Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/group/3469/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Human Consumption of Large Herbivore Digesta and its Implication for Foraging Theory (March 22, 2024 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/120294 120294-21844517@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 22, 2024 12:00pm
Location: School of Education
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Vegetal matter undergoing digestion in herbivores’ stomachs and intestines, digesta, can be an important source of dietary carbohydrates for human foragers. Digesta significantly increases large herbivores’ total caloric yield and broadens their nutritional profile to include three key macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) in amounts sufficient to sustain small foraging groups for multiple days without supplementation. Including this underappreciated resource in our foraging hypotheses and models can substantively change their predictions. In this talk, I explore the foraging implications of digesta in two contexts—sex-divided subsistence labor and archaeologically observed increases in plant use and sedentism—using estimates of available protein and carbohydrates in the native tissues and digesta, respectively, of a large ruminant herbivore (Bison bison).

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:01:36 -0400 2024-03-22T12:00:00-04:00 2024-03-22T13:00:00-04:00 School of Education Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion rg
SocioCultural Anthropology Colloquium: "Bodies, Knowledge, and Sovereignty" (March 22, 2024 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/116760 116760-21837963@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 22, 2024 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

"What does the body know? What can bodies tell us about ontologies that cannot be recuperated or resolved into Western ways of knowing? What can they tell us about the forms of collective world-building that exist outside of but in relation to the juridical structures of sovereignty that govern modern Western political and social life? And further, what might sovereignty look like, and feel like, if we approached it not primarily in terms of its foundational violences (conquest, imperialism, settler colonialism, capitalist extraction, and so on) but in relation to the forms of self-determination and autonomy people have attempted to create in the realm of everyday life? This paper will explore these questions in order to in order to claim that we are heir not only to colonial logics, but also to the means to refuse or retool them, and that both of these inheritances are inscribed in and on the body. Thinking through and with the space of Kumina in Jamaica, and particularly through a kumina festival I have co-organized for the past five years, I reflect on the ways community-based spaces of care, creativity, and spirituality can open portals to thinking beyond linearity, creating channels for accountability, and investigating contemporary mobilizations of personhood and political life on post-but-still-colonial terrain. I argue that being attuned to the body’s inheritances can provide inroads into genealogies of sovereignty alternative to those that are tethered to the foundational frames of property, accumulation, and dispossession."

Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. Her recent book, Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair, was awarded the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association in 2021, the Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society in 2020, and was also the runner-up for the Gregory Bateson Prize in the same year. She is also the author of Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (2011), and Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004). She is co-editor of the volumes Sovereignty Unhinged: An Illustrated Primer for the Study of Present Intensities, Disavowals, and Temporal Derangements (2023), Citizenship on the Edge: Sex, Gender, Race (2022); Changing Continuities and the Scholar-Activist Anthropology of Constance R. Sutton (2022); and Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness (2006). Thomas co-directed and co-produced the documentary films Bad Friday, and Four Days in May, and she is the co-curator of a multi-media installation titled Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston, which was on view at the Penn Museum from November 2017 to October 2020. From 2016-2020, Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and she is currently the co-chair of the AAA Commission on the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains. Prior to Thomas’s life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 12 Mar 2024 12:35:10 -0400 2024-03-22T15:00:00-04:00 2024-03-22T16:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
RCGD/EHAP Winter Seminar Series: Runaway Social Selection in Human Evolution (April 1, 2024 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/115987 115987-21835980@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 1, 2024 2:00pm
Location: Institute For Social Research
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Runaway Social Selection in Human Evolution
Monday, April 1, 2024 (2 PM – 3:30 PM)

Mark Flinn
University of Missouri

Charles Darwin posited that social competition among conspecifics could be a powerful selective pressure. Richard Alexander (1989, 1990) proposed a model of human evolution involving a runaway process of social competition based on Darwin’s insight. Here we briefly review Alexander’s logic, and then expand upon his model by elucidating runaway, positive-feedback processes that were likely involved in the evolution of the remarkable combination of adaptations in humans. We discuss how these ideas fit with the hypothesis that increased inter-group interaction and cooperation among individuals in small fission-fusion groups opened the door to runaway social selection and cumulative culture during hominin evolution.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:24:24 -0500 2024-04-01T14:00:00-04:00 2024-04-01T15:30:00-04:00 Institute For Social Research Department of Anthropology Workshop / Seminar RCGD/EHAP Winter Seminar Series: Runaway Social Selection in Human Evolution
Linguistic Anthropology Colloquium: "Unsettling Signs: Indexical Disorder and the Diacritics of Raciolinguistic Life" (April 1, 2024 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/119919 119919-21843820@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 1, 2024 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Unsettling Signs: Indexical Disorder and the Diacritics of Raciolinguistic Life

