Council for Museum Anthropology Preliminary Program, American Anthropological Association 2021 Annual Meeting, November 17-21, Baltimore, MD (and Virtual)

CMA-SPONSORED IN-PERSON PANELS/POSTERS

(2-1620) Anthropology at St. Louis and Before

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Oral Presentation (In-Person)

Council for Museum Anthropology

11/18/2021: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Sean O'Neill, Christopher Lowman, Richard Warms, Robert Launay, Reece McGee

(2-1460) Entangled Histories and Bundles of Relations: Contemporary Ethnographic Work In and Around Collections

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Invited Session - Oral Presentation (In-Person)

Council for Museum Anthropology

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Catherine Nichols, Diana Marsh, Kristin Otto, Christopher Berk, Howard Morphy

(3-2233) From Ecomuseum to Museum Family: Developments in China and Taiwan

Friday, November 19, 2021

Poster (In-Person)

Council for Museum Anthropology

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Yanqi Wei

(4-3340) Anthropology In/Of Museums and Their Collections

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Volunteered - Oral Presentation (In-Person)

Council for Museum Anthropology

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Chris Urwin, Lawrence Ramirez, Sylvia Ngo, Meryl Shriver-Rice, Elizabeth Oakley, Foster W. Krupp, Sonia Barragan

OTHER IN-PERSON PANELS/POSTERS OF INTEREST

(3-2120) Organizing and Curating Museums during the Pandemic: Truth, Responsibility, and Repatriations

Friday, November 19, 2021

Oral Presentation (In-Person)

Association for Africanist Anthropology

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Preminda Jacob, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Erica Fontana, J.R. Osborn, Shannen Hill

(5-3640) Commodification and Environmentalism: The Political Economy of Defining Cultural Heritage

Sunday, November 21, 2021

Volunteered - Oral Presentation (In-Person)

Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Nicholas Denning, Rowenn Kalman, Jocelyn Moylan, Amy Medvick, Rebecca Irons, Meredith Main Sá

CMA-SPONSORED VIRTUAL PANELS/PODCASTS/TALKS

(2-1690) "Small Museums—Large Truths"

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Oral Presentation (Virtual)

Council for Museum Anthropology

10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

John Bodinger de Uriarte, Sigurjon Hafsteinsson, Joseph Gonzales, Anna Runarsdottir, Bergsveinn Thorsson

(3-2553) A Conversation on Community-led Databases: Surveying Methods of Knowledge Sovereignty

 Friday, November 19, 2021

Invited Session - Roundtable / Townhall (Virtual)

Council for Museum Anthropology

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Christina Hodge, Diana Marsh, Cara Krmpotich, Ricardo Punzalan, Alexandria Rayburn, Sandrena Raymond

OTHER VIRTUAL PANELS/PODCASTS/TALKS OF INTEREST

(3-2122) Native Americans and Museums: International Perspectives and Collaborative Prospects.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Roundtable / Townhall (Virtual)

Society for the Anthropology of North America

10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Robert Collins, Justin Richland, Alaka Wali, Markus Lindner

CMA-SPONSORED ASYNCHRONOUS CONTENT

(0-0430) Remediating Sky Blanket: A conversation with Jaad Kuujus.

Podcast (Virtual)

Council for Museum Anthropology

Hannah Turner, Kate Hennessy, Meghann O'Brien

(0-0980) Global Themes in Local Context: A Case Study of a Japanese Human Rights Museum

Talk (Virtual)

Council for Museum Anthropology

Lisa Mueller

(0-1240) Constructing Arab Cultural Heritage from Museums-Based Materials

Talk (Virtual)

Council for Museum Anthropology

Sara Ann Knutson

OTHER ASYNCHRONOUS CONTENT OF INTEREST

(0-0310) Schools and local museums in the Pyrenees. Some reflections on the relationship between cultural and educational institutions from an ethnographic approach.

Talk (Virtual)

Council on Anthropology and Education

Elizabeth Pérez Izaguirre 

(0-1910) Shifting Post-colonial Narratives of the U.S. South: Historic Houses, Tour Talk, and Museum Scripts

Flash Presentations (Virtual)

Society for Linguistic Anthropology

Lori Donath

(0-1120) Dulac-You-Wanna: Cultural Heritage and Subsiding Ecologies in Louisiana's Coastal Marsh

Thesis Competition (Virtual)

National Association of Student Anthropologists

Dustin Reuther

(0-1670) Authority and Authenticity: an ethnographic discourse analysis of the safeguarding of Zhuang ethnic minority heritage

Late Breaking - Individual Poster (Virtual)

Executive Program Committee

Linfei Yi

 

Event Announcement: Think Again! African Arts, Museum Politics, and Savior Complexes


The Institute of African Studies at Emory University is pleased to host a conversation with Teju Cole as the kick-off for the Fall 2021 symposium, Think Again! African Arts, Museum Politics, and Savior Complexes.

We invite you to join us for this one-day virtual event as we hear from a broad range of university and museum-based professionals—some located in African institutions and others in North American ones—to consider different power dynamics and other concerns at play and to the discuss the topic of restitution and demands for action.

The aim is to listen carefully to a variety of informed perspectives, including ones that may unsettle, inconvenience, or otherwise prompt us to rethink what we thought we knew. 

REGISTER HERE

Call for Papers: UnSettled: Redefining Archival Power

Archives are repositories that help shape public and community memory. Traditional archival theory has upheld control of the historical record by colonial institutions, western perspectives, and whiteness. This power has been used to marginalize, other, undervalue, and erase diversity within the archive and public memory. As a result, colonial institutions have perpetuated their own biases against non-western worldviews to mobilize public memory in support of ongoing colonization.   

Today, archives are used to empower, fill gaps, educate, and celebrate the voices and perspectives of those traditionally barred from this work. Transformative practice allows us to rethink traditional western theory, forge a path of solidarity, and uphold our work based on collective values in regards to archival work. The power of archives and memory keeping is evolving into something new. UnSettled hopes to shine a spotlight on the many ways the profession is redefining archives and archival work.  

We welcome proposals in all formats, consider: individual traditional papers, panel sessions, full sessions, round-tables, or feel free to suggest something new!  We encourage participation from all individuals and organizations involved in memory work, including students, new professionals and community archivists.  Our goal is to hear from a variety of perspectives.    

More here.

Position Announcement: Native American Scholars Initiative Engagement Coordinator, American Philosophical Society

The Library & Museum of the American Philosophical Society seeks to hire an Engagement Coordinator for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) and Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR). This position will assist in implementing the Native American Scholars Initiative by developing and executing innovative programs at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research as well as providing mentorship for fellows and interns; work with Native American communities and community-based scholars to provide access to the Library & Museum’s Indigenous-related collections from reference request onward; as well as cultivate new and steward existing partnerships.


More here.

Call for Book Chapters: Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories: Narrating the Past for Present and Future

Over the course of the last decade, many museums have embraced new ways of storytelling. In dialogue with their communities and audiences, and often under pressure by museum activists, museum staff and curators have grappled with systemic racism and their institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion. 

In response, curators of history, art, archeological and anthropological museums have enlisted contemporary artists as well as new and traditional narrative and visual media to face these entangled memories and histories, to embrace practices of redress and repair, and to tackle other pressing contemporary issues, among them global warming, migration, genocide, and systems of inequality. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to break with linear narratives of progress and began to experiment with new forms of “recognition and identification to unsettle received narratives about the past and/or to produce new forms of subjectivity” (Andrea Witcomb). Other museums, however, have held on to and reimagined narratives of scientific progress, nostalgia, and national celebration. We are interested in the simultaneity of divergent narrative modalities found in contemporary museums: in multivocality and -lingualism as well as in mono-perspectival exhibition concepts.

More here.

