AAA Debuts New Blog Design

AAA is pleased to announce the debut of our new, unified association blog, available at http://blog.aaanet.org. We have created this blog as a service to our members and the general public. It is a forum to discuss topics of debate in anthropology and a space for public commentary on association policies, publications and advocacy issues. We will post select items that we think are of interest to our members and that readers have voiced an interest in. We invite all anthropologists to use this domain to stimulate intellectual discussion, and would be delighted to host guest bloggers who are active in any of anthropology’s four fields.

The new AAA blog, available through Wordpress, combines our previous Anthropology News, Public Affairs and Human Rights blogs, with all archived content and comments migrated from Blogger to Wordpress. The updated format enables visitors to easily post comments, link to our Flickr photostream, search content, browse posts by category, find other anthropology blogs, and more. This is a living forum, and we welcome your feedback! Use the “Contact Us” bar at the top of the screen to tell us what you think of this new design and to offer content suggestions.

AAA thanks staff members Brian Estes, Lisa Myers and Dinah Winnick, and intern Leo Napper, for their work in developing this online forum. Visit the new blog today!

Note: New posts will no longer be added to the original Anthropology News blog.

April AN Now Online

April AN commentaries addressing visual ethics and multisensory/multimedia anthropology, are now available as featured articles on our website. Want to access articles that appeared in other sections of AN? The complete April issue is now available through AnthroSource. Simply visit www.aaanet.org, click on “Member/AnthroSource Login,” submit your login info, then click “Use it now!”

To view full color images from our April photo essays, plus additional photos, visit our Flickr page. And remember, AN always welcomes letters to the editor (up to 400 words), so please send you thoughts on our April issue to dwinnick@aaanet.org for possible publication.

UNESCO Courier Addresses Endangered Languages

The current issue of the UNESCO Courier focuses on the theme "Endangered Languages, Endangered Thought," featuring several articles on this important topic in honor of International Mother Language Day (February 21).

New Commentaries Online: Perinatal Care and Reproductive Governance

March AN features In Focus series on perinatal care and reproductive governance. These two series, plus a commentary in our continuing Work-Life Balance series, are now available for download. Visit our website for series descriptions and articles.

Also, remember to check out the results of our 2008 Photo Contest. Full-color photo images are available on Flickr. Visit both our 2008 Photo Contest Winners and Finalists gallery and 2008 Photo Contest Semifinalists gallery.

Written in Bone: A New Smithsonian Exhibit

"Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake" opened February 7th at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Curated by forensic anthropologists Doug Owsley and Kari Bruwelheide, the exhibit provides information both on 17th-Century Chesapeake ways of life and also on forensic anthropology as a field. It incorporates 340 objects, artifacts and humans bones from more than 20 archaeological organizations and museums, and also includes educational components, such as a hands-on forensic anthropology lab, companion books and an interactive website.

AAA staff Dinah Winnick and Joseph Jones attended a special preview of the exhibit. Speaking about the purpose of exhibit's educational components during the event, Owsley remarked, "I never heard the words 'forensic anthropology' until college. One professor can make a huge difference." He highlighted the importance of educating kids and the general public about anthropology, and the necessity of teaching scientific methodologies, so that they can learn to ask the right kinds of questions.

For photos of the exhibit, see the Anthropology News Flickr gallery. Also, visit the exhibit website to learn more. The exhibition will be on view through February 6, 2011.

Photo Contest Images Now on Flickr

Winners of the 2008 Photo Contest have been announced and their photos are now available online!

The contest committee reviewed 294 entries from 73 participants, selecting 54 photos as semifinalists. From that group 20 finalists were selected, including four top winners. All images selected as finalists and winners can be viewed online through our Flickr gallery. These photos will also be featured in March AN and will be hung as prints in the AAA office beginning late spring. Semifinalist photos will be available on Flickr soon.

Curious about the recording featured in the Peter Biella's winning photo? An excerpt is available here and through the AAA podcast.

Stay tuned to Anthropology News and this blog for information on the 2009 contest, coming soon.

New AN CFP: Codifying Anthro Ethics

Anthropology News seeks contributions for a thematic series on anthropological ethics at a key moment during the AAA Code of Ethics revision. We ask our members to pause and consider what this process should entail. What are your thoughts about the notion of codifying ethics? Have you encountered ethically complex situations where guidance would have been helpful? How have available guidelines and advice met or failed to meet your needs?

View the full call for proposals and submission guidelines on our website

Proposal submission deadline: May 25, 2009.
Early submissions are encouraged.

The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008

What do Norse rune stones, the Sarah Palin effect, Neanderthal language, and the anthropology of YouTube have in common? They are all part of Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008.

Anthropology online has gone mainstream. Millions of people have interacted with the digital content anthropologists create everyday. The Best of Anthro 2008 shows that content off using the best work from 36 anthropology blogs. The posts cover the entire spectrum of anthropology, including all four fields as well as medical and applied anthropology and media studies.

For fun, start with the all-inclusive Best of Anthro 2008 prizes, ranging from Best 3D Inuit Map to Best Use of Ritalin. You can also check out everyone’s submissions and the list of participating blogs.

