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.