American Anthropological Association

2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting: Transitions
2023-11-15 08:00 - 2023-11-19 17:00 (America/New_York) | Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 255 Front St W, Toronto, ON, M5V 2W6, Canada
The 2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting will again be a hybrid meeting. This means the meeting will take place in-person in Toronto, ON, CA, from November 15-19, 2023, as well as online over those same dates.
The place-based meeting in Toronto will look and feel very similar to annual meetings of the past. As we continue to navigate the COVID-19 Pandemic, safety protocols will be in place to ensure the health and safety of in-person attendees. Please check our webpage on Public Health and Safety often for updates to our protocols as the AAA and CASCA continue to monitor the evolving COVID-19 situation and applicable public health guidance.
The virtual component of the meeting will be hosted professionally on a virtual meeting platform. Virtual attendees will be able to engage with live virtually presented content during session rounds, select place-based sessions streamed live into the platform from Toronto, and pre-recorded asynchronous content uploaded to the platform’s library. Place-based attendees will have the option to attend meeting sessions in Toronto or on the online platform, as the platform will also serve as the place-based attendee mobile app.

Anthros on the Public Stage: Interactive Workshop for Public Speaking & Writing
2023-10-27 12:00 - 14:00, 2023-10-20 12:00 - 14:00, 2023-10-13 12:00 - 14:00, 2023-10-06 12:00 - 14:00
Are you an anthropologist eager to share your research experiences and insights to make a difference in the world? Have you ever wondered how to tell a compelling story that can help people understand each other better and resolve their differences? Would you like to learn some strategies for communicating persuasively with print/digital media? Or might you be interested in coaching peers, students, or groups you work with to relate their experiences? If you answered yes to at least one of these questions, this course is for you!
This course has two overarching goals: 1) Take the guesswork out of speaking to and writing for general audiences, and 2) Equip you with the tools and strategies for successful public engagement. To accomplish these goals, we will build on four modules from the anthrocurious.com production of Anthropologists on the Public Stage (2022):

Develop an Idea Worth Sharing
Connect with the Media
Tell a Great Story
Promote Yourself and Anthropology

Four two-hour sessions represent the foundation for the course, with assignments in between, from Noon – 2:00 p.m. Eastern on October 6, 13, 20, and 27. At the start of each session, we introduce relevant video and solicit your reactions to it. Then we springboard to exploring an idea you would like to share publicly, using tips presented in the video. In at least two sessions, we will be uploading one or more documents (e.g., working papers, articles, reflections) to an AI platform and will suggest some ways to query it. Then, it will be your chance to become creative as you see your initial idea in relation to the AI-generated text. You will work to extend your idea in new directions with strategies for developing your plan for media and public engagement. Opportunities will be available to get guidance from communication experts during the course.
By participating in this course, you will come away with a media and public engagement plan, which includes storytelling techniques and tools to move from idea to audience-ready, media outreach tactics, and promotional strategy.

The REAL AI revolution: the benefits of Chatbot Augmented Instruction
2023-10-26 15:00 - 16:00
Join Michael Wesch and Elisa (EJ) Sobo for an exciting conversation on how to leverage generative AI for better teaching and learning! Together, they will delve into the challenges presented by large language models and generative AI technologies, offering not only concrete suggestions for classroom practice but also timely reflections on the purpose of higher education. “In meeting this new technology with creativity and purpose, we can reorient education’s compass needle back toward process as opposed to product – toward thinking about as opposed to merely recounting what others have said” – and as we do, we can bolster efforts to increase equity in higher education too: “The adaptations we create, not ChatGPT, could be the real revolution” (Sobo, 2023, 1). By guiding students to apply generative AI in innovative classroom activities and projects, we can empower our students to use this technology as a practical tool for inquiry and discovery while also interrogating its potential sociocultural impacts.
Sobo, E. (2023). Could ChatGPT Prompt a New Golden Age in Higher Education? Teaching and Learning Anthropology, 6(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/T36160114
Presenters
Michael Wesch is a winner of the CASE/Carnegie US Professor of the Year Award, Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, and founder of anth101.com, an award-winning free textbook alternative for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.
Elisa (EJ) Sobo, professor of anthropology, is Director for Undergraduate Research in the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University, and AI Faculty Fellow in the Instructional Technology division. A past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA) and a past Convener for the AAA’s Section Assembly Executive Committee (SAEC), Dr. Sobo’s research concerns non-biomedical or ‘alternative’ approaches to health including, most recently, yogic sound bath therapy.
Fees: Free for members and non-members

Department Climate and Academic Workload in Anthropology Departments
2023-10-18 13:00 - 14:00
Scholars of intersectional identities face unique challenges in their departments including disproportionate workloads, excessive service assignments, and additional mentorship obligations. Patricia A. Matthew, an English department faculty member at Montclair State University, describes these extra commitments as “invisible labor” – because institutions do not value this labor with the currency they typically use to reward faculty work: reappointment, tenure, and promotion. This webinar session, hosted by SSRC PROGRESS, is structured around a participant-led discussion of two case studies, with two discussion facilitators to support a meaningful dialogue on issues of department climate and academic workload/career advancement. The ultimate goal of this session is to have an open discussion of both challenges and successes in employing DEI interventions in anthropology departments.
PROGRESS is an NSF ADVANCE adaptation grant program that addresses organizational policies and procedures related to advisory board formation, peer review, and fellowship/awards conferment to ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion measures are meaningful and effective. Housed within the Social Science Research Council, PROGRESS partners with five disciplinary associations – the American Anthropological Association, the American Economic Association, the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, and the American Sociological Association.
Presenters

