The Turkish government is prosecuting hundreds of academics who signed a petition by a group called "Academics for Peace" advocating a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict. It is part of the on-going crackdown on free expression and speech in the country. A beloved academic and renowned scholar, Ayse Gul Altinay, was last week sentenced to 25 months in prison by the Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court. Dr. Altinay is noted for her commitment to a peaceful future for her country shaped by nonviolence, democracy, and a… read more about Statement of Support for Ayşe Gül Altinay »
Senior Seminar Thesis Presentations
Room 225 Friedl Building, East Campus
1:30-3:00PM
Lunch will be provided
Please join us to celebrate our senior thesis writers!Erick Daniel Aguilar: A Home of Our Own: Social Reproduction of a Precarious, Migrant Class
Margaret Darko: Theatre of Health: Exploring Female Physician Well-being in Accra, Ghana Using Theatre-Based Interventions… read more about Senior Seminar Presentations »
The Regulator welcomes Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna for a book reading and signing of The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes. The Shining Path tells the gripping history of the unlikely Maoist rebellion that nearly took power in Peru before its final defeat. Cosponsored by The Regulator Bookshop and Duke's Forum for Scholars and Publics.
Thursday, April 18
7:00 PM
The Regulator Bookshop
720 Ninth Street, Durham
read more about The Shining Path: Love, Madness and Revolution in the Andes »
Tenure Standards for Digital Scholarship, a conversation with Professor Anne Allison
Thursday, April 11 | 12pm – 1pm | Lunch served at 12pm
Smith Warehouse Bay 4, C105 | Ahmadieh Family Lecture HallRSVP | Facebook event
Professor Allison co-authored the May 2018 “Tenure Standards Committee Report” that was commissioned by the Provost as part of the implementation of the Strategic Plan, “Together Duke.” Participants are encouraged to review the Report, especially the section focused on Digital Scholarship… read more about Anne Allison: Tenur Standards for Digital Scholarship »
Friday, February 22, 2019
Harris Solomon, “On Life Support”9:30am (Breakfast available at 9am)Ahmadieh Family Lecture HallC105, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse
This paper considers the phenomenon of breath to understand the edges of living and dying. It is based on ethnographic research in a trauma intensive care unit in one of Mumbai's busiest public hospitals. The paper examines how patients, their kin, and doctors navigate the thorny state of… read more about Harris Solomon, “On Life Support” »
This past Sunday in Los Angeles, an album produced by Eric Oberstein, CulAnth major Duke '07, Back to the Sunset, by the Dafnis Prieto Big Band (DPBB), won the GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album.
Eric has had the pleasure of collaborating with Cuban-born drummer, composer, bandleader, and 2011 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Dafnis Prieto on this project for the past three years. He also was fortunate to collaborate with two Duke alums on this project — Harsha Murthy '81 (Executive Producer) and John Hahn '74 (… read more about CulAnth major Eric Oberstein, Duke '07 produces Grammy winning album »
A key goal of Together Duke is to invest in faculty as scholars and leaders of the university’s intellectual communities. To foster collaboration around new and emerging areas of interest, Intellectual Community Planning Grants (ICPG) are available to groups of faculty.
These grants cover the cost of food, meeting venues, external speakers or other meeting costs, and exploratory research into potential collaborators at Duke and elsewhere. The offices of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and the… read more about Faculty to Pursue Collaboration through 2019 Intellectual Community Planning Grants »
Monday, January 28, 2019
6-8pm
Perkins 217
Credible reports have revealed that China has detained over a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in internment camps, where they are forced to denounce their religion and ethnic identity. An Uyghur survivor of the camp system, Mihrigul Tursun, will provide testimony of her experiences.
This event will shed light on the situation in East Turkestan/Xinjiang - specifically on the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs, mass surveillance state, crackdown on religion, internment campus, a… read more about China's Concentration Camps: What's at Stake? »
Cultural Anthropology is pleased to present
Airing Grievances and the Atmospherics of Chinese Legal Reform
Julie Y. Chu
Dr. Chu is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China. She is currently completing a new book entitled The Hinge of Time: Infrastructure and Chronopolitics at China's Global Edge.
Monday, November 26, 2018
1:30pm
Friedl Building, Room 225
This talk considers the… read more about "Airing Grievances and the Atmospherics of Chinese Legal Reform" »
The John Hope Franklin Center has chosen to feature Prof. Anne-Maria Makhulu's "Millennial Capitalism: Global Perspectives” (CULANTH 530S) course in its spring 2019 global course highlights. Please join us in spreading word about this fantastic course. Attached are two digital files that can be used in either print promotion or on social media.
Monday afternoon the course was listed in a student mailing featuring global course: https://mailchi.mp/92ff7298aa7c/bookbagging-consider-global-studies. Share this link on social… read more about "Millennial Capitalism: Global Perspectives” (CULANTH 530S) »
The #metoo Movement Comes to the Kitchen
The free, public events Alexander organized include a conversation with Severson and other food writers Thursday, Oct. 4, at the Durham Hotel and a Friday, Oct. 5, panel discussion on ‘Violence in the Kitchen’ at 11 a.m. at Duke’s Forum for Scholars and Publics, the co-sponsor of the event, in 011 Old Chemistry on West Campus.
