Anthro Reckoning and Reconnaissance
Over the past several days, the anthropological community has been forced to confront instances of abuse, exploitation and discrimination latent in the discipline. A tweet from Cultural Anthropology…
Author: Emma Louise Backe
So You Want to Write for The Geek Anthropologist?
You ever see those quippy article titles–the perfect combination of academic punnery and inside theory humor–pop up on your newsfeed, only to click through and discover that your…
Letting Silence Have a Voice in #MeToo
On December 9, 2017, #MeToo ralliers in New York City, many of whom are survivors of sexual violence, took a stand against prominent men who have reportedly committed…
Nerdlesque and Body Positive Cosplay: Stripping Down Sexual Paradigms in Geek Culture
By Emma Louise Backe The lights on the stage dim, a lone spotlight hovering over a dark figure clad in loose robes. Just as Kylo Ren’s red lightsaber…
Toying with Our Teleologies: Reflections on What SF Can Do for Anthropology
By Priya Chandrasekaran, Taylor C. Nelms, Valerie Olson, Elizabeth Reddy, Heather Thomas, and Nicholas Welcome At the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in late 2017, a…
Colossal: The 2017 Monster Movie About Abuse You Might Have Missed
By Emma Louise Backe 2017 was a year for grappling with monstrosity, the deeds and discourses perpetrated by private citizens and public officials, as well as the explosion…
An Archaeology Carol… Or How Ghost Hunting Made Me A Better Archaeologist
By April Beisaw Another Christmas has passed without a personal visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Yet to Come? Same here. In Dickens’ A Christmas…
Mattering Anthropology, Anthropology Matters
By Emma Louise Backe Anthropology Matters! was the exhortation of the 116th American Anthropological Association Annual meeting this year in Washington, D.C. The frenetic energy of the 115th…
Anthropology Blogging 101: Archaeogaming
In this edition of Anthropology Blogging 101, we feature Andrew Reinhard, founder of Archaeogaming. His application of archaeology to virtual worlds and digital gaming platforms like World of…
Replicants and Reproduction: Blade Runner 2049 and Sci Fi’s Obsession with Motherhood
(Warning: Blade Runner 2049 spoilers.) From the outset of Blade Runner 2049, Agent K (Ryan Gosling) is promised the possibility of a miracle. No longer more human than…
Why The World Needs Anthropologists: Powering the Planet
By Simone Abram Why does the world need anthropologists? This is the question posed at an annual meeting of the Applied Anthropology Network of the European Association of…
Call for Papers–Worlds of Resistance: Dystopia and Heterotopia in Fiction and Reality
We find ourselves in a period of worlding and otherworlding, of recognizing that the microcosms in which we operated were not simply illusory but untenable, shielding us from…
Ethnography as Street Magic, or What We Can Learn from David Blaine
By Haley Bryant I think we have a lot to learn about ethnographic practice from street magic….stay with me, here. What is Magic? David Blaine, Street Magic When…
When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism
By Maria Menegaki Based on the paper ‘When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism’ which I presented in Piran, Slovenia in 2015 in terms of the…
Scientist, Woman, Earthling: Why We Need the March for Science
By Kate McGrath I am a scientist. Some people would probably call me a woman-scientist, and those people are jerks. Though it’s easy to forget, women make up…
Resolving the Study of Geek, or What to Do When You Become “That Brony Researcher”
By Steven Dashiell One lesson they teach in a PhD program: think strategically. In most of undergrad (and even masters-level) work, the objective of the student is to…
World Anthropology Day: Grokking as a Geek Anthropologist
In honor of World Anthropology Day 2017, we’re sharing the text from an AnthroTalk presentation on what it means to do geek anthropology, given at George Washington University…
Luke Cage: A Marvel Take on Black History
By Astrid Countee “Only Forward,” that is the message of Netflix’s latest superhero show, Luke Cage. A message that seems to have shown up just in time for…
Beware the Slender Man: From Cyberlore to Conspiracy Theory
We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… The moral…
Are You Not Entertained: TGA’s Favorite 2016 Movies, Television & Media
In 2015, mainstream geek culture began to emerge as more than simply a popular and bankable enterprise–throughout the year, creative projects in the genre provided models of diversity…
Postmortem and Possibilities: Reflections on AAA 2016
After the results of the election, there was a new kind of energy at the AAA’s, a nervousness and a palpable anticipation. There was a sense that this…
A Review of Virtual Reality Ethnographic Film, or: How We’ve Always been Creating Virtual Reality
By Haley Bryant Upon opening my eyes, I see that a figure has appeared on the horizon: a young boy adorned in the iconic red vestments of the…
Public Anthropology is More Important Than Ever
As The Geek Anthropologist has expanded over the past several years, the editors have had a number of discussions about our identity as an online publication. Though our…
Halloween Horrorshow: Donald Trump is a Tulpa
It’s fair to say that Halloween is one of TGA’s favorite holidays—between the spooky folklore and urban legends, constellation of costumes, and rumors of supernatural activity, Halloween seems…