On Friday nights, the small town of Floyd in southwestern Virginia (population 425) becomes a gathering spot to play and hear American traditional music. Decades ago, the Floyd Country Store started hosting an informal jamboree. Word spread, the crowds grew, and the store now boasts a state-of-the-art performance stage. “People come from all over the world every Friday night,” says Charles D. Thompson, Jr., professor of the practice of cultural anthropology and documentary studies and a senior fellow at the Kenan… read more about ROCK CASTLE HOME: A DISAPPEARING APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY SHARES ITS STORIES »
This month, we present a collection of eight Duke-authored books covering a range of environmental topics including sea-level rise, species protection, renewable energy, and the ocean floor. These books, along with many others, are available at Duke University Libraries, the Gothic Bookshop or the Regulator Bookshop. Sea Level Rise by Orrin Pilkey "Sea Level Rise" lays out the consequences… read more about Eight Duke-Authored Books on the Environment »
Floyd Country Store Friday Jamboree (Photo: Richard Toller, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0) On Friday nights, the small town of Floyd in southwestern Virginia (population 425) becomes a gathering spot to play and hear American traditional music. Decades ago, the Floyd Country Store started hosting an informal jamboree. Word spread, the crowds grew, and the store now boasts a state-of-the-art performance stage.“People come from all over the world every Friday night,” says Charles D. Thompson… read more about Rock Castle Home: A Disappearing Appalachian Community Shares Its Stories »
A new Trinity College of Arts & Sciences program offering peer mentoring to Ph.D. students in their first, second or third year at Duke will begin hosting meetings this fall, and has selected the inaugural class of fellows to lead those groups. Designed as small, interdisciplinary mentoring groups each facilitated by a peer fellow, the program aims to help students flourish in their respective doctoral programs – providing a confidential space to navigate frustrations, offering a diversity of perspectives, encouraging… read more about Trinity Launches Peer Mentoring Program for Early-Stage PhD Students »
Congratulations to Dr. Layla D. Brown-Vincent who will begin her appointment as an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Africana Studies at Northeastern University this fall. She will be on fellowship leave during AY 21-22 as a Senior Research Fellowship at the KHK Center for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg, Germany wrapping her first book project which she hopes to publish through Duke’s Radical Americas series and begin work on her new project based… read more about Congratulations to alumna Dr. Layla D. Brown-Vincent »
India’s surge of COVID-19 cases is amplifying the global burden of illness and death and straining the country’s healthcare system. As treatment supplies of oxygen and medicine run low, the workers caring for patients are increasingly overtaxed. Care work should be valued as an infrastructure of COVID-19 treatment, and hospital workers and families deserve greater support for their labor, says Harris Solomon, a medical anthropologist at Duke University. The following quotes are available for use in your coverage of the… read more about News Tip: Pandemic Response in India Should Focus on Care Workers, Too, Duke Expert Says »
What can a hydroelectric dam teach us about inequality, injustice, poverty and the environment? Quite a lot, it turns out, when the dam in question it sits on the border between one of the smaller countries in South America, Paraguay, and the global giant that is Brazil. Christine Folch, an assistant professor in Cultural Anthropology, has been studying the politics of the Itaipu Dam for the past 10 years, leading to the publication of her first book on the subject in 2019. Since arriving at Duke, she has engaged students… read more about Cultural anthropologist awarded Carnegie Fellowship for her work in Latin America »
Welcome to the end of semester digital ethnography collaboratively produced by students in Cultural Anthropology 302: Fieldwork Methods. This class, a requirement for all Cultural Anthropology majors and also popular with students in other majors, is a rigorous introduction to the core methodology anthropologists utilize in ethnographic research: participant observation, or more colloquially, “deep hanging out.” Through participating, observing and talking to people in what is often an unfamiliar (to the anthropologist… read more about Duke in the Time of Covid »
Thursday, April 22, 2021 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm Online Event Contact Rogers, Sarah sarah.rogers@duke.edu 919-668-2401 Please register here The explosive rise of Amazon poses questions about labor rights and surveillance, privacy and logistics, and monopoly practices and the new economy among many others. Join us for a discussion with three experts - an anthropologist, a journalist, and an antitrust expert - about Amazon and its role in our lives and the world. Read more. read more about Unpacking Amazon: Consumerism, Labor Rights, Monopoly »
Paul Rabinow, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of anthropology and world-renowned anthropologist, died April 6 at the age of 76 in his Berkeley home. Rabinow spent about 41 years at UC Berkeley between 1978 to 2019, serving as the director of anthropology for the Contemporary Research Collaboratory and as the former director of human practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. Read more. read more about UC-Berkeley Professor Emeritus Paul Rabinow dies at age 76 »
Marshall D. Sahlins, a brilliant and witty anthropologist who, starting in the 1970s, explored how individuals shape and are shaped by their cultures — a point he had already put in practice a decade earlier as the inventor of the “teach-in” against the Vietnam War — died on April 5 at his home in Chicago. He was 90. His son, Peter Sahlins, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, confirmed the death. Read more. read more about Marshall D. Sahlins, Groundbreaking Anthropologist, Dies at 90 »
Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month reminds us of the integral role poets play in our culture. For the 25th anniversary of this annual celebration of poets and poetry, we highlight six poets among the university's faculty who have published collections of poetry. The works of these poets, along with many others, are available at Duke University Libraries, the Gothic Bookshop or the Regulator Bookshop. In addition, Duke University Press is offering a… read more about Celebrate National Poetry Month with Six Duke Faculty Poets »
