With the nation’s social and political turmoil as well as an ongoing pandemic, 2020 revealed how now more than ever the perspectives of social science scholars and Native American artists matter. In today’s post, we reflect on the last year and invite you to join us for online programs in the new year.
To celebrate the publication of SAR Press’s most recent Advanced Seminar volume, Archaeologies of Empire (2020), we have brought together editors of this book and our previously published Imperial Formations (2007) to discuss new insights and intersections in their work.
Although almost any aspect of life can be understood as political in some way, SAR Press has chosen five books on traditionally political subjects—sovereignty, democracy, language revitalization, elections, and walls—for our latest top reads.
Alex Blanchette was SAR’s 2012–2013 Weatherhead resident scholar, co-organizer of the 2016 Advanced Seminar “How Nature Works,” and co-editor of How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet, published by SAR Press in 2019. SAR recently spoke with him about his new book and the effects of COVID-19 on the meatpacking industry.
2020. Edited by Anna L. Boozer, Bleda S. Düring, and Bradley J. Parker
This book demonstrates how archaeological research can contribute to our conceptualization of empires across disciplinary boundaries.
Almost every week brings an announcement related to the growth of open access in scholarly publishing: new studies, partnerships, and innovations. Over the past six months or so, I have begun my own experiment with open access at SAR Press and chosen one of our classic Advanced Seminar volumes to make openly available on the website: Elites, edited by George Marcus and published in 1983.
Former SAR Weatherhead fellow and director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Carla Sinopoli shares some of the ways she and her staff are supporting patrons during the pandemic and discusses the importance of museums at this time.
A selection of this year’s resident scholars—who study everything from ancient drinking practices in Chaco Canyon to the newly built Delhi metro—have recommended the SAR Press books they find most useful, thought provoking, or even just enjoyable. We hope you enjoy them, too.
SAR Press is now offering a free download of our 2014 Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability. In times of crisis, we rely on experts to help us make decisions and understand the impacts of those decisions. In the coming weeks and months, as we try to make sense of the Coronavirus and its spread, we will be looking not only to epidemiologists and doctors, but also to anthropologists, sociologists, and others who can provide insight into the social and historical dimensions of the outbreak.
In the latest Advanced Seminar volume from SAR Press, co-editors Laura McAtackney and Randall McGuire ask a timely question: Why are we building new barriers to divide us? Walling In and Walling Out brings together scholars from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, city and regional planning, geography, and Latino and Caribbean studies to investigate examples of wall building around the world, past and present.
