Announcements

Senior SOAN major Hannah and her boyfriend Shane were recently featured on Instagram TV and the Today Show in light of Valentine’s Day!

Before Emily Culver embarked on her Sociology/Anthropology Comps project, she knew that she wanted to do research that would reach beyond academia and be of use to a broader community. She had interned at Growing Up Healthy the summer before, so when she reached out to the coordinator about the possibility of volunteering alongside them while doing research for her Comps, they were happy to have her.

URBAN FIELD SCHOOL
Ethnography & the Urban Experience:
Millennials, Youth Crime, and Work in the Inner City
ANT 295 (3W1) with Urban Ethnographer Professor Ric Curtis
John Jay College’s Urban Field School is the only field school of its kind in the United States and is designed to train students from colleges and universities across the country in urban ethnography and other innovative research methods. Become immersed in an urban field site as anthropologists involved in hands-on learning about the problems and processes vital to the future of city life. Gain on-the-scene experience and develop expertise in mixed method research methodologies that may include:
• Participant-observation and direct observation
• Geo-mapping
• Respondent-driven sampling
• Cultural expert interviewing
• Writing and coding field notes
• Rapid-assessment surveys
• Photography for research and analysis
• Video ethnography
• Multi-method evaluation techniques: trend;
impact; needs; & technology analyses
This summer, we will work on a research project that focuses on Mercer Sullivan’s classic, “Getting Paid”: Youth Crime and Work in the Inner City (1989). Following in Sullivan’s footsteps, students will participate in team research with their own updated study on “Millennials, Youth Crime, and Work in the Inner City” and will spend at least 30 hours in the field and 15 hours in a classroom setting. By the end of this intensive 3-week course, students will have designed, implemented, and participated in an urban field research project focusing on ethnographic methods of data collection. They will also have discussed various issues including theory, analysis, and ethics with their fellow students and instructors. The John Jay College Urban Field School provides students with a learning experience that links theories and concepts that are central to anthropology and other social sciences to the methods and techniques that anthropologists use to do their work and offers an excellent opportunity for personal and professional career development, including preparation for graduate school.

To register please visit: www.jjay.cuny.edu/summer

The University of Minnesota Department of Anthropology is planning to hold, for the first time, a six-credit summer field course in Kenya. The focus of the excavations will be 17-20 million year old fossil ape sites on Rusinga Island, and the course will be taught by me and by a visiting professor of geology (Dr. Lauren Michel) who has been working on Rusinga for a decade and looks forward to sharing this research experience with motivated undergraduates.

Note that the course fee ($3500) INCLUDES the tuition cost for six credits, as well as all of your expenses while in Kenya for the course. Airfare to Kenya, vaccinations/medications, and a Kenyan travel visa are extra.

The course will be capped at 12-14 students and will have a formal application process in place soon. If you are interested in earning college credit while working on fossil excavations in Kenya, please join me for an informational meeting on March 23 at 3:30pm in Blegen 318. If ypu have any questions contact Prof McNulty.

Anthropology students are encouraged to participate in this annual poster session at the American Anthropological Association meetings featuring undergraduate student research. This is the ELEVENTH year and we keep growing!

First Rites: Innovative Undergraduate Research in Anthropology 

Undergraduate students are an increasingly important element in the production of anthropological knowledge. In its best form, undergraduate research can be seen as an apprenticeship, wherein the novitiate is granted a partnership and some degree of agency in pushing the boundaries of and crossing into new frontiers of shared knowledge. Collaboration with undergraduate students in research is one of the important ways we can facilitate innovation within our discipline. Their research breaks down classroom/research boundaries, focuses on the importance of experiential learning, and exploits the naiveté and vigor of students not yet indoctrinated into paradigmatic complacency. Undergraduate students can be agents and partners in reshaping the landscape of anthropology. The importance of undergraduate research and scholarly activity is underscored both in financial support by federal-level agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Institutes of Health, and the growing number of faculty-student collaborations in anthropology departments across the globe. Through their engagement, undergraduate students challenge current boundaries and present their findings in the inter-disciplinary medium of visual posters to enrich anthropological inquiry into the human experience.

Students are especially encouraged to present on topics that link to this year’s theme of “Evidence, Accident, Discovery,” raising issues central to debates within both anthropology and politics in a neoliberal, climate-changing, social media-networked era.

