The material culture studies students at Indiana and I have been engaged in a a very interesting if slow-motion research discussion of Etsy (Your place to buy and sell all things handmade. ™) and its extensions, such Regretsy (Where DIY meets WTF.) Adding to the conversation is Grant McCracken’s recent and interesting post on Meaning Manufacture, Old and New in which he discusses a remarkable project/site called Significant Objects.

[from an AFS announcement]

Call for Book Proposals

The University of Illinois Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin Press, in cooperation with the American Folklore Society and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, are collaborating to host an author’s workshop at the 2010 conference of the American Folklore Society for authors working on their first book. Up to six authors will be selected to participate in a full day of intensive activities devoted to critiquing and developing their individual projects. Workshop activities will include one-on-one mentoring sessions with editors and senior scholars and group discussions of revision and editing strategies, publishing processes, and project critiques. A modest stipend will be provided to participants to help defray the costs of attending the workshop.

This opportunity is open only to authors preparing their first books. Projects must be single-authored, nonfiction books based on folklore research. Edited volumes, photography collections with minimal text, and memoirs will not be considered.

Projects selected for the workshop will be candidates for publication in the Presses’ new collaborative series, Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World, which aims to publish exceptional first books that emphasize the interdisciplinary and/or international nature of the field of folklore. Within the series, each Press will focus on specific aspects of folklore studies related to its areas of expertise: Illinois on gender and queer studies, world folk cultures, and multiculturalism as manifested in forms of vernacular expression such as music, dance, and foodways; Mississippi in folk art, American folk music, African American studies, popular culture, and Southern folklife; and Wisconsin in folklore studies that intersect with Upper Midwest cultures, Irish/Irish-American studies, Jewish studies, Southeast Asian studies, gay/lesbian studies, foodways, and travel. Applicants may indicate in their proposal whether they have a preference of publisher.

Proposals should be submitted via e-mail between January 1, 2010 and April 1, 2010, to fsmw@uillinois.edu. For submission guidelines, please see http://folklorestudies.press.illinois.edu/guidelines.html.

My super-talented friend Jessica Cattelino has written a great piece for Anthropology News on the social dimensions of Everglades restoration in my home territory of South Florida. (Unfortunately it is toll access and thus not easily accessible to non-AAA members.)

A (cc) liscenced image of the Everglades from Flickr. How cool is that?

Ruth Landes‘ (1908–1991) work as an anthropologist is well known to me, but I have only recently learned of the research grants program in her name. It looks very impressive and could be especially valuable to those who, like Landes, undertake ethnographic dissertation research in (hard to fund) (Native) North America (she is also known for her work in Brazil). Find details on the program here: http://www.thereedfoundation.org/landes/grants.html

With this note, I want to congratulate Brice Obermeyer on the publication of his new book Delaware Tribe in a Cherokee Nation (University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Brice is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Emporia State University. His book began as his dissertation research at the University of Oklahoma, where I had the privilege of serving on his doctoral committee. Of the Ph.D. students with whom I have worked, Brice has the distinction of being the first to accomplish the difficult additional task of seeing his doctoral dissertation transformed into a published book. This major effort entails not only additional research, writing and revision, but the practical matters of securing a publisher, further revision on the basis of peer-review, and going through the multitude of steps the follow in the production process. Congratulations to Brice on his negotiating these many steps successfully.

An important study of a complex and contentious topic, Brice’s book has been published by the University of Nebraska Press, an important publisher of books in anthropology and Indigenous studies. His study is a crucial examination of the political and historical complexities that have led to the entanglement of the Delaware people with the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and of the Delaware struggle for self-determination in a context in which they are doubly encompassed by both the United States and the Cherokee Nation, two powerful governments whose interests have often been hostile to Delaware ones. To explore the complicated ways in which the exercise of Cherokee national sovereignty has resulted in the disenfranchisement and subjugation of another American Indian people is a difficult and painful undertaking, one that Brice pursues with care. Brice succeeds in accounting for the complexities of the Delaware situation, respecting the diversity of views found among Delaware people, and contextualizing the historical events and social and culture processes that make sense of the political paradoxes that Delaware and Cherokee people must negotiate. A excerpt is available on the University of Nebraska Press website.

Congratulations to Brice and to his Delaware collaborators.

JOB POSTING: Head of the Gallery Laboratory Project

The Gallery at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture is expanding its established exhibition program to include a second area called the Laboratory Project that is devoted to experimentation and innovation in all aspects of exhibition practice, particularly display and interpretation. This project seeks to re-define the identity of the curator by integrating exhibition practice in the academic life of the Center and academic investigation in the practice of the Gallery. The idea of a laboratory implies openness to thinking in new ways about the gallery as a space for faculty and students to engage in exhibitions as an intellectual endeavor and as a craft. The Head of the Gallery Laboratory Project will have three primary responsibilities devoted to realizing these goals. The first is to coordinate the newly established Focus Exhibitions that are curated by faculty and derive from seminars taught at the Center. The second is to be responsible for realizing the student-participation exhibitions organized by the BGC in collaboration with museums in the New York City area. The third is to be part of a team developing a new informal gallery-based curriculum intended to teach students about conceptualization, implementation and interpretation of exhibitions. In addition, this position will be responsible for organizing programs for the Laboratory Project exhibitions.

