The people who make music recommender systems have lofty goals: they want to broaden listeners’ horizons and help obscure musicians find audiences, taking advantage of the enormous catalogs…
In the Andes, minga, a form of collective labor, has existed for centuries, often helping communities weather disasters. But how does it work in practice? ✽ Judith grew…
By Maaike Matelski On 8 December 2022, Nickey Diamond visited the VU for two lectures. Nickey is an activist from Myanmar who recently started a PhD in Anthropology…
GRADUATE ASSOCIATION FOR FOOD STUDIES Editor’s note: We are reprinting this announcement, which we received a few days ago. This looks like a great opportunity for graduate students…
New evidence is prompting researchers to rethink Homo sapiens’ origin story—and what it means to be human. ✽ As a university student in the early 2010s, I recall…
The city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand has become the destination for a growing segment of the international tourism market: religious tourism. International tourists visit Buddhist temples,…
Drag shows that test the capacity of bars persist alongside wishes for stronger community among River City’s LGBTQ population. In this examination of LGBTQ community in a small,…
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Yugoslav historiography counted seven major Axis military operations undertaken against…
By Jehron Muhammad Every year, including 2023 we in the United States celebrate the life and legacy of civil rights …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Soldiers participate in wars for various reasons, some of which…
It’s important to remain impartial when conducting ethnography. A mean girl at an after-school club challenged my role as a researcher. The post Ethnographic Postcards: The Mean Girl…
The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2022), edited by Professor David Newheiser reveals the diverse nonreligious experiences obscured by the combative intellectualism…
Over six million prime-age men are neither working nor looking for work; America’s low unemployment rate hides the fact that many men have dropped out of the workforce…
In the film Doctor Dolittle (1967), the title character yearns to “Talk to the Animals,” as the song goes, to understand their mysterious and often vexing ways. It…
The 2020 discovery of an ancient villa in Britain uncovered the most important Roman mosaic found in the last century. An archaeologist explains how the mosaic offers an…
Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets. Columbia University Press. New York: 2022. ISBN # 9780231192446 Emily Contois (The University of Tulsa)…
Page 99 of my dissertation reflects on a detail in an elite type of garment that the Inka Empire (ca. 1476-1532 CE) fabricated in its workshops during the…
A true story: Eight women from Santa Rosa wanted to see a movie set on their home island of Rotuma. And so they got in their cars…
An exploration of soldier humor This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Are soldiers funny? On the…
M. R. Sharan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, studying questions centred around development economics and political economy. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University…
A Tohono O’odham poet and linguist reflects on the stories and wisdom ancestors communicated—how people survived, how they dispersed and differentiated, how they remember. “Rock Drawings” …
In this episode of High Theory, Jack Jen Gieseking tells us about queer space. Queer geographies matter alongside queer temporalities. And it turns out that lesbian life in…
Trying to read in the library but looking out the window at the reminder that this is no ordinary library experience. A few parts from a recent text:…