Cities are shaped as much by paper and rubber stamps as they are by bricks and mortar, argues Matthew Hull in Government of Paper. By tracing the unexpected ways in which documents travel, he exposes the secret life of paper that profoundly shapes the built landscape of the planned city of Islamabad, and more broadly, gives us new ways of understanding bureaucracy on a global scale.
A new, widely acclaimed book by SAR scholar alumnus David Treuer is challenging long-held views of the state of Native America. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, argues that Dee Brown’s famous history of Native American dispossession and genocide, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, perpetuates a mistaken impression of the situation of American Indians today.
Exploring the world of death and mourning has always been part of anthropological work, but the opportunity to examine these topics in an interdisciplinary setting is rare in academia. This fall, SAR hosted an Advanced Seminar that enabled a cross-disciplinary dialogue among ten scholars who are currently studying death practices and their cultural relevance.
Earlier this month, the American Anthropological Association hosted the 117th annual meeting in San Jose, California. For many, the gathering is a five-day whirlwind of presentations, panels, committee meetings, awards, and social gatherings. Among the 6,000 anthropologists and related professionals in attendance, there were hundreds of SAR alumni.
For SAR’s 2018-2019 Mellon Fellow John Arroyo, the hotly contested gubernatorial race in Georgia is more than just a news story passing through his feed. Since July 2016, Arroyo, the MIT-trained urban planner, has been visiting Gwinnett County, Georgia, and researching Mexican immigrant experiences in the region. Arroyo’s timely ethnographic research illustrates the importance of new perspectives based on interdisciplinary research that bridges urban planning with migration studies, Latinx studies, and urban sociology.
The immersive film Voices of the Rainforest spans a day in the life of the Kaluli people in their Bosavi rainforest home in Papua New Guinea, highlighting the sounds of the animals, insects and natural world that the Kaluli believe speak of their ancestors.
William Calvo-Quirós, one of SAR’s 2018-2019 Mellon Fellows, was one of three Americans invited to join 230 global participants in the World Conference on Xenophobia, Racism, and Populist Nationalism in the Context of Global Migration.
Abou Farman (Anthropology, The New School) was recently at SAR as a participant in the advanced seminar “Death Culture in the 21st Century,” co-chaired by Shannon Lee Dawdy (University of Chicago) and Tamara E. Kneese (U. San Francisco). Knowing about my interest in Amazonia, Abou passed along information on a recent tragedy in Amazonian Peru that took place not far from the major city of Pucallpa.
