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17:40
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I'm taking part in a faculty discussion today on "teaching controversial issues." In preparation for that meeting, I started to jot down some thoughts on the matter. (I'll be responsible for saying a few words.)br /br /There is a hyper-politicization ...
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17:10
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From the Annals of Anthroman
It feels callous, even pathetic, to go on with business-as-usual while Haiti continues to reel from such a singular catastrophe. Not that it is really a viable alternative to stand still, catatonic and mouth ajar, wallowing in all the graphic ...
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22:41
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From the Annals of Anthroman
span style="font-style:italic;"Four Theories of the GRE's evaluative significance/span:br /br /1. span style="font-style:italic;"The Primacy of Quantitative Scores/span: This position holds that high quant scores are a good indication of how crisply someone thinks, regardless of whether or not the discipline they ...
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18:06
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From the Annals of Anthroman
What's the best way to spend a snow day?br /br /A nor'easter decided to add an exclamation point to the massive winter storm that pummeled Philadelphia (and the entire mid-Atlantic region) this past weekend, which means that schools famous for ...
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17:01
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I recently had someone tell me that co-teaching was one of the biggest academic scams going. "The biggest, in fact," he corrected. According to him, this was insult to injury in the context of a larger academic universe that was ...
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17:46
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From the Annals of Anthroman
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TN7p1tOBoRQ/S2Bx72I-m8I/AAAAAAAAAFU/i9DBseyfMZc/s1600-h/DEAVERE_shot6_big.jpg"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TN7p1tOBoRQ/S2Bx72I-m8I/AAAAAAAAAFU/i9DBseyfMZc/s200/DEAVERE_shot6_big.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431466423568210882" //abr /br /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"(crossposted at a href="http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Brainstorm/3/John-L-Jackson-Jr/82/"span style="font-style:italic;"The Chronicle of Higher Education/span/a)span style="font-style:italic;"/span/spanbr /br /Anna Deavere Smith describes her life-long project ...
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16:31
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From the Annals of Anthroman
There are many reasonable people (and even some otherwise unreasonable ones) who would maintain that Pat Robertson's take on the recent earthquake in Haiti need not be dignified with a response. I understand that point, and I see where its ...
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4:06
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From the Annals of Anthroman
span style="font-style:italic;"The career pipeline: Not leaking but pouring/spanbr /By Katherine Senderbr /br /At a recent meeting of Penn faculty members from across the University, the provost spoke with concern about “the leaky pipeline,” where large numbers of women and minority ...
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5:20
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Given the media's current fixation on one golfer's rampant infidelities, it is hard to remember that anything else happened in 2009, especially before that failed suicide attack on a Detriot-bound airplane Christmas morning took over the headlines this holiday season. ...
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15:55
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From the Annals of Anthroman
During the AAA conference last week, I spent a ton of time in the Book Exhibit. But I wasn't just checking out the newest anthro-titles, which can be its own small joy, especially when friends and mentors have new offerings ...
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15:36
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Why publish “Obama’s mama’s book” at all?br /br /That’s probably one of the most dismissive and derogatory ways of phrasing a question that at least a few anthropologists are asking at this year’s AAA conference, and in just such disparaging ...
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22:10
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From the Annals of Anthroman
The anthropologists are finally here!br /br /Philadelphia's Downtown Marriott is housing the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, which started last night, and span style="font-style:italic;"The Chronicle of Higher Education/span has already run a story on one of Wednesday ...
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16:04
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From the Annals of Anthroman
The American Anthropological Association is holding its a href="http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/"annual meeting/a in Philadelphia this week, and I'll be there with bells on (maybe literally).br /br /I realize that the last time I mentioned anything about academic conferences in one of my ...
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15:22
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Later on today, Oprah Winfrey is supposed to announce that she's closing up shop on her wildly influential daily show. The lights go out on that televisual institution in 2011, and that will be the end of a pop-cultural era.br ...
