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Jul 20

Excellent Symposium Concludes 2013 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

Many things have been happening lately–so many that keeping up with them here has been difficult. Many good things have gone unreported and some bad current events (global and national, not personal) have gone un-commented upon. I am pleased though to celebrate the conclusion of the 2013 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology. I was invited to join the institute for its last week and a half and to participate in its concluding symposium at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) on the Mall in Washington. In the symposium, SIMA’s twelve graduate student participants presented the initial findings of their four-week research projects utilizing the (amazing) collections–both objects and archival materials–of the NMNH Department of Anthropology. The students came to SIMA from many different graduate programs and backgrounds and possessed a diversity of historical, ethnographic, topical, and theoretical interests. They did wonderful work and I learned a lot from their studies and from their careful and compelling reporting. While they have further to go, of course, with their projects, I think that it is pretty exciting to hear the results of four intensive weeks of research as the concluding act of that same four week process. Quite remarkable.

I am very appreciative of my continued association with this wonderful program. I am glad that I have been able to help it continue moving along so well.

SIMA will happen again next summer. Details will be posted here on the SIMA website in the months ahead.

Jun 6

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#Altmetrics Coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education includes extensive coverage of the topic of altmetrics by Jennifer Howard. There are two companion stories, but the main one is “Rise of ‘Altmetrics’ Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research.” If you can get access to the Chronicle, this main story can be found here. I spoke to Ms. Howard during her research and was quoted in the story. My discussions with her drew upon the collaborative work of the Faculty Advisory Board for the Office of Scholarly Publishing (at Indiana University) as well as my participation in campus events focused on the reassessment of tenure and promotion guidelines. As might be suggested from the quotations that she shared, our discussions sat on the border between the altmetrics discussion and a neighboring conversation–what is increasingly being discussed as the “what counts?” issue. The later theme concerns questions of genre in scholarly communication under significantly changing circumstances. My hope is that Ms. Howard will have a chance to return to the later theme in future work. She is a fine communicator and a great observer of academic publishing, technology, the digital humanities and neighboring realms. If you can access it, please check out her stories. They are a helpful introduction to the places where we are now.

May 31

George Sabo Named Director of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey

Here is some very good news from the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Archaeological Survey.

George Sabo III, a professor of anthropology and environmental dynamics at the University of Arkansas, will be the next director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, a division of the University of Arkansas System.

Sabo, who has served as an archeologist with the survey for more than 30 years, will replace  Thomas J. Green, who will retire June 30 after more than 20 years as director of survey, a statewide research, public service and educational institution with 11 research stations. UA System President Donald R. Bobbitt selected Sabo after a national search for a new director.

Read more in the full press release. Congratulations George!

May 17

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Last but Not Least: Hacking the Academy–the Print and Ebook Editions

I am pleased to note that the University of Michigan Press has now published the print and ebook editions of Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities. This volume was organized and edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt and is part of the press’ Digital Humanities series.

Followers of the project will know that this is just the latest iteration of a multimodal effort. The history of the project is narrated in numerous places, including in the preface to the free open web version (made available earlier by the Press’s Digital Culture Books unit). Very instructive is the more primordial version (inclusive of much content not in the book) at http://hackingtheacademy.org/

I was trilled to participate in the project with an abridged version of a blog post that first appeared here (still a best seller after several years). That original post was called “Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five East Steps” and it promotes resisting the increasing enclosure of scholarly publishing by large multinational firms. (In the new book, it appears on pages 13-14.)

Everyone reasonably wonders about the point of a print edition of a “book” born out of twitter links and weblogs posts. Here is how the editors address this point.

Finally, the reader may legitimately ask: Doesn’t the existence of Hacking the Academy as a book undermine its argument? Why put this supposedly firebrand work into a traditional form? The answer is that we wanted this project to have maximal impact and especially to reach those for whom RSS and Twitter are alien creatures. Moreover, one of the main themes of this volume—and of digital technology—is that scholarly and educational content can exist in multiple forms for multiple audiences.

A review of the book edition, but someone new to the effort (who missed the earlier instances), has been published on the Education Technology and Change (ETC) blog.

Thanks to all of the editors, contributors, readers, and publishers involved in this experimental work.

May 2

Four Dissertations Defended Successfully

On top of the recent museum events and the usual end of semester grading, etc., the past week saw four students with whom I work compete their doctorates in successful dissertation defenses. Warm congratulations to Dr. Janice Frisch, Dr. Gabriel McGuire, Dr. Mintzi Martinez-Rivera, and Dr. Carrie Hertz. It has been a pleasure learning with each of them.

Apr 19

Treasures of the Mathers Museum Opens Sunday April 28, 2-4 p.m

Invitation to Exhibition Opening

Apr 14

Some Museum Anthropology Review Stats for 2012

Readers of Museum Anthropology Review might be interested in knowing which contributions to the journal were most intensively consulted during 2012. Only today did I study the statistics closely. Here is the journal’s top five for 2012.

1. Daniel C. Swan’s “Objects of Purpose—Objects of Prayer: Peyote Boxes of the Native American Church” in MAR 4(2).

2. Jon Kay’s “A Picture of an Old Country Store: The Construction of Folklore in Everyday Life” in MAR 4(2).

3. Heather Horst’s Review of “Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture (Pugh)” in MAR 4(2).

4. Carrie Hertz’s “Costuming Potential: Accommodating Unworn Clothes” in MAR 5(1-2).

5. Jill Ahlberg Yohe’s “Situated Flow: A Few Thoughts on Reweaving Meaning in the Navajo Spirit Pathway” in MAR 6(1).

Congratulations to these authors and thanks to MAR’s many readers around the world!

