Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History

MUSEUM RESEARCH TRAINING USING SMITHSONIAN COLLECTIONS

The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) is a research training program offered by the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History with major funding from the Cultural Anthropology Program of the National Science Foundation. The program seeks to promote broader and more effective use of museum collections in anthropological research by providing a supplement to university training. Each summer SIMA supports 10-12 graduate students who want to use collections in their research. 

Using Smithsonian collections, experts, and visiting faculty, SIMA:

-introduces students to the scope of collections and their potential as data 

-provides training in appropriate methods to collect and analyze museum data 

-makes participants aware of a range of theoretical issues relating to collections 

-positions students to apply their knowledge within their home university. 

The curriculum, including both seminars and hands-on workshops, teaches students how to navigate museum systems, select methods to examine and analyze museum specimens, and recognize the wealth of theoretical issues that museum data can address. 

For more information on SIMA visit: http://anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute

Deadline: 1 March 2015

Culture Lab at the Haffenreffer

Not to be confused with the DMNS Culture Lab, a very exciting development at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology:

In February the museum will open CultureLab. I’ve written about it before, when it was just an idea – that post showed a rough floor plan, and reproduced our planning document – a document based on the ideas and interests of museum staff, and also the input of students in my Museums and Communities collecting and collections course, and the very imaginative ideas of Brian Kernaghan’s RISD course on museum design.

More here

Here Come the Anthros (Again)

Some interesting new articles out ...

HERE COME THE ANTHROS (AGAIN): The Strange Marriage of Anthropology and Native America by ORIN STARN

ABSTRACT
This article charts and tries to reckon with the relationship between anthropology and Native America. In an older time, most American anthropologists made their living studying Indians, this almost parasitic disciplinary dependence lasting well into the 20th century. Then came the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, the Red Power movement, and a period of estrangement between anthropologists and Native America. And now, quite unexpectedly, a tentative rapprochement has been taking place, albeit on very different terms with native anthropologists often at the forefront. This article focuses mostly on the United States, although also reflecting on new work about native peoples Canada and Latin America. [Article here]

And, a reply from James Clifford here.

And, also this article will be relevant to many material culture studies types:

Human-thing entanglement: towards an integrated archaeological perspective by Ian Hodder

Abstract
In exploring human-thing entanglement I wish to make five points. (1) Humans depend on things. In much of the new work in the social and human sciences in which humans and things co-constitute each other, there is, oddly, little account of the things themselves. (2) Things depend on other things. All things depend on other things along chains of interdependence. (3) Things depend on humans. Things are not inert. They are always falling apart, transforming, growing, changing, dying, running out. (4) The defining aspect of human entanglement with made things is that humans get caught in a double-bind, depending on things that depend on humans. (5) Traits evolve and persist. When evolutionary archaeologists identify lineages of cultural affinity, they claim to be studying cultural transmission. Transmission may be involved in such lineages, but it is the overall entanglement of humans and things that allows success or failure of traits. [Full article for free here]

Clark-Oakley Fellowship Annoucement

An announcement forwarded to Museum Anthropology by Michael F. Williams:

2010–2011 Clark-Oakley Fellowship

The Oakley Center for the Humanities & Social Sciences, Williams College, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, a center for research and higher education as well as a public art museum, jointly offer a fellowship for national and international scholars, critics, and museum professionals who are engaged in projects that enhance the understanding of the visual arts and their role in culture. The Clark/Oakley Fellowship is an academic year appointment for a scholar in the humanities whose study addresses some aspect of the visual.

Clark/Oakley Fellows receive stipends, dependent on sabbatical and salary replacement needs, reimbursement for travel expenses, and local housing. Williamstown is located in a rural setting in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Both Boston and New York City are about three hours away by car. Photos and more details of the Scholars’ Residence are available at clarkart.edu/research.

Applications are invited from scholars with a Ph.D. or equivalent professional experience in universities, museums, and related institutions. Because of the highly competitive nature of the fellowship competition, we do not normally award fellowships to scholars whose dissertations are only recently completed. For full fellowship guidelines and an application form, as well as further information, please visit clarkart.edu/research or williams.edu/resources/oakley/fellowships.htm. The application deadline for fellowships awarded for the 2010–2011 year is November 2, 2009.

Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

From a Dear Colleague Letter from Candace Greene, Director of the Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA):

Dear Colleagues – I am pleased to announce a new research training initiative being launched by the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology with support (pending) from the National Science Foundation.

The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology is an intensive four-week training program that will teach graduate students how to use museum collections in research, incorporating Smithsonian collections as an integral part of their anthropological training. Support from the Cultural Anthropology Program at NSF will cover full tuition and living expenses for 12 students each summer.

Please help us get the word out on this program, which will begin in June 2009 and is already accepting applications. Full information including application instructions and dates is available at http://anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute.

Candace Greene
Director, Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology
Ethnologist, Collections and Archives Program
Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution

Ann Dunham: Material Culture Specialist

"Ann wanted to study the whole spectrum of crafts, but out of practicality I urged her to pick one, so she wrote 1,000 pages on blacksmiths as part of a larger research project on crafts and crafts markets."--Alice Dewey

Readers of museum anthropology might be interested to learn more about U.S. President-elect Barak Obama's late mother's work as an anthropologist whose special interest were the handcrafts of Indonesia. It is not available as an open access paper and it is not yet posted in AnthroSource, but the current issue of the AAA's Anthropology News includes an item in its Knowledge Exchange section titled "Ann Dunham: A Personal Reflection" (November 2008, p 20.). It is an interview by Geoffery White (U Hawai'i) of Alice Dewey (emeritus, U Hawai'i). Professor Dewey served as Dr. Dunham's disertation advisior and she describes aspects of her studies as an anthropologist and her career in applied work in Indonesia. Dr. Dunham's dissertation is Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Agains all Odds (1992). Find it in Open WorldCat here. I am proud that my university library already owned a copy and a bit bummed that someone here has it checked out already.

Color Images for "Crests on Cotton": A Paper by Aaron Glass Appearing in MUA 31(1)

When it was established in July 2006, we hoped to use the Museum Anthropology weblog as an inexpensive and easy means of enhancing the journal through the provision of additional information of interest to readers and especially as a means by which to supplement works published in the journal's pages. The post that follows is offerred in the context of this later goal.

Among the articles appearing in Museum Anthropology 31(1):1-16. [Spring 2008] is a fine paper by Aaron Glass titled "Crests on Cotton: “Souvenir” T-shirts and the Materiality of Remembrance among the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia." The author's abstract reads:

This essay examines the production and circulation of printed T-shirts as “souvenirs” within Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) communities in British Columbia. Like button blankets in larger Northwest Coast cultures of visual display, such shirts are unique material forms that facilitate individual memories for specific events, collective family and village commemorations, and flexible affiliations at varying levels of identification. Drawing anthropological attention to the materiality of clothing as it mediates social relations, I address a mundane—if hallmark—form of modernity as it is indigenized within a micro-economy of First Nations gift exchanges, fund-raisers, and thrift stores, where it visually enables both the remembrance of local events and the re-membering of social groups.

The article is accompanied by fourteen black and white photographs of shirts that illustrate the points that Glass makes in his paper. For all who might take an interest in them, these same images are presented below in color. All photographs were taken by Aaron Glass and those wishing to correspond about them are urged to contact him directly, although responsible comments on this post are very welcome as well. The original article can be found inside AnthroSource here.

Figure 1: T-shirt design by Beau Dick, distributed at his 1993 potlatch in Alert Bay, BC (photo by author).

Figure 2: T-shirt design by George Hunt Jr., distributed at a family potlatch c.1995 (photo by author).

Figure 3: T-shirt based on a design by Fah Ambers and sold in Alert Bay in the late 1970s (photo by author).

Figure 4: T-shirt designed by William Wasden Jr., Alert Bay (photo by author).

Figure 5: Soccer jersey belonging to Kevin Cranmer with his hereditary title displayed, Alert Bay, 2003 (photo by author).

