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So maybe there are jobs in visual anthro after all?

Assistant Professor New Media Studies

Tenure-track assistant professor in New Media Studies. The Syracuse University English Department is continuing to expand its focus in Film and Visual Culture. Ph. D. must be in hand at time of appointment. Send detailed letter, CV, and names of three references to Professor Erin Mackie, Chair, English Department, 401 Hall of Languages, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1170. Applications should be postmarked by 16 November 2009. Syracuse University is an EO/AA employer. An offer will be made contingent upon the availability of funds in the FY 2011 budget.

Hope this helps someone.

Prospective graduate students have been writing me for advice about doctoral and masters programs in visual anthropology. Since my previous entry on this topic is outdated, I've decided to update it to the best of my current knowledge.

M.A. Programs

• USA: San Francisco State University, MA in Visual Anthropology
  
• USA: University of Southern California - Masters in Visual Anthropology
  

Ph.D. Granting Institutions with Visual Anthropology Programs/Faculty

• USA: Harvard University - Sensory Ethnograph Lab and Secondary PhD in Film and Visual Studies
• USA: New York University - Profs. Faye Ginsburg, Tejaswini Ganti, Haidy Geismar, Noelle Stout. Also see Center for Media, Culture, and History
• USA: Temple University - faculty
• USA: U. of South Carolina - Ph.D. with research foci in visual anthropology
• USA: Yale University - Karen Nakamura*

* Italics = denotes junior faculty member who may or may not be taking on graduate students.

Note that the wikipedia entry on Visual Anthropology also has a very useful list of visual anthropology programs.

I'll keep updating this list, if you have any suggestions, additions, corrections, feel free to e-mail me or drop a comment below. Last updated: 2009/10/23

A potential grad student wrote to me asking about which faculty at Yale worked on queer anthropological topics. Here are the faculty who are interested in, or supportive of, topics regarding gender and sexuality:

• Jafari Allen (Cuba; Carribean; USA; Black consciousness)
• Sean Brotherton (Cuba; HIV; biomedicine)
• Kate Dudley (USA; poverty; South)
• Karen Nakamura (Japan; disability; identity)

In addition, Prof. Marcia Inhorn does work on gender, health, and reproductive technologies.

One of the more interesting panels at the Association for Asian Studies meeting Chicago was the Japan Image Use Protocol Guide workshop. This was organized by the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources.

Basically, the Image Use Protocol Guide is designed to help academic authors and publishers navigate the somewhat circuitous path to getting image use rights from Japanese copyright holders. The most useful portion for me is the Permission Request Templates that you can use to send to image rights holders (museums, publishers, etc.) asking for permission to reprint photographs in your papers and monographs.

The protocol guide is still in the beta stage and they are asking for comments:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ncc/imageuse/index.html

I was reading the latest Anthropology News when I came across a reference to the National Doctoral Program Survey from Arizona State University. I wasn't aware of this. I wanted to put in a link on my blog for people who might be interested in it:

Anthropology programs ranked by best practices: http://cresmet.asu.edu/nagps...

The NDPS ranks all doctoral programs across all divisions (social sciences, humanities, arts, etc.) and a variety of schools. It's hardly scientific as the sample size of respondents per school is small and self-selected; but it does give a little bit of insight into various programs for people thinking about graduate school -- and an area of possible conversation when chatting with grad schools peers.

Be sure to wander around, you can rank programs on more than just best practices, including areas such as climate and professional development.

Here are two comic-blogs (¿clogs?) that grad students and junior faculty should subscribe to. First, xkcd:

and guest blogger JR also recommends Indexed:

An undergraduate student noted that there weren't many doctoral or masters programs in visual anthropology. The Society for Visual Anthropology has a list that is relatively kept up to date:

• http://www.societyforvisualanthropology.org/programs.html (link broken)

Update 2009.10: It looks like the SVA didn't archive this page before moving their website to a new system. I used the Wayback Machine to grab the 2008 version of the page and include here (after the jump) as a reference. I'll remove it if the SVA wants me to:

MIT has released a new streaming series on Doing Anthropology at: http://techtv.mit.edu/file/663/

My pal CS sent me a link to PhD Comics - a definite must-read for us in the academe.