An accomplished food writer who formerly worked at Saveur and Food & Wine magazines, Alexander is now a doctoral student in Duke’s cultural anthropology… read more about The #metoo Movement Comes to the Kitchen »
Eric Oberstein graduated from Duke in 2007 with a degree in Cultural Anthropology. He is currently a producer and Associate Director, Duke Performances
as well as Adjunct Faculty, Arts Management and Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Duke.
An album Eric produced, Back to the Sunset, by the Dafnis Prieto Big Band (DPBB), was nominated for a Latin GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album!
Full listing of nominees here.
Congratulations, Eric! read more about Eric Oberstien nominated for a Latin Grammy Award »
Jieun Cho’s research will take her to Japan this summer, where she will be meeting with refugees and returnees of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. “I will continue to work with the nuclear-affected, as well as scientists, lawyers, and activists, to see how low-level exposure to radiation is made sense of in different fields.” One of Cho’s specific areas of interest is residents living in irradiated environments who are caretakers of children. She plans to work with a group of citizen-scientists studying this sub-… read more about Fellows’ Summer Research Considers the Anthropocene in Madagascar, Japan, and Birmingham, Alabama »
America’s Sacred Spaces
A new documentary research initiative poised to tell the stories of 40 essential American places that enhance our understanding of the United States
The United States possesses singular places where citizens and others can visit to absorb elements of the nation’s depth of pain, triumph, awe, reverence, disappointments and dreams. “Sacred spaces” in this context refers to understanding America by literally standing in places and taking in layers of meaning that plumb the… read more about America's Sacred Spaces - Bass Connections »
Cultural Anthropology is pleased to present
Ambient Thickness: The Atmospheric Materiality of the Anthropocene
Gastón Gordillo
The atmospheric, elusive, but powerful materiality of the droughts, wildfires, intense rainfalls, and toxic environments that define the Anthropocene cannot be accurately explained by our existing theories about place and space in the humanities. Based on ethnographic research among rural residents in northern Argentina who have been negatively affected by deforestation, agrichemical exposure, and… read more about Ambient Thickness: The Atmospheric Materiality of the Anthropocene »
A talk by Nancy Khalil.
Owing to a common absence of a central religious body to authorize religious clerics, combined with the U.S. secular conception of separation of church and state, Muslim authority in the United States contends with a regulatory vacuum. The concept of clergy that drives much of how religion encounters our bureaucratic structures in the U.S. liberal-secular context does not sufficiently transpose in the context of Muslim religious authority and service. In this talk, I offer an introduction to…read more about Training the Imam: Locating American Sites of Religious Authority »
Anne-Maria Makhulu is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and African and African-American studies at Duke. Much of her work, including her current research, focuses on globalization and issues of political economy in South Africa.
Makhulu is examining what she deems a broken promise made to a majority black population of South Africa 23 years ago when democracy took hold there following the end of apartheid.
Read more... read more about What I'm Working On: Financial Divisions in South Africa »
Monday, February 5, 2018
1:30pm
Friedl Building, Room 225
Nadia Abu El-Haj is Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia. Her publications include Facts on the Ground. Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, and The Genealogical Science. The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology. Her current work focuses on the field of psychiatry, exploring the complex ethical… read more about The "Military-Civilian Divide:" On War, Citizenship, and Obligation »
A talk by Bill Maurer
Dean, School of Social Sciences
Professor, Anthropology and Law
Director, Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion
University of California, Irvine
Monday, November 27, 2017
1:30 - 3:00PM
225 Friedl Building, East Campus
Without using the word, logistics engineers are really worried about the Anthropocene. And they have begun to attract the interest of all sorts of radical thinkers, from regenerative agriculture proponents to technologists embedding smart sensors in… read more about Logistical Visions: Blockchains, Supply Chains, and Anthropological Claims in the Anthropocene »
Video of October 26, 2017 talk by Donna Haraway
Watch: Making OddKin: Telling Stories for Earthly Survival
Multispecies environmental and reproductive justice must be practiced against human exceptionalism and in resistance to colonial capitalist divisions of species, landscapes, peoples, classes, genders, populations, races, natures, and societies. Easy to say; hard to do. The language and politics of these categories alone block needed stories, needed practices. But a turn to SF—to string figures,… read more about Video of recent Donna Haraway talk: Making OddKin: Telling Stories for Earthly Survival »
"I had no intention of doing portraits. As Professor Poncho Herrera and I walked up to the group of octogenarians demonstrating quietly in Benito Juárez Park in the middle of the city I had only asked in Spanish if I might make some photographs. I meant the general scene—the signs they were holding demanding their retirement benefits, their banners that told the story of the Braceros, maybe a few groupings of those who had worked in the United States some years between 1942 and 1964.
Especially since I had arrived… read more about Faces of Time: The Braceros of Ciudad Juarez »
Gabi Weiss, cultural anthropology major and senior thesis writers, has been awarded a Winfred Quinton Holton Prize for Educational Research by Duke's Program in Education. Gabi's project considers the impacts of elite education on students, finding that the pressure to always succeed inculcates an intense risk aversion in students, among other negative consequences. For more on the award, see: https://educationprogram.duke.edu/undergraduate/scholarships read more about Cultural Anthropology major Gabi Weiss awarded a Winfred Quinton Holton Prize »
Cultural Anthropology