Figure 6: T-shirt designed by Kevin Cranmer for distribution at his 2004 feast (photo by author).

Figure 7: T-shirt designed by Christine Hunt for a family potlatch, 1992 (photo by author).

Figure 8: T-shirt distributed at a potlatch memorializing Maggie Frank (photo by author).

Figure 9: T-shirt and sweatshirt design commemorating two Cook Family reunions, in 1991 and 2001, in Alert Bay (photo by author).

Figure 10: T-shirt distributed to family members at the Granny Axu (Agnes Alfred) Memorial Potlatch, 1997 (design by Harold Alfred, photo by author).

Figure 11: Sweatshirts with designs by William Wasden Jr.. for the ’Namgis (Alert Bay) and Mamalilikala (Village Island) First Nations (photo by author).

Figure 12: T-shirt designed by K’odi Nelson parodying the advertising slogan for Molson Canadian beer (photo by author).

Figure 13: T-shirt designed by William Wasden Jr. for a video training group in Alert Bay in the mid 1980s (photo by author).

Figure 14: T-shirt designed by Christine Hunt in 1994 and distributed at a family memorial potlatch in 1996 (photo by author).

CALL FOR PAPERS

Bodies on Display
McCord Museum
Montreal, QC
November 7 and 8, 2008

Abstracts due June 13, 2008

A two-day colloquium organized by the McCord Museum of Canadian History in collaboration with the Costume Society of America, Northeastern Region in conjunction with the McCord Museum exhibition Reveal or Conceal?

In the light of the growing scholarly interest in addressing the body in many academic disciplines, this colloquium aims to foster a dialogue among those in the academic setting who study the body as it relates to dress and fashion, and dress as an embodied practice, with those who approach it from the museum, material culture, living history, and design perspectives.

More information:

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/activities/colloquia/

cynthia.cooper@mccord.mcgill.ca

McCracken on Orphan Objects

It is a slow time for the blog, as I have been busy preparing MUA 31(1) for submission to the publisher. Holiday activity has also quieted many people's schedules.

Here is a link to an interesting holiday-themed material culture post by Grant McCracken on his blog This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.

Happy New Year.

NYT: Really Thinking About Things

Readers might find this recent New York Times story of interest. It is by Penelope Green and it profiles the material culture research work of Sherry Turkle. It begins...

IT is heartening to learn that a member of the cyberelite cannot figure out how to turn off her iPod, and that she sometimes fumbles new programs on her laptop. “That’s why they invented 16-year-olds,” said Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and M.I.T professor who has been studying the folkways of computer culture for over two decades (since long before the rest of us knew to put “culture” and “computer” in the same sentence).

Thanks to Gabi for calling it to my attention.

Mary Douglas and Material Culture Studies

In recognition of her recent passing, Daniel Miller has offered a rich and valuable assessment of Mary Douglas' work, especially her important contributions to material culture studies. Find his essay on the Material World blog here.

Fashioning Tradition: Maya Huipiles in the Field Museum Collections

Fashioning Tradition: Maya Huipiles in the Field Museum Collections. Fieldiana: Anthropology, New Series No. 38. J. Claire Odland. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 2006. 67 pp.

Carol Hendrickson

The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) holds a sizeable collection of Guatemalan traje (‘Maya clothing’), including 500 pieces of women’s attire. J. Claire Odland focuses her study on 145 huipiles (‘Maya blouses’) collected between 1893 and 1995 from seven municipalities: Quetzaltenango, Chichicastenango, San Juan Comalapa, San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santa María de Jesús, San Pedro Sacatepequéz, and Cobán. Drawing insights from the holdings of the Field Museum and other textile collections, published works, and field research in Comalapa and San Antonio Aguas Calientes between 1994-2005, the author has produced a museum monograph with twenty-two pages of text, seventy illustrations, and six pages of descriptions of the illustrations. Her aim is to analyze the huipiles in terms of the materials and technologies with which they were produced; the social, political, and economic dimensions of their use; and fashion changes that mark significant historical shifts. Given the ambitious nature of this project—topically, geographically, and temporally—it is no surprise that Odland touches only briefly on a vast range of topics.

