This Saturday March 8th is UBC Archaeology Day.

Each year, the two departments that are home to archaeology at UBC (Anthropology and Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies) come together to hear about each other’s work. The day of presentations, posters and discussion involves archaeology students and faculty from both programs, as well as friends and colleagues from the Vancouver area.

The theme this year is workshopping upcoming conference papers and features a number of graduate and undergraduate student projects.

The program is available here.

This coming Thursday, Dr. Alexia Bloch of UBC’s Department of Anthropology presents a talk:

Post-Soviet Mistresses and the Turkish State: Negotiating Intimacy, Kinship, and Labor Migration in a Time of Transnationalism

Thursday, February 28, from 11:30-1:00 in ANSO 134

Dr. Bloch’s research focuses around dynamics of power, historical consciousness, and the anthropology of gender. Her current research concerns emerging capitalism and the transformation of gender relations, with an ethnographic focus on women migrants moving between centres of global capital and areas of the former Soviet Union. Her recent monograph publications include:

• Museum at the end of the world : encounters in the Russian Far East
• Red ties and residential schools : indigenous Siberians in a post-Soviet state

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a climate change and Inuit rights advocate recently co-nominated (with Al Gore) for the Nobel Peace prize, will be speaking this Friday on “The Right to be Cold: the Global Significance of Arctic Climate Change” as part of the terry speakers series.

In the past two decades, Inuit across the Arctic have reported profound changes to their environment and wildlife — changes where their human right to life, health, subsistence, safety and security are all being violated as large countries emitting greenhouse gases continue their business as usual. Yet even as this immense struggle is ongoing, Inuit are now also faced with a renewed interest in the Arctic from a world hungry for its resources and newly opening shipping routes.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier will discuss the need for our world to re-connect around our shared Arctic, our shared atmosphere, and ultimately, our shared humanity. Individuals, communities, corporations, industries and nations must realize that the challenges in the Arctic are connected to the cars we drive, the industries we support, and the policies we create.

The talk is at the West Atrium of the Life Science Centre at 12:00 noon on February 29th. Seating is free and open for all UBC students, staff and faculty, and is first come first served (no tickets to pick up). More information can be found at http://www.terry.ubc.ca

This evening, the UBC Museum of Anthropology presents the second of three talks in the Mud Matters series:

Sculpted and Adorned: Mud Architecture in India

Art historian, curator, anthropologist, photographer, and author Dr. Stephen Huyler shares images and insights gained through 37 years of travel documenting folk art and aesthetics in rural India.

Tuesday, January 29, 7:00- 9:00 pm

UBC Library has several books by Dr. Stephen Huyler, including:

• Meeting God : elements of Hindu devotion
• Gifts of earth : terracottas & clay sculptures of India
• Painted prayers : women’s art in village India

If mud architecture intrigues you, then here are a few books to get you started:

• Down to earth : mud architecture : an old idea, a new future / based on an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, conceived and directed by Jean Dethier.
• Mud architecture of the Indian desert / Kulbhushan Jain, Minakshi Jain.
• The valley of mud brick architecture : Shibām, Tarīm & Wādī Ḥaḍramūt : ancient to contemporary design

This Thursday, Dr. Gaston Gordillo, UBC Dept. of Anthropology, presents a talk entitled:

Places that Frighten: Residues of Wealth and Violence on the Argentinean Chaco Frontier

Location and Time
Thursday, January 24,
11:30 am – 1:00 pm
AnSo 205

Since 1987, Dr. Gordillo has based his research in the Gran Chaco region of northern Argentina. His current SSHRC-funded research project, “The Traces of History: Ruins and Memories of the Conquest of the Argentinean Chaco” involves a multi-sited ethnography on the old frontiers of the Gran Chaco. The project analyzes the legacy of the region’s long history of violence and resistance in contemporary landscapes and memories and examines the ways in which history is inscribed on, and erased from, space.

For a full list of Dr. Gordillo’s publications, see his profile page at the Dept of Anthropology. His books are available at Koerner Library, including:

• Nosotros vamos a estar acá para siempre : historias tobas (2005)
• Landscapes of devils : tensions of place and memory in the Argentinean Chaco (2004) (preview online at GoogleBooks)
• Río y la frontera : movilizaciones aborígenes, obras públicas y MERCOSUR en el Pilcomayo (2002)

To locate copies of journal articles by Dr. Gordillo, try the MetaLib search tool to search across multiple databases. Click this link to launch a predefined search for his name, or create your own search in the MetaLib Anthropology and Archaeology PowerSearch Page. After the list of results is returned from MetaLib, use the UBC eLink icon to locate a copy of the journal. Many of the articles are available electronically to UBC faculty, students, and staff.