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15:33
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Former United States Senator Rick Santorum penned an op-ed in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer that questions the military's commitment to "diversity." Santorum's "The Elephant in the Room: Diversity, but at What Cost?" argues that the Naval Academy's characterization of diversity ...
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18:40
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="360" height="310"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b5FYahzVU44hl=en_USfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b5FYahzVU44hl=en_USfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="360" height="310"/embed/objectbr /br /Most of the reviews are in, and if it weren't for Wes Anderson's new animated film, span style="font-style:italic;"Fantastic Mr. Fox/span, Lee Daniels might have ...
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15:41
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From the Annals of Anthroman
For the sake of full disclosure, I should probably start off by admitting that I'm in the middle of a particularly heavy conference stretch right now, which clearly informs this mini-tirade.br /br /American Studies, one of my favorite annual meetings, ...
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15:51
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Who posts "comments" to blogs? And why?br /br /It isn't just happenstance that some of the most dismissive and hostile "comments" to blog posts come from anonymous readers. Anonymity gives courage to the cowardly. And that was the case long ...
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16:43
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Do academics have good reason to be depressed?br /br /When I was in graduate school, I had two friends (also grad students) who cried (literally broke down in tears) just about every single week of their graduate school careers--and it ...
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15:44
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I spent the last four days in sunny Southern California, and most of that time found me losing my mind about the zaniness of America's current racial landscape.br /br /I went out West to take part in a fantastic conference, ...
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17:06
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From the Annals of Anthroman
When I was an undergraduate, which really wasn't all that long ago, attending classes and completing my coursework constituted the sine qua non of my university existence. And that was probably true for many of my classmates at Howard University. ...
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16:44
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I never understood the phrase, "you can't win for losing." Not really. I assume that it implies something like "without bad luck, I'd have no luck at all," the assumption that some people would only win anything if we gave ...
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16:04
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I'm teaching an undergraduate course on the mass mediation of religious beliefs this semester, and the students are taking an interdisciplinary look at how new media technology's ubiquity has changed (in big and small ways) people's religious experiences and practices ...
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16:06
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From the Annals of Anthroman
In a web-post labeled "Reality Check," the White house recently blasted Fox News for trying to "smear the Administration's effort to win the Olympics for the United States."br /br /The White House has been attempting to stay somewhat above the ...
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15:44
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From the Annals of Anthroman
The beginning of the academic year is full of excitement and activity. Especially activity. There's all that frantic prep to get courses ready for students (completing syllabi, posting readings, organizing lectures). Then your Fall meeting schedule starts to kick-in, and ...
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16:48
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Earlier this week, I received a phone call from a friend/colleague at a university on the West Coast. (I'll try to stay purposefully vague about things, which will include avoiding gendered pronouns.)br /br /The person, a rigorous scholar in the ...
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19:16
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From the Annals of Anthroman
On the train ride back from Washington to Philadelphia this morning, after catching the U.S. premiere of filmmaker Haile Gerima's new feature film, span style="font-style:italic;"Teza/span, I read the David Brooks span style="font-style:italic;"NYT/spans op-ed, "No, It's Not About Race." Brooks does ...
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16:21
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I missed most of President Obama’s speech Wednesday night, but I’ve been getting tons of messages about S.C. Representative Joe Wilson heckling him during the address, screaming “You lie!” from a seat in the audience. Even though it does seem ...
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19:08
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From the Annals of Anthroman
In symbolic preparation for the start of another academic year, I ritualistically cleaned out one of the many file cabinets today, one of the several that I haven't opened in what seems like millennia. There are usually at least two ...
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22:12
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From the Annals of Anthroman
So, the semester has finally started. It really has. And I've got a stack of half-written student recommendations (and more than one unfinished syllabus) to prove it. Classes don't begin at Penn until next week, and I have been trying ...
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21:14
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I had just started reading an article by literary scholar Joyce Ann Joyce in a recent issue of the journal span style="font-style:italic;"Callaloo /spanwhen I came across her severe critique of my latest book, span style="font-style:italic;"Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of ...