The body of the text is divided into six sections. Odland presents a sketch of each of the seven municipalities and distinguishing characteristics of the huipiles from each of the different areas. Fashion trends in traditional wear and the social uses of traje are recurring themes, and these link to the second section where, in less than three pages, Odland describes various social characteristics and uses that can be signaled by Maya blouses (e.g., age, wealth, sexuality, and worldliness). She then considers the materials and technologies that figure in huipil production, including the subjects of design motifs and their meanings, and markets for traje sales. The final sections of the monograph outline some of the traditional activities of Maya women as well as changes in Guatemalan life that have been reflected in huipil design. Throughout the text, references to particular pieces are keyed to the photographs bound at the back of the volume.

Odland’s work is most informative when she presents insights about particular pieces in the Field Museum collection (e.g., that “the oldest huipil… was a gift of the Government of Guatemala to the 1893 Chicago Colombian [sic] Exposition” [p. 8]). It is also a pleasure to see the images, and this work will surely serve to alert readers to the wealth of the Field Museum holdings. However, the length of the monograph is simply too short to do justice to the breadth of topics, and the author is often left making such gross generalizations that these fail to get at the complexity of situations and can even lead the reader astray. The author was also challenged to organize her narrative around sets of huipiles from so many regions and different time periods. The result is a good photographic record of a segment of the FMNH’s huipil holdings but a very general account of their historical and cultural significance.

Carol Hendrickson is Professor of Anthropology at Marlboro College. She has has been researching weaving in the central highlands of Guatemala for more than twenty-five years. Her research focuses on the ways clothing non-verbally relates cultural meanings and provides insight into local understandings of issues such as ethnicity, gender, class, politics, and national identity. She is the author of Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town (University of Texas Press, 1995). With Edward Fischer she co-wrote Tecpán Guatemala: A Modern Maya Town in Global and Local Context (Westview, 2002).

The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village

The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village. Frank Salomon. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 331 pp.

John H. McDowell

Frank Salomon, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, is among the most prominent of living Andeanists, having authored important historical and ethnographic studies and having prepared, in partnership with George Urioste, the definitive text of the famous Huarochirí manuscript, an early colonial-era compendium of localized mythic narrative. Indeed, Salomon’s interest in the Huarochirí document caused him to travel the highland district that gave birth to it, and there, by “a fluke of ethnographic luck” (p. 3), he came across a contemporary usage of khipus, the record-keeping cords of knotted fiber that count as one of the great mysteries and great achievements of Andean societies. Salomon was lucky, as well, in the timing of this discovery, which coincided with a growing interest among villagers in “Inka” symbolism and the connection between the khipus and this revered ancestral past.

The present monograph is an attempt to further our understanding of the wide-spread khipu tradition by delving into local knowledge and practice in the village of Tupicocha, in the sierra that rises to the east of Lima, where patrimonial khipus are retained by ayllus, corporate descent groups, and utilized in ayllu ceremonial politics. What results is a brilliant piece of detective work that assembles a diverse range of cues and clues and weaves them into a plausible account of how khipus might have functioned as data-encoding systems during the several centuries they persisted as the primary means for recording and conserving information in a world region that famously remained without writing even as it developed a highly complex civilization.

In the absence of resources that reliably explicate how this “technology of knowledge” might have operated—the craft was suppressed after 1583 by the Spanish and the last competent local practitioners disappeared in the early decades of the 20th century—Salomon adduces evidence both ethnohistorical and ethnographic to mount an engaging argument that originates in the Huarochirí province and in the specific code properties of its khipus but carries us far beyond these points of origin into a sustained encounter with the semiotics of sign systems, with Andean ethnohistory, and with the essence of what it means to be Andean.

