Dec 7
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
Congratulations go to IU Folklore doctoral student Arthur Lawton, whose latest article “Music on the Goshenhoppen Landscape” has just appeared in The Bulletin of the Historical Society of Montgomery County.
The editors an
d staff of Museum Anthropology Review are pleased to announce the publication of the journal’s latest issue, 3(2). As noted previously, publication of the issue is timed to coincide with the celebration of Open Access Week. Thanks go to the authors, reviewers, peer-reviewers, and helpers who make this gold open access journal happen. Thanks go as well to our wonderful publisher, the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries.
As I noted in a previous post, the final issue of Museum Anthropology for my editorship is out in the world. It is there now, but it took much longer than I expected to get posted in AnthroSource. I am happy that the issue features the valuable work of so many great colleagues. I am less happy with how the issue appears on the printed page and especially in AnthroSource, where thus usual metadata inconsistencies are ubiquitous. I will miss working with my CMA colleagues on Museum Anthropology but I will not miss being disappointed by the many value-added enhancements that the AAA’s toll access publishing system is supposed to deliver.
In happier news, its only 17 more days until the beginning of Open Access Week.
Sep 7
This past summer, my editorship of Museum Anthropology slowly wound to a stop. I saw tonight that the final issue of my term has now been posted online (behind a toll wall) in Wiley InterScience. It should thus appear in AnthroSource very soon and then it will show up in mailboxes. One of the consistent pleasures of the editorship has been publishing the work of smart and talented colleagues with whom I work here at Indiana University. The final issue 32(2) contains reviews or review essays by several of these friends.
Arle Lommel provided a review essay titled “From Galleries and Catalogues to Websites: Three Online Musical Instrument Exhibitions” (pp. 111-113).
Gabrielle A. Berliner authored two reviews for the issue. One of the digital exhibition “Keeping the Faith: Judaica from the Aron Museum” (pp. 117-118) and one is of the book Jews and Shoes edited by Edna Nahshon (pp. 152-154).
Teri Klassen reviewed the book Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy by Marcia Kaylakie with Janice Whittington (pp. 134-135), while a second quilt book–Contemporary Quilt Art: An Introduction and Guide by Kate Lenkowsky (pp. 160-161) was reviewed by Janice E. Frisch.
Michael Dylan Foster’s contribution to the issue is a review of How to Wrap Five Eggs: Traditional Japanese Packaging by Hideyuki Oka and Michikazu Sakai (pp. 154-155).
An alumnus of our department, Katherine Roberts (now on the faculty of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) reviewed the book Sacred and Profane: Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art edited by Carol Crown and Charles Russell (pp. 122-124).
Finally, a DVD produced by our colleague Jon Kay (who is the director of Traditional Arts Indiana) was reviewed by Chris Goertzen of the University of Southern Mississippi. The film is Crafting Sound: Indiana Instrument Builders and it appear on page 119-120 in the new issue.
Thanks to everyone in (and of) the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology who worked so hard to help Museum Anthropology thrive over the past several years.
Congratulations to Teri Klassen on the appearance of her latest research article “Representations of African American Quiltmaking: From Omission to High Art” in the new issue of our field’s flagship journal, The Journal of American Folklore. The article can be found online in ProjectMuse and in the paper issue, which should be hitting mailboxes soon.
Don’t miss Kim Christen’s account of returning to Tennant Creek. Its a beautiful account of an important moment. Find it on her website here.
Jun 13
A few days ago I finished reading Chris Kelty‘s wonderful book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008). During the academic year, I could not get to it but it was a treat to read it at a time in which it could be the only big thing that I was reading (as opposed to reading it alongside course readings). While I would have benefited greatly from reading it last year (when my involvement in the issues that it treats really began to expand), it will do me much good in the days ahead, as it relates very centrally to the work that I am now doing on scholarly communications issues. It provides invaluable context on the emergence and present-day life of open source software, but it also offers a range of valuable theoretical, interpretive and methodological tools that are portable to other contexts. The book also examines, in a very sophisticated way, the manner in which the processes and ideas and values of free and open source software have been extended into projects like Connexions (about which my department held a really fruitful meetup recently) and the Creative Commons license system. All of this work is done very artfully and in ways that we can all learn from.
This post is no surogate for a careful review, but I want to flag the book’s importance to me and to suggest that it is going to be touchstone work for many of the projects that I am increasingly involved in. More ambitiously, I want to plead with my friends and colleagues to read it so that we can talk about it and draw upon it in our efforts together and in our conversations. It is a great work of ethnography, history, and theory. It is also an experiment that modulates the very processes that it describes, as is evident on the excellent and innovative website that Chris has built to extend the book. One can purchase the book the conventional way, but it is also available to freely read and remix in a variety for formats via the website. Some of the background for this is also provided in the “Anthropology of/in Circulation” project that Chris led and that I particupated in. Find the article version of that project here in IUScholarWorks Repository.
Thank you Chris.
A new volume (=issue) of Cultural Analysis, volume 7, has just been published. It has a special focus on “Memory.” Find the new issue as well as the entire back content, plus information on the journal at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum. CA is an open access journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles and assorted editorially reviewed genres in PDF and HTML formats.
The editors also announce a call for papers for a special issue (volume 9). The CFP follows:
CALLS FOR PAPERS:
1. Call for Papers for Special Issue Volume 9: Here, There, and In-Between: Virtual and Actual Social Space
Cultural Analysis is currently seeking submissions for an upcoming special volume on the virtual. Folklore’s power to constitute collectivities has made it a frequent site of shared virtual spaces. As scholars increasingly engage with the effects of digital media on culture, it is useful to reflect on the historical virtualities of folklore as well as the newly emerging folklore of the digital virtual.
The editors welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines and perspectives that touch on the production, transmission, performance or reception of virtual social spaces. Possible subject areas could include the digital virtual (The cultural geography of digital spaces, online social memory sites, etc), other forms of virtual presence (“real but not actual” social spaces) or connections between virtual and actual spaces.
2. General Submissions
In addition to submissions for our special volume, we always welcome submissions for our general issues. These submissions should critically interrogate some aspect of folklore or popular culture, but can approach these topics from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Cultural Analysis encourages submissions from a variety of theoretical standpoints and from different disciplines including anthropology, cultural studies, folklore, media studies, popular culture, psychology, and sociology. As the mission of Cultural Analysis is to promote interdisciplinary dialogue on the topics of folklore and popular culture, pieces that engage with multiple methodologies are especially welcome. For a representative sample of our publications, previous volumes can be viewed on our website.
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I am pleased to note the openning of the “One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record” exhibition at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman. I have not yet heard how the openning events have gone, but I look forward to seeing the exhibition myself this summer. Learn more about the show here. Find the associated book, authored by Candace Greene and published by Nebraska, here.
Shreds and Patches 