Date: Thursday, September 14 at 7:00-8:00 PM ET

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

Thursday, February 23 at 2:00-3:00 PM ET

FREE

Access to the film is provided upon registration for the audience to watch prior to the live event.

Abstract:

MY REMBETIKA BLUES director/filmmaker Mary Zournazi is joined by Grammy-winner Christopher C. King who will moderate the discussion on the film. Weaving together different stories of music and migration, the film documents the history of Rembetika music or the Greek blues. A music born of exile and the streets and developing its roots from the mass migration of people in the early twentieth century, the film gives the viewer a wealth of experiences that are often left out of the chronicles of history. The film touches on themes of loss, history, music, and family.

Access to the film is provided by our partnering group Documentary Educational Resources.

Panelists

MARY ZOURNAZI

Mary Zournazi is an Australian filmmaker and philosopher. Her multi-awarding winning documentary Dogs of Democracy (2017) was screened worldwide. Her recent documentary film, My Rembetika Blues is a film about life, love and Greek music. She is the author of several books including Inventing Peace with the German filmmaker Wim Wenders.

CHRISTOPHER C. KING

Christopher C. King is an ethnomusicologist, writer, and advocate of traditional music. He has produced over 351 CD collections of folk music. In 2002 he won a Grammy in the Historical Production category. In 2018 he published a book about the traditional folk music of northwestern Greece, Lament from Epirus (W.W. Norton). He is the Editor (Chair) of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal. He regularly presents lectures for the Gennadius Library in Athens, Greece and for the US State Department. In 2022 he was awarded Honorary Greek Citizenship for his work in promoting the music of Greece. He now lives in Konitsa, Epirus. Visit his website.

Date: Thursday, March 23 at 6-7:30 PM ET

How can anthropological expertise on sex and gender help us better understand the complexities of the world around us, particularly in the face of increasing legislation targeting transgender people and efforts at equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)? This panel discussion–featuring scholars from all four fields of anthropology–will delve deeply into sex and gender as categories, drawing on things like cross-cultural approaches, biological studies, and feminist theory. Non-anthropologists and anthropologists alike are warmly welcome!

Panelists:

Dr. Kate Clancy – Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Gabby Omoni Hartemann – PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais
Dr. Benjamin Hegarty – Researcher at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales
Dr. Rae Jereza – Senior Researcher at the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL) and Research Assistant Professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University

Discussant:
​Dr. Rine Vieth, McGill University

Date: Thursday, April 6 at 2:00-3:00 PM ET

Fees: Free for members and non-members

Location: Online

As learners return to campus after experiencing considerable trauma from a racialized pandemic, we must collectively adapt our pedagogical practices and teaching methods to reach and support them “where they are.” Framing authentic learning via inclusive teaching methods entails approaching teaching as a dynamic and responsive process. Rather than thinking of inclusion or accessibility as something that can be addressed as an after-the-fact consideration, inclusive teaching demands that instructors challenge themselves to center student needs throughout their pedological design process. This presentation will provide strategies and tips for applying an inclusive design approach to pedagogical innovation and practice.

Panelist

DR. RHIANNA C. ROGERS

Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers is director of the RAND Corporation’s Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy. She is an expert on cultural and ethnic studies, intercultural competencies and diversity education, cultural mediation, and virtual exchange programming and a recurring speaker at the United Nations – Geneva Forum. Rogers has supported DEI in a variety of capacities, including leading training for Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS)/German NATO DEU Air Command DEI (2022), participating in the White House – Year of Evidence in Action Forums (2022), and sat on the New York State Digital Equity Summits advisory group (2021). Before RAND, Rogers was a professor of interdisciplinary studies (history and anthropology) at the SUNY – Empire State College, where she held systems appointments as the Ernest Boyer Presidential Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2019–2020) and as a SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence Fellow (2014–2021).

