Spring 2017 Colloquium Series Schedule

Full Schedule:
2.24 Elliot Blair (Univ. of Alabama) Glass Beads and Colonial Networks: A Social Network Approach to Exploring Population Aggregation in 17th Century Mission Santa Catalina de Guale

3.3 Cymene Howe & Dominic Boyer (Rice Univ.) Aeolian Futures: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene
3.1 Leo Coleman (Hunter College, CUNY) Against the Invisibility of Infrastructures 
3.17 Nessette Falu (CUNY GC) Ethical Recognitions: Resisting Sexual & Racial Prejudice in Brazilian Gynecology
3.24 Ellen Moodie (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne) Generation & Memory in Post-Postwar El Salvador

4.21 Paulina Alberto (Univ. of Michigan) El Negro Raul: Racial Stories in the Makin of an Afro-Argentice Celebrity (1886-Present)
4.28 Catherine Fennell (Columbia Univ.) The Ends of the House

5.5 Physical Anthropology Lecture – details forthcoming 

NOV. 11 Colloq | Kieran McNulty

50 Years of Progress in Untangling Ape and Human Origins

Kieran McNulty | University of Minnesota

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Unless otherwise noted, all events take place on Fridays, from 4:15-6:15 PM in room C415A (concourse level) at the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue). Please visit http://www.gc.cuny.edu/anthropology for more information.

NOV. 4 Colloq| Paul Edwards

The Glass Laboratory: Climate Knowledge Infrastructures in the Age of Hyper-Transparency

Paul Edwards | University of Michigan

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AbstractIn this talk, I argue that new media environments have created a “glass laboratory,” where even scientists’ emails become metadata in the public life of climate knowledge. I begin with a historical account of data-making in climate science, drawn from my book A Vast Machine. Next, based on recent work with climate software developers and Earth system scientists, I analyze the 1990s emergence of the knowledge infrastructure that underlies today’s broad scientific consensus on global warming. Against this historical background, I explore three climate controversies of the early 21st century: the “hockey stick,” Climategate, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. In each episode, outsiders leveraged new media to “audit” climate science, expose the deepest details of the climate knowledge infrastructure, and even create their own climate datasets. The glass laboratory presents a paradox. It holds the potential to democratize expertise and improve public trust, yet also risks rendering expert knowledge impotent in public debates. Understanding the roots of this paradox is essential for all future science-related policymaking.

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place on Fridays, from 4:15-6:15 PM in room C415A (concourse level) at the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue). Please visit: http:;//www.gc.cuny.edy/anthropology for more information.

OCT. 28 Colloq | Stephen Houston

Virile Predicaments: Shaping Men in Ancient Maya Civilization

Stephen Houston | Brown University

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Abstract:  The human arc traverses from birth to death and, depending on view, to states well beyond. What is made of that journey—a travail, a delight—constitutes a welcome opportunity for visual culture, in themes taken up around the world. So too for the Classic Maya, who flourished from c. AD 250-850. A literate people, occupants of Mexico and Central America during the first-millennium AD, they left inscriptions now open to scrutiny. Recent decipherments reveal the makers, meanings, and motives behind Classic Maya images, buildings, and the dynastic personages who commissioned them. This talk develops the claim that a central concern in Maya imagery and texts was the virile task of “growing men.” Boys and teenagers, always elites in surviving evidence, were conceived as vegetal sprouts (ch’ok), a decipherment made some decades ago but left partly in fallow. For Classic rulers, the hope was that youths would grow to become kings and nobles, ready to govern, maraud, game, feast, and reproduce.

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place Fridays, from 4:15-6:15 PM in room C415A (concourse level) at the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue). For more information please visit: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/anthropology.

OCT. 21 Colloq | J. Lorand Matory

The “Fetish” as a Race Problem: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make

J. Lorand Matory | Duke University

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Unless otherwise noted, all events take place on Fridays, 4:15-6:15 PM in room C415A (concourse level) at the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue). Please visit http://www.gc.cuny.edu/anthropology for more information