Skip to content

Posts from the ‘For the Record’ Category

Jan 5

16 Comments

Behind the Research Works Act: Which U.S. Representatives are Receiving Cash from Reed Elsevier?

A bill (H.R. 3699) recently introduced in the U.S. Congress by  Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) aims to undo open access policies at NIH and to prevent the establishment of open access policies in other federal agencies. The large publishers, as represented by The Association of American Publishers, has expressed its love for this innocuously named “Research Works Act.” Open access advocates understand it as another terrible assault on the public interest and as instrument designed to not only mislead those who do not understand how scholarly research and its communication work but to more intensively transfer public resources into private, corporate hands. I am not going to offer an analysis of the bill and its contexts here.

In this note, I just want to highlight University of California Biologist Michael Eisen’s posting about the Research Works Act. After contextualizing and characterizing H.R. 3699, he points his readers to political contribution data available via MapLight. Looking into which members of Congress have received contributions from the large, multinational scholarly publisher Read Elsevier, Eisen notes that the largest recipient of Elsevier cash is Rep. Maloney (co-sponsor of H.R. 3699). He notes:

Dutch publisher Elsevier and its senior executives made 31 contributions to members of the House in 2011, of which 12 went to Representative Maloney. This includes contributions from 11 senior executives or partners, only one of whom is a resident of her district.

Who else is on the Elsevier donation list? Any guesses? Yes, of course, Rep. Issa. (For the full list of Elsevier recipients, see here.)

Thank you to Professor Eisen for his work digging into this question.

Aug 26

1 Comment

The Hasan El-Shamy Shout-Out

This is a shout-out. I have boundless respect and admiration for my senior colleague Hasan El-Shamy. Dr. El-Shamy is continuing to make crucial contributions to the social sciences and humanities, especially in his beloved field of folklore studies. He is a leader in considering the mutual implications of psychology and folklore studies. He is a world renowned scholar of Middle Eastern expressive culture and belief systems. He has advanced comparative methods and theories in folklore studies, adapting them for the current century. He has argued persuasively for the importance of recognizing vernacular theorizing on the human condition and he has an uncanny ability to recognize the lay social theories expressed in the most humble of expressive genres and folk beliefs and to connect these to the longterm concerns of psychological, social and cultural theory in the academic mode. At another end of the continuum, he is in dialogue with literary scholars as a consequence of his detailed studies of a key canonical text in world literature—The Thousand and One Nights. The glowing reviews that his works receive and the global community of admirers in dialogue with his studies speak to his centrality and influence to our field.

In the past several years, Dr. El-Shamy has published numerous important books, including Tales Arab Women Tell (IU Press, 1999), Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2002), Types of the Folktale in the Arab World (IU Press, 2004), Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature (Sharpe, 2005), A Motif Index of The Thousand and One Nights (IU Press, 2006), and Religion Among the Folk in Egypt (Praeger, 2008). In one of countless high profile recognitions that he has received, this year he was recognized with the honor of being the “Great China Lecturer” at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He was the 94th internationally recognized scholar to be accorded this distinction.

Dr. El-Shamy is on a well-deserved research leave this semester and I wish him well in his continuing research endeavors.

Aug 4

2 Comments

Mathers Museum, Glenn Black Lab Merger Yields Cultural History Powerhouse

IU news announced back home:

Mathers Museum, Glenn Black Lab Merger Yields Cultural History Powerhouse

This is a big deal for the students with whom I work, the colleagues with whom I collaborate, and the collections that I have been studying.

May 19

1 Comment

Anthropologist Robert Reeves Solenberger (1916-2006)

In a paper that I published in 2002, I drew upon unpublished ethnographic notes compiled in 1940-1941 by then University of Pennsylvania graduate student Robert R. Solenberger. Solenberger was a student of Frank G. Speck and others on the faculty at Penn. The notes that I drew upon in my paper are part of the Speck Papers at the American Philosophical Society. I have today been working on a new paper that draws upon the same unpublished manuscript by Solenberger. In 2000, when I was working on the paper mentioned above, I was able to track down Professor Solenberger in retirement in Tuscon, AZ and to speak with him on the phone about his graduate studies and the materials that I was then drawing upon.

Taking up work on a new project based on his notes, I went online tonight to see what more I could learn about Solenberger’s career. I learned that he passed away (in his 90s) a few years ago. I found various bits of information on his life, work, and history, but did not find a professional obituary. Based on the information that I pieced together tonight, I offer the following brief sketch.