The Relevance of Anthropology-Part One uses this online collection to discuss public anthropology, our anthropological vision, and definitions and debates about being human. Part Two shows how anthropology delivers critique and public commentary online, contributes to scholarship, employs language in innovative ways, and demonstrates how blogging and other types of online interactions represent a powerful new domain for anthropology.

As a resource for teaching, the Best of Anthro provides an online reader that students can explore. It’s also an easy and entertaining way for the public to discover what anthropology is about. After all, it’s only a click away.

The Best of Anthro was created by Daniel Lende at the University of Notre Dame, and is hosted at Neuroanthropology.net. Anthropology News thanks Daniel for this post and welcomes comments on the Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008.

February In Focus Now Online

The AAA website is now featuring February Anthropology News In Focus commentaries under the themes "Reproductive Technologies" and "Reproductive Subjects."

Reproductive Technologies
The development and increasing availability of assisted reproductive and contraceptive technologies worldwide has dramatically impacted the ways in which families make reproductive choices. Here, five contributors examine such technologies and the political, social and economic contexts within which they are employed by parents-to-be, surrogates, gamete donors and healthcare providers in both public and private health sectors. See articles by Viola Hoerbst, Lara Braff, Emilia Sanabria, Suzanne Pelka and Kalindi Vora

Reproductive Subjects
Reproductive practices engender a variety of complex subjectivities that are locally experienced and articulated in compelling ways. Contributors to this series examine the construction of reproductive subjects through conception, pregnancy, birth and infant care, as well as contraceptive practices. Their commentaries provide insight into the diverse forms of personhood constructed through reproduction—from “credible” sexual assault victims, to “responsible” pregnant women, to parents as “informed consumers.” See articles by Sameena Mulla, Cecilia McCallum/Ana Paula dos Reis/Greice Menezes, Sallie Han, Ellen Lewin, Charlotte Faircloth and Rebecca Howes-Mischel.

Visit our website to read these articles today. Complete electronic access to February AN will be available soon via AnthroSource.

CFP Deadline Extended to Jan 28 -- Submit Your Proposal Today!

The deadline for proposals for the upcoming AN issue on veterans of military conflicts has been extended to January 28. Early submissions are encouraged. For details about this call for proposals, see our website.

New AN CFP: Military Veterans

Anthropology News seeks contributions for a thematic issue on veterans of military conflicts. We welcome proposals from all areas of anthropology; by anthropologists who study, work with or teach veterans; and by anthropologists who are veterans themselves, in the US or internationally. This topic includes not only veterans as traditionally conceived, but also other participants in situations of conflict, such as child soldiers, military contractors, peacekeepers and aid workers.

The below areas of research are meant to inspire and we welcome additional topics related to this general theme:

* Education and the new GI bill
* Post-trauma recovery
* Medical and psychological healthcare
* Substance use and abuse
* Gender and sexuality
* Family relationships
* (Un)employment
* Homelessness
* Suicide and thoughts of violence
* Commemoration and memorial sites
* Public engagement, activism and service
* Use of veterans in political discourse
* Public perceptions of veterans
* Veteran groups and social networks
* Veteran identities over time

We encourage proposals for In Focus commentaries, Teaching Strategies, Field Notes articles, photo essays, infographics, interviews and more. To participate, email a 300-word proposal and 50-100-word author bio to Anthropology News editor Dinah Winnick (dwinnick@aaanet.org). Proposals for photo essays should also include five high resolution photographs, each with a caption and credit. Selected authors will be asked to submit final articles of 1000-1400 words for commentaries and 300-1000 words for other article types.

Proposal submission deadline: January 21, 2009

Proposal Deadline Approaching: Visual Ethics and Multisensory Anthro

The proposal submission deadline for the Anthropology News series on (1) “Visual Ethics” and (2) “Multisensory Anthropology across Media” is approaching. If you are interested in contributing an In Focus commentary, Teaching Strategies piece, Field Notes article, photo essay, news story or interview on these topics, be sure to submit your proposal by Monday, December 15.

To participate, email a 300-word proposal and 50-100-word author bio to Anthropology News editor Dinah Winnick. Proposals for photo essays should also include five high resolution photographs, each with a caption and credit. Selected authors will be asked to submit final articles of 1000-1400 words for commentaries and 300-1000 words for other article types. Please spread the word about this opportunity among your colleagues and students. For additional info and guidelines, see our website.

Anthropology Blogs

"In Focus: Reflections on Anthropology News" is just one of three active AAA blogs. Readers might also be interested in our Public Affairs blog or Human Rights blog, both of which provide links to many of the popular anthropology blogs available today. Not sure where to start? You can also check out Savage Mind's recommendations on top anthropology blogs and online journals.

Media Coverage of AAA Meeting

AAA Public Affairs is currently tracking media coverage of the 2008 AAA Annual Meeting. Although a full listing of media is not yet available, as articles are still appearing, an early listing can be found on the AAA Public Affairs blog.

