Michael F. Brown | School for Advanced Research

Hugh Raffles Named 2023 Winner of J.I. Staley Prize

by Michael F. Brown | Mar 5, 2023 | Blog, Cultural Anthropology, General Anthropology, Staley Prize

SAR is pleased to announce that Hugh Raffles, Professor and Anthropology Department Chair at the New School for Social Research, has been named winner of the 2023 J. I. Staley Prize for The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (New York: Verse Chorus...

SAR Artist Alumnus Co-Curates Important Exhibition of Native American Photography

by Michael F. Brown | Dec 22, 2022 | Blog, News

Will Wilson, the Santa Fe-based Navajo photographer and 2013 Rollin and Mary Ella King Artist Fellow at SAR, has co-curated a major exhibition of contemporary Native American photography at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. The...

2022 Staley Prize Awarded to J. Lorand Matory at Duke University

by Michael F. Brown | Dec 21, 2022 | Blog, News, Staley Prize

On November 3, 2022, SAR President Michael F. Brown presented the 2022 J.I. Staley Prize to J. Lorand Matory, Duke University, at an event in Durham, North Carolina, hosted by Duke’s School of Arts & Sciences. Matory is the Lawrence Richardson Distinguished...

Another New Resident Scholar Book: Undocumented Saints

by Michael F. Brown | Dec 5, 2022 | Blog, History/Social Sciences, Latinx Studies, Media Page News, Resident Scholars

Did you know that La Santa Muerte (“Saint Death”) is worshipped by some residents of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands? Likewise Santa Olguita, a feminist saint associated with border women’s experience of sexual violence? These and other emerging folk...

SAR Alumna Publishes Award-Winning Book on Community & Ethnic Change in South Central L.A.

by Michael F. Brown | Nov 14, 2022 | Blog, Climate Change, Latinx Studies, News

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (Sociology, USC), a 2017-2018 Weatherhead Fellow, was recently honored for a book written during her time at SAR. South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A. (NYU Press), co-authored with Manuel Pastor, is a...

SAR Members Tour Chaco Canyon and Related Sites

by Michael F. Brown | Aug 31, 2022 | Blog

Chaco Canyon and the so-called “Chaco Phenomenon” have long evoked intense interest among SAR members. Our more-or-less annual tradition of Chaco field trips continued in mid-August, when fourteen members and SAR staff spent three days visiting Chaco,...

SAR Board Member Appointed to Cultural Property Advisory Committee by President Biden

by Michael F. Brown | Aug 29, 2022 | Blog

Alex W. Barker, who joined the SAR board of directors in August, has been appointed by President Biden to the federal government’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC). Barker, who currently serves as director of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey, is a...

SAR Alumna Op-Ed on Wildfires and Climate Change is Published in Los Angeles Times

by Michael F. Brown | Jul 12, 2022 | Blog, Media Page News

Adriana Petryna, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and an SAR summer scholar in 2014, published an op-ed essay in the July 10, 2022, issue of the Los Angeles Times that builds on her recent book, Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an...

Reflections on SAR’s “Seeking Justice” Webinar Series

by Michael F. Brown | Jun 16, 2022 | Blog

On June 2 SAR held the sixth and final webinar in this year’s Creative Thought Forum series called Seeking Justice: Toward a More Equitable America, which launched in February. The series was primarily funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities, with...

SAR Member Trip to Bears Ears, Utah

by Michael F. Brown | May 28, 2022 | Blog

After a long pandemic-related hiatus, SAR relaunched member field trips on May 13 with a four-day journey to Bears Ears in Utah. Given the scale of this new national monument—more than 2100 square miles—we couldn’t possibly do justice to its diverse mesas,...