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17:45
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="325" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/trck9WT1IUohl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/trck9WT1IUohl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="325" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /"He's a socialist." "He's a communist." "He's anti-American." "Heck, he wasn't even born in the United States."br /br /By most accounts, Obama has been ...
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17:38
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Nobody talks about Baudrillard anymore, but this has been a summer replete with political absurdities of Baudrillardian proportions.br /br /Budrillard is most famous for his use of the concept simulacra, the idea of a copy passing itself off as "the ...
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7:10
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From the Annals of Anthroman
The folks I follow on Twitter (yeah, I’m still experimenting with that seemingly useless social networking tool) have been raging over the past day and a half about Skip Gates’s recent altercation with the Cambridge Police Department, an altercation that ...
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15:44
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="325" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EAiN3DBchFUhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EAiN3DBchFUhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="325" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /I've been watching the Sotomayor confirmation hearings pretty faithfully since Monday, and one thing jumps out about the entire affair. Obama might get his ...
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6:07
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="325" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3h-5ouVP_9Mhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3h-5ouVP_9Mhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="325" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /It is one thing not to seek re-election, but why would Palin resign? And before her first term is even done? br /br /I ...
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22:22
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From the Annals of Anthroman
"When Men Should Learn from Michelle"br /by Khadijah Whitebr /br /She’s the perfect woman, right? Tall, good-looking, well-educated, stylish and endlessly devoted to her family. Michelle Obama is i The Cosby Show'/is Clair Huxtable personified. br /br /Especially important to ...
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17:08
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From the Annals of Anthroman
iframe src="http://dotsub.com/media/665bd0d5-a9f4-4a07-9d9e-b31ba926ca78/e/s" frameborder="0" width="320" height="272"/iframebr /br /I'm stilling planning to get to my "Friday's Flick" post later on today (probably a review of Kristy Anderson's iZora Neal Hurston: Jump at the Sun,/i but I just wanted to send out a ...
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21:41
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="325" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/It2ggiEoIoIhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/It2ggiEoIoIhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="325" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /The New York Historical Society is highlighting the powerful Harlem photographs of Camilo José Vergara in an exhibit, a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2219821/"Harlem: 1970-2009/a, scheduled to be ...
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19:14
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From the Annals of Anthroman
I read two very short books while I was in Kingston, Jamaica, earlier this month. One, a tattered copy of St. Clare Drake's iThe Redemption of Africa and Black Religion/i (1977), I bought at a vending table set up for ...
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21:21
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="324" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s75P8xNMZEEhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s75P8xNMZEEhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="324" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /I just finished watching Jon Voight's recent speech at a fundraising dinner thrown by the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees. Voight, an accomplished ...
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21:20
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="325" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FBmsPRW7Chkhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FBmsPRW7Chkhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="325" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /I am attempting to institute a new feature on my blog this summer, a film review segment on Fridays. And anything is fair game: ...
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22:45
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From the Annals of Anthroman
iNational Review/i editor and syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg has thrown down the gauntlet in a iPhiladelphia Inquirer/i a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090607_Yes__let_s_have_that_talk_on_race.html"op-ed/a published yesterday. Motivated by recent debates over President Obama's nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Goldberg has called liberals hypocrites ...
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16:13
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Obama is set to announce his replacement for Souter this morning, and insiders have indicated that he intends to nominate Sonia Sotomayor, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals, the Second Circuit. Democrats might like the pick, ...
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21:23
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From the Annals of Anthroman
object width="324" height="314"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NSIQszUAvowhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NSIQszUAvowhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="324" height="314"/embed/objectbr /br /The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Legend spoke at the University of Pennsylvania yesterday, delivering this year's graduation speech for the College of Arts and Sciences, ...
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3:49
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From the Annals of Anthroman
Berkeley Law Professor Mary Ann Mason has written a Chronicle article on some of tenure’s hard-wired biases. It is worth a read.br /br /Based on research that Mason and her colleagues conducted at the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic ...