly produced videos can be viewed on the Anthropology Department website at http://anthropology.si.edu/founding_collections.html.
The subjects include the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838 -1842); the North American Mound Explorations (1881-1892); Edward Nelson’s Arctic Expedition (1877-1881); ethnologist James Mooney; anthropologist Frank Cushing, and Diplomatic Gifts beginning in 1846.
This project was made possible with a grant from The Smithsonian’s Women’s Committee.