APG Newswire WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Anthropological Association (AAA) made the announcement today that its Joint Committee for Publishing and Employment Services unanimously recommended the immediate dissolution of the AAA, stating there was nothing left to study.

James Curry, the newly-past President of the now defunct AAA, stated the organization had no choice. “Look, it’s all been done. All of it. We have talked to every god forsaken group on the planet, and there is nothing left to study.” “Frankly there is not even a job market out there for students.” Increasingly graduate students of these former anthropology programs have found themselves with little to do even when trying to complete their dissertations, much less do meaningful publishing. John Gault from Indiana University talks about hardships in the field: “I originally wanted to work with the Tsohon-djapa tribe living in the Javari region of Brazil. Turns out the F’ing Discovery Channel gave one of the kids there an HD webcam that runs 24/7. Now my dissertation is on some group of freaks outside of town that worship an old incandescent light bulb with a grease smudge that appears to be the image of Jesus. This blows”

To hasten the demise of the former organization, the AAA is recommending the destruction of all books, letters, monographs, white papers, dissertations and even master’s thesis work in the former field of Cultural Anthropology. The committee began by burning the minutes of their own meetings along with the abstracts and agendas of every meeting and conference the AAA has even been a part of.

Foster Kerry, the head of the committee was thrilled with the move.  “I am very excited for this new untouched field. Just imagine all of those utterly primitive cultures out there, such as Ireland, we know nothing about. With the advent of transportation like the steamship and the auto-mobile we have access to so many other places. Up to this point what we know about these primitive peoples are from the writings of missionaries. 2010 looks to be a great year for this new field of study.”

Not everyone is so pleased Martin Cost, a full professor at Walknut University has serious concerns about the announcement. “What the HELL, what the hell does this do to my Tenure!?” was the first official statement from Dr. Cost when informed of the move by APG reporters. “I am not doing that fieldwork crap again, no way.  My whole career has vanished.” APG asked one of Dr. Cost’s graduate students to comment on the potential destruction of most tenured faculty members careers, including Dr. Cost. That graduate student stated “BAHAHAHAHAHA!  HAHAHAHAH! HAHAHAHAHHAHA!”

Dr. Curry has some understanding for the concern.  “Look its true; teaching positions, publishing, tenure, sex with natives before any ethics are laid out, are totally up for grabs at this point. Right now we have a lot of High School PE teachers filling in at their local colleges and universities teaching “health studies” until some real research gets underway.  We expect this to be a banner year for grants, people love to fund new fields of study.”

An ad-hoc committee has already been formed to discuss what to name this new field and set-up a professional organization. It is likely to focus on documenting the ways the simple, primitive, innocent folk lived before we were corrupted by modern conveniences.  A overall “Study of Man” if you will.

Librarians nationwide also hailed the move for freeing up an enormous amount of space in the countries libraries which is now expected to be used for coffee and pastry kiosks.

Since May 15, 2008 (the last year post) sort of in this order:

• Changed my blog name from Synthesis of Thought (but I’m not sure what I’ve changed it to yet)
• Got an internship at Intrepid Consultants, Inc – a Seattle based market research firm specializing in technology
• Moved to Seattle and started my internship/practicum in “Translating Virtual Ethnography from Academia into Practice”
• Got married – eloped in San Francisco on the second day of the AAA last November
• Gone back-and-forth on if I want to go by “Jen Kersey” or “Jen Cardew Kersey” or “Jen Cardew” professionally, but Kersey legally… it’s tough
• Continued to work on the SfAA Podcasts (the quality is SO much better this year, check them out www.sfaapodcasts.net)
• Wrote a 99 page write-up about my practicum
• Went to Hawaii
• Graduated!
• Went to EPIC2009 in Chicago

I’m still working on fixing links on this site and getting it organized. Once that’s set, I’m going to start a series about my practicum.  The work itself is confidential but the issues I encountered in translating an academic methodology into practice are ones that I can talk about.

More soon.