An upcoming talk in the UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies Colloquium Series may be of interest to Anthropologists:

The Archives of the Nisga’a Nation

The Nisga’a Lisims Government is concerned to establish proper care of its archival material. This talk will report on a consultation with the Nisga’a people about measures needed to provide good care of its archives. Professor Emeritus Terry Eastwood will explain the situation of Nisga’a Nation over the years and the character of its governance of its affairs and of the archives it has accumulated and preserved to date. It will then look at the prospects of building an archival program of the government.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m.
Sherrington Room, Woodward Biomedical Library

The new Faculty of Arts Outreach schedule for this term is out. This semester’s workshops are on the theme of intellectual property in a digital environment, and include workshops on Refworks, Google Scholar/Metalib, plus two new workshops: the first on finding and attributing digital images in papers and presentations, and the second on preserving your digital reputation.

For more information, you can download the flyer here, or click the “Continue reading…” link below for descriptions, dates, and locations.
Finding & Using Digital Images
Learn how to find the best images for your presentation or paper and how to cite them.

Monday, January 14, noon – 1:00pm
Friday, February 15, noon – 1:00pm

Your Digital Reputation
Don’t become a headline! Learn how to manage your digital identities so you reflect the image you want – now and in the future.

Monday, January 28 noon – 1:00pm
Monday, February 11 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, March 26 noon – 1:00pm

RefWorks for the Arts
Use RefWorks to format your bibliographies and footnotes automatically!

Thursday, January 24 9:00 – 11:00pm
Tuesday, February 19 2:00 – 4:00pm
Friday, March 7 1:00 – 3:00pm
Please register for one of the Refworks workshops at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/
description.cfm?sessionid=5194

Location: Koerner Library, Room 217

Google Scholar and Beyond
Go straight to academic articles via Google Scholar; search up to ten article databases at a time with Metalib, and more . . .

Friday, February 1 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, Feb. 13 noon – 1:00pm

All sessions in Buchanan B114 , with the exception of RefWorks (Koerner 217).

Sponsored by UBC Library, and supported in part by funding from the Office of the Dean of Arts.

This coming Friday, the Law & Society@UBC group presents a talk that will be of interest to Anthropologists:

Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez and Indigenous Women’s Rights: Can Gender and Sovereignty Co-Exist?

by Dr. Cheryl Suzack, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Victoria and a member of the Batchewana First Nations of Ojibways.

Abstract:
This paper explores the cultural and political implications for Indigenous women of the Martinez decision by taking up the following question: What are the implications for indigenous-feminist politics if the racial sovereignty asserted by tribal nations depends on socially-sanctioned sexual identities? It takes up this question by arguing for the value of a law and literature project that explores how Indigenous women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko challenge conventional associations of gender identity.

Friday, January 11, 2008
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
UBC Faculty of Law, Room 149

A reminder of today’s Medical Anthropology Seminar:

“One size fits all? The experience of mothers and fathers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit”
Dr. Susan Albersheim, MD, FRCPC , Ph.D., Dept. of Pediatrics

27 November (Tuesday) 3:30-4:30
Anthropology and Sociology Building Rm 205

Dr. Albersheim’s Ph.D. dissertation, “Matters of life and death in the neonatal intensive care unit : decision-making for the not-yet-competent“is available online through the Proquest Theses and Dissertations database or in microform in Koerner Library.

(Note that you’ll have to be on campus or authenticated via VPN to access the online copy of the dissertation through the UBC Library licensed resource, Proquest Theses and Dissertations.)

A reminder of tomorrow’s Anthropology roundtable discussion :

Ethnographic Methodologies for Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda

1:00 – 2:00 pm Thursday, November 22 in AnSo 203
With the research group from the Liu Institute & Gulu, Uganda

Northern Uganda has experienced 20 years of conflict. 1.7 million people have been displaced into overcrowded and underserved camps. Each week, 1,000 people die of war related causes. The UN Under-secretary General, Jan Egeland recognized northern Uganda as one of the world’s worst, most neglected humanitarian crises. The primary victims of this conflict are civilians. Over 30,000 children as young as six years old have been abducted and forced to commit gross atrocities against thier own communities. If they manage to escape, they return to live in insecure camps. Many experience intense trauma and stigma by their neighbours. The Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) is the result of a 2005 research initiative with Ker Kwaro Acholi, the cultural institution representing the Acholi people of northern Uganda. In order to move forward, culturally sensitive healing and reconciliation must begin to take place within Acholi-land. Yet little is known about traditional practices as they are currently being practiced and adapted to current circumstances. The institution of cultural leaders has been weakened over the course of the war, and there is a need to strengthen it by reconnecting to the grass-roots level. The JRP works directly with victims of the conflict in some of the 100 internally displaced persons camps in northern Uganda, providing them with tools for documenting cultural approaches in order to strengthen them. Through Field Reports, dialogues and national and international workshops, we disseminate findings to national and international stakeholders.

See the Justice and Reconciliation Project for more information, including links to publications on this topic.