This cartoon reminds me of my colleague BB:

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that my book Deaf in Japan (Cornell University Press) was awarded the 2008 John Whitney Hall Prize at the Association for Asian Studies 2008 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Below is a photo of me with my wonderful editor, Roger Haydon, of Cornell University Press at the conference.

I recently wrote a short article for the Anthropology News titled: A Case against Giving Informants Cameras and Coming Back Weeks Later (. Vol. 49, No. 2: 20). Here is a snippet to whet your appetite:

A Case Against Giving Informants Cameras and Coming Back Weeks Later
By Karen Nakamura (Yale U)

Giving informants cameras and asking them to take photographs of their environment is a growing trend in anthropology. The resulting photos are later displayed, analyzed or exhibited as examples of a particularly internal, private or emic view of the world. Students love this technique, which is inexpensive and initially appears to be risk-free, with all of the hallmarks of reflexive anthropology. If not done carefully, however, it can be problematic both ethically and methodologically.

.....

For those who choose to do photoethnographic work that involves providing informants with cameras or video equipment, it is essential to first critically examine the ethical and methodological implications of a project. The anthropologist must consider both the potential harms and benefits that a project might pose for an informant. Possible ways to address these concerns include giving informants high quality photographic equipment (to keep) as well as technical training, so that in the future they can use their new tools and skills for their own purposes, to address their own needs. Informants working for an anthropologists (i.e. completing assigned tasks) should be paid as field assistants. Prior to using an image an anthropologist should receive permission to do so from both the photographer and any people that appear in the photograph. Finally, photography should supplement, not replace, long-term fieldwork–it is time and labor intensive, but ultimately necessary for interpreting and contextualizing visual images from the field.

You can read the rest at the full text PDF.

Comments, criticism, and feedback on this article are more than welcome -- either here or by e-mail.

Hot off the press, Apple just released Mac OS X 10.4.11, otherwise a minor update to the last OS release. I haven't upgraded to PantherCheetahLionLeopard yet (since Yale has a site license and I have to wait until I'm back in the USA) -- but the big thing about 10.4.11 is that it supports the Microsoft Presenter Mouse 8000 -- which I've blogged about before.

Yippee! Keynote here I come!

For more: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306297

I gave a lot of talks last year.... at Harvard, Columbia, UBC, NYU and Purdue. I think it's mostly due to my book coming out last year.

I usually talk using Apple Keynote. I rarely read my talks from a written paper and speak semi-extemporaneously. I use the Keynote "presenter display" which gives me my speaker's notes for each slide, a preview of the next slide, and a timer. I think Microsoft PowerPoint has a similar feature. You need a PowerBook or Mac Book Pro to make the "presenter display" function because the lower models can only mirror what's on the data projector and can't give you a separate screen.

UIC's program in disability studies is excellent (and there's a new minor at UCLA after the jump):

PLEASE CIRCULATE THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL WHO MAY BE INTERESTED:

The Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Disability Studies at the University 

of Illinois at Chicago is accepting applications from prospective students 

for Fall 2008. The deadline for receipt of full applications is January 1, 

2008. UIC's Disability Studies Ph.D. program promotes the development of 

new scholarly models for understanding disability. Part of this 

intellectual approach involves the education of disabled and non-disabled 

academicians, researchers, policy experts, and clinicians who will join 

with disabled people in the community as active challengers of oppressive 

institutions and environments. The program examines how addressing 

disability in its full complexity can promote the full participation, self- 

determination, and equal citizenship of people with disabilities in society.

From my inbox:

ALL FOR APPLICATIONS: THE 2008 PAUL G. HEARNE/AAPD LEADERSHIP AWARDS (due:
Sept. 21, 2007)

The Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards program was established to
identify and support emerging leaders with disabilities who will carry on
the disability rights movement. Administered by AAPD and sponsored by the
Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation, the 2008 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD
Leadership Awards identifies up to two emerging leaders with disabilities to
each receive $10,000 to help them continue their progress as leaders. These
individuals will also have an opportunity to meet and network with national
disability leaders at the annual AAPD Leadership Gala in Washington, DC in
the spring. Applications are available from www.AAPD.com
. Apply by: Friday, September 21, 2007.