The cumulative effect of reading this book is to agree with the author that the question, Did the Inkas have writing?, should be scuttled in favor of adopting a mindset attuned to cultures organized around the manipulation of fiber, where life is lived like a khipu, where canal systems resemble giant khipus on the land, and where the cords of a khipu can map the terrain even as they inscribe the progress and completion of such procedures as assigning labor, keeping track of material resources, and coordinating the interaction of political entities. Basing his reasoning on the evidence he has uncovered, Salomon presents khipus as “operation devices” (p. 273) that mirror in their structure the structure of the social occasions that created them. He states that “khipu recording was not only about the community—a controlling simulacrum, and important as such—but was itself the means of producing the community performatively” (p. 269). Salomon proposes that khipus, at least in the Tupicochan setting, functioned at one time as encodings of planning sessions, where responsibilities were negotiated, and of accounting sessions, where reckonings of performance were made and collectively ratified. In contemporary Tupicocha, these khipus are used mostly for ceremonial purposes, as emblems of local identity on official occasions, though they retain a curious half-life and afterlife, in Salomon’s terms, to which I will return below.

Let me briefly profile some of the significant areas of argumentation in this book. Regarding the interpretation of meaning in the khipu, Salomon offers a technical exposition with two primary threads: one, an inquiry into the type of signification operating in khipu art and the other, an exhaustive treatment of the elements of khipu signification and what kinds of data they most likely encode. Regarding the former, a key question is whether the khipu is predicated on spoken language—is it a lexigraph, a sign vehicle that corresponds to segments of speech? Salomon argues for a relation of complementarity between the khipu and speech, holding that information stored on khipus can be articulated in speech but does not depend on speech in the way that most familiar writing systems, for example, do. He views khipus as semasiographs, that is, signs that stand for the referents themselves, as in notational, pictographic, and token systems. He notes that semasiographs “are superior where different users have a substantial domain of culture in common, but little spoken language in common” (p. 27), a situation that obtained over the vast territory controlled by the Inka Empire.

In Salomon’s view, the semiotics of khipus are pragmatic rather than grammatical, and “the record-keeping art takes shape around the social problems it solves” (p. 28). He notes that, “the khipu’s surface regularities are likely to bear the stamp of schemata repeatedly employed to effect the social ends of gatherings where they were present” (p. 38). Sorting out these regularities and the schemata they might represent is the most technical component of this ambitious study, and if one is willing to follow the argument, a viable portrait of khipu signification emerges. Figure 26, the Key Figure (150-151), is a sketch of a composite Tupicochan khipu that captures most of the structural features presumably implicated in khipu signification. There are a great many variables capable of fashioning a difference in meaning: the color of threads, their size, the placement of knots, the kinds of knots used, the attachment of pendants, the grouping of cords into like-color bands, the use of specific colors as run-through elements—these and other dimensions of khipu art lend themselves to signification. As Salomon’s exegesis of khipu construction proceeds, it becomes clear that corded fiber is a remarkably potent medium for encoding bits of information.

Salomon draws on two related technologies of knowledge practiced in villages like Tupicocha to suggest the means and functions of khipu signification. One of these is the visual codes carved into staffs of office in Tupicocha. These designs carry information about the hierarchy of local offices and are distributed through a process of collective negotiation in a ceremonial forum. Much like the khipus, in Salomon’s view, the visual designs encode a process of social collaboration, but in this case within a much more limited semiotic medium. Also of consequence to the argument are practices associated with ayllu books that have been used for some time now in communities like Tupicocha to record duties to be performed and resources communally held. These books are updated annually and are employed to plan and then certify performance of communal labor. The occasion for updating the books, as is true for the carving of the staffs, is a ceremonial one, with ritual drinking, dancing, and the performance of music. Salomon proposes that practices observed in these media are congruent with practices associated with the making and remaking of khipus during the period when they were the medium of choice for recording these kinds of information.

Although apparently no living person commands the language of the khipus, there is a local lore that conserves a good many details of khipu art and signification. Salomon gathers and surveys this fount of information to good effect, and at this stage the various branches of his argument begin to cohere into an account with considerable credibility. An interesting episode revolves around the reconstructions of Nery Javier Rojas, who as a young fellow spent a good deal of time with his grandfather, one of the last khipu masters, and committed to memory much of what he learned from this elder relative. Salomon refers to the store of information preserved in contemporary commentary as the half-life of the khipu medium, and he takes note as well of what he calls its afterlife, invented traditions centering on the khipus that may nonetheless reveal or confirm an authentic approach or concept. He coins the term “khipumancy” to refer to a well-entrenched practice centered on the “fall” of khipu cords in divinatory sessions.