Robert R. Solenberger (1916-2006) earned a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 with a thesis on “An Interpretation of Material on the Anthropology of East Africa Based upon Mediaeval Arabic Writers.” and was on the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bloomsburg State College (now Bloomsburg University). He published a prominent series of articles focused on the Marianas Islands, where he worked in the 1950s. (These appeared in Human Organization, Anthropological Linguistics, and Oceania, among other outlets.) During his graduate training, he participated in archaeological research at Clovis, New Mexico in 1937 (under the direction of John L. Cotter). He was a Quaker and a conscientious objector during World War II.

My sources include published works discoverable via Google Scholar and the Internet Archive, as well as the following Google discoveries:

http://www.biblerecords.com/solenberger.html

http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0709/passages.htm

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0302/0302notes.html

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0707/obits.html

He appears on the AAA Honor Roll of Donors in the last years of his life, but I could find no professional obituary in a AAA publication or elsewhere. A Society of Friends memorial sketch is available.

It was an honor to speak with this anthropology elder early in 2000. I record here my thanks for his kindness and his interest in my work. I also express appreciation for his work, including the six pages of Southeastern Indian ethnography that he compiled in 1940 while on a road trip with  through Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

Rest in Peace.

(Additions and corrections to this sketch are very welcome.)

Dec 20

Mukurtu: An Indigenous Archive and Content Management Tool | New Website Announcement

From a December 20, 2010 Mukurtu Project Press Release:

Mukurtu: An Indigenous Archive and Content Management Tool
New Website Announcement
www.mukurtuarchive.org

Project Director: Dr. Kimberly Christen; Director of Development: Dr. Michael Ashley; Lead Drupal Developer: Nicholas Tripcevich

In March 2010 the Mukurtu project was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start‐Up grant to produce a beta‐version of an open‐source, standards‐based community digital archive and content management platform. As the third phase of an ongoing software production project, the Mukurtu team is aware that indigenous and tribal libraries, archives and museums are underserved by both off‐the‐shelf content management systems (CMS) and open source CMS and digital archive/web production tools. Over the last decade as web technologies have diversified to include user‐generated content and more sophisticated digital archive and content management tools the specific needs of indigenous collecting institutions have been left out of mainstream productions.  Based on long‐term research and collaboration with indigenous communities and collecting institutions, Mukurtu’s development and production has focused on producing a digital archive and content management tool suite that meets the expressed needs of indigenous communities globally. Specifically, Mukurtu:

  1. Allows for granular access levels based on indigenous cultural protocols for the access and distribution of multiple types of content;
  2. Provides for diverse and multiple intellectual property systems through flexible and adaptable licensing templates;
  3. Accounts for histories of exclusion from content preservation and metadata generation sources and strategies by incorporating dynamic and user‐friendly administration tools;
  4. Provides flexible and adaptable metadata fields for traditional knowledge relating to collections and item level descriptions; and
  5. Facilitates the exchange and enhancement of metadata between national collecting institutions and related indigenous communities through robust import/export capabilities.

The Mukurtu software tool suite is under development now with a system demonstration site planned for Spring 2011. Our informational website, development blog, and wiki are now live. These sites allow us to chronicle our development progress, provide updates and engage with users as we move forward to a full launch in August 2011.

Please visit the new site at: www.mukurtuarchive.org and follow the links to learn more about the Mukurtu project goals, development, and collaborations.

Dec 11

Wenner-Gren Foundation Takes Major Step for Open Access

Anthropologists have reason to cheer with news from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research that the biannual symposium proceedings published by the Foundation as an extension of the journal Current Anthropology will now be made available in open access form. Wenner-Gren Foundation President Leslie Aiello describes the move and the rationale behind it in a [toll wall protected] contribution to the latest issue of Current Anthropology [volume 51, page 727, December 2010] See: DOI: 10.1086/657920.

The two supplements published in 2010 are freely available via the journal’s page at the University of Chicago Press.  Formatted like the journal, these are book-sized edited collections organized thematically. Discussing the history of the Foundation’s Symposium efforts, Aiello writes:

The first Wenner-Gren Symposium was in 1952, and since then, more than 170 symposia and workshops have been sponsored by the foundation. Many of these have resulted in landmark edited volumes that have made significant contributions to the development of our field (see http://www.wennergren.org/history). In today’s electronic age, the foundation wants to ensure that its symposia continue to have a significant impact and reach the broadest possible international audience. We believe that open-access publication in Current Anthropology is the best way to achieve this goal.

