2014-2015 Call for Papers
The Workshop on U.S. Locations is now accepting presentation proposals for the 2014-15 academic year. We are excited to continue the great work that Kristen Simmons and Emily Bock did last year, and welcome feedback and suggestions for making the Workshop as productive and successful as possible as we begin planning.
The Workshop will meet every other Wednesday from 4:30-6:00pm in Haskell Hall. More scheduling and calendar information to follow.
The Workshop explores current ethnographic research on the United States. While emphasizing anthropological approaches, we provide a forum for all ethnographers examining the US as a socio-cultural entity, within, across, and outside the boundaries of North America. Over the past decade, a re-emergent anthropology of the US has incorporated the legacies of ethnographic sociology, critical geography, and sociolinguistics. Continuing in this tradition, we invite scholars from across the disciplines to participate in regular meetings. We will critically analyze the burgeoning literature on ethnographic practice and theory, as well as focus on carefully formulated empirical studies.
For the Fall quarter, we welcome in particular work-in-progress under the loose theme of privacy and recognition. Related work might address how deploying and withholding information and recognition constitutes experiences of self, social life, and state power by exploring topics ranging from technological surveillance and recognition programming/software, legal and cultural recognition, digital and/or virtual privacy, work around familiarity and finding/locating community or others, the materiality of delineating private/public spaces, and practices, objects, and processes related to either cultivating and encouraging or escaping and resisting an experience of privacy or recognition. Of course, we are welcome to pushing the boundaries of this theme!
Please email uslocationswksp@gmail.com with the presentation/paper proposal, including a brief description of the work-in-progress and a tentative title. Please submit by no later than Friday, September 19.