Salomon has produced a challenging and rewarding study that takes us deep within the core of highland cultures in the Andes. His work here builds upon a strong tradition of khipu research and extends previous understandings by bringing into the picture a well-documented case study of khipu practices in a specific locale. Salomon integrates his findings into this literature by proposing Tupicocha as a regional variant, a vernacular or grassroots off-shoot, sharing many common features with the inventory of Inka khipus held in museums around the world but adapted to the purposes of local rather than imperial authority. Of necessity, his conclusions are speculative, but they are grounded on a firm foundation of evidence and exposition, and as a consequence they approach and enter into the realm of the believable.

This study is surely not the final word on khipu art and signification; as Salomon notes in closing, a new database (in progress) of khipus in museums, and the encounter of new khipus in undisturbed archaeological sites, are likely to produce conditions for evaluating the arguments he advances in this book and pushing towards that breakthrough that would allow a definitive reading of these Andean artifacts, characterized by Salomon as “perhaps the most complex and versatile of data writings” (p. 281) in the world’s diversified repertoire of information-encoding systems.

John H. McDowell is Professor of Folklore at Indiana University. His ethnographic research has led to extensive work in a number of cultural settings in the United States, Mexico, and the Andes. His Andean studies are reported in numerous works, including “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (University Press of Kentucky, 1994). Currently working on a number of archival and digital exhibition projects, his most recent book is Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (University of Illinois Press, 2000).

CFP: Things that Move: The Material Worlds of Tourism and Travel

From an e-notice circulated on H-Material Culture:

19 - 23 July 2007, Leeds, United Kingdom

Whatever the prophecies of 'virtual' reality, we inhabit and move through the 'real' world of objects. Though tourism and travel are bound to concepts of time and space, they are also rooted in the material world - a tangible world of places, things, edifices, buildings, monuments and 'stuff'. The relationships we develop and share with these things varies from the remote to the intimate, from the transient to the lasting and from the passive to the passionate. Within the practices of tourism and its use (and non-use) of the material world, and, through the act of travel, objects are given meaning, status, and are endowed with symbolism and power. Objects construct, represent and even define the tourist experience. Our journeys through the world of objects generate a plethora of emotions - pleasure, attachment, belonging, angst, envy, exclusion, loathing and fear - and feed on-going discourse and narratives. Moreover, through tourism, and our touristic encounters, the material world itself is challenged and changed.

CALL FOR PAPERS

In this, our fifth annual international research conference, we seek to explore the multi-faceted relationships between tourism and material culture - the built environment, infrastructures, consumer and household goods, art, souvenirs, ephemera and landscapes. As in previous events, the conference aims to provoke critical dialogue beyond disciplinary boundaries and epistemologies and thus we welcome papers from the following disciplines: aesthetics, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design history, cultural geography, cultural
studies, ethnology and folklore, history, heritage studies, landscape studies, linguistics, museum studies, philosophy, political sciences, sociology, tourism studies and urban/spatial planning.

Key themes of interest to the conference include:

* Histories, mobilities, and the symbolic/political economies of tourism objects
* The dialectics of tourism objects and places / spaces
* Structures / infrastructures of international tourism-building/architecture/ design for tourism and tourists
* Tourism in the museum
* Tourist art and art for tourists
* The performance of material culture in the tourism realm
* Language and the translation of objects in tourism
* The tourist souvenir - commodity fetishism and religious relics
* The tourist object as metaphor and memory
* Ownership, display and interpretation - contested pasts and presents
* Curating for tourism - collecting the worlds of the tourist
* Overcoming the material through the virtual - future realms of tourist experience

Please submit your 300 word abstract including a title and full contact details as an electronic file to Professor Mike Robinson (ctcc@leedsmet.ac.uk) as soon as possible but no later than March 23rd 2007.

More information on this conference can soon be found at www.tourism-culture.com.