The framework of indexical order has been powerfully deployed in sociolinguistic and broader semiotic analyses throughout the world. This presentation critically engages with prevailing empiricist approaches to indexicality which focus on signs’ heterogeneous meanings across contexts. It examines institutionalized attributions of deficiency and experiences of structural marginalization to offer the alternative framework of indexical disorder, which emphasizes the profound role of modern colonialism and racism in overdetermining signs’ meaningfulness. The goal is to develop new insights into organizing power structures across contexts, as well as to rethink how indexicality can be a crucial analytic for understanding and unsettling these structures.


Jonathan Rosa is Associate Professor of Education, Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, and, by courtesy, Anthropology, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is author of Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press) and co-editor of Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). His work has been published in scholarly journals such as Harvard Educational Review, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, as well as featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, and Univision.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 08 Mar 2024 15:59:46 -0500 2024-04-01T15:00:00-04:00 2024-04-01T16:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
2024 Betty Ch’maj Distinguished American Studies Lecture (April 2, 2024 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/119155 119155-21842278@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 2, 2024 4:00pm
Location: Palmer Commons
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Professor Jason De León will be delivering the 2024 Betty Ch’maj Distinguished American Studies Lecture.

De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of the award-winning book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow. He is also Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a 501©(3) research, arts, and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally while also assisting families of missing migrants be reunited with their loved ones.

Professor De León’s lecture will draw from his new book Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, which is coming out in March 2024.

The lecture will take place on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 from 4-5:30 pm in Forum Hall, Palmer Commons. A reception will follow immediately in the atrium outside.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 21 Feb 2024 11:26:15 -0500 2024-04-02T16:00:00-04:00 2024-04-02T19:00:00-04:00 Palmer Commons Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion Event Poster
ASC 15th Anniversary Conference. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Keys to US-Africa Partnership (April 5, 2024 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/120233 120233-21844441@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 5, 2024 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

This two-day conference will feature notable speakers and panelists and explore the future of higher education, academic collaboration, and student engagement in Africa.

The event is free and open to the public; registration is requested. Please register at https://myumi.ch/DrGME

~~~ *Friday, April 5, 2024* ~~~

[9:00 am] Opening Remarks by Santa Ono, U-M President, and Omolade Adunbi, ASC Director

[9:15 am] Keynote Remarks by Mary Catherine Phee, Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State Bureau of African Affairs

[10:35-11:35 am] Democratization and its Challenges in Africa

[11:35 am] Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe, Mandate Secretary for Health and Environment, Federal Government of Nigeria

[12:15 pm] Fireside Chat with Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe and Dr. Joseph C. Kolars, University of Michigan

[2:00-2:15 pm] Keynote Remarks by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, Michigan’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives

[2:15-3:15 pm] Engaging Higher Education in Africa and the United States

[3:15-4:15 pm] Archives, Open Access, and the Politics of Knowledge

[4:15-5:15 pm] Artificial Intelligence in Africa: Possibilities, Progress, and Caveats

[5:15-6:15 pm] UMAPS Alumni meet Faculty Hosts


~~~ *Saturday, April 6, 2024* ~~~

[9:00 am] Keynote Remarks by Sarah Mosoetsa, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council

[10:00-11:00 am] Innovate Africa: Technologies, Opportunities, and Economic Possibilities

[11:00 am-12:00 pm] Technologies, Climate Change, and Politics of Extraction in Africa

[1:00-2:00 pm] New Frontiers of Data Research & Health in Africa

[2:00-3:00 pm] Climate Change, Conflict, and Social Media in Africa

[3:15-4:15 pm] Decolonizing Ancient History and Archeology in Africa

[4:15 pm] Keynote Remarks by Judd B. Devermont, Kupanda Capital and former Special Assistant to President Joe Biden

[5:15 pm] Closing Address by Omolade Adunbi, ASC Director

*Thank you to the following cosponsors for making the 15th-year conference possible.*

