The Department of Sociology & Anthropology invites you to join us for the first discussion of our fall series, “Out From the Shadows of Racist Anthropology” on Thursday, September 17 at 4pm. We encourage SoAn majors, minors, and alums to attend, along with anyone interested in sociological and anthropological perspectives on race.
In this first event, Professor Gareth Barkin will lead a discussion about negotiating the racist history of anthropology through the lens of Michelle Munyikwa’s Scientific American blog post on her own struggles with that topic. Please read her short blog here.
Michelle Munyikwa, PhD
We will also discuss the Confronting Racism Discussion Series and the SoAn Department’s broader antiracism collaborations, and introduce the Sociology & Anthropology Student Association (SASA). For more information on this event, a ‘deeper dive’ reading, and the schedule for future events, please see our series webpage here.
If you’d like to join the conversation, please RSVP here: https://tinyurl.com/SoAnRSVP1 to receive the Zoom link.
We’ll send a reminder email to everyone who registers on the day of the event. Please forward this invitation far and wide!
For this event, please take a moment to review the reading linked above, and consider the following discussion questions:
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Professor Munyikwa describes her experiences confronting anthropology’s history of scientific racism through, among other things, being assigned authors like Lewis Henry Morgan. She concludes that an awareness of anthropology’s past is important to improving the discipline’s future. What other reflections on anthropology’s past do you see as valuable for constructing its future? What useful tools or lessons would you want to see brought forward?
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Yolanda Moses, a prominent anthropologist of race, argued 20+ years ago that, after seeking to dismantle the American racial worldview in the early/mid 20th century, the discipline largely abandoned its efforts to engage with issues of race voice that critique outside the world of anthropology. To which current debates or issues do you see anthropological analyses of race offering important interventions? How might they disrupt or change the terms of those debates?
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology is committed to promoting the values of diversity, equity, and human rights and to confronting racism in our fields of research, our institution, and our classrooms.
As part of these efforts and to support our students, colleagues, and communities, we are undertaking a series of discussions in the Fall, 2020 semester, to explore anthropological and sociological perspectives on race and ethnicity, constructions and experiences of race and racism, and efforts to confront structural formulations of white supremacy. The series will also explore the ways these categories intersect with other social cleavages and dimensions of inequality, including gender, sexuality, citizenship, education, health, and social class.
Discussions will be led by department faculty members in collaboration with SoAn majors and minors to build conversation within and beyond the SoAn Department. The series is open to all in the Puget Sound community and will be held on Zoom semi-weekly on Thursdays at 4PM (see below for a detailed schedule). Details and readings will be emailed and posted on our series page a week before each discussion.
You can read more about the series and the SoAn Antiracism Initiative here.
SOAN 