Spring 2020 Colloquium Series: Rachel Heiman 2.28.20

 

RACHEL HEIMAN, The New School

February 28, 2020 4:15 – 6:15 pm in room C415A (one floor below the Lobby) Ph.D. Program in Anthropology | The Graduate Center, CUNY

SUSTAINABLE SUBURBANISM IN THE AMERICAN WEST: an unlikely convergence of Mining, Mormon, and Planning Practice

ABSTRACT: This talk draws on four summers of fieldwork in an unlikely site for the production of environmental subjects and expertise: a massive master-planned community in Utah spearheaded by one the largest mining conglomerates in the world and developed with equal parts attention to sustainable suburbanism and values of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Now 16 years into an anticipated 30-year build out on remediated mining lands, the suburb in which the project is located is one of the fastest growing U.S. cities and has become an object lesson in sustainable development in politically conservative areas of the American West, including for its award-wining advanced stormwater retention system that integrates landscape architecture, infrastructural design, and earthquake preparedness. My research sheds light on the generative power of diverse temporalities and modes of legitimacy in this long-term build-out, as architects, mining officials, planning non-profits, builders, municipal workers, residents, marketers, master gardeners, and politicians negotiate aspirations for—and anxieties about—the material, social, aesthetic, and environmental future of the American suburb.

Spring 2020 Colloquium Series: Alex E. Chávez

2-21-20 Chavez

Chávez Verses and Flows: Migrant Lives and the Sounds of Crossing

Alex E. Chávez
Nancy O’Neill Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

ABSTRACT
In his award-winning book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke 2017), Dr. Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and aural poetics of huapango arribeño, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. In this presentation, he draws on this work to address how Mexican migrants voice desires of recognition and connection through performance, and the politics such desires attain amidst the transnational context of migrant deportability. As a researcher, artist, and participant, Chávez has consistently crossed the boundary between scholar and performer in the realms of academic research and publicly engaged work as a musician and producer. In this presentation, he draws on these experiences to address the politics of his intellectual and creative work and how he engages both to theorize around the political efficacy of sound-based practices, the “voice,” and the disciplinary futures of borderlands anthropology.

Friday, February 21, 2020
4:15-6:15 PM | room C415A
The Graduate Center | 365 Fifth Ave.

gc.cuny.edu/anthropology

Spring 2020 Colloquium Series: Feb. 7 Nina Glick Schiller

2-7-20 Schiller

Dispossession: A Conjunctural Analysis

Nina Glick Schiller, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Abstract: Analyses of emerging processes of capital accumulation through dispossession can illuminate both ethnographic research and struggles to build inclusive movements for social justice at a global conjunctural moment of racist authoritarianism and the rise of a neo-fascist “right’.  After examining the current moment and debates about the nature and contemporary significance of accumulation by dispossession, I link these debates to the anthropology of migration, cities, and social movements.

Letter to Prospective Students in Cultural Anthropology

Dear Prospective Student,

Thank you for your interest in our Ph.D. program.

Here is some information about the program. We admit 13-15 cultural anthropology students per year. Each is guaranteed some form of financial support. 9-10 will get full stipends in the amount of $25,000 per year for five years. Three of those five years include teaching. The others do not. Of these funded students, some are also eligible for Provost Enhancement Fellowships, which include a supplement to the stipend in the amount of $10,000+. The remaining 4 students get tuition scholarships, so they only have to pay for their own living expenses. Information about the different fellowships can be found here.

We also welcome students with outside funding packages, especially from their countries of origin, if they are international students.  This happens frequently.

The admissions procedures can be found online here:

The whole application is important, but three parts are especially so. First is the admissions essay. We look closely at that.  Second is your writing sample.  Third, it is important to know whom you would be interested in working with.  We ask you to list at least 4 faculty members who might be interested in your project.  We ask this because we are, of course, very interested in admitting students who have a direct interest in working with our faculty.

Here is a link to our faculty webpage.  It includes a short profile about each faculty member.

You might wish to use this as a starting point, if necessary, to identify faculty with whom you might wish to work.

I am available to meet with prospective graduate students in November and December of 2019.  Please contact our program office to make an appointment or to set up a time to talk.  You can  contact information on our program’s website here.
The application deadline for Fall 2020 admission is Dec. 1, 2019.
Finally, if you are in town during the fall semester, please stop by for one of our Friday colloquia and join us for the reception that follows.  Information about our Fall 2019 colloquia series can be found here.
I look forward to reading your application!

Take care,

Jeff Maskovsky, Ph.D.

Professor and Executive Officer (Chair)
Ph.D. Program in Anthropology
The CUNY Graduate Center, Rm. 6406.01
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309
E-mail: jmaskovsky@gc.cuny.edu
Tel: 212-817-8005

If you are interested in one of the other subfields, contact the coordinator for the subfield:

Dr. Alexander Bauer – Archaelogy subfield coordinator (alexander.bauer@qc.cuny.edu)
Dr. Miki Makihara – Linguistics subfield coordinator (miki.makihara@qc.cuny.edu)
Dr. Eric Delson – Physical subfield coordinator (eric.delson@lehman.cuny.edu)