anthro{dendum}

The Challenges of Conducting Fieldwork in a Place You Call Home

By Trauma and Resilience | August 17, 2019

Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Saira Mehmood. She will be a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Spelman College in the 2019-2020 academic year. You can follow her on Twitter @SairaAMehmood. The Challenges of Conducting Fieldwork in a Place You Call Home Saira A. Mehmood I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in my hometown of New Orleans. As a woman of color, I have noticed many other anthropologists of color also conducting fieldwork in places they call home. {+}

A Call for Transformation: Shifting the Narratives

By Bryan Cockrell | August 15, 2019

This is the final post in a four-part blog series about transforming the academic-industrial complex, particularly museums. After introducing the proposal, I described ending the myth of neutrality and then discussed turning away from partnerships that exploit people and the earth. The last part of my call is to: shift the narratives that are being told and center authors beyond the institution’s traditional umbrella of authority A starting point is language. In A Million Black Anthropocenes or None, Katherine Yusoff {+}

Methods of Motherhood: The Borderlands of Scholarship, Motherhood, and Trauma

By Trauma and Resilience | August 13, 2019

Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Melinda González. She is a PhD Candidate at Louisiana State University in the department of Geography and Anthropology, pursuing a doctorate in Anthropology. She is currently conducting dissertation research on post-Hurricane Maria community organizing in the Puerto Rican diaspora. Melinda is a first-generation college graduate, single mother, published and performance poet, and capoerista. You can learn more about her at PhDdreams.com. Methods of Motherhood: The Borderlands of Scholarship, Motherhood, and Trauma Melinda González “Una herida abierta” In {+}

The Embodiment of Kintsugi

By Trauma and Resilience | August 9, 2019

Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Shir Lerman Ginzburg, project director in the Department of Pediatrics and the Preventive Intervention Research Center (PIRC) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. She earned both her PhD in medical anthropology (2016) and her MPH (2015) from the University of Connecticut. Her primary research interests include mental health (particularly depression and anxiety), idioms of distress, obesity, diabetes, mindfulness, Hispanics, and Puerto Rican identity. She also has an interest in the Zika Virus and health disparities. {+}

Humanizing Fieldwork

By Trauma and Resilience | August 5, 2019

Anthrodendum welcomes guest editors Beatriz Reyes-Foster and Rebecca J. Lester. Humanizing Fieldwork: Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork, Part II The first collection of posts in this series demanded that we recognize the fact that fieldwork can hurt, and that we have fostered a disciplinary culture where that hurt has been normalized and even celebrated. In this next installment, our contributors recognize the challenges of navigating mental illness before and during fieldwork as well as the multiple structural constraints faced {+}

A Call for Transformation: Dismantling Extractive Partnerships

By Bryan Cockrell | July 18, 2019

After introducing my call for transformation within museums and the wider academic-industrial complex, and presenting the first part of my call, ending the myth of neutrality, I am writing to explain the second component of my call for transformation: dismantle partnerships with agencies and corporations that exploit people and the earth. Caring about people and the earth is not only part of the work of anthropologists and archaeologists, but should be part of our lives without the need for approbation {+}

Networking Nature: Tracking Terra, Sensing the Sea, Atmo-structures

By Adam Fish | July 10, 2019

Lately, when I have the pleasure of walking in the stacks of a regal, well-stocked, old library, and am in a devious mood, I imagine I am an alien roaming the halls of some temple of speciesism. I roll my eyes and mutter, “wow, another book by a human about a human’s perspective on something.” My alien observation describes all of human art, invention, science, and literature. More humans talking about humans and human’s views on other. Trapped in all-too-human {+}

Accumulation by media saturation

By Ryan | July 7, 2019

Recently, I was at the doctor’s office (I’m fine, thanks) and I started sifting through all the magazines. You know, all the magazines that you don’t usually read that suddenly look slightly more appealing when there’s no other choice. Yes, those. And then I saw one of the covers. It was Sunset magazine’s August 2018 issue. I saw the picture and it just seemed familiar. I didn’t look too closely, but it reminded me of the Cape region of Baja {+}

A Call for Transformation: Ending the Myth of Neutrality

By Bryan Cockrell | July 2, 2019

Following my introductory post, I now describe the first of three parts of my call for transformation in museums and the academic-industrial complex. The first part is to: (1) end (finally) the narrative that museums and academic institutions are neutral. Museums and academic institutions are not neutral. Instead, they are often rooted in inequality: the accumulation of material, money, physical space, and knowledge, along with alliances with other institutions that include the state. As Nathan Sentance argues, institutions that receive {+}

I’m too tired to read your work — on refusing HAU Journal

By zoetodd | July 1, 2019

This weekend, PhD student Taylor Genovese drew attention to the fact that the former Editor in Chief of HAU journal was granted an opportunity to write a final editorial in the journal (which I refuse to link to) — despite widespread accounts from former staff of highly problematic behaviours that were allowed to carry on at the journal. I have only read one screen cap of a portion of the editorial on twitter, and here’s why: life is too short to {+}