This is wonderful news and a real advancement. One more reason to say thank you to Wenner-Gren for its dedication to the discipline of anthropology. Wenner-Gren joins other scholarly foundations working to advance the cause of a more just, rational, and effective system of scholarly communication.

Note:  While there is not a press-release on the Foundation website regarding this shift, there is a discussion of the move to publishing the symposium in connection with the journal (rather than as edited books). This announcement also discusses several recent symposium volumes.

Jul 11

Brian Gilley Named Director of IU’s First Nations Educational and Cultural Center

Congratulations to Dr. Gilley, IUB and the FNECC.

Brian Gilley, associate professor of anthropology and director of the ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies program at the University of Vermont, has been selected as the first director of the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center at Indiana University Bloomington.

Read the full IUB Press Release here.

Jul 4

AFS Executive Board Issues Arizona Statement

[As noted in today's AFS email newsletter] After a period of discussion and review, the American Folklore Society‘s Executive Board [on which I serve] has issued a public statement on recent Arizona immigration legislation. The Society will distribute this statement to relevant public officials and bodies in Arizona, and to other learned societies.

The statement reads:

The American Folklore Society, the US-based professional association for the field of folklore studies, with a membership of 2,000 people and institutions, and an annual meeting that draws more than 700 participants from around the world, has historically supported policies that prohibit discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion, or sexual orientation, and our field has long been concerned with the well-being of immigrant populations.

The Executive Board of the American Folklore Society takes notice of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, requiring all local law enforcement officials to investigate a person’s immigration status when there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the United States unlawfully, regardless of whether that person is suspected of a crime. We also take notice of Arizona House Bill 2281, that prohibits public schools in the state from offering, at any grade level, courses that advocate ethnic solidarity or cater to specific ethnic groups.

More than a century of research in the field of folklore studies (and in other fields in the humanities and social sciences) has detailed the cultural, political, and social impact of discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, and race.  Based on that research, the Executive Board of the American Folklore Society considers these laws just identified, and the ways they may be implemented, to be discriminatory.

The Executive Board of the American Folklore Society resolves that the Society will not hold a scholarly conference in the State of Arizona until such time that Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and Arizona House Bill 2281 are either repealed or struck down as constitutionally invalid and thus unenforceable by a court.

Jun 9

Congratulations Smithsonian Anthropology

Today I received the email newsletter of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Their lead story is a big deal. Congratulations to the department on the successful conclusion of a curatorial hiring effort that has brought four new colleagues to the department. Department Chair Dan Rogers writes:

With the arrival of Gwyneira Isaac (curator, North American indigenous cultures) in early June and the arrival of Gabriela Perez Baez (curator, linguistics) in December 2009, the department has successfully concluded its search for four new curators over the past three years. (Curators Joshua Bell (globalization) and Torben Rick (human-environmental interaction) were hired in 2008.) This represents the largest influx of curatorial staff in several decades and we are delighted to bring in another generation of scholars. These hires bring the number of anthropology curators to 23.

This is great news for Smithsonian anthropology specifically and for museum anthropology generally. Congratulations and good luck to the new members of the curatorial staff.

May 6

Janice Frisch on T-shirt Quilts

A note of congratulations for Janice Frisch on the completion of her M.A. in Folklore. Her M.A. Thesis, recently accepted by the faculty, is titled Scrapbooks in Fabric: Memory, Identity, and the T-shirt Quilt. It is a wonderful study utilizing ethnographic methods in the study of contemporary U.S.  material culture. It is particularly valuable in the ways that it situates t-shirt quilts relative to the areas of (1) dress and adornment, (2) quilts and quilt history, and (3) scrapbooking and other practices associated with hand-made memory objects. In her abstract, she writes:

Historically, in the United States, clothing that was worn beyond repair was used in quilts in order to salvage the still usable parts while creating another useful item. Modern quilters, however, generally purchase new cloth to use in their quilts rather than cutting up old clothing. Fairly recently there has been a trend towards constructing quilts out of still wearable clothing items, such as t-shirts. This form of quilting is both a continuation of past practices and an innovation. In today’s society these quilts are a medium for the expression of personal identity and memories. This thesis draws upon existing literature on body art, material culture, memory, and identity as well as original fieldwork to examine the rapidly growing phenomenon of t-shirt quilts and connect them to the larger history of quilting, dress, and collecting in the United States. [Frisch 2010:vi]

Looking ahead to her Ph.D. work, Ms. Frisch will be continuing her studies of quilting this summer at the Smithsonian and several European museums. Congratulations to her on the completion of an important M.A. study.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 363 other followers