CFP: Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950

From an e-mail circulated on H-Material Culture:

Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950

Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, editors

Although the body is both object (for others) and a lived reality (for the subject), it is never simply object nor simply subject. It is defined by its relation with objects and in turn defines these objects as such.
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty

We invite proposals for essays for a collection titled Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950. This collection invites scholars to consider women's engagement with the material world, from the most ordinary, mundane daily practices and objects to the most extraordinary, life-altering practices and objects, over the two-hundred-year period of 1750 to1950.

Since material culture encompasses all human-made objects, the possibility of topics is wide open so long as they connect women to things. Therefore, topics might include, but are certainly not limited to: fiber arts (needlework, quilting, knitting, crocheting); decorative
arts; other kinds of crafts; painting; sculpture; scrapbooks; albums; china; porcelain; architecture; interior design; landscape and gardening; shopping; clothing; fashion; and food. The focus might be on all or part of the life-cycle of an object, from design, to production, to circulation, to consumption, to commodification, to valuation, to collection and display.

Although scholars in anthropology, museum studies, and decorative arts have long taken material culture as their focus, in the past twenty years scholars from other disciplines that have traditionally been more text-centric have increasingly turned their attention to material
objects in what might be termed the material turn. This edited collection is designed to serve those scholars. We look forward then to proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, cultural studies, history, literature, rhetoric and composition,
art, art history and art theory, communication studies, visual design,
race studies, and women's studies. We encourage and wish to present multiple theoretical frames and methodologies that grapple with questions concerning women and material things.

Please send your 250-500-word proposal and a CV as electronic attachments in MS-word or RTF format to Beth Fowkes Tobin (beth.tobin@asu.edu ) and Maureen Daly Goggin (maureen.goggin@asu.edu ) by March 30, 2007.

CFP: Jewish Material Culture

From a call for papers posted to H-Material Culture:

Jews at Home: The Domestivation of Identity

Second volume in book series on Jewish Cultural Studies, edited by Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished University Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Publisher: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, UK.

Format and Guidelines: 8,000-12,000 word essays in English, prepared electronically in Word (in-text citations with reference list). Photographs in TIF format (min. 300 dpi).

Deadline: March 15, 2007

Contact: Professor Simon J. Bronner, School of Humanities, The Pennsylvania State University, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057-4898, USA, sbronner@psu.edu

Papers are sought that explore how Jews conceptualize and culturally materialize spaces, and ideas of home. The editorial board is especially looking for interpretations of private selves and collectives of Jews constructing a Jewishness distinctive from that expressed in the synagogue and street. The volume addresses issues of domestication that is both imposed from the outside because of societal repression of Jewishness, and that which is displayed and invented to announce, differentiate, and renew Jewish identity. For example, contributions can open critical inquiry into display and use of Judaica in homes, secular performances of Jewishness in the home, private constructions and performances of Jewishness in repressive situations, symbolism of the Syrian Jewish housefront in mixed ethnic Jewish areas, adjustment of urban dwellings for Hasidic families, symbolism of holiday celebrations at home, emergence of the Jewish practice of kosher in the home and non-kosher outside the home, differences in ethnic home decoration, home dress, and socialization pattern in different Jewish cultures.

The purpose of the series is to present thematic volumes interpreting Jewish cultures ethnographically and historically around the globe, and exploring the idea of Jewish culture as it has been constructed, symbolized, produced, communicated, and consumed in diverse contexts. Themes of volumes will be interdisciplinary, drawing particularly on research in folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, and sociology. Volumes typically contain ten to twelve essays of 8-12,000 words anchored by an introduction addressing the theme, and a section (usually 3 or 4 essays) called New Views of original research on Jewish cultural studies not on the theme. See http://www.littman.co.uk/jcs/index.html. Unlike most publications in Jewish studies, the Jewish cultural studies series will be exploring secular as well as religious spheres, and the intersections of the two, with attention to the diversity of traditions and customs in the Jewish world. For more information, and a list of editorial board members, see http://afsnet.org/sections/jewish/.

