Call for Executive Session Proposals for AAA Annual Meeting in Denver

The CMA Board joins the AAA Executive Program Committee in encouraging CMA members to propose Executive Sessions for the upcoming meeting in Denver, CO (Nov 18-22), the theme of which is "Familiar/Strange." 

From the Call for Papers:

Casting common sense in new light by making the familiar seem strange and the strange seem familiar is a venerable strategy used across anthropology's subfields. It can denaturalize taken-for-granted frames and expand the horizons of students and public alike. But useful as this process of estrangement and familiarization can be, it can lapse into exoticism through "us/them" comparisons that veil historical and contemporary relations of power and powerlessness within and across societies, begging the question of the normative templates (of the "West," of "whiteness") that lurk behind. As an orienting theme for the 2015 Denver meeting of the AAA, we invite proposals for Executive Program Committee sponsorship (sessions, forums, special events, installations or media submissions) that press us to grapple with how and why this strategy proves both productive and obstructive, considering  what it simultaneously opens up and 'nails down.' We particularly seek proposals that bring together and foster dialogue among subfields as we scrutinize the multiple uses and effects of this durable anthropological 'way of knowing.

Executive Sessions can be traditional panels with papers, but other formats are strongly encouraged. Executive Sessions are selected by the Executive Program Committee. Denver Site Committee chair Christina Kreps (Director of Museum and Heritage Studies, University of Denver) and CMA Board Members would be delighted to discuss your ideas for an executive session. The deadline for Executive Session submissions is Feb. 17, 2015, by 5pm EST, via the AAA website.

Earlier CMA Executive Sessions have been wildly successful. Among the most recent was “After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge,” developed for the 2010 meeting by past CMA board member Kimberly Christen Withey (Washington State University).