Center for Global Health Equity; Department of Afroamerican and African Studies; Department of History; Department of Anthropology; Department of English; Global Islamic Studies Center; International Institute; LSA Office of the Dean; LSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Office of the Vice President for Research; Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; Office of the Provost Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Office of the Provost Engaged Learning

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Conference / Symposium Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:21:59 -0400 2024-04-05T09:00:00-04:00 2024-04-05T18:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Department of Anthropology Conference / Symposium Banner displays the event information and keynote speakers: ASC 15th Anniversary Conference. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Keys to US-Africa Partnership
SocioCultural Anthropology Colloquium: "Follow the Water: Connecting Hydrospheres in the Arctic and the Gulf Coast" (April 5, 2024 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/116208 116208-21836444@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 5, 2024 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

"As temperature records are broken across the world, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets is accelerating. Rising surface temperatures likewise guarantee new conditions of drought and flood, exacerbated by a slowing jet stream that will tend to stall weather systems in unpredictable ways. Our changing cryospheres and hydrospheres promise misery to millions across the planet. But they also reveal forms of material connectivity that could potentially be mobilized in the struggle against climate change and the petroculture that produced it. In this presentation, we juxtapose Cymene Howe’s elemental ethnography of the transformation of ice into water in the Arctic with Dominic Boyer’s research on how Houstonians are seeking to adapt to the increasing presence of stormwater in their lives. We discuss a concept we call “hydrological globalization” to highlight the elemental connections and cultural impacts that follow from the redistribution of water across the planet. We also highlight how hydrological precarity creates new possibilities for alliances across the world built out of shared Anthropocene experiences like droughts, fires and flooding."

Dominic Boyer is an anthropologist, media maker and environmental researcher who teaches at Rice University where he served as Founding Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (2013-2019). He recently published Energopolitics (Duke UP, 2019), which analyzes the politics of wind power development in Southern Mexico and Hyposubjects (Open Humanities Press, 2021), an experimental collaboration with Timothy Morton concerning politics in the Anthropocene. With Cymene Howe, he made a documentary film about Iceland’s first major glacier (Okjökull) lost to climate change, Not Ok: a little movie about a small glacier at the end of the world (2018). In August 2019, together with Icelandic collaborators they installed a memorial to Okjökull’s passing, an event that attracted media attention from around the world and which caused The Economist to create their first-ever obituary for a non-human. During 2021-22 he held an artist residency at The Factory in Djúpavík, Iceland, and was a Berggruen Institute Fellow in Los Angeles working on a project on “Electric Futures.” His most recent book is titled No More Fossils (U Minnesota Press, 2023) a discussion of fossil fuel fossils and what is to be done about them.

Cymene Howe is Professor of Anthropology and Founding Co-Director of the Science and Technology Studies Program at Rice University. Her books include Intimate Activism (Duke 2013) and Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke 2019), and the co-edited collections Anthropocene Unseen (Punctum 2020), Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions (Punctum 2023), and The Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and she was awarded The Berlin Prize for transatlantic dialogue in the arts, humanities, and public policy. Her current research examines the changing dynamics between people and bodies of ice in the Arctic region and sea level adaptation in coastal cities around the world. Out of her research in the Arctic region, she co-created documentary film Not Ok: A Little Movie about a Small Glacier at the End of the World (2019) and the memorial for Okjökull, the world’s first funeral for a glacier fallen to climate change.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:50:31 -0400 2024-04-05T15:00:00-04:00 2024-04-05T16:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
ASC 15th Anniversary Conference. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Keys to US-Africa Partnership (April 6, 2024 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/120233 120233-21844442@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, April 6, 2024 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

This two-day conference will feature notable speakers and panelists and explore the future of higher education, academic collaboration, and student engagement in Africa.

The event is free and open to the public; registration is requested. Please register at https://myumi.ch/DrGME

~~~ *Friday, April 5, 2024* ~~~

[9:00 am] Opening Remarks by Santa Ono, U-M President, and Omolade Adunbi, ASC Director

[9:15 am] Keynote Remarks by Mary Catherine Phee, Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State Bureau of African Affairs

[10:35-11:35 am] Democratization and its Challenges in Africa

[11:35 am] Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe, Mandate Secretary for Health and Environment, Federal Government of Nigeria

[12:15 pm] Fireside Chat with Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe and Dr. Joseph C. Kolars, University of Michigan

[2:00-2:15 pm] Keynote Remarks by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, Michigan’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives

[2:15-3:15 pm] Engaging Higher Education in Africa and the United States

[3:15-4:15 pm] Archives, Open Access, and the Politics of Knowledge

[4:15-5:15 pm] Artificial Intelligence in Africa: Possibilities, Progress, and Caveats

[5:15-6:15 pm] UMAPS Alumni meet Faculty Hosts


