Highly Accurate Pictures of Anthropologists

Here's something fun for back to class: the relatively new tumblr Highly Accurate Pictures of Anthropologists!

Alex Golub posted about his new project on anthro{dendum} back in November, but it is totally worth a re-post here. Golub notes the impetus for this new tumblr as "driven by [his] long-term interest in curating open access material. The Internet is awash in high-quality material. But it’s also awash in… well, let’s just say that sometimes the signal to noise ration on the Internet is not where I’d want it to be. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to pictures of anthropologists."

Not only a fun/ useful collection to review, but the tumblr account also has lots of great links to the online sources for these photos (#FurtherReading). Golub is also taking requests if there's an anthropologist out there whose highly accurate and well-sourced picture you need.

Happy 2018!

Anthropologists everywhere! Filming heavy metal with Sam Dunn

The first time I met Sam Dunn was in the smoking room (when those still existed) of a dive-y bar that my cohort of Dalhousie MA students used to ritually visit on Thursday wing-nights in Halifax. One of my colleagues, a die-hard metal fan and Marxist sociologist, called me over to his table and introduced us. Dunn had completed his MA at York in 2000, and we had both accepted offers to begin our PhDs in Social Anthropology at York University in Toronto in September, 2006.

By September, he decided to postpone and eventually declined his acceptance to the doctoral program -- with good reason!

Dunn had already filmed Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005), and would soon film a sequel of sorts, Global Metal (2008). Yet, rather than a departure from anthropology, both of these films and others made throughout Dunn's career are informed by his anthropological training and perspective.

Besides being a cool example of what you can do with a degree in anthropology, I have found Dunn's work to be a really useful teaching tool. For instance, Global Metal is a great resource for teaching about globalization, and how cultural forms and practices are always reinterpreted locally, sometimes deeply changing the meaning of the original cultural producers.

Check out more about Dunn and the connection between his work and anthropological background in the following links... and more about finding anthropologists everywhere:

• Interview with Sam Dunn, BA '98 (University of Victoria: Alumni, 2017)
• Global Metal on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos (Strombo, CBC, 2008)
• Chief Headbanger (York University Magazine, 2011)
• Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university (anthro everywhere!)
• To PhD or not to PhD... (anthro everywhere! July 13 2017) 
• Undergrad & MAs career paths (anthro everywhere! May 22 2017)

Climate Change Resource for the Classroom

Leonardo Di Caprio has given open access to his environmental documentary on climate change. Entitled Before the Flood, Di Caprio wants to engender a sense of urgency regarding climate change and to show us the role we can play.

Important to note is that there may be a time limit in which this documentary is available for free (perhaps this is just its availability on cable); however, according to EcoWatch.com: from Oct. 30 through Nov. 6, you can also watch it on just about any website or device where you regularly stream online videos. The exhaustive list includes: Natgeotv.com, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Sony PlayStation, GooglePlay, VOD/Video On Demand (through MVPD set-top boxes), MVPD Sites and Apps, Nat Geo TV Apps (iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, Roku, Android phones, Xbox One and 360, Samsung Connected TVs) and more.
You can watch it right here.

Check it out with your classes for those in need of something timely and important.

A guide to academic conversations

It can be a little daunting to approach a speaker after an academic talk.

We've all been there at one time or another. You've just heard an inspiring public lecture, faculty talk, or panel speaker at a conference, and you have so much to say, but you just don't quite know how to approach the speaker after the talk.

Luckily, Gretchen McCulloch of All Things Linguistic has written up "How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk - A guide to academic conversations" (2016). In this post she offers a number of tips and scripts for students starting up a conversation with other scholars. Although these are directed at linguistics students, they easily apply to students of all stripes, and go beyond just speaking to a public lecturer (e.g. ice-breaker and networking tips).