Qualifications
• No less than five years of museum or gallery experience coordinating exhibitions with knowledge of public and private collections
• Experience teaching at the graduate level
• Terminal degree in history of decorative arts, design history, material culture, art history; Ph.D. preferred
• Knowledge of museum interpretation including writing text panels and exhibition labels
• Experience working with innovative approaches to display and developing new approaches to curating exhibitions examining the decorative arts, design history, and material culture
• Excellent writing skills
• Experience with budget oversight
• Must be a team player with excellent interpersonal skills

This position reports to the Chief Curator and Executive Editor Gallery Publications. This is an administrative position that will join the Gallery staff currently comprised of the Administrator, Curatorial Projects; Assistant Curator; Exhibition Designer; Registrar; Digital Technology Designer; Head of Education; Gallery Outreach Educator; Gallery Program Coordinator; Catalogue Photography Coordinator; and two Curatorial Fellows.

Please send letter of interest, including salary requirements, curriculum vitae, and a list of three referees to: HGLsearch@bgc.bard.edu .AA/EOE

For more Information on the Bard Graduate Center: http://www.bgc.bard.edu/

I am pleased to report that Dr. Liora Sarfati recently and successfully defended her dissertation on the material culture of contemporary Korean Shamanism, thereby earning her Ph.D. in from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. I was honored to be a part of her committee and I look forward to seeing her fine and innovative work published and discussed in the years ahead.

Call for Essays:  Special Issue of Anthropological Quarterly

Cultures of Piracy

Anthropological Quarterly is seeking submissions for a special issue exploring “piracy” defined broadly, from copying CDs to Captain Hook, from biopiracy to the coast of Somalia.  Authors may consider one of the following, making sure that their work draws upon ethnographic research, and/or engages anthropology as a discipline:

1. How do practices labeled “piracy” differ from other sorts of extraction, expropriation, borrowing, and theft?
2. How does piracy conflict with or affirm narratives of law and governance?  What, for instance, are piracy’s critical and utopian impulses?
3. How is piracy mediated through various forms of public culture, and what are the components of its circulation within various publics?
4. What are the spatial and temporal features of piracy – its histories and geographies?
5. What are piracy’s economic and political entailments?
6. What specific localities (the Straits of Malacca, Somalia and the Caribbean) or activities (p2p file-sharing and fishing) are in part constituted by notions of piracy?

Authors have considerable freedom; essays can be short (3,000 words) or long (10,000 words), grounded in ethnographic data, or purely theoretical. One of Anthropological Quarterly’s goals is to give ethnographers a range of possibilities for scholarly writing.

Our deadline for abstracts and titles is August 1st, 2010.
We request the completed work by October 1st, 2010.

Email submissions to aqsubmissions@gmail.com (preferably in .doc file format) and mail two hard copies to:

Alexander S. Dent – Associate Editor
Anthropological Quarterly
The George Washington University
2110 G St. NW
Washington, DC 20052

Email questions to asdent@gwu.edu

A job notice circulated for the good of the anthropology, ethnology and folklore studies community.

The Department of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology within the Philosophical Faculty of Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, seeks a

W2 – Professor in Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology
to begin on April 1, 2010.

We are seeking a scholar who knows the subject in its entire breadth and has done exceptional work in research as well as methodology. Expertise in the analysis of local, region and national everyday culture is desirable as well as in the field of cultural exchange and migration in Europe and its regions. In terms of teaching, in depth knowledge and experience are expected in the central methods and theories of the discipline. In addition to the regular teaching duties, the position also requires readiness to carry out empirical projects with students in the masters program.

Applicants should be interested in interdisciplinary work, participate actively also in the Center for Modern Humanities and show openness toward research cooperation in national and international dimensions. An active interest in the work of the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for the study of religious and ethnic diversity is also desirable.

The precondition for application is the ”habilitation“ or equivalent achievements (such as tenure and/or a second monograph) as well as adequate teaching experience. Also desirable is experience with research planning and grant writing.

Getting appointed to a professorship is based on the conditions set out in §25 of the Law for Higher Education of the State of Lower Saxony (NHG). Particulars will be explained upon inquiry.

Further information is available at http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/119119.html

We explicitly welcome applications from abroad. Women are underrepresented in academic teaching at the University of Göttingen. Applications from women holding the requisite qualifications are thus especially welcome and will be treated favorably within the framework of legal possibilities. Severely handicapped applicants of equal aptitude will be privileged.

Part-time employment can be made possible, depending on the circumstances.

Please send applications including a curriculum vitae, a publications list as well as an accounting of scholarly development including a detailed description of teaching experiences and research plans within 6 weeks of the appearance of this advertisement to:

Dekanin der Philosophischen Fakultät der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Humboldtallee 17, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany.

Congratulations to everyone involved in moving the journal Anthropology of East Europe Review to the IUScholarWorks Journals project. Find the new issue–27(2)–online here:
http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/index