Tag Archives: AAA

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION DISSOLVES, DECIDES TO START OVER TOMORROW

2 Apr

reposted from the anthrodesign Yahoo! listserv (Thanks Mark!):

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.

American Anthropological Assoc. (AAA) launches a podcast series

1 Apr

This is from the AAA eNews for April 2008:

“Tune in regularly to our bi-weekly podcast for news and updates on the AAA. To listen to the podcast, visit the AAA website and look under the “New Features” section on the homepage. To download the most recent podcast, please visit this site.

To subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, please visit this site“

While I’m sure they will not be quite as awesome as the SfAA podcasts, I can admit I am a bit biased towards the SfAA podcasts ;)

I’ll be interested to see how ‘successful’ the AAA’s podcasts are. One thing I noticed in their announcement was they didn’t provide an explanation about what a podcast is, etc. If I’m having trouble making these concepts accessible within the SfAA I can only imagine that the AAA will face similar struggles.

Regardless, I appreciate the AAA’s move into the 21st Century- I doubt they’ll do any sessions from the conference though…

CFP NASA (National Assoc. of Student Anthropologists) E-Journal

14 Mar

Below is an announcement from NASA:

The National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA) will launch its first online publication, The NASA e-Journal, under the banner of the 2008 American Anthropological Association conference theme: “Inclusion, Collaboration, and Engagement.”

We seek scholarly submissions from undergraduate and graduate students worldwide about the application of anthropological theories and methods outside of academia or across disciplines for the purpose of exploring, problematizing, or addressing social problems. Have you worked in an internship, co-op or another job as a student anthropologist and wish to reflect on how you relied on your anthropological training? Perhaps you collaborated with students from other disciplines at a volunteer organization and seek to describe the value you added from an anthropological perspective? Is there a paper you submitted for a service-learning class where you addressed a social problem using anthropological methods? Have you done fieldwork in a community where you sought to create positive social change in the process of gathering data? Tell us about it! Scholarly articles should be 1,000 words in length and will be subject to a double blind review process.

We also welcome innovative commentary submissions to the e-Journal. Commentaries are opinion or avant-garde pieces of work which are the original work of the authors. These submissions are to express the next generation of anthropologists’ ideas, goals and beliefs of the direction our discipline should head, be it locally, nationally or globally. We seek a plurality of voices on this issue and intend to raise awareness among fellow students as well as more established anthropologists about the direction our discipline is heading. Commentary submissions might include such mediums as written pieces (1,000 words in length), photo stories (10 photos + 1,000 words of commentary in length) and videos/YouTube© clips (10-minute maximum in duration + 1,000 words of commentary in length)

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a full 1,000 word manuscript for consideration by midnight EST on April 21, 2008 along with any accompanying materials.

* Authors should complete their submissions according to the AAA style guide (http://aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.htm).
* Submissions should be saved in Microsoft Word “.doc” format with the file title being the first author’s last name and first initial. (example: HebertM.doc)
* We invite authors to provide drawings, graphs and maps to enhance the visual component of each article. These should be included as separate attachments in the email. Graphics should be saved as “.jpg” format. The file name should be the first authors last name, first initial and then the number of the photo. (example: HebertM1.jpg) Please also include reference in your text where graphics should be placed by inserting the above identifier in the text.
* Videos should be provided as a link (if located on a site such as YouTube) or included as a graphics file in a readily viewable format such as QuickTime or Windows Media Player.
* Please send submissions to the e-Journal editorial team with the subject heading “NASA Manuscripts – Vol. 1” at nasaejournal@gmail.com.

Authors will be notified regardless if their work has been selected for publication or not. We look forward to publishing submissions for Volume 1 of the NASA e-Journal in the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009.

2007 AAA Days 3-4

5 Dec

The AAA conference in DC went on until Sunday, December 2 but Saturday was the last day I went in. By the time our session was over on Saturday, I was completely conferenced out!

I spent the majority of the day on Friday in various meetings/meet-ups/etc. I had a much needed f2f meeting with my advisor and we’ve figured out an approach for finding my practicum idea- I have several ideas, but nothing ‘perfect’ yet.

We presented our research on online-on-campus education on Saturday morning. The session went pretty well and we had some questions after the session. There were about 50 people in the room while we were presenting- this was an improvement over last year’s 8 :) If anyone has interest in reading our paper “Using Linguistic Anthropology to Compare Online and On-Campus Learning Experiences” let me know. The focus for the paper was on the experiences in class discussions.

Overall, I felt like this year’s AAA conference was much better than last year’s. It’s likely that I’ll attend the 2008 meeting in San Francisco, but I’m not sure if I’ll chose to go after I graduate- the SfAA conference is much more comfortable for me and is of more interest to me as well. I was in one of three ‘applied’ sessions at the AAA and it wasn’t as ‘applied’ as you’d find at the SfAA (some papers were, some were not). I do not like non-applied anthropology; I’ve always been in an applied department and I plan to always do applied work.