Coverage ranges from Inside Higher Ed's news article on the session “The Problem with ‘Community’: Rethinking Participation, Contestation, and Imagination in Spaces of Teaching and Learning," chaired by Doris Warriner, to a San Francisco Chronicle style feature. Have you spotted news coverage of the annual meeting? Email Lauren Schwartz at lschwartz@aaanet.org.

AAA Annual Meeting on Flickr

Are you attending the AAA Annual Meeting? Did you miss the meeting this year? Anthropology News is covering the 107th Annual Meeting of the AAA in print and online through our Flickr photostream. Select images are currently available to view, and additional photos will be online soon.

To make your photos accessible online, simply upload them to your own Flickr gallery and add "107th AAA Meeting" as a tag.

Call for Proposals: Deadline Extended

Anthropology News is pleased to extend the proposal deadline for our upcoming series on Multisensory Anthropology across Media and Visual Ethics. The new proposal deadline is Dec 15, 2008. For more information see the below call for proposals or our website.

See you all at the AAA Annual Meeting.

New AN CFP: Ethnography across Media

Proposal submission deadline: December 1, 2008.

Anthropology News seeks contributions for two series that explore how ethnographic work is produced through diverse media. The below prompts are meant to inspire and we welcome additional topics related to these general themes.

Multisensory Anthropology across Media
More than just ways of thinking and being, cultures are also fields of sensation, experience and sentiment. Indeed fieldwork remains the sine qua non of ethnographic understanding precisely in so far as both cultural transmission and cultural understanding depend on experiential engagement. Recognizing this, many contemporary anthropologists seek to explore the variety of media—including video, music, photography, digital ethnography and creative writing—through which such multisensory experiences and knowledges can be communicated. Drawing from diverse modes of creative expression, from traditional forms of ethnographic writing to work that makes use of performance or new technologies, submissions should focus on how media can be harnessed to ethnographically convey different kinds of information.

Visual Ethics
As access to digital media increases, discussions of “visual ethics”—ethical considerations regarding the collection and dissemination of visual data—become ever-more incumbent on anthropologists using this data. This conversation is framed by the varying, sometimes conflicting needs and interests of those who produce and consume visual data, including research communities and anthropologists across all subfields. This series seeks to explore the following issue: (1) negotiating representational authority; (2) control in the circulation of images; (3) displaying images in different contexts, including textbooks, conferences and film festivals; (4) relations with and responsibilities toward research subjects and communities; (5) balancing rights to privacy and knowledge circulation; and (6) the collection and dissemination of visual materials within the context of globally expanding use of and access to digital media.

For guidelines see our website.

Reproductive Politics CFP Extended to Oct 30

As we have received such a positive response from interested contributors, we will be extending the proposal submission deadline one week. The new proposal deadline is October 30, 2008.

To participate, email a 300-word proposal and 50-100-word author bio to Anthropology News editor Dinah Winnick at dwinnick@aaanet.org. Proposals for photo essays should also include five high resolution photographs, each with a caption and credit. Selected authors will be asked to submit final articles of 1000-1400 words for commentaries and 300-1000 words for other article types.

For details see the post below or see our website.

Deadline Approaching: Reproductive Politics CFP

Do you work in the area of reproductive politics? AN is seeking contributions for an issue on this theme to be published in February 2009. Proposal submission deadline: October 23, 2008. Potential topics in include, but are not limited to:

Reproductive Technologies: assisted conception (eg, IVF), cryopreservation, surrogacy, gamete donation, obstetric sonography, prenatal testing, contraception, abortion

Public Health and Policy: family planning and contraception, sex education and teen sexuality, insurance and medical liability, midwife certification and regulation, ACOG and AMA policies, maternal and infant mortality, social determinants of maternal-child health

Making People, Making Families: from fetus to child, concepts of parenthood, foster care, adoption, LGBT parents, single parents

Perinatal Care: health providers (eg, doctors, midwives, doulas), birth models (eg, homebirth, hospital birth, midwifery care), post-partum adjustment, infant nutrition, maternity/paternity leave

To participate, email a 300-word proposal and 50-100-word author bio to Anthropology News editor Dinah Winnick at dwinnick@aaanet.org. Proposals for photo essays should also include five high resolution photographs, each with a caption and credit. Selected authors will be asked to submit final articles of 1000-1400 words for commentaries and 300-1000 words for other article types. For the full CFP, see our website.

Food Crisis Coverage in AN

In addition to In Focus commentaries on food security, Anthropology News is happy to feature additional articles on this topic in other sections of our October issue. We encourage you to read the following articles, available currently in your print AN and available online through AnthroSource in the coming weeks.

Knowledge Exchange feature: "In the Wake of Cyclone Nargis: Food Security, Information Flows and Foreign Aid" by Ingrid Jordt (pg 19)

Human Rights Forum: "Can a Right-to-Food Approach Help?" by Ellen Messer (pg 22-3)

Teaching Strategies: "Unwrapping Hunger in the Classroom: Teaching the Anthropology of Food and Food Policy" by Ellen Messer (pg 25)

Anthropology Works: "Food Security from a Practitioner Perspective" (pg 26)

SAFN column: "Task Force on World Food Problems" by Deborah Rubin and Rachel Black (pg 57-8).

We welcome you to share your comments here.