Why should you participate or attend NASA sessions at the Annual AAA Conference?
Attending or presenting at NASA sessions offers a chance to network with other students while showing your support for NASA and our student members' research. Presenting a paper at our professional sessions is also an impressive entry on your resume. Please peruse this section of our website which describes past sessions as well as those being offered this year. If you have any theme ideas for next year, if you want to organize a session, or if you would like to help in any way, please contact our Annual Meetings Program Committee Chair.
The 2004 103rd Annual AAA Meeting will be held at the San Francisco Hilton and Towers San Francisco, CA Nov 17-21, 2004
NASA Call for Invited Sessions
4th Annual Mentor Workshop
NASA Call for Professional Anthropologists for Annual Mentor Workshop
Call for Papers
Society for Humanistic Anthropology Call For Papers
NASA Call for Invited Sessions
NASA is seeking suggestions for invited sessions to be presented at the AAA's Annual meeting in San Francisco. Invited sessions are intended to include cutting-edge research and/or critical issues of interest to members across sections. Papers, sessions, and suggestions should be centered on the theme of the 2004 Meetings Magic, Science, and Religion. Not only would we like to have high caliber panels but we would also like to have a strong invited poster session. Even experienced presenters can prepare a poster or poster session since it can be an opportunity to dialog with others and get feedback regarding ongoing research. Lecture style panels do not allow much time for this kind of interaction. AAA will continue the roundtable format, which was introduced last year. No papers are presented in this format. The organizer will submit an abstract for the roundtable but participants will not present papers or submit abstracts. Participation as a discussant in this type of format will be the participants' major role, having the same weight as a paper presentation (This basically means that if you participate as a discussant in a round table format you will not be able to present a paper in another session due to AAA's one paper rule). We are very interested in knowing what our membership would like to see on the program. Even if you have never organized a session before please do not hesitate to volunteer! Our Program Editor is happy to coach anyone through the process. This is a great opportunity to learn the process in a non-intimidating environment. If you would like to organize a session for NASA or if you have any suggestions please contact the Annual Meetings Program Committee Chair (Lori Johns). The deadline for submissions requesting invited status is March 1, 2004.
Students, there is a great opportunity for you during the upcoming 2004 American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, CA from November 17-21, 2004. Do you have questions about applying for anthropology programs, post-doctoral positions, or jobs? Would you like to know more about a career in anthropology? Are you interested in talking to anthropologists who work outside of academia? Would you like to talk to someone about the process of successfully pursuing your Ph.D., writing a proposal, applying for funding, doing research in the field, or completing your dissertation? Are you interested in speaking with an archaeologist? If you have these kinds of questions and others then sign up for the 4th Annual NASA/AAA Student / Mentor Workshop to be held on Friday, November 19th from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. in the San Francisco Hilton, rooms 15 & 16 Union Square, refreshments provided. You will get to select three professional to meet with for from a list of twenty. E-mail Michele Verma at Mentorworkshop@yahoogroups.com or mmoritis@hotmail.com for the mentor list. To register please go to the AAA Website at http://www.aaanet.org/mtgs/2004/workshops.htm.
Professional Anthropologists: NASA Call for Mentors for the 2004 AAA annual meeting
Please consider giving a little of your time to students seeking your expertise. The National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA) would like to invite you to participate as a mentor at our fourth Annual Mentor Workshop co-sponsored by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) at the annual meeting in San Francisco. Students will be given the opportunity to seek your advice on their research and/or career objectives. Mentors are expected to meet individually with up to three students for a thirty minute appointment. Refreshments will be served so you can mingle with students between appointments during the course of the two-hour workshop. It is hoped that these discussions will create mentor relationships that will continue beyond the annual meeting.
If you volunteer, then your information will be used to create a master-list of mentors from which students registering for the workshop will choose from. The idea is to match students with professionals working in the same regional or theoretical area. Before the AAA annual meeting you will be sent the names and email addresses of the students that wish to meet with you as well as the specific time they will meet during the two-hour workshop. The students will also be sent the email addresses of the mentor they have paired with and their specific appointment. If there are more mentors than needed you will be notified as soon as possible.
