WE’RE BACK!!! We hope that you have all enjoyed yourselves during our absence – whether with work or play! On our part we’re once again full of ideas for things to come, we’re getting everything set for our #EASA2014 coverage in Tallinn as well as the ‘Shadow EASA’ in Helsinki. And of course continuing our #Fieldwork thread with plenty of #AVMoFA fun too…
So let’s hop to it – and there’s NO better way to pick up the pace than by glancing at July’s #EVENTS (those besides the EASA 2014), courtesy once again of Hilja Aunela! This time we have noticed a strong embrace for all things visual, which is hardly a surprise considering the bright light and long summer days currently bracing the Northern hemisphere.
Enjoy & DO send us your conference notes & papers! And remember: CONTACT US if you’re organising an event that you think Allegra should feature; EMAIL: allegralab@gmail.com
Who do ‘we’ anthropologists think we are? And how does our sense of being part of larger collectives – disciplinary, professional, regional, and so on – shape our understandings of sameness and difference, self and other, intimacy and distance? In recent decades – particularly since the postmodernist ‘writing culture’ debates of the 1980s – much ink has been spilt on the question of how anthropologists construct and theorize otherness, as well as the ethical and epistemological ramifications of their efforts. What remains hidden, however, is the other side of the story: the implicit assumption of affinity between ‘us’ anthropologists, on which understandings of otherness often hinge. The ‘Who are “We”?’ project seeks to redress this imbalance by interrogating how ‘we’ are imagined and invoked in anthropological writing, theory and practice. Click here to share your thoughts and experiences!
Call for Papers:
Shadowing the Scene: Negativity in Affects, Politics, Aesthetics
Interdisciplinary Conference on Affect and Visuality
26-27 September 2014, Vilnius, Center for Contemporary Art
Deadline for abstracts and visual work: 15 July 2014
A stalker of light, an ambiguous threshold, an imprint of the real: shadow is brought to give depth and texture to a surface, only to obscure it at next choice. It frightens, hides, protects, invites play, for animals, children, performers. A creative sublime or a perpetual negative: the grave of Capa’s soldier, the homoerotic of Caravaggio’s paint, film noir’s pick of the obscene. The hideaway and the stage of the horrendous, traumatic, lurid. The metaphor and device for clandestine wars, unaccounted economies, illicit affairs. Proposing to elaborate and extend on the indexical and metaphorical notion of shadowing, as active process rather than empirical state or static quality, this conference invites critical and creative interventions into the conceptual bases shared by affects, aesthetics, and negativity.
Training @ Spectacle
Digital Video Production Weekends for Anthropologists & Social Researchers
12-13 July / 16-17 August / 11-12 October / 6-7 December 2014, London, UK
Short, Sharp, Affordable. This is an intensive, hands-on, weekend training course with emphasis on developing your practical filming skills, participatory techniques, and do-it-yourself confidence that will enhance the quality and validity of filmed fieldwork material. The short, condensed and effective course will give all participants a solid foundation of practical knowledge and a working understanding of digital cameras, sound recording, and filming on location.
Call for papers and sessions
“Struggle and Style: African Youth Cultures Today”: an international symposium
12 September 2014, University of Helsinki, Finland
Deadline for proposals: 21 July 2014
“Struggle and Style” approaches youth as a flexible and often prolonged period of life; according to conventional measures, such as establishing an independent household, many Africans remain reluctantly “youthful” well into their 30s. Yet even by more basic measurements, Africa is experiencing a demographic “bulge” with approximately sixty per cent the population under 24 years of age. Subject to high levels of unemployment and relatively low levels of education, Africa’s youth are alternatively depicted as a “ticking time bomb” ready to explode if new opportunities are not made available, and a vital asset to be harnessed in rapidly developing economies. The symposium seeks to address current issues concerning youth cultures across Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective, and warmly welcomes contributions from across the humanities and social sciences.
Call for films
The Athens Ethnographic Film Festival: Xenophobia and Ethnographic Film
Deadline for submissions: 28 July
The Athens Ethnographic Film Festival is proud to announce that its fifth edition will introduce a themed-screenings section, which will be showcasing ethnographic films focused on particular social issues and present visual/anthropological perspectives on these issues. In this year’s edition the theme of this section will be “xenophobia”. As we consider issues of racist violence, aggressive expressions of nationalism and social exclusion to be of pressing relevance for the Athenian society today, we have decided to launch the themed section of the festival with a selection of ethnographic films that deal with such issues. We are, thus, inviting submissions for films made by/ or in collaboration with anthropologists (or other social scientists), which deal with one or more of the following issues: xenophobia; racism; racist hatred/violence; (religious/ ethnic) intolerance; social exclusion; discrimination; nationalism; euro-centrism.
17-18 November 2014, NYU School of Law, New York
Deadline for abstracts: 30 July (proposals to angelina.fisher@nyu.edu)
On November 17-18, 2014, the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University School of Law and David M. Malone, Rector of the United Nations University, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, will convene a conference to examine how power-knowledge dynamics within global institutional governance are being transformed by new practices and cultures of measurement, data, indicators, and other quantified information. The central focus will be on governance of illicit activity (corruption, money laundering, human trafficking, illegal logging, narcotics, dangerous fake pharmaceuticals, etc).
7-9 September 2014, Durham University (United Kingdom)
The Centre for Intercultural Mediation, Durham University, and the Department of Interpreting and Translation, Alma mater studiorum, University of Bologna, jointly organise this interdisciplinary conference that seeks to explore questions related to taboos as diverse as sex, sexuality and nudity, to disability, sickness and death, among others, and to showcase research into linguistic, cultural and societal taboos and their reinforcement/debasement from both an intra- and inter-cultural perspective. Registration open.
Call for papers
Anthropology in Action: Special Issue on Impact of Anthropology
Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2014
Anthropology in Action is an international peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology. In a range of countries, the public ‘value’ of and support for a range of academic disciplines has been questioned and debated. Following the recent Research Excellence Framework Exercise in the UK, which introduced formal assessment of ‘research impact’, it is timely to reflect on the engagement of anthropology with public policy and practice and how it makes an impact on these spheres.
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2014
HAU is now officially a full-fledged Open Access anthropology Press. Following the new partnership with University of Chicago Press, the editors of the HAU Book Series are delighted to launch an international competition for manuscript proposals for new, state-of-the-art monographs in anthropology. Proposals selected for publication will be published in our upcoming series, The Malinowski Monographs, distributed on HAU’s website in Open Access format and in paperback via the University of Chicago Press. Short monographs (40–50,000 words) focusing on a specific conceptual engagement from the bottom-up (i.e. money, witchcraft, love, friendship, imagination, belief, etc.) are also welcomed.
Open Call for Contributions
Border Criminologies
Based at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, Border Criminologies brings together academics, practitioners and those who have experienced border control from around the world. Showcasing original research from a range of perspectives, we hope to better understand the effect of border control and to explore alternatives. The website has an open call for contributions such as (but not limited to): Themed posts, From the Field series, Audio and images, News and updates, Book or article reviews and Opinion pieces.
Thanks for all your hard work, Hilja Aunela!
