Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Schedule of Events
Events are listed chronologically. Please contact sponsoring GBAC instution for more information.See past events hosted by GBAC and affiliated institutions.
Schedule of Events |
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| 18 April 2008 Friday 2:30pm Tufts University |
Public Athropology Roundtable |
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"Questioning the Public Paradigm: Views on Civic Engagement from Four Public Disciplines" Who benefits, and how, when a university class partners with a community group or when a college student interns in a local social service organization? Universities like Tufts are increasingly active players in the worlds of aid and development, civic planning, and urban design, and students and professors are more and more involved in projects in these spheres. But questions are emerging at Tufts and elsewhere about the complex social dynamics and real “sustainability” of these efforts. Join us for a roundtable discussion about how public and applied anthropologists, public archeologists, public historians, and public sociologists are working within the "civic engagement" paradigm, and how we can bring our critical views and long public experience to bear on its pedagogies and projects. |
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| 4 April 2008 Friday 5:00pm Pendleton East 239 Wellesley College |
Lecture: Steven Feld, Ph.D (Depts of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico) |
| "Acoustemology in Accra: Honk Horn Music and the Chronotope of the Road"
My anthropology of sound research has concerned how sound embodies and performs a sense of place, particularly revealing consciousness of time and space. In studies of rainforest Papua New Guinea I found that birds, poetics, and song linked sound to environment and cosmlogy. I called this linkage the acoustemological triangle (acoustemology = acoustics + epistemology, e.g., sound as a way of knowing the world). Later research on village, church, animal, festival, and musical bells in Greece, Italy, France, Norway, Denmark, and Finland revealed a similar acoustemological presence linking sound to environment and cosmology. European bells turn out to play a similar role to rainforest birds in producing consciousness of time and space, and embodying senses of place. The most recent (2005-present) development in this line of research concerns urban Accra, Ghana where I am working with a union of public transport drivers who, 60 years ago, in the context of opening up the roads of the city and nation, invented a music for circular squeeze bulb klaxon car horns, the original horns on public transport vehicles. The honking horns are accompanied by the rhythmic beating of wrenches on tire rims. This musical practice, named Por Por (pronounced "paaw paaw") in imitation of the klaxon sound, opens up a history of colonial and post-colonial sounds that also link environment and cosmology in Accra. The Por Por sounds and texts concern the experiences and histories of the vehicles, drivers, and roads, and the music is ritually performed at funerals of prominent drivers, the effect being much like a New Orleans jazz funeral, with the drivers' spiritual road to heaven paved by the honking of their horns. This paper discusses both the Por Por story and the broader acoustemological issue of how sound embodies and performs senses of place. |
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| 29 February 2008 Friday 8:45-6:30pm Rapaporte Treasure Hall Brandeis University |
GBAC's Presents the Fifth Annual Student Conference |
| Each year, a student Anthropology conference is held on one of the GBAC campuses. The event is a collaborative effort by the faculty, staff, and students of the GBAC institutions (Brandeis University, Clark University, Olin College, Tufts University, Wellesley College, and Wheaton College). The Fifth Annual Student Anthropology Conference will be held on February 29, 2008 at Brandeis University. | |
| 6 November 2007 Tuesday 12:00-1:30pm Lee Gallery Rose Art Museum Brandeis University |
Roundtable: Gender and Power in South Asian Video Art |
| This roundtable will feature discussion of the gendered symbolism in the video art installations of the “Tiger by the Tail! Women Artists of India Transforming Culture” exhibition presented by the Women's Studies Research Center. Roundtable speakers include: Jyoti Puri (Simmons College), Rajeswari Mohan (Haverford College), and Harleen Singh, Elinor Gadon, Ulka Anjaria, Nancy Salzer, Mark Auslander, Michael Rush and Ellen Schattschneider (Brandeis University).