2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Awards Announcements

We're delighted to announce the winners of this year's Council for Museum Anthropology awards!! We thank the CMA Awards Committee (Cara Krmpotich, Catherine Nichols, Laura Peers. and Adrian Van Allen), and the CMA Book Award Committee (Jennifer Kramer (Chair), Christy DeLair, Laura Peers, and Carolyn Heitman) for their dedicated work on this.

This year CMA Awards will be presented at a Zoom Awards Ceremony on 

Wednesday, 10 November 2021 

9pm EST / 8pm CST / 7pm MST/6pm PST (UTC: 11 Nov 2021 2:00am)

Please come and toast the winners!

Register here:

https://luc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrduihqjkjHtK8MbwBrXv8ndFL6TB2MT3b

2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Michael M. Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology

The CMA is extremely pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Michael M. Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology: Nicola Levell, University of British Columbia, for her exhibition, associated catalogue, educational programming, and virtual platform, "Shadows, Strings & Other Things" --and her book on this work, Bodies of Enchantment. Thanks to all who submitted nominations for consideration, and congratulations to Nicola and all associated with the project. 

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Through puppetry, Levell’s project showcases seven modes through which visitors and scholars experience the (im)material cultural heritage of puppetry and exhibit making, including an onsite gallery, digital 3D scans of the exhibit, videos, podcasts, virtual reality, an open access gallery guide, and the Bodies of Enchantment book. This multi-modal project offers a compelling model for anthropologists engaging in multi-faceted scholarship and public engagement. Multiple aspects of museum operations are evident in the project’s design and execution: from sensitive collecting and documentation, to curation, to theatrical and creative public programming, to the multi-purpose digital platform that extended and archived the temporary exhibition. 

“Shadows, Strings & Other Things” is an exemplar of how museum anthropology generatively troubles easy distinctions between tangible and intangible culture; animacy and object; and how it brings into public conversation ontological queries about things-belongings-beings. Levell’s museological practice does not shy away from politics and the pressing need to unsettle Western hegemonic structures, nor is it anchored in an ahistorical and disengaged formation—rather it invokes the core principles of Michael Ames’ efforts to decolonize and democratize museums.

2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Lifetime Achievement/Distinguished Service Award

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The CMA is delighted to announce the winner of the 2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Lifetime Achievement/Distinguished Service Award: Corinne A. Kratz, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and African Studies Emerita at Emory University, and Emory Director for the African Critical Inquiry Program. Thanks to all who submitted nominations for consideration. 

Kratz’s academic work spans a lifetime of scholarly and engaged anthropological achievement. Over the course of her near 50-year career, Kratz has redefined both museum anthropology and critical museology, especially at the intersections between these fields and African Studies. Kratz is the author of the award-winning book The Ones That Are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition, which is a description of, and extended critical reflection upon, Kratz’s own exhibition ‘Okiek Portraits,’ a traveling exhibition of fieldwork photographs taken during her work with the Kaplelach and Kipchornwonek Okiek people of South-central Kenya. Including tri-lingual captions, short dialogues between Kratz and her Okiek interlocutors, and the use of color photographs, the exhibition challenged earlier visual stereotypes of the Okiek. Based on the failures and successes of the exhibition as it traveled around the United States, Kratz’s ethnography was one of the first book-length studies to take seriously the idea that an exhibition may be engaged as an anthropological ‘field site’ in its own right. It is a seminal study for visual anthropology and critical museology, and exemplifies participatory and collaborative methodologies while taking seriously the dynamics and contexts of visitors and institutions. In addition, Kratz is a lead editor on the landmark volume Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, one of the most important contributions to critical museology of recent decades.

Kratz’s impact on a global community of scholars is also evident in her mentorship, especially her support of African Early Career Researchers. In addition to mentoring young scholars at Emory University, Kratz’s service and mentoring activities extended transnationally to the Institutions of Public Culture Program, a partnership between the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship at Emory and South African cultural institutions. Following Ivan Karp’s death in 2011, Kratz carried forward their joint commitment to developing public intellectual life in Africa by establishing the Ivan Karp and Corinne Kratz Fund. The Fund supported the creation of the African Critical Inquiry Program, which provides research funding for African doctoral students from across the continent and sponsors innovative annual workshops in South Africa. We honor her generosity of spirit and time, and her indelible human connection with a global community of colleagues. 