This session is generously sponsored by the Society for Visual Anthropology. Students are encouraged to highlight both their work and their visual acumen via research posters of their projects. The SVA will evaluate all entries in this session and recognize exemplary posters – that is, those that maximize the possibilities of the format – with a prize.

Interested students must

(1) Become a student member of the AAA, if they are not already.

(2) Register for the conference

http://www.americananthro.org/AttendEvents/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=1697&navItemNumber=69.

(3) Upload their poster title and abstract by April 10. Our session is sponsored by the Society for Visual Anthropology, so please indicate them as the reviewer. Choose “First Rites: Innovative Undergraduate Research in Anthropology” as the poster session in which you would like to participate.

(4) Send Dr. Deb Rotman (drotman@nd.edu) a copy of the following information

               Student name(s)

  Institutional Affiliation
               Email contact(s)
               Poster title
               Poster abstract

Operation Groundswell is a non-profit organization that runs international volunteering programs, focusing on social justice issues and working alongside local activists, organizations, and communities. We are looking for globally conscious and socially active students who want to spend their summer exploring some of the most complex and beautiful countries in the world! 

If you’re into cultural exchange, meaningful community service, and off-the-beaten path adventure, apply by our early bird deadline on February 29^th!

Space is limited.

*Financial assistance is available for all students on five- and six-week programs.

Check out where we go: 

 www.operationgroundswell.com 

Summer programs are open in the following countries and regions:

India – Education or Gender Rights

 Southeast Asia – Conservation or Youth Empowerment

Middle East – Human Rights

Ghana – Global Health

Tanzania – Social Innovation

Uganda: Development or Youth Empowerment

Guatemala – Fair Trade Justice, Human Rights, or Peace & Conflict

Peru – Environment

Can’t travel in the summer? Join us for our alternative breaks in the spring!

The University of Michigan Undergraduate Journal of Anthropology is a new journal focused on showcasing the best work produced by undergraduates in all four fields of the discipline.

Do you have an interest in marine archaeology or African art? Maybe you just want a productive way to spend your summer getting hands-on experience working in anthropology as well as in an office environment. Whatever your career goals may be, the AAA internship program provides two exceptional students with the opportunity to spend a summer earning valuable work experience and living in Washington, DC.

“I appreciated the reality of the internship, the kindness of the people I worked with and the glimpse of world-applicable work that I received,” said 2015 AAA Summer intern, Emily Haver. “The things I treasure most are the connections I made with fellow archaeologists and culture enthusiasts, and the ideas they gave to lead me to my next steps in anthropology.”

Funded entirely by member donations, AAA internships are six weeks in length, running from the end of June through August. The internships are unpaid, but interns will be provided housing and a meal/travel stipend.

Interns will spend the majority of their time working on-site at either the Naval History & Heritage Command or the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Individuals selected for the program will also have the opportunity to work on special projects at the AAA offices in Arlington, VA.

Download and submit your application and supporting materials here, Link: http://projects.americananthro.org/internship/

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The City of Minneapolis, Minneapolis Public Schools, the Metropolitan Council, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, the State of Minnesota, are currently seeking future leaders for employment in a summer leadership development program for college students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

• Full-time, competitively paid, professional resume-building work experience for undergraduates and graduate students.
• Direct access to agency leaders including but not limited to the Mayor, City Council members, Department Heads, Superintendents, and Executive Directors.
• A team-based community project that will be presented to City Council, community stakeholders, senior management and colleagues.
•  Leadership and communications skills development as part of the Urban Scholars Leadership Institute
• Networking Advisors to provide guidance to achieve professional goals.
• Opportunities to create valuable professional networks.

This highly competitive summer internship starts on Monday, May 23, 2016 and ends on Friday, August 12, 2016. Applications will be accepted until Friday, February 19, 2016. This opportunity is open to undergraduate and graduate college students regardless of academic major. Public sector experience is highly desired, but not required.

Requirements:

• Must be enrolled and in good standing at an accredited two or four year college, university, graduate program, or law school or must be a recent graduate with a degree conferred between December 2015 and May 2016.
• Must have completed first year of post-secondary education.
• Must be authorized to work in the United States
• Must be able to participate on a full-time basis for 12 weeks (40 hours per week)

Please note that recent graduates (December 2015 & May of 2016) are eligible for participation and there is no residency requirement.

For more information and a link to the online application, visit: www.minneapolismn.gov/urbanscholars. If you have specific questions or need additional information, please contact: urban.scholars@minneapolismn.gov or (612) 673-2516.