Call for Papers
Engaged Anthropology:
Responsibility and Scholarship in the Current Political Moment
A Graduate Student Conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder
Anthropology is in a moment of creative rupture, redefinition, and profound possibility, and it is the task of the next generation of cultural anthropologists – particularly graduate students – to rethink the potentials of our work. While contemporary anthropologists engage with a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives and paradigms, there is still coalescence around a common commitment to ethnography. In the introductory issue of HAU, Giovanni da Col and David Graeber (2011) call for a return to ethnographic theory – or the “critical concepts we bring from the field” – to resituate anthropology as a relevant source of knowledge production within the academy. Anthropology has a long history of public and political engagement, responsive to both local conditions and real world politics of the time. Scholars have long called for an anthropology that is responsible as well as responsive, from Talal Asad (1973), Sherry Ortner (1984), Faye Harrison (1991), Ruth Behar (1996), Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2003), and Lila Abu-Lughod (2013) among many others. Kim Fortun (2012), writing in Cultural Anthropology, asks how anthropology and ethnography can speak to the current historical and political moment. As the world bears witness to struggles over racial injustice, gendered and sexual violence, environmental destruction, economic inequality, and geopolitical insecurity, we would like to locate ethnographic knowledge beyond just the university and ask how it can contribute to deeper public understanding and profoundly impact the lives of those people engaged in such issues.
In this conference, we aim to conceptualize the current political moment and possibilities for an engaged anthropology by bringing together graduate students thinking through the disciplinary potentials in their own research projects. Now is a time that can be variously characterized by social unrest, insecurity, and inequality across the globe, but also by possibility, connection, and social change. What responsibilities do we as anthropologists have to people engaged in struggles for justice? How can our deep ethnographic knowledge about complex social issues speak to the public and respond to current issues in a timely way? How do the politics of our situated locations as graduate students inform ethical commitments and obligations to the people with whom we work? If ethnography remains our central commitment as a discipline, how can we tell stories that are compelling and at the same time make sophisticated intellectual claims that do justice to the complexity of people’s social worlds?
Engaged Anthropology is a two-day interdisciplinary conference organized by graduate students in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Events are free and open to the public. The conference will be held Friday, September 25 and Saturday, September 26, 2015 and will include panels moderated by University of Colorado faculty. Laurence Ralph will give the keynote address.
We invite applicants to submit an abstract by Wednesday, July 1, 2015 by clicking the Abstract Submission link.
In this conference, we aim to conceptualize the current political moment and possibilities for an engaged anthropology by bringing together graduate students thinking through the disciplinary potentials in their own research projects. Now is a time that can be variously characterized by social unrest, insecurity, and inequality across the globe, but also by possibility, connection, and social change. What responsibilities do we as anthropologists have to people engaged in struggles for justice? How can our deep ethnographic knowledge about complex social issues speak to the public and respond to current issues in a timely way? How do the politics of our situated locations as graduate students inform ethical commitments and obligations to the people with whom we work? If ethnography remains our central commitment as a discipline, how can we tell stories that are compelling and at the same time make sophisticated intellectual claims that do justice to the complexity of people’s social worlds?
Engaged Anthropology is a two-day interdisciplinary conference organized by graduate students in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Events are free and open to the public. The conference will be held Friday, September 25 and Saturday, September 26, 2015 and will include panels moderated by University of Colorado faculty. Laurence Ralph will give the keynote address.
We invite applicants to submit an abstract by Wednesday, July 1, 2015 by clicking the Abstract Submission link.