Annual Lecture In Anthropology

2011-2012

Oct. 25, 2011 Prof. Hugh Raffles

The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce that we will be hosting Prof. Hugh Raffles of the New School of Social Research on Oct. 25, 2011 for our Annual Public Lecture. Prof. Raffles will be speaking on: "Rocks, Stones, and Other Vital Things"

In this paper, I take tentative steps into a new ethnographic project that explores the lives of rocks and stones. There are currently two central problems. One is familiar to anthropologists: What are the forms of life enacted by objects that, in "the Western philosophical tradition," are commonly considered inanimate? The second, although related, may be less familiar: What can we learn from stones? I explore these questions ethnographically, assuming that they are susceptible to empirical investigation. The project will consider a limited set of cases of which two are introduced in this talk: the ancient monuments of the British Isles and Chinese "scholar's rocks."

Follow the link for a video recapping his fascinating work "Insectopedia".

2010-2011

The Space of Otherwise, the Hope of Critical Theory

Elizabeth Povinelli

Professor Povinelli’s talk draws on her work in indigenous Australia and the queer US to address those moments in the life of alternative social projects when they are neither something or/and nothing. Since the mid 1960s, immanent critique has sought to conceptualize the source and space of “new possibilities of life” independent of philosophical notions of transcendental consciousness. But a critical set of anthropological questions emerges in this ontotheoretical spacing: How do new forms of social life maintain this force of existing in specific social spacings of life? How do they endure the effort it takes to persevere? And how, in answering these questions, do new political and ethical concerns emerge?

Elizabeth Povinelli is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her work develops a critical theory of late liberalism by exploring the translation, transfiguration and circulation of values, materialities, and socialities within settler liberalisms. Among her recent works are The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality (Duke UP, 2006) and The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Duke UP, 2002).

Sponsors: Department of Anthropology, Founders College, the Office of the Master of Founders College, the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, the Sexuality Studies Program, and the Graduate Program in Women’s Studies.

2009-2010

Fugues for Multi-Species Living
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz

View Y-file article about the lecture.

Sponsors: Department of Anthropology, Founders College, Office of the Master of Founders College, the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR), the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, the Social Anthropology Graduate Students’ Association (SAGA) and the Graduate Program in Sociology

2008-2009

Diversity, (In)Equality & Justice: An Anthropological Perspective on Globalization, Human Rights, and the Politics of Culture
Faye V. Harrison
Director of African American Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida

View Y-file article about the lecture.

Sponsors: The Department of Anthropology, Founders College, Faculty of Arts Dean's office, The Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, The Graduate Program in Women’s Studies, and CERLAC.