If you are interested in volunteering for the Annual Mentor Workshop please send an email to Michele Verma, NASA Graduate Representative-at-Large at nasa_mentorworkshop@yahoogroups.com. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and a description of your area(s) of study/research/interest. Please use key words in order to be as brief as possible so that your description can be included unedited on the list to the students. Thank you for your consideration.
The Magic and Science of Blood: Race, Belonging, and the Body Politic in North America
Race is the bugbear of anthropology, long recognized as lacking in basis but stubbornly persisting in its existence as a "social fact." Blood is commonly invoked as a metonym for race, uniting those who "share" blood and condemning those whose blood is considered inferior or impure. In the most extreme racist ideology, categories of blood figure prominently in genocide and ethnic cleansing. Blood thus possesses high fetish value. Intriguingly, however, this magical fetish value is frequently exercised through exacting scientific calculations.
In North America, the magic and science of blood come into play in a range of issues, from anti-miscegenation laws to native claims and from immigration policy to membership in the "white" majority or "red," "yellow," "brown," "black," "other" or "more-than-one" minorities. Blood is thus used to mark hierarchies and inequalities within the multi-nation state and evaluate the relative purity and legitimacy of individuals. These powerful potions of blood can therefore determine status and belonging in the body politic.
Bringing together current research and fieldwork in and on the North American landscape, this panel will explore the variety of magical, scientific, and religious notions that come under dispute over the meaning of blood. We invite papers that address definitions and reconceptualizations of race and notions of blood purity and hybridity, particularly considering the ways in which they intersect with power, policy, sexuality, and historical legacies. Other possible issues for discussion include conflicts and discrepancies between self-definition and ascribed status, public representations, "racial" ambiguities, claims to space and place, nostalgia and imagined pasts, distinctions drawn between the primitive and the modern, and constructions of "race" and the nation.
Please send inquiries by February 29, 2004 to:
Sue-Je Gage slgage@indiana.edu
Pearl Chan pechan@indiana.edu
Sarah Quick saquick@indiana.edu
Society for Humanistic Anthropology Call For Papers
"So What? The Anthropological Challenge of the 21st Century," AAA Graduate Student Panel
"And what is THAT good for?"
In the course of our careers, anthropologists may face similar inquiries when explaining the topic of their research to friends, family, and informants, yet even within disciplinary boundaries there is often disagreement about future directions, appropriate motivations, and personal responsibilities, the materiality of anthropology lost in a hall of smoke and mirrors.
The anthropological challenge of the 21st century is to explain why who we are, what we study, and how we do so, matters. The Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) turns 30 this year, and to commemorate that anniversary, SHA (with potential co-sponsorship from the National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA)) offers newly-minted researchers a panel which considers the AAA Conference theme of "Magic, Science, and Religion," and examines how anthropology mystifies, both within and outside the discipline.
With an exploration of in-progress and recent fieldwork and ethnographic challenges, the session as a whole posits humanistic anthropology as a productive theoretical and ethnographic orientation, providing young ethnographers with a forum to think and write about their anthropological encounters and research decisions. Paper topics will be based on the session theme, framing panelists' research choices and treatments in terms of a "so what" question.
. Why research 'X'?
. What written treatment suits/doesn't suit such a topic?
. Why is it relevant to the academy? To non-academies?The panel is intended to bring a collection of young ethnographers into conversation on common research obstacles. As such, papers may address:
. resolving the challenges presented by unconventional fieldsites or ethnographic subjects
. charting and analyzing the sometimes uneasy relationship between the anthropologist and her/his conflicting environments and colleagues or peers
. the complicated task of (and philosophy behind) writing about these encounters in accessible and sometimes unconventional waysPlease send abstracts (250 words or less) to Jessa Leinaweaver (jleinawe@umich.edu) or Maria McMath (mmcmath@princeton.edu) by MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16th. Notification of acceptance to the panel will be sent out by Monday, March 1.
Previous NASA Sessions at the AAA Meetings
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