Race is Still a Problem in Anthropology
By Anar Parikh [The following essay emerges from conversation with fellow PhD student and AES/SVA attendee, Scott Ross (George Washington University).] How is it that a senior anthropologist…
Tag: race
Living On Screen: Sondra Perry and Ian Cheng at the Serpentine Galleries
Like many other London institutions seeking to shore up against an ever-rising digital tide, the Serpentine Galleries have announced a new annual “Digital Seasons” initiative that will recognize…
Reaching Out, Looking In: On Research, Refusal, and Responsibility by Tess Lanzarotta
The papers in this series, “Critical Histories, Activist Futures,” have captured some of the exciting conversations that took place during a conference titled “Critical Histories, Activist Futures: Sc…
Film Review: Black Panther
Nearly three decades ago, my grandfather took me to the local pharmacy in Broadway, NC to get ice cream (it had an ice cream bar!). While there, I…
Illustrated Man #11 – (H)afrocentric
Re-spawn. Its been on since dawn. Illustrated Man check your king with a pawn. Don’t know where but I send ’em Make my posts now on Anthrodendum Hey,…
Brave Community: Teaching Race in the American Classroom w/ Janine de Novais – This Anthro Life
Welcome listeners to the second installment of our Diversity and Inclusion crossover series, bringing together This Anthro Life with Brandeis University. For those of you who are new…
Conference Transcript: “Slipping Into Darkness: Recruiting and Student Understanding of Anthropology as a Field and Major”
This is the transcript for the talk I gave at Skeletal Biology in the Carolina conference. You can see the PPT here: Slipping into Darkness Slide 1 Introduction Slide…
The force of race in a Missouri college town
Back in 2011 I went for a bike trip in southern Illinois and made it just across the river to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I wrote about my trip…
Blue binders of white donors: sorting race out in South African IVF by Tessa Moll
Miracle babies. The microscopic enchantments of embryos. The image of a woman holding that much-desired infant. In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is replete with awe-inducing imagery, often bordering…
Defining “Social Justice” at the Academic Medical Center by Marco A. Ramos
I am delighted to contribute to this series on the Critical Histories and Activist Futures: Science, Medicine, and Racial Violence Conference. As captured by the submissions published here…
Book forum — Alondra Nelson’s The Social Life of DNA by Eugene Raikhel
In The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome, Alondra Nelson traces the multiple ways in which genetic testing and related technologies have become…
Body by Joshua O. Reno
It is increasingly impossible to think of the problem of waste, or discarded and denigrated materials, separately from the problem of race, or discarded and denigrated people. There…
Beauty by Lynn M. Thomas
In the late 1990s, a group of Japanese researchers set out to investigate whether small-scale gold mining operations near the shores of East Africa’s Lake Victoria were resulting…
Diversity + Inclusion in Higher Education, part 1 – This Anthro Life
Welcome listeners to the first installment of our Diversity and Inclusion crossover series, bringing together This Anthro Life with Brandeis University. For those of you who are new…
Dust by Nick Caverly
The building pictured below sat near Mack Avenue on Detroit’s far east side and, according to the municipal government, was an environmental hazard. Following years of complaints from…
Justice, Science, and Pedagogy by Myrna Perez Sheldon
As we consider the role of justice in pedagogy and scholarship, I want to ask a simple but difficult question: What is our ethical task? Do we desire…
Colonialism’s Orchestrated Disasters in Puerto Rico
“María, María, perdí la esperanza, María, María, perdí la esperanza.” I am reminded of these lyrics from the bomba group, Yuba Iré, when I see the pictures and…
When Black Boy Joy and STEM Don’t Mix
As a kindergartner with Black boy joy, Carter excitedly began public school wanting to become a scientist. Carter considered scientists “some of the smartest people on earth,” because…
The hair clipper: One or two thoughts about a mundane artifact
The gender of an object – For a seminar session on “gendered objects”, my colleague and I asked the participants to bring to class an object that they…
Detritus by Sharad Chari
I employed the category ‘detritus’ in the early 2000s to diagnose the different kinds of residues of racial capitalism with which people struggled in the shadows of South…
Here’s the Rub on the Dove Skincare Ad
The latest rendition of “sorry, not sorry” is not just topping the Billboard charts. It is also a public relations anthem about “missing the mark.” This time, Dove…
Three Lessons I Learned From Charlottesville
White supremacists surrounded counterprotesters at the University of Virginia campus on August 11. Shay Horse /Associated Press On the evening of August 11, a torch-bearing mob assaulted …
Rethinking Beauty and Race at Dominican-American Hair Salons
A Dominican immigrant cuts the hair of a customer at her New York City salon. Seth Wenig/Associated Press This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republishe…
Working for the Race: Black Scholars, Invisible Labor, and the Baggage of Creating Space by Ayah Nuriddin
Photograph taken by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, February 25, 2017 “Critical Histories, Activist Futures: Science, Medicine and Racial Violence,” a conference hosted by Yale University in February 20…