Miami University’s anthropology department was well represented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Philadelphia Dec. 2-6, with seven faculty members presenting papers at the national meetings of anthropology’s largest professional organization.
On Wed., Dec. 2, Assistant Professor Neringa Klumbyte gave a talk called “The Wry Smile of a Nation: European Integration, Citizenship and the Politics of Laughter in Lithuania” which focused on how “showmen-activists” used laughter, cynicism, and irony to catapult their new political party to prominence. The paper was part of a panel called “Intellectual Activisms and the Making of the New Europe” sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe and which Klumbyte co-organized with Barbara Wolbert of the University of Minnesota.
Politics and humor were also the topic of Professor Susan Paulson’s paper on how Bolivian’s merge juvenile humor about farts, boobs and burping with sophisticated political criticism to call into question the political-economic status quo. “Transgressive Humor and Political Transformation in Bolivia” was presented as part of a panel on “Laughter and Everyday Life” sponsored by the Society for Visual Anthropology.
Also on Wednesday, Visiting Assistant James Bielo explained “Why Blogs Matter among America's ‘Emerging’ Evangelicals” to the audience of a panel entitled “From New Technologies to Neo-Spiritualities” sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.
In “Betwixt and Between: Everyday Ethics of Healer-Patient Relations Research” Assistant Professor Cameron Hay-Rollins drew on fieldwork in Lumbok, Indonesia as well as California and Ohio, to discuss the ethical difficulties facing anthropologists who are studying both healers and patients, and have ethical duties toward each. The paper was delivered Thursday, Dec. 3 as part of a panel on “The Lived Experience of Health Research Ethics” co-Sponsored by National Association for the Practice of Anthropology and Society for Medical Anthropology.
Visiting Assistant professor Christina Leza (Middletown) helped organize a panel on “Indigenous Identities on the Border” Friday, Dec. 4 and offered a paper on “Negotiating Division: Indigenous Identities on the US-Mexican Border.” Her work focuses on the O’odham people, whose community is bisected by the border separating the US and Mexico.
On Saturday, Associate Professor Mark Allen Peterson discussed how transformations in the market and technology, as well as changes in how people view language in India, enabled India’s Urdu press to come back from the brink of collapse. His paper, “Indexicality, iconicity and Language Ideology in the Urdu Press Revitalization” was part of a panel on “Language Ideology and Writing Systems” sponsored by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.
Also on Saturday, Assistant Professor Leighton Peterson described how Navajo has been used in American films, from the westerns of John Ford and Clint Eastwood to films by contemporary Navajo filmmakers, as a sign of Indian identity and, unexpectedly, a reason to learn the language. His paper “Reel Navajo: Ideology, Iconicity, and the Unexpected Learning of Language Through Film” was part of a panel on Native American languages entitled “Indian languages in Unexpected Places” sponsored by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.
Founded in 1902, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is the world's largest organization of individuals interested in anthropology. The annual meetings draw more than 5,000 anthropologists from around the world.