~~~ *Saturday, April 6, 2024* ~~~

[9:00 am] Keynote Remarks by Sarah Mosoetsa, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council

[10:00-11:00 am] Innovate Africa: Technologies, Opportunities, and Economic Possibilities

[11:00 am-12:00 pm] Technologies, Climate Change, and Politics of Extraction in Africa

[1:00-2:00 pm] New Frontiers of Data Research & Health in Africa

[2:00-3:00 pm] Climate Change, Conflict, and Social Media in Africa

[3:15-4:15 pm] Decolonizing Ancient History and Archeology in Africa

[4:15 pm] Keynote Remarks by Judd B. Devermont, Kupanda Capital and former Special Assistant to President Joe Biden

[5:15 pm] Closing Address by Omolade Adunbi, ASC Director

*Thank you to the following cosponsors for making the 15th-year conference possible.*

Center for Global Health Equity; Department of Afroamerican and African Studies; Department of History; Department of Anthropology; Department of English; Global Islamic Studies Center; International Institute; LSA Office of the Dean; LSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Office of the Vice President for Research; Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; Office of the Provost Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Office of the Provost Engaged Learning

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Conference / Symposium Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:21:59 -0400 2024-04-06T09:00:00-04:00 2024-04-06T18:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Department of Anthropology Conference / Symposium Banner displays the event information and keynote speakers: ASC 15th Anniversary Conference. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Keys to US-Africa Partnership
RCGD/EHAP Winter Seminar Series: A Seven Decade Lifespan? Variations on an Evolutionary Theme (April 8, 2024 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/115988 115988-21835981@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 8, 2024 2:00pm
Location: Institute For Social Research
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

A Seven Decade Lifespan? Variations on an Evolutionary Theme
Monday, April 8, 2024 (2 PM – 3:30 PM)

The evolution of human longevity still remains a curious puzzle. Here I provide some new perspectives on the why and how of longevity over the course of human evolution, using longitudinal study of subsistence societies as an imperfect lens for gaining insight. I argue that our evolved human lifespan is about seven decades, and that the multifaceted contributions of middle-to-older aged adults is part of the reason why. I will combine ethnographic, demographic and biomedical studies to shed light on the timing and significance of the transition from “asset” to “burden” in late adulthood, with implications on the global Gray Wave of population aging.

Michael Gurven is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Chair of Integrative Anthropological Sciences, and Associate Director of the Broom Center for Demography. His research program applies an evolutionary lens to help inform our understanding of aging and today’s complex diseases. Since 2002, Gurven has co-directed the Tsimane’ Health and Life History Project to better understand how lifestyle and the physical and social environment affect health and lifespan in subsistence-level societies.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 09 Feb 2024 13:36:55 -0500 2024-04-08T14:00:00-04:00 2024-04-08T15:30:00-04:00 Institute For Social Research Department of Anthropology Workshop / Seminar RCGD/EHAP Winter Seminar Series: A Seven Decade Lifespan? Variations on an Evolutionary Theme
Anthropology Honors Research Poster Symposium (May 2, 2024 10:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/119494 119494-21842826@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, May 2, 2024 10:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 10:30am-12pm, 211 WH - Titiev Library

Please join the Department of Anthropology for the Anthropology Honors student Research Symposium. The Anthropology Honors students will share their thesis research in a poster session format. Light refreshments will be served.

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Presentation Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:19:02 -0500 2024-05-02T10:30:00-04:00 2024-05-02T12:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Presentation West Hall
Anthropology Graduation Ceremony (May 3, 2024 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/119495 119495-21842827@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, May 3, 2024 1:00pm
Location: Modern Languages Building
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Friday, May 3, 2024, 1-2:30pm, MLB Auditorium 4

A graduation ceremony honoring our graduating students in the Department of Anthropology. Questions and more information available from Melinda Nelson, Undergraduate Program Coordinator, mmonro@umich.edu.

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Ceremony / Service Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:21:26 -0500 2024-05-03T13:00:00-04:00 2024-05-03T14:30:00-04:00 Modern Languages Building Department of Anthropology Ceremony / Service Modern Languages Building