As a third year student in the University of North Texas’ (UNT) online master’s program in applied anthropology, I see graduate school as my introduction to a community of practitioners. As with students in more traditional programs, I have expectations that through my graduate experience I will learn about anthropological theory and research, meet other anthropologists and begin contributing to the discipline by producing my own work. I also expect—and have participated in—an experience that is in some ways quite different from the traditional.

The UNT program was designed to take advantage of the opportunities an online educational forum provides, and to manage the challenges that online students can encounter. For example, students are required to take a qualitative methods course that requires a class project conducted for a real client, which gives them experience not only with conducting anthropological research, but also with long distance collaboration and presentations. A lack of face-to-face communication can be a real challenge in developing close relationships with people you have not yet met. For this reason, each cohort of online students begins the program with a face-to-face orientation on campus. Relationships established during this time can be continued through communication in online forums.

Opportunities outside of the online classroom can also strengthen students’ educational experiences. In addition to working as a research assistant in the department and traveling to professional conferences, I have also been encouraged to join a local practitioner organization. An essential part of becoming an anthropologist is learning about the culture of the discipline through dialog with others in the field, which can be experienced through these local groups or online through blogs, listservs and various digital anthropological networks.

Jennifer Cardew is a graduate student in the online anthropology master’s program at the University of North Texas. In 2007 she initiated a project to make the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting more accessible to students by providing selected sessions as free podcasts online at www.SfAApodcasts.net. She is currently researching the graduate experience of on-campus and online students with Christina Wasson.

“Copyright 2008 American Anthropological Association. Reprinted from Anthropology News, Vol 49, issue 6, with the permission of the American Anthropological Association.”

Planning for the 2009 round of SfAA Podcasts is now underway. We’re asking for your help in selecting the 20 sessions that will be recorded so that we can ensure a wide range of topics and interests are covered.

Suggested selection criteria include:

• Topic is “hot”
• Topic is of widespread interest to many people
• Famous speakers

The preliminary program can be found here. In listing sessions, it would be helpful if you could copy and paste the session number and the session name, e.g. “W-01 Lessons and Questions from Applied Settings” directly from the program into an email or Word doc. We would like to request your suggestions by Friday, January 15. Please send them to Jen Cardew at jencardew@gmail.com or post them here in the comments field.

Every year people come up to me at the conference and ask why their session wasn’t recorded or how we select sessions so now is your chance to speak up

Tomorrow, May 15, we will do an online presentation at noon CST and you all are welcome to attend!  Here’s information on how to attend:

Please join us online in Live Classroom this upcoming Thursday, May 15, 2008, from noon – 1:00 p.m. CST for the monthly CDL Brown Bag. This session will be held online, so you can join us directly from your desk!

Christina Wasson, Associate Professor, and Jen Cardew, Graduate Student, in the Department of Anthropology, conducted an applied anthropological study comparing a graduate-level course taught by a single instructor in both an online and face-to-face format. They will discuss how their ethnographic and linguistic analysis of the data shed light onto students’ experiences in both formats, and led to recommendations for the design of virtual pedagogy and building community in online courses.

To log into Wimba Live Classroom at noon CST on Thursday, May 15:

a. Go to: http://untlive.horizonwimba.com/.

b. If this is your first time to use Live Classroom, click on the “run the Setup Wizard” link to the right and then click “Start.”

c. Click “Finished” when you are done.

d. Enter your name in the Participant login box. (There is no username or password.)

e. Click on “CDL Brown Bag Room.”

f. Click the “click here” link provided on the screen to enter the room.

Our panel was selected to be in the 2008 SfAA Podcasts. It’s a coincidence that I was on the panel- a group of people vote on the sessions. You can find the blog post containing the podcast, our PowerPoint, and our paper here.

It was an excellent panel and I really enjoyed it so I recommend you listen to it

The SfAA Podcast team received permission to record four speakers from this two part panel. McFate’s paper is not included. The others are interesting though. You can find them here.

The session chairs Phil Young and Carla Guerrón-Montero have put together a nice summary of the main points for this two part COPAA sponsored session.  All of the speakers in this session have a NAPA Bulletin in-press that will be a more throughout account of the SfAA papers.