While this post was originally written with graduate students in mind, McColloch notes that a lot of this information might also be useful for undergraduates trying to figure out how to approach their instructor during their office hours, or raise a question in class. It might be useful for instructors to bring some of these tips into their classrooms as a link on a syllabus, or even as part of a short assignment to help cultivate critical thinking and engagement skills.

Systemic racism in Hollywood

In this Vulture.com (2016), George Takei talks about Hollywood's systematic whitewashing of Asian characters. These comments follow on the casting of white actresses Scarlett Johansson as "Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg leading an elite police task force in a futuristic Japan" (Huffington Post Canada, 2016) and Tilda Swinton "as the Ancient One, a Tibetan male mystic" (New York Times, 2016) in the upcoming Ghost in the Shell and Dr. Strange features, respectively. While these upcoming features have brought attention to the issue of whitewashing characters in Hollywood, it is by no means a new phenomenon. (Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) comes readily to mind as an example where an Asian character has been portrayed through a stereotypically racist caricature for comedic effect by a white actor.)

As the NY Times questions:

Why is the erasure of Asians still an acceptable practice in Hollywood? It’s not that people don’t notice: Just last year, Emma Stone played a Chinese-Hawaiian character named Allison Ng in Cameron Crowe’s critically derided “Aloha.” While that film incited similar outrage (and tepid box office interest), no national conversation about racist casting policies took place.

Obviously, Asian-Americans are not the only victims of Hollywood’s continuing penchant for whitewashing. Films like “Pan” and “The Lone Ranger” featured white actors playing Native Americans, while “Gods of Egypt” and “Exodus: Gods and Kings” continue the long tradition of Caucasians playing Egyptians. 

In all these cases, the filmmakers fall back on the same tired arguments. Often, they insist that movies with minorities in lead roles are gambles. When doing press for “Exodus,” the director Ridley Scott said: “I can’t mount a film of this budget" and announce that “my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.”

This is a useful think piece for students who may be used to thinking about racism and white privilege only in relation to whiteness vs blackness. Why can't Scott mount a film with such a massive budget without a white lead actor? What does this seemingly frivolous issue say about race in our society?

The Anthropology of Trump: It's getting political in here

Rhiannon and I have been remiss. Despite all the hullabaloo, we have yet to post anything about the political events happening south of the border. Happily, Paul Stoller from West Chester University has done just that in a recent news article entitled: the Anthropology of TRUMP

In this article, Stoller uses what he calls a 'cultural vantage' to understand Trump's (aka. Drumpf) popularity which he speaks of as: "the embodiment of celebrity culture — a world filled with glitz, fantasy and illusion".

Stoller goes on to describe Trump's show time recipe:
Step 1: Trump comes on stage
Step 2: Trump recites his poll numbers
Step 3: Insults his opponents
Step 4: Invites famous supporters to the stage to 'sing his praises'
Step 5: Talks about how bad things are, how he's the man to make things better (all the while) avoiding anything factual
...
Step 6 (my own inclusion): some lewd or ludicrous joke about genitalia, sweating, vulnerable/visible minorities

Stoller goes on to argue that "[a]t no point does his talk focus upon a program for action, the complexities of policy or the intractability of social, political and economic problems at home and abroad".

As an anthropologist whose work in the Netherlands discussed the everyday experiences of rising Islamophobia, Stoller's point that "[i]n the real world Mr. Trump’s willful ignorance, his undignified behavior and his Islamophobia is both senseless and dangerous" particularly hits home. He goes on to conclude that "[d]espite substantial evidence to the contrary Mr. Trump’s supporters believe his mantra: things are horrible and we need a strong leader — Donald Trump — to fix a broken system", seemingly regardless of the truth or one's ability to manage the complexities of one of the largest nations in the world.

The tools of Anthropology prove to be a useful tool in this scenario to peel back the laughable drama and pomp that surrounds this political circus and help call attention to the real outcomes of Trump's campaign. This article also demonstrates the applicability of Anthropology in various realms.