Following up on news of Jim Seaver’s summer position at the National Gallery of Art, I am pleased to report on two more IU students (and Curatorship course alumni) headed to great paid graduate internships for the summer. Carrie Hertz, a doctoral student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, will be headed to Stratford Hall (birthplace of Robert E. Lee), for a position in its Textile Collection, while Suzanne Godby Ingalsbe, also a doctoral student in folklore, will be headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she will also work with textiles in its Antonio Ratti Textile Center. These are wonderful summer museum jobs going to excellent students. Congratulations!

Congratulations go to Michael P. Jordan, Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, upon his reciept of two significant grant awards in support of his upcoming doctoral research in Southwestern Oklahoma. Mike has been awarded a Jacobs Fund Grant from the Whatcom Museum Society and a Morris and Lucille Opler Research Award from the OU Department of Anthropology. Mike has a significant track record of research work in the ethnography and ethnohistory of the Southern Plains and is a museum anthropologist with a number of projects to his credit. He is also involved in the work of publishing Museum Anthropology Review. Well done.

Thanks go to everyone who participated on Friday [4-18] and Saturday [4-19] in the symposium on dress and adornment that Suzanne Godby Ingalsbe, Pravina Shukla and I organized. The paper presentations were diverse, interesting and innovative and it was exciting to talk shop with faculty and students drawn from the IU departments of anthropology, apparel merchandising and interior design, folklore and ethnomusicology and history of art. In addition to the faculty and student presenters, thanks also go to those who came to take in, and comment upon, the presentations. While the Saturday events took place at the IU Memorial Union, the presentations on Friday were held at the Wylie House Museum, where our host was the museum’s director Jo Burgess and our kickoff activity was a tour (by Suzanne) of the new exhibition What Women Wore: Clothing and Accessories of the 19th Century. The Friday papers were a special treat, delivered as they were in the first floor of Wylie House. The house was dark enough to see the slides of the presenters, but it was open to the breeze and to just enough sunlight on a beautiful Bloomington afternoon. The experience was a great reminder of what a wonderful resource Wylie House is for the IU community.

We are very pleased that the next issue of Museum Anthropology Review (volume 2, number 1) has just been published. Find it here. The issue contains some fine reviews as well as two peer-reviewed articles. These articles are the first peer-reviewed works to appear in the journal. Find more information on the new issue here.

I am happy to have recently accepted an invitation to join the editorial board for Cultural Analysis, an excellent open access journal whose virtues I have celebrated on several occasions (such as here, here, and here). As its editors describe it:

Cultural Analysis is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to investigating expressive and everyday culture. The journal features analytical research articles, but also includes notes, reviews, and cross-disciplinary responses. Cultural Analysis is global in scope, with an international editorial board.

Best wishes to the journal and to everyone involved in its work. Keep its free, easy to access offerings in mind in your teaching and research and consider sending them your most complelling manuscripts.