[Cross-posted from the Museum Anthropology Review announcements page.]

Apr 12

UBIQUI-TEE: T-Shirts Design Culture

I was happy tonight to attend the opening for a great new exhibition organized by the Sage Collection and presented at the Indiana University Center for Art and Design Columbus (IUCA+D Columbus). Curated by Sage Assistant Curator Kelly Richardson, the exhibition is titled UBIQUI-TEE: T-Shirts Design Culture. It does a great job of framing the diversity of t-shirts and their many uses in global culture. The show was strikingly presented in a beautiful setting, the still relatively new design-focused center in beautiful downtown Columbus, Indiana.

Extensive Sage collections were supplemented by loans from a number of individuals and institutions, including the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, which lent shirts collected in Native American and African contexts as well as two wonderful, recently collected t-shirt quilts.

Congratulations to Kelly and everyone involved in the new show.

(Columbus had a great downtown. Go see the show.)

Apr 12

Tweeter Arrested [#IUonStrike]

This is an update on the bad news side of my post from yesterday. The tweet that I described and then described as disappearing was made by a student who has now been arrested on a preliminary felony charge of intimidation. This has been reported publicly now by Bloomington Herald Times reporter Abby Tonsing.

It is worth noting that, as my web scouting last night began revealing to me, the tweeter has been an opinion writer for the IU student newspaper (the IDS) and seems to specialized in careless and willfully inflammatory criticism of progressives and their politics. His inappropriate tweet was part of a campaign of hassling the strikers and, it seems, more generally provoking mayhem. His conduct thus appears to be the campus equivalent of right wing talk (and shock) radio and its print and TV analogs. Even as satire, I condemn his act as reprehensible for an educated person who is seeking to speak in a public forum. I am more unforgiving than at least some of the #IUonStrike participants. The IU on Strike twitter account offered this:

Tweettweet 2

I support free speech, but rights come with companion responsibilities attached. Rights are talked about indignantly a lot right now, but I wish more attention was being paid to responsibilities, particularly to one’s neighbors.

Update: As reported by Laura Lane for the Herald Times on April 16, 2013, charges are not being pursued in this case. http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2013/04/16/news.no-charges-coming-in-death-threat-tweet.sto

Apr 11

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Good News | Bad News

On the good news front, students, faculty, staff, and friends associated with the Mathers Museum of World Cultures continue to come together to do good work and illustrate why museums are good places to gather, talk, think, study, and try to make a difference. As I move into my fourth month as the museum’s director, I feel so thankful for everyone’s interest in, and support of, the museum’s efforts. Here are some highlights from recent days.

Last Saturday the museum hosted a great “Meet the Collection” event. The focus was the museum’s collection of handmade chairs by Chester Cornett. This collection was assembled by folklorist Michael Owen Jones during his doctoral research at Indiana. Some chairs came to the museum at the time of Jones’ initial student research, but others were recently donated by this now distinguished UCLA scholar. Jon Kay, James Seaver, and Ellen Sieber all contributed remarks that led to a wider group conversation to which Joanne Stuttgen, Pravina Shukla, Henry Glassie and others contributed valuable questions, observations, and historical reflections.

A recent IU press release describes a 2nd Meet the Collection event as part of the series of events celebrating the museum’s 50th anniversary. The next gathering focuses on the museum’s collection of Aboriginal Australian bark paintings and will feature remarks by Earlham College art historian Julia May. The gathering will be held at the museum from 2 to 3 pm on Saturday, April 27. Please join us if you can. (The IU press release linked to here focuses on the upcoming Treasures of the Mathers Museum exhibition. I will focus on that in an future post.)

More good news at the museum was reported in the latest issue of Inside IU Bloomington. Bethany Nolan wrote a great article profiling the work the students in my Curatorship are doing studying the ethnographic collection given to the museum by the late Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. The quotes that the students gave Bethany would be music to any teacher’s ears. Alumni of this graduate course are now doing great things as museum professionals and it is exciting to teaching it again, particularly in a spirit of hopefulness. Public folklore and museum anthropology–these are fields that have roots that extend back to the time before the fields became rooted in academia. They were alt-ac (ie. alternative to academic careers) before these fields even had an “ac” track. As neighboring humanities disciplines begin (sometimes for the first time and in a spirit of panic and despair) to seriously consider non-academic careers for their graduate students, it is great to point to a deep tradition of engaged research-based public humanities work in museums and to be able to illustrate the skills required and the path ways that can be taken.

It helps to have role models. A graduate of my department, Michael Mason, has just been named Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian. He is moving over to this new leadership role from the National Museum of Natural History, also at the Smithsonian, where he has been serving as Assistant Director for Exhibitions. (Read all about it in a recent Smithsonian press release.) I do not want to get ahead of the institution that has just hired her, but a current student in my department has just been hired into an impressive postdoctoral fellowship aimed at bridging academic and museum work in New York City. At the other most distinguished end of the career spectrum, one of our department’s most innovative and impactful graduates is Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Barbara is in the news constantly now because she is playing a central role in the development of the (soon to open) Museum of the History of Polish Jews. As core exhibition designer for the museum, she is drawing upon all the lessons she has learned over an amazing career as a Jewish ethnographer, cultural theorist, museums studies specialist, public folklorist, and NYU professor of performance studies. Reporting on the (incredible) museum (to be) and her work is ubiquitous, but one can dip into it in a recent Tablet magazine story “Curator of Joy and Ashes” to gain a sense of the amazing effort.

Back home at the Mathers, I feel like we are having success.

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