We are stunned by the anti-Asian mass shootings in Atlanta and Acworth on March 16, 2021. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families who have suffered from this senseless act. Eight innocent lives were brutally taken away by a gunman, six of them women of Asian descent. This is not an isolated incident and comes out of the current-day repetition of long-standing racist sentiments targeting various minority communities fueled by political rhetoric. Read and sign the complete statement. read more about Statement of Solidarity Against Anti-Asian Violence »
Please register here for this event. Ethnographic Sense: Composing the Contemporary Friday, April 9, 2021, 2:00-3:30 PM (Eastern Time) What does it mean to write from the inside of our current condition—a global pandemic that has kept us home for a year, even as events unfold across the nation and the globe. How can we “make something” of the present, when conditions for doing ethnography have fundamentally changed? Read more. read more about Ethnographic Sense: Composing the Contemporary »
The Office for Faculty Advancement has awarded seed grants to 14 faculty-led projects exploring new ideas and expanding existing initiatives to promote an equitable and inclusive academic environment at Duke. The theme for this cycle was "Confronting Racism and Bias: Fostering an Inclusive Community." Faculty Advancement Seed Grants provide a financial head start for novel faculty development initiatives within academic units.2021-22 Faculty Advancement Seed GrantsArt, Art History and Visual Studies Anti-Racist Pedagogy… read more about Seed Grants Help Faculty Lead the Way in Confronting Racism and Bias »
Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent by That Anthro Podcast • A podcast on Anchor Welcome to another episode of That Anthro Podcast, where we dive into all things anthropology. This episode was just as much of a treat to record as it is to listen to, Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent is a captivating scholar, storyteller, and professor. Dr. Brown-Vincent is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at U Mass Boston, but holds a Phd in Cultural Anthropology. Read more. read more about Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent by That Anthro Podcast »
The Office for Faculty Advancement has awarded seed grants to 14 faculty-led projects exploring new ideas and expanding existing initiatives to promote an equitable and inclusive academic environment at Duke. The theme for this cycle was "Confronting Racism and Bias: Fostering an Inclusive Community." Faculty Advancement Seed Grants provide a financial head start for novel faculty development initiatives within academic units. Read more. read more about Seed Grants Help Faculty Lead the Way in Confronting Racism and Bias »
Duke University's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences seeks candidates for three tenure/tenure-track professorships in the study of Native, Indigenous, and/or First Nations people of the Americas. Candidates should be at the assistant or associate professor level; distinguished candidates at the full professor level will also be considered. These hires are part of a sustained commitment by Trinity College of Arts and Sciences to increase the expertise and representation of Native American and Indigenous studies across core… read more about Open Rank Tenure Track Faculty Positions - Study of Native, Indigenous, and/or First Nations people of the Americas »
Katya Wesolowski's new article "Imagining Brazil in Africa: Capoeira's Transatlantic Roots and Routes" and co-authored piece for a new article format “Ethnography In-Sight” which is a reflection on a photo-montage created by one of Professor Wesolowski's artist-collaborators in Angola and which is the cover image for the issue. read more about Imagining Brazil in Africa: Capoeira's Transatlantic Roots and Routes »
J. Lorand Matory, the Lawrence Richardson Distinguished Professor of Cultural Anthropology, was interview for an NBC New York story about botánicas, which are "brightly colored stores, often adorned with statues and idols in their windows." read more about The African History Behind Latino Botánicas »
Mar 5, 2021 02:00 PM In recent years, researchers have highlighted the importance of using “Asia” as a site to develop new research tools and methods to rethink the global world. The outbreak of Covid-19, in many ways, has only heightened this call. Beyond the Asian stories of “failures” and “successes” in dealing with the ongoing public health crisis, the pandemic has exacerbated the existing geopolitical tensions, dispossession, as well as state violence against minorities and political dissidents, all against the… read more about Asian Research in the Fog of Pandemic »
Professor Ralph Litzinger’s conversation with former Duke undergrad Aydin Anwar on the Xinjiang camps in China, forced labor, labor transfer programs, surveillance and incarceration, missing relatives, genocide, and questions of complicity is now live on Duke’s You Tube channel. read more about Live on Duke's You Tube channel - Professor Ralph Litzinger’s conversation with Aydin Anwar '19 »
The Dean of the Social Sciences at Duke University invites applications for a one-year residential postdoctoral fellowship focused on race and sports. The fellow will be appointed in one of four departments: Cultural Anthropology; African and African American Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; or Education. Applications must be submitted online. Apply here. read more about Postdoctoral Fellowship in Race and Sports »
After the declaration of a public health emergency following the outbreak of coronavirus, it became clear to me that this was a vitally important time to learn about infectious disease control, medical management and the role of care-providers in delivering proper healthcare to the people who are most likely to need it and least likely to have it. The mission of my project, Sustainably Improving Neurosurgical Patient Outcomes in Uganda, is to focus on all these aspects of healthcare… read more about Bass Connections: Maria Pita, Cultural Anthropology '21 »
In this covid moment, death has altered the social landscape. How is this taking place and how do anthropologists deal with death as a concept and a method ethnographically: a vital event in our collective life? In this session, the speakers draw upon their own research —on mass graves in Hart Island, digital economies and media communication, and (dis)locations of silence—to consider how death can bring us beyond the sense(s) of finality to shape lives in inalterable ways. Read more. Please register here… read more about Deathscapes: Ethnography of/beyond Senses »