In the News: Green Clothes

Students of material culture, particularly contemporary clothing and consumption patterns may find a story in today's New York Times of interest. Written by Elisabeth Rosenthal and titled "Can Polyester Save the World?" the piece explores the environmental impact of the virtually disposable, low-cost, fast fashion clothing that is central to contemporary consumption practices in Europe, North America (ex: Target, Old Navy), and significant parts of Asia. The story chronicles the differential environmental impacts of different materials and lifestyles, as well as of the rapid fashion changes characteristics of the affluent world. The story also explores the ways that some retailers in the UK are looking toward more sustainable approaches to clothing as attractive business opportunities comparable to those emergent with free trade commodities, organic foods, and green tourism.

This American Couch

In the This American Life episode (with the theme "Cat and Mouse") running on most NPR radio stations in the USA this weekend there is a compelling tale of one man's 18 year (plus or minus) quest for the perfect couch. The story makes several linkages between marital and material aspirations and, in the engaging and entertaining style characteristic of the show in general, illustrates in miniature many of the themes central to contemporary research in material culture studies, including the role of consumer objects as social agents, the social nature of consumption and desire, the materiality of real and imagined objects, and the linkage of objects and personal experience narrative.

I have, for several years, pointed students and colleagues to the show with the argument that it offers some of the best humanistic ethnography being produced today. Last year I had the opportunity to attend a staged lecture/show by This American Life's host, Ira Glass, in which he discussed and demonstrated how the weekly shows are assembled and reflected upon the kind of radio journalism he and his colleagues practice. The lecture included great tips for, and reflections on, compelling storytelling that I wished I could have shared with all of my students.

The episode will be available online next week.

Viriginia Commonwealth University Jobs

The School of World Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences at VCU is seeking applicants in four fields from which to fill three full-time tenure-eligible faculty positions:

China/Pacific Asia
Middle East
Transatlantic Migration and Material Culture
Europe and Film

For detailed job descriptions and application process click here:

Anthropology and Material Culture Studies in Harper's Magazine

Returning recently from a funeral in Oklahoma, I purchased a copy of Harper's Magazine in an airport newsstand. I do not read it every month, but I have always enjoyed and benefited from those issues that I pick up along the way. This issue was surprising for the amount of anthropology and material culture studies found within. The cover story, "Moby-Duck Or, the Synthetic Wilderness of Childhood" is by Donovan Hohn. It tells the story of huge shipment of rubber ducks (and other animal effigy "floatees") lost at sea only to be tracked and collected by beachcombers and oceanographers as they circulate around the world. The story of the lost ducks provides him with an opportunity to reflect on a wide range of topics of current interest in material culture studies, and anthropology more broadly--the materiality of plastics, the cultural construction of animals, the passions of collectors, the nature of childhood, the archaeology of middens, etc.

The duck story is preceded by a compelling essay by anthropologist David Graeber "Army of Altruists: On the Alienated Right to Do Good." Extending his work on theories of value, he explores political life in America through the lens of class and military service. Along the way, he reflects upon the social constitution of egoism and altruism and offers up, to a general audience, a compelling account of the lessons learned through the anthropological study of gift economies. I cannot do justice to the essay, but I think that it would be a compelling starting point for a discussion with students or with colleagues in other fields. It is a fine piece of public access anthropology.

As always, the ads and photographs in Harper's are telling. There is a beautiful full-page ad, facing the "Harper's Index," promoting heritage tourism in Romania. The key line is "25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites" suggesting they ways that the paradoxical and problematic UNESCO list is being operationalized in tourism promotion aimed at educated audiences. (On UNESCO heritage policy, see MUA editorial board member Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's great essay in the new book Museum Frictions (Durham, Duke University Press, 2006). Photographs on pages 24, 27, 65, and 66 are especially evocative vis-a-vis material culture studies. There is also an beautiful essay (I cannot tell if it is ethnographic reportage or ethnographic fiction) on hopping freight trains ("Catching Out" by William T. Vollmann) that brought to mind, for me, a wonderful classic ethnography of Chicago School sociology, Nels Anderson's The Hobo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923).