How Accurate Is the Stone Age Thriller Out of Darkness?
An archaeologist with expertise in human origins assesses the accuracy of a 2022 film about Homo sapiens who encounter Neanderthals. This article was originally published at The Conversation…
Tag: media
The Responsibility of Witnesses to Genocide
Palestinian narratives of their own dispossession are routinely dismissed—making witnessing Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Palestine that reignited in 2023 an urgent task. But witnessing is not enough….
The Viral Atrocities Posted by Israeli Soldiers
Tracing 75 years of Israeli war photography, an anthropologist explains how images that reframe disproportionate violence as proof of victory have intensified in the war on Gaza that…
Review: Food, Media, Senses
Food – Media – Senses: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Christina Bartz, Jens Ruchatz, and Eva Wattolik (editors). Transcript, 2023. 330 pps. ISBN: 978-3-8376-6479-9 Emily Contois (University of …
The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power – review
Caty Borum‘s The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power considers how comedy intersects with activism and drives social change. Borum’s accessible text draw…
Book Review: In Mediation with Difficult Kin: Bishnupriya Ghosh’s The Virus Touch
The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media, by Bishnupriya Ghosh (Duke University Press, 2023) In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and with various forecasts predicting likelihoods of a…
Celebrity Status Almost Ruined Ancient DNA Research
An evolutionary anthropologist draws lessons from paleogenetic’s journey from Jurassic Park fiction to Nobel Prize reality. ✽ The morning of my 26th birthday, I woke up to incredible…
30 Minute Methods – Ned Rossiter
Tuesday 23 January 2024 at 4pm HCMC time: online – all welcome Topic: 30 Minute Methods TDTU – Title: Reflections on Organized Networks and Collective Research Methods Join Zoom…
Re-vaulting
Everybodyism – see footnote 1. New Poetics/from the Re-vaults of almost forgotten heroes Nobody finishes everything – here are some that won’t get done soon… I gue…
E. Gabriel Dattatreyan on his book, The Globally Familiar
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-globally-familiar Eléonore Rimbault: Much of the energy of The Globally Familiar derives from your candid and involved focus on the young b-boys and rappers …
Why Shoes Do Not Make the Runner
East African runners wearing “super shoes” have outpaced global marathon records. But the shoe fervor—alongside older stereotypes about African runners’ “natural” abilities—means athletes’ hard work o…
Antti Lindfors Interviews Nicole Starosielski on Media Hot and Cold
This is a conversational interview between Professor Nicole Starosielski (UC Berkeley) and me, Dr. Antti Lindfors (University of Helsinki), discussing Nicole’s book Media Hot and Cold (2022, Duke…
Authorship in the post-academic, post-human age
In 1964, when describing the threshold for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said that while he couldn’t define precisely what constituted…
Migration, Logistics and Unequal Citizens in Contemporary Global Context
Happy to share that the article collection from the GHI special issue of Social Identities is now live at the following URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/csid20/collections/Migration-Logis…
Frank Cody on his book, The News Event
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo190464205.html Shikhar Goel: Describe for us some intellectual motivations behind writing this book. What were some significant moments th…
Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future? FILMMAKING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE A group of 12-year-olds enters a decrepit building…
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in…
Subcontinental Media
I am very happy to have got this out, thanks to all at and in the journal: Please email me to get a pdf if you have not…
Junk Anthropology: A Manifesto for Trashing and Untrashing
It is currently held, not without certain uneasiness, that 90% of human DNA is ‘junk.’ The renowned Cambridge molecular biologist, Sydney Brenner, makes a helpful distinction between ‘junk’…
What Indiana Jones Gets Right About Archaeology
As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise’s shortcomings while espousing its merits. DR. JONES RETURNS Pop culture’s most famous archaeologist…
Do Washing Machines Belong in Kitchens? Many Brits Say “Yes.”
An anthropologist moves from Canada to the U.K. and finds herself reflecting on what home design patterns reveal about a society. Excerpted from Silent but Deadly: The Underlying…
Godard’s “British Sounds” link updated
Godard “British Sounds” From 2009: You can find Jean-Luc Godard’s “British Sounds” in all its glory now. It is worth watching all the way through – from the…
Going beneath the surface: The subtler messages about forced displacement in ‘The Swimmers’
The screen is dark, the music sombre. There are sounds of muffled voices and explosions. The dark screen breaks to reveal blue skies as the words “2011: A…
Five Highlights From the 2023 RAI Film Festival
This March, SAPIENS is partnering with the Royal Anthropological Institute’s RAI Film Festival to celebrate anthropological documentaries. ✽ The art of anthropological documentary filmmaking is thriv…