Veronica Zepeda, Program Director, Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network – Social Science Research Council
Fred Palm, VP of Administration and Operations, P.I. of PROGRESS – Social Science Research Council

Fees: Free for members and non-members

The Job of the Future: Digital Anthropology Meets Data Science
2023-09-27 09:00 - 10:00
Abstract
This panel will discuss how digital anthropologists can use data science to help us better understand people and communities in the “Phygital” world, and why this growing field is a critical “Job of the Future” across the public and private sector. This panel discussion–featuring experts from digital anthropology, data science, journalism, social media and tech –will delve deeply into how this field will play a role in AI, combat online extremism and violence and support a more equal and ethical digital future. Non-anthropologists and anthropologists alike are warmly welcome!
Presenters

Cristian Huepe, Co-director, Social Listening Lab (SoL-UC), Universidad Católica de Chile.
Himanshu Panday, Co-founder, Dignity in Difference
Matt Artz, Founder of Azimuth Labs
James Ingram, Founder of the Liiv Center & CEO of TelmarHelixa
Christine Burke, VP Cultural Insights, TelmarHelixa

Moderator

Katie Hillier, Chief Digital Anthropologist, Liiv Center

Fees: Free for members and non-members
Register

Anthropology Live: Discussing “Decolonizing Anthropology: Global Perspectives”
2023-09-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Join us for a thought-provoking webinar on what it means to decolonize anthropology in different contexts around the world. This event brings together Dr. Gretchen Stolte, Dr. Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, and Dr. Carolyn Rouse, contributors of the American Ethnologist special forum, “Decolonizing Anthropology: Global Perspectives“, to explore the past, present, and future of anthropology. This discussion, moderated by Dr. Faye Ginsburg, will touch on everything from the decolonizing politics of citation, public anthropology, the historical relationship between anthropology and colonial power in different parts of the world, and the degree to which anthropology provided and provides the tools to resist.
Panelists
Dr. Gretchen Stolte, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia
Dr. Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, Departamento de Estudios Culturales, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico), Departamento de Antropologia (emeritus), Universidade de Brasília
Dr. Carolyn Rouse, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University
Moderator
Dr. Faye Ginsburg, Department of Anthropology, New York University
Register

2023 Anthropology Photo Contest
2023-08-09 17:00 | Online
We’re now accepting submissions for the 2023 Anthropology Photo Contest! The deadline to submit your photos is August 9th, 2023.
Anthropologists work all around the world in a diverse range of careers, and we want to highlight them. Photographs can be anything you believe relates to your work, in the field, lab, or classroom. In addition to being featured on the AAA website as header images and on AAA’s social media accounts, select photo contest images will be featured in the 2024 AAA calendar which will be distributed at the 2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting in Toronto.

2023 AAA Department Leaders Summer Institute
2023-06-21 12:00 - 2023-06-23 17:00 | Online
Registration for the 2023 Department Leaders Summer Institute, Advocating for Your Department and Our Field, is now open.
Click here to register now!
The Department Leaders Summer Institute provides an opportunity for department leaders to have face-to-face conversations about the various challenges of administering a department and to share successful practices for dealing with these challenges.
AAA DSP Partners are eligible for complimentary registration. If you have questions about your DSP partnership, please contact AAA staff here.

Deadline: 2023 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing Contest Entry
2023-06-15 08:00 - 23:45
Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
The Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) announces the annual juried competition for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. The late Victor Turner devoted his career to seeking an accessible language that would reopen anthropology to the human subject, and the competition recognizes the innovative books that further this project. We seek graceful, accessible ethnographic writing which deeply explores its subject and contributes in innovative and engaging ways to the genre(s) of ethnography and the field of humanistic (and/or post-humanistic) anthropology.

2023 SEA Annual Meeting — Wellbeing And The Common Good
2023-05-18 16:00 - 2023-05-20 20:00 | Norris University Center, Northwestern University, United States
In our third year of a global pandemic, we are stretched thin, suffering touches us all, and our wells of empathy seem to be running dry. And yet, despite this suffering many of us are also paying closer attention to our own well-being and to the well-being of those around us. In this spirit of exploration and cautious hope, the theme of the 2023 Society for Economic Anthropology meeting will be “Well-Being and the Common Good.” Drawing in part from a growing “anthropology of the good” (coined by Joel Robbins), we seek papers that challenge us to rethink the economy as one part of a total experience aimed at making life worthwhile. The anthropology of the good asks us to reflect on the values we hold as economic anthropologists and how these values lead us to investigate (or set aside) topics like well-being or the common good. Bringing these topics to the foreground of economic research can help us understand where we have fallen short and where we might succeed in efforts to study, reveal, highlight, and perhaps help people to achieve well-being and the common good.

SAR 2023 Spring Meeting: Religious Assemblages
2023-05-12 09:00 - 2023-05-14 17:00 | University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
A signature contribution of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, and the anthropology of religion more generally, has been to reveal both the overt and covert ways in which religious practice both informs and can be conjoined to myriad other domains of social life. From James Frazer’s interrogation of the pagan roots of Christianity to Saba Mahmood’s insights about the implicit Christianity of liberalism, the anthropology of religion has revealed assemblages of religious forms and practices with other forms and practices that superficially appear to be devoid of religious influence.
