Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar (BARS)
The Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar (BARS) is a weekly yearlong seminar that meets on Fridays at 2:30 pm in Schwartz 103 (except where noted below). The series includes anthropology colloquia presented by invited guests and Brandeis anthropology faculty, alternating with workshops, reading groups and presentations by graduate students. For more information, contact anthropology@brandeis.edu.
Spring 2026
Crafts and hot chocolate: crocheting, knitting, quilting, and more
with Elizabeth Ferry and Sarah Lamb
January 16, Schwartz 103
Public Facing and Academic Writing Strategies with Elizabeth Ferry
with Elizabeth Ferry
January 30, Schwartz 103
A Crown Seminar with Beth Derderian in conversation with Andrew McClellan and Attiya Ahmad
Museum Politics and the Making of the Louvre Abu Dhabi: Celebrating the Publication of Art Capital
February 4, 4:00 - 6:00 pm, Mandel Atrium and Online- Attiya Ahmad is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University
- Andrew McClellan is Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University
Elif Irem Az: Elif Irem Az (“Irem”), Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University
February 13, Schwartz 103
Never-Was Futures: Prevention’s Paradox in the Pacific
Jessica Hardin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology
February 27, Schwartz 103
Abstract: Prevention is one of the most powerful and least interrogated moral frameworks of modern life. Across domains—from gang violence to chronic disease—it circulates as an unquestioned good, organizing care, funding, and responsibility around the promise of futures not-yet realized. In this talk, I introduce the core arguments of my book manuscript Complications: Prevention’s Paradox and the Making of Never-Was Futures in Samoa. The book takes prevention as its object of analysis, arguing that it is a temporal technology that hinges on an imagined “before,” organizing health around futures that can only be secured retroactively and therefore never arrive. In doing so, it recasts chronic illness not as a present condition requiring care, but as evidence of a failure to have acted in time.
I begin with the story of Vaimea, a double amputee living outside Apia, to grapple with the realities of living with diabetes for years before recognizing it as such. Living in the temporal folds of prevention that promises a life free of diabetes, and the realities of health infrastructure that are unable to deliver on that promise, is the space in which complications arise. In a context saturated with lifestyle messaging for over fifty years and where behavioral interventions continue to fail, this book asks: What makes prevention so compelling—politically, ethically, and affectively—even as its promised futures remain perpetually out of reach? Who bears the costs when prevention falls short? And how should critical health studies grapple with the durability of a framework whose limitations are so well documented? Ultimately, I argue that the futures prevention promises in Samoa are never-was futures: forms of health held out as achievable while remaining structurally unavailable, even as individuals are made responsible for not attaining them.
How is the sausage made?
Faculty and alums share their experiences of going through a PhD and having an academic job.
March 6, Schwartz 103
Leniqueca Welcome, George Washington University
March 20, Schwartz 103
Manju Edachira, Madeleine Haas Russell Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Caste Studies, Brandeis
March 27, Schwartz 103
Shanti Morell-Hart, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Brown University
April 17, Schwartz 103
Anthropology Graduate Student Symposium
Followed by snacks and drinks on Moody Street!
April 24, Schwartz 103