Hallowe’en & Racism
LSPIRG’s (Wilfred Laurier University) I am Not a Costume campaign Boo! Hallowe’en is a rich holiday for anthropologists to dig into for how it brings together many different…
Tag: material culture
Ethnography & Tourism: Part III
Part of the blog-writing duo had the opportunity to travel from Canada to Japan for one short week. During this time, blogger Jennifer Long wanted to explore the…
Ethnography & Tourism: Part III
Part of the blog-writing duo had the opportunity to travel from Canada to Japan for one short week. During this time, blogger Jennifer Long wanted to explore the…
Thank You @iupress for a Great Material Vernaculars Reception at #afsam16
A quick note to convey appreciation for the great staff of the Indiana University Press, especially the work of the press staff who attended the 2016 American Folklore…
On Solidarity and Molecules (#MakeMuskratRight)
Deferring to molecules rather than social movements when it comes to contamination is a case of power relations.
The Free-to-Readers Edition of Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds
As I discussed in a previous post, works in the Material Vernaculars series are being made available in a free-to-readers PDF edition via IUScholarWorks. The eponymous edited collection Material…
Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds (is out now)
I am happy to share this note to report that the edited collection Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds has now been published. I am the…
Who Cares About Craft as Traditional Knowledge?
This fall has been a particularly busy season for research-based programs at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. An an outgrowth of our Indiana Folk Arts: 200 Years…
Reflections on The Mind is a Collection
On September 22, 2016 Indiana University’s Center for Eighteenth Century Studies held the 2016 Kenshur Prize celebration at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. The museum was an…
A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"?
The use of ‘they’ as a replacement for ‘he or she’ pronouns has been gaining momentum not only because it lets one slip around those steadfast predefined gender…
Don’t Miss the Great Mathers Museum Building Debate
Built in the early 1980s, the Mathers Museum of World Cultures building is an example of Brutalist architecture, a modernist style reviled by some and revered by others.…
Reviving food diversity through Indigenous knowledge
This NPR piece — How Native American Tribes Saved A Giant, Ancient Squash From Oblivion — offers an interesting example for thinking about the everyday impacts of colonization…
Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa
Get all the details by checking out the new press release announcing the Mathers Museum of World Cultures’ programs and activities in support of the exhibition Siyazama: Traditional…
Material Vernaculars: Institutional Role, Review, Authors, and Genres
The new Material Vernaculars series is co-published by the Mathers Museum of World Cultures with a huge amount of heavy lifting from our partner, the Indiana University Press.…
Improving Access to Scholarship: Material Vernaculars as Milestone and Experiment
First the take away, then the story. While produced in very nice and reasonably priced hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, works in the new Material Vernaculars series are…
Material Vernaculars Series Launches with Jon Kay’s Folk Art and Aging
This fall I will be talking a lot about the new book series that the Indiana University Press and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures are jointly publishing.…
Things that Make Us
Via The Institute of Making Zoe Laughlin of UCL’s Institute of Making has a new podcast, Things That Make Us. Following the model of Desert Island Discs, each week, Laughlin interviews…
Indigenous cultural appropriation?
In June we posted an article from The Atlantic on The do’s and don’ts of Cultural Appropriation. In that post I suggested that the article, with its focus…
One person’s trash…
One person’s trash is another’s treasure… or data, if you are an archaeologist or anthropologist working in a landfill. Places where trash builds up can provide archaeologists important…
Why aren’t millennials buying diamonds?
link to original tweet @TheEconomist Earlier this week, The Economist magazine asked the Twittersphere a question: Why aren’t millennials buying diamonds? Unsurprisingly, this question generat…
An Interview with Sterling Jenson of the March Field Air Museum
Sterling Jenson is the Collections Manager at the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, California. He earned a B.A. degree in folklore and an M.A. degree in arts…
An Interview with Dr. Lori Hall-Araujo, Curator and Assistant Professor at Stephens College
In fall 2016, Lori Hall-Araujo will begin a position as Assistant Professor and Curator in the School of Design and the Costume Museum at Stephens College in Columbia,…
Book Review: My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin
Haidy Geismar, UCL Anthropology My Life With Things: The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin, 2016. Duke University Press. My Life with Things is an engaging, quirky, auto-ethnography detailing key…
Open Access Book: Indiana Folk Arts
This year is a big year for the Mathers Museum of World Cultures in a number of respects. Two of these weave together. Its the state bicentennial for…