World Anthropologies: Building Disciplinary Bridges and Upending Hierarchies of Knowledge

Date: Thursday, April 20 at 2:00-3:30 PM ET

Fees: Free for members and non-members

Location: Online

This webinar brings together scholars involved in the World Anthropologies movement to discuss the current state of this vital project with global scope. Starting with the recognition that the building of anthropological knowledge is mainly constrained both by imperial/colonial structures and the default frame of the nation-state, the session will explore methods of doing anthropology otherwise. As an AAA sponsored event, the session will focus in particular on the role of the US and the AAA. We will reflect on the extent to which USian anthropology positions itself as an (or even sometimes the!) “anthropology without culture”, as well as on how USian institutions and structures produce a USian anthropology. Within the context of efforts from within the AAA and other national or multinational bodies (notably the World Council of Anthropological Associations) and supranational bodies (notably the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences), we will discuss the struggle to decenter knowledge production from a place of privilege and domination. We will then consider how the World Anthro movement does or could build bridges with anthropologies that traverse, get around, subvert, or transcend “national” boundaries, and in particular the hegemony of the US, the AAA, and of English, and with movements that seek to queer anthropology, to decolonize it, to crip it, or to burn it down.

Panelists

MONICA HELLER

Monica Heller is Professor emerita at the University of Toronto. She is President-elect of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société Canadienne d’anthropologie, and a past President of the American Anthropological Association. A linguistic anthropologist, her work focusses on the role of language in the construction of social difference and social inequality, with a focus on francophone Canada.

GUSTAVO LINS RIBEIRO

Gustavo Lins Ribeiro is Full Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies, Autonomous Metropolitan University – Lerma, Mexico and National Researcher Emeritus of the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology. Professor Emeritus of the University of Brasilia. He was a visiting professor in Argentina, Colombia, France, South Africa and the US. His fields of research include topics such as development, international migration, internet, globalization, transnationalism and world anthropologies.

VIRGINIA R. DOMINGUEZ

Virginia R. Dominguez is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Anthropology (and member of the Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Caribbean Studies faculty) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also co-Founder and consulting director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies (established in 1995) and co-editor of its book series, Global Studies of the United States. A political and legal anthropologist, she was president of the American Anthropological Association from 2009 to 2011, editor of American Ethnologist from 2002 to 2007, and president of the AAA’s Society for Cultural Anthropology from 1999 to 2001.

MWENDA NTARANGWI

Mwenda Ntarangwi, PhD. is a cultural anthropologist based in Nairobi, Kenya. He holds a B.Ed. (Language Education) and MA (Swahili Cultural Studies) from Kenyatta University in Kenya and a MA and PhD (Cultural Anthropology) from the University of Illinois, USA. Ntarangwi is widely published on popular culture, youth culture, African Christianity and the practice of anthropology and a sought-after speaker globally. Some of his publications include: The Street is my Pulpit: Hip Hop and Christianity in Kenya (2016); Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology (2010); and East African Hip Hop: Youth Culture and Globalization (2009). He is a past president of the Association for Africanist Anthropology.

FAYE V. HARRISON

Faye V. Harrison is Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is Past President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and played a role in founding the World Anthropological Union. Considered a member of an earlier “decolonizing generation” in U.S. anthropology, she edited the influential Decolonizing Anthropology and is the author of Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age along with many other publications that address the history, politics, and sociology of anthropological praxis. In 2022 she received the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Bronislaw Malinowski Award.

CARMEN RIAL

Carmen Rial is a full professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, a researcher at the CNPq (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development), chair of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Brazilian Football Studies, directs the Center for Visual Anthropology/Research Group on Urban Anthropology (NAVI/GAUM), and is the immediate past chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations.

Moderator

EMILY M. METZNER

Emily M. Metzner, PhD, MPH, holds a World Anthropologies Seat on the Members’ Programmatic, Advisory, and Advocacy Committee (MPAAC) at the American Anthropological Association. She is an Academic Editor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Social Sciences at Western Connecticut State University.

Date: Wednesday, September 27 at 9:00 -10:00 AM ET

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

Date: Wednesday, October 18 at 1-2 PM EDT

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

Date: Thursday, October 26 @ 3-4 PM ET

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