The National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA) is a group within the AAA, as is Ethnography in Praxis Conference (EPIC); if I continue to be part of the AAA post-graduation it will likely be because of these 2 organizations.

2007 AAA Day 2 & SfAA Podcasts

30 Nov

I spent about 6 hours at the main conference hotel yesterday and while I did not attend any sessions, I had a great time! The vibe of this year’s AAA is drastically different from last year’s and I’m contributing this to two things; there is a central location for people to hang out in (last year the convention center was not conducive to hanging out) and I know significantly more people. I’ve met a ton of people in the last year because of the podcast project and knowing people makes conferences more fun (half the fun is running into friends, etc.!).

Yesterday I met up with John Curran . I’ve emailed with John before, but had not met him f2f yet. He’s a great guy!

I also met the program chairs for both the 2008 and 2009 SfAA Meetings. Both chairs are supportive of the SfAA podcasts and I’m looking forward to working with them!

I also went to dinner with five people to discuss the podcast project. It was a very productive meeting and we discussed funding, documentation, consent forms, etc. Going forward the podcasts will be hosted much longer than four months and there will be an option for professors to use them in their courses! The podcasts will also remain free to the listeners ;)

I’m off to yet another meeting in a bit…

2007 AAA Day 1

29 Nov

The 2007 Meeting of the AAA started yesterday. I’m here in DC for the conference and went in yesterday to register. I spent about an hour total at the conference yesterday and I didn’t attend any sessions. But, I can already tell this conference venue is going to be much better than last years (the San Jose Convention Center). There were many groups of people hanging out the hotel and it felt much more intimate than the too large venue last year.

I’m headed into the conference in a bit. I’m not sure that I’ll sit in on any full sessions today, but I’m happy to finally spend some time there. I’ll be meeting up with a bunch of people this afternoon, and that’s always fun!

I’ll be at the AAA conference this week in DC

26 Nov

After a little encouragement from those around me (and most importantly from my research team), I’ve decided to attend the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting again this year.

I went to the meeting in San Jose last year and I was less than impressed with it. My main dislike for the conference last year was the general vibe, it felt stuffy, too academic, and semi-dull. After a few days there I felt better about it, but I still did not like it as much as the SfAA conference. People told me that last year’s Meeting was stuffier than usual, so that on top of presenting, convinced me to give it another go. Well, I’ve never been to DC so that is an added bonus!

I’ll be presenting, along with my advisor Christina Wasson and the other RA Megan Bannon, on Saturday morning (8 am is when the session starts!). Our panel is called “Issues in Applied Linguistic Anthropology.” It’s sure to be an interesting session for those of you interested in linguistics and there are some big names in the almost 4 hour long session! We are presenting on our online-on-campus research (and here and here).

I’ll be tweeting during the conference, so you can find me here on Twitter.
Let me know if you’ll be at the conference too, here’s my email.

I’ll be in DC from Nov. 27 – Dec 3.

This conference habit is getting expensive!!

6 Nov

I’m not going to get into the fact that conferences are expensive, nor will spend anytime on the irrelevance of conferences, the rise of “unconferences,” or any other critique of them. I have my opinions of conferences, and for the most part it seems a bit contradictory that I’ll be attending so many… but I’m a student, I get discounts (I’ll take advantage while I can ;)

Today, Tim and I registered for the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) in Miami, Florida. Part of our discussion to go was simply because it’s so close to home for us (home is Tampa, FL) and the affordable cost of the trip (early registration is only $150 for non-students, $50 for students). But, I’m looking forward to FOWA because it’s not anthropology – it’ll help me to expand my horizons a bit. Plus, it’s neat that Tim (total geek) and me (totally awesome) can go to the same events and enjoy them (we went to BarCamp Orlando and had a lot of fun). BarCamp Miami is during FOWA, so we’ll be there too :)

Two weeks after FOWA, Tim and I will be headed to Austin, TX for SXSW. We’ll be there for the Interactive part, so again, it’s cool we can go together (we’ll get totally different things from the sessions) and I’ll be expanding my horizons. Really excited about SXSW.

Two weeks after SXSW, I’ll be in Memphis, TN for the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Meeting. I always have a good time at the SfAA Meetings, and I’ll be doing the SfAA Podcasts again in Memphis (much news about that project – I’ll post about it soon!).

Late February – early April is going to be super busy! EPIC is in Denmark next year… I hope to be there – but who knows! I’m currently taking a break from working on our paper for the American Anthropological Assoc. conference (AAA) this year in DC – that takes place at the end of November.

I’m really not looking forward to being busy or being away from home that much – BUT, like I said, I’ll take advantage of the student discounts and University funding while it lasts :)

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