2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award 

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The Council for Museum Anthropology is most pleased to announce that Jason M. Gibson has won the 2021 CMA Book Award for Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of The Strehlow Collection (SUNY Press: Albany, NY, 2020).  In this deftly reflexive and sensitive work, Gibson analyzes the historical colonial context for the collection of central Australian men’s songs, stories, and ceremony by linguist/ anthropologist T.G.H. Strehlow. Gibson redresses the anthropological myth of Strehlow as heroic salvager and replaces it with an awareness of the intentional co-creation of this archive by Anmatyerr and Arrernte ceremonial specialists who actively allowed their secret and sacred knowledge to be recorded for posterity. Through ethnographically specific, place-based exchanges with contemporary Anmatyerr ritual knowledge holders, Gibson offers a nuanced understanding of authority, ownership, and reciprocity that emerge around this significant archive and the significance of its holdings to Anmatyerr men today. Eschewing simplistic repatriation rhetoric and grounded in rich fieldwork and Anmatyerr ritual knowledge holders' perspectives and voices, this ethnography intimately details the challenges and opportunities in co-stewarding this collection into the future. Thanks to all who submitted nominations and Congratulations Jason!

UNESCO Has Called on the British Museum to Reassess Its Position on the Contested Parthenon Marbles

Via ArtNet NewsKingdom has been urged to reconsider its position on the Parthenon Sculptures and to negotiate with Greece on the return of the cultural treasures following a recent UNESCO meeting, which concluded that the matter was “intergovernmental” rather than one that remained on an institutional level only.

The UNESCO intergovernmental commission for the return of cultural property to countries of origin voted unanimously for the first time at its 22nd session to include the return of the Parthenon Sculptures in its decision and recommendation documents, marking a major step forward since Greece first introduced the request to the meeting’s agenda in 1984.

“Both texts, the recommendation and the decision, are a very important development in our country’s perfectly legal claim,” said Lina Mendoni, Greece’s minister of culture and sports, in a statement following last week’s conclusion of the session. Last summer, in a television interview Mendoni had put direct pressure on the British Museum for the return of the 2500-year-old objects., October 5, 2021

“The United Kingdom has been urged to reconsider its position on the Parthenon Sculptures and to negotiate with Greece on the return of the cultural treasures following a recent UNESCO meeting, which concluded that the matter was “intergovernmental” rather than one that remained on an institutional level only.

The UNESCO intergovernmental commission for the return of cultural property to countries of origin voted unanimously for the first time at its 22nd session to include the return of the Parthenon Sculptures in its decision and recommendation documents, marking a major step forward since Greece first introduced the request to the meeting’s agenda in 1984.

“Both texts, the recommendation and the decision, are a very important development in our country’s perfectly legal claim,” said Lina Mendoni, Greece’s minister of culture and sports, in a statement following last week’s conclusion of the session. Last summer, in a television interview Mendoni had put direct pressure on the British Museum for the return of the 2500-year-old objects.”

More here.

Position Announcement: Assistant Professor, American Studies, Yale University

The American Studies Program at Yale University is looking to hire an assistant professor in Critical Information Studies beginning July 1, 2022. Critical information studies areas of research may include: technology, law, and race; political economy of data; digital epistemology; inequalities in access to digital networks and technologies; how the management of information has become part of the construction and surveillance of forms of national belonging and exclusion; citizenship, migrant status, ethnic and racial accounting and profiling; the biometrics of gender and sexuality; marketing platform companies and AI; and how data infrastructures are mobilized for new forms of security, policing, carceral and border control. We especially invite applications from scholars working at the intersections of critical ethnic studies, critical security studies, critical refugee studies, studies of race and racialization, and digital technology or information studies from below. The teaching expectation is normally four courses per academic year, plus service to the program.

More here.