Graduate Lunch Series: “Listening vs Lingwashing: Promise, Peril, and Structural Oblivion in White South African Linguistic Nationalism” with Dr. Janet McIntosh
December 2nd, 2016, 12:00pm Anthropology Department, PLS 102 In recent years a growing number of urban, liberal South African whites have expressed a wish to learn an indigenous language such as isiXhosa or isiZulu, often out of anxiety that their linguistic limitations have become embarrassing, even disabling, to their national belonging. Their efforts have been […]
Graduate Lunch Series: “Global God Talk: Communication Anxiety and Playful Improvisation in Interfaith Encounters” withDr. Marcy Brink-Danan
Wednesday, November 16th 2016, 12:00pm Anthropology Department, PLS102 From President Obama’s Interfaith Campus Challenge to the Doha Annual Interfaith Dialogue Conference, today there are few places in the world where government policies have not prioritized increased interfaith “communication.” Why is God talk experiencing such a global boom? To investigate this question, I study international organizations […]
Graduate Lunch Series: “Does Market Integration Give Rise to Social Inequality? The Case of Mosuo in Southwestern China” with Dr. Chun-Yi Sum
Friday October 28, 2016, 12:00pm PLS102 (Anthropology Seminar Room) The Mosuo (Na) are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group in southwestern China. This small population of 30,000 on the provincial border of Yunnan and Sichuan is known for being the only remaining matrilineal society in all of China. Since the 1990s, tourism and economic development have brought […]
Graduate Lunch Series: “The Yin World in Chaos: Expanding Cities and Transforming Religions in Contemporary China” with Prof. Robert P. Weller
Friday October 14th 2016, 12:00pm PLS102 (Anthropology Seminar Room) Rapid urban expansion in wealthy parts of China has led to the resettlement of many villagers into high-rise buildings, making earlier forms of social organization impossible. At the same time, large-scale urban reconstruction has displaced many old city neighborhoods. The result is that the territorially based […]