Please see the Cultural Production program (Brandeis University) wikispace for event schedule and further details. This event is sponsored by the Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies working group, Cultural Production program, Women's and Gender Studies program, and Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. |
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| 6 November 2007 Tuesday 1:40-4:30pm Women's Studies Research Center, Epstein Building Brandeis University |
Symposium: Sexualities and the National Body in Asia |
| This symposium explores the broad range of sexualities and gendered expression in Asia and Asian Diasporas. Topics to be explored will range from "third sex" cultural politics; Gay activism in Xi'an,China; South Asian queer weddings in transnational perspective; and representations of violent women in India; and the politics and poetics of gay Japanese literature. The symposium is held in "conversation" with the works of art by Indian women artists in the "Tiger by the Tail!" exhibition at the Women's Studies Research Center and the Rose Art Museum. The symposium will feature three sessions, followed by a reception. Symposium co-conveners include: Ellen Schattschneider, Sarah Lamb, Matthew Fraleigh, and Harleen Singh (Brandeis University).
Please see the Cultural Production program (Brandeis University) wikispace for event schedule and further details. This event is sponsored by the Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies working group, Cultural Production program, Women's and Gender Studies program, and Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. |
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| 25 October 2007 Thursday 4:00-5:30pm Rapoporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, Brandeis University |
Lecture: Jok Madut Jok, Ph.D. (Loyola Marymount University) |
| Jok Madut Jok is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA. Born and raised in southern Sudan, Professor Jok was in high school when the current round of civil war resumed. The state of constant turmoil led to his political awareness and activism throughout his high school and university career. As a graduate student in Egypt and the United States, he worked on the impact of war on gender relations. Professor Jok has been conducting research in Sudan and refugee camps in the neighboring countries where he chronicled how violence is reproduced within communities and families during times of violent political conflict. Professor Jok has conducted numerous other studies on the impact of humanitarian aid in Sudan and is the author of War and Slavery in Sudan, and Sudan: Race, Religion, and Violence.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. | |
| 24 October 2007 Wednesday 3:40-8:00pm Rose Art Museum Brandeis University |
Symposium: Visualing Science: Image-Making in the Constitution of Scientific Knowledge |
| This interdisciplinary symposium explores the enigmatic relationship between science and art, with particular attention to the power of visual images in scientific imaginations. Do visual images simply represent scientific data and concepts, or do images and image-making, at times, actively inspire, catalyze or constitute scientific insight? In what respects are scientists engaged in image acquisition directly or indirectly influenced by iconographic conventions drawn from the history of art? How, in turn, have artistic practices been mediated and shaped through scientific investigations and representational practices? The symposium will feature three sessions, reception, and keynote address from Peter Galison, Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics, Harvard University. Symposium co-conveners are Mark Auslander (Anthropology, Brandeis University) and Andreas Teuber (Philosophy, Brandeis University).
Please see the Cultural Production program (Brandeis University) wikispace for event schedule and further details. |
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| 3 October 2007 Wednesday Collins Cinema Davis Museum Wellesley College |
Screenings: Documentaries by Cheryl Furjanic |
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Gender, Body, Performance: featuring A Good Uplift (13 minutes) and Bar Talk (8 minutes) followed by sneak preview/premiere of Sync or Swim (75 minutes). Cheryl Furjanic (Director) is an award winning filmmaker currently teaching documentary video production in the Culture and Media Program in NYU's Department of Anthropology. Her previous films include Take This Hammer, a study of the traditions of American work songs as seen through the eyes of legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, and Dimassimo to the Rescue, a short comic documentary about a NYC advertising agency's attempt to save the life of a veal calf. Take This Hammer screened at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival and was awarded a Silver Apple in 1999 from the National Educational Media Network. Her short comedy Bar Talk asks "what are women really saying when they lock eyes across a crowded bar?" and "why some women are too cool for words." It has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide. Cheryl recently finished co-directing the short documentary A Good Uplift, a light-hearted glimpse into a The event is organized by the Anthropology Department in conjunction with the exhibition "Global Feminisms" and is co-sponsored by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis '28 Fund for World Cultures and Leadership. For more information: |
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| 26 September 2007 Wednesday 3:30-5:00PM Morris Brown Hall, Brandeis University |
Lecture: Ajantha Subramanian, Ph.D. (Harvard University) |
| Ajantha Subramanian, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Social Studies at Harvard, will speak on Spaces of Maneuver: Patronage and Rights on India's Southern Coast. Professor Subramanian's research interests include postcolonial anthropology, political theory, political economy, race, class, multiculturalism, liberalism and equality, nations and minorities, capitalism and community secularism and religion. Please join us for a reception in the department following the talk.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. |
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