Olivia DrakeGina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African-American studies, was invited to perform her avant-garde meditation, "Voodoo Doll, What if Haiti Were a Woman?" at two international conferences in 2013. Ulysse's piece focuses on coercion and consent inspired by Gede, the Haitian Vodou spirit of life and death. She intersperses the story with Haiti’s geopolitical history, statistics, theory and Vodou chants. On Jan. 12-19, Ulysse will attend the 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. There, she will join more than 400 artists, performers, scholars and activists who will…
A book by Margot Weiss, assistant professor of American studies, assistant professor of anthropology, received the 2012 Ruth Benedict Book Prize by the Association for Queer Anthropology. Her book, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Duke University Press, 2011) was honored in the category “Outstanding Monograph." This prize is presented each year at the American Anthropological Association's national meeting to acknowledge excellence in a scholarly book written from an anthropological perspective about a topic that engages issues and theoretical perspectives relevant to LGBTQ studies. Techniques of Pleasure is a vivid portrayal of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual…
Benjamin TraversIn the Spring semester of 2012, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Gillian Goslinga and Creative Campus Fellow Jill Sigman, co-taught a course titled Ritual, Health and Healing. The course consisted of a weekly seminar and movement lab where the students explored the moral and material worlds of ritual and religious healing through assigned reading, writing and physical exercises. A video of the class is below: [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83YTKlRWl0A[/youtube]
Lauren RubensteinThe students in ANTH 289, “Ritual, Health, and Healing” stepped outside the Wesleyan campus this spring to participate in a service learning project in the North Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. According to Assistant Professor of Anthropology Gillian Goslinga—who co-taught the course with Artist-in-Residence Jill Sigman, a North Brooklyn-based performance artist—Greenpoint is a neighborhood facing multiple health, social and environmental challenges. The students in this Creative Campus anthropology course, which is cross-listed with Science in Society and Dance, had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of community organizations, each dedicated to addressing a different issue. This is the first time…
David PesciA book by Margot Weiss, assistant professor of American Studies, assistant professor of anthropology titled, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Duke University Press, 2011) is a finalist for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBT Studies category. According to the announcement nominating Weiss for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, “the Lambda Literary Award is the most prestigious book prize in the LGBT community with over 600 total nominations.”
David LowCati Coe ’92 is a co-editor (with Rachel Reynolds, Deborah Boehm, Julia Meredith Hess, and Heather Rae-Espinosa) of Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective (Vanderbilt University Press), which illuminates the wide-ranging continuities and disruptions in the experiences of children around the world, those who participate in and those who are affected by migration. When children, youth, and adults migrate, that migration is often perceived as a rupture, with people separated by great distances and for extended periods of time. But for migrants and those affected by migration, the everyday persists, and migration itself may be critical to…
Margot Weiss, assistant professor of anthropology, assistant professor of American Studies, is the author of Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality, published in January 2012 by Duke University Press. Techniques of Pleasure is a vivid portrayal of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual BDSM (SM) community. Margot Weiss conducted ethnographic research at dungeon play parties and at workshops on bondage, role play, and flogging, and she interviewed more than sixty SM practitioners. She describes a scene devoted to a form of erotic play organized around technique, rules and regulations, consumerism, and self-mastery. Challenging the notion that SM…
A chapter written by Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology, emeritus, is featured in the Flavours of the Arts:
From Mughal India to Bollywood exhibition catalog for Geneva's Musée d'ethnographie. This pertinently illustrated book focuses on the close relationship between music, painting and film in northern India. His chapter is titled, "Living with Pictures. Study, Film and Life in Naya (West Bengal)."
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Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology, emeritus, was appointed to "Professor Catedratico" for the fall semester at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Epresa - Lisbon University Institute. This is the highest appointment offered in the Portuguese University system. There, Östör is teaching a course on the "History of Visual in Anthropology" for the new master's program in Visual Anthropology. "Lisbon is a delightful place, deep histories and memories of ages and ethnicities, well reflected in the cuisine (the wine and seafood are superb and affordable in the numerous tascas, neighborhood eateries, throughout the city) definitely a place to visit and…
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