Category Archives: Announcements

Open Positions for Grad Student Representatives on ACYIG Board

The Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group is recruiting two graduate student representatives to join the board for the 2022-2023 year.

Join a team of anthropologists who are passionate about supporting and promoting global anthropological perspectives on childhood and youth.

The two student representatives will work together and with the Board to create networks and opportunities for graduate students interested in the study of childhood and youth. Additionally, the two representatives will hold the following specific responsibilities:

Grad Student Representative for Media Content
Responsibilities: Attend all board meetings. Contribute to digital media content and marketing strategies–including website. Take control of social media digital content, posting and keeping things updated. Supervised by the Communications chair.

Grad Student Representative for Operations
Responsibilities: Attend all board meetings. Take meeting minutes, and send to Convenor. Organize the ACYIG invited session at the AAA meetings each year. Organize a graduate student event at the AAA meetings each year (mixer, meetup, mentoring session, etc.) Supervised by the Convenor.

If you are interested in either of these positions, please send your CV and a short paragraph detailing your interest, including which position you are interested in, and qualifications to the Convenor, Elise Berman, eberman@uncc.edu by Friday 28th January 2022.

ACYIG at the 2021 AAA

(1-0571) ACYIG Invited Session: Highlighting Language through Repair Practices in Children’s Interactions (Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group)

Executive Session – Roundtable / Townhall (Virtual)
Executive Program Committee
4:30 PM – 6:15 PM

Roundtable Participants:

Matthew Burdelski (Osaka University)
Aliyah Morgenstern (Sorbonne Nouvelle University)
Pauline Beaupoil-Hourdel (Sorbonne University)
Alexander M. Thomson (UCLA)
Shannon Ward (UBC)
Lilit Ghazaryan (UCLA, organizer)
Jan David Hauck (London School of Economics and Political Science, organizer)
Candy Goodwin (UCLA, chair)

Discussant:

John Lucy (University of Chicago)

 

(5-3700) “You wouldn’t understand, you are white”: Racial Sincerity and ACT (Anti-racist Clinical Training) through Performance and Film

Late Breaking – Roundtable / Town Hall (Virtual)
Executive Program Committee
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM

Jasmine Blanks Jones
Noah Triplett
Maryann Dreas
Jai’Lysa Gamboa
Devin Kennedy
John Jackson

For access to the current draft of the program visit the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting Preliminary Program.

Seeking Chapter Submissions for COVID Play Academic Volume

Two folklorists will be editing a multidisciplinary academic volume on COVID Play and are seeking submissions for chapters. We are particularly interested in a range of cultural voices that address the play of children, youth, or adults in a variety of countries during the pandemic. Topics of interest include: resilience, creativity, and resourcefulness in play during this time, COVID related themes in play, use of public playgrounds and public spaces during the pandemic, and creative uses of online play and techno mischief.  Send expressions of interest to Dr. Anna Beresin aberesin@uarts.edu, and Dr. Julia Bishop j.c.bishop@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr. Anna Beresin is professor of psychology and folklore in critical studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the US. She serves as co-editor of the International Journal of Play.

Dr. Julia Bishop is research associate in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield in the UK where she studies children’s folklore, past and present. She is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Play.

New Book Announcement: Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication and Socialization

Dear Colleagues:

I’d like to share word of my new book: Warshel, Y. (2021). Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication and Socialization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

You can find links below for book review copies, course inspection and purchase copies, and a description of the book below those.

The book is divided into 4 parts. If you are interested in adopting for a course, dependent on your focus, you can use one or all. The first part of the book describes the production of peacebuilding versions of Israeli and Palestinian Sesame Street; the second, the reception of it by Palestinian, Jewish Israeli and Arab/Palestinian Israeli citizens in-the-making; the third, an ethnography of violence of these young audience members conflict zones lives, illuminating why they interpreted the glocal hybrid television programs the way they did; and the fourth, offering recommendations to peace media practitioners interested in applying evidence to their practice. Part IV ties together the introduction, aimed at advancing a subdiscipline of peace communication, to provide scholars with methodological recommendations to critically and empirically determine the utility using media to build, make, and sustain peace in contexts of armed political conflicts.

While focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the book is framed both comparatively and globally so applicable to and includes recommendations for using communication to manage conflict worldwide and address debates surrounding structural discrimination and social justice.

A TEDx talk I gave summarizes the book and can be used together with chapters as a standalone course module for teaching (including for those in need of an asynchronous online module): https://www.ted.com/talks/yael_warshel_a_call_for_evidence_can_media_help_build_make_and_sustain_peace

purchase copies: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/experiencing-the-israelipalestinian-conflict/696329534C17D1B0BA9243FE02A7D0C8

review copies: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/request-review-copy

inspection copies: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/textbooks/inspection-copy-information

Book Description:

“Over the last eighty years there has been a global rise in ‘peace communication’ practice, the use of interpersonal and mass communication interventions to mediate between peoples engaged in political conflict. In this study, Yael Warshel analyses Israeli and Palestinian versions of Sesame Street which targeted negative inter-group attitudes and stereotypes. Merging communication, peace and conflict studies, social psychology, anthropology, political science, education, Middle Eastern and childhood studies, this book provides a template to think about how audiences receive, interpret, use and are influenced by peace communication. By picking apart the text and subtext of the kind of media these specific audiences of children consume, Warshel examines how they interpret ‘peace communication’ interventions, are socialised into Palestinians, Jewish Israelis and Arab/Palestinian Israelis, political opinions they express, and violence they reproduce. She questions whether peace communication practices have any relevant structural impact on their audiences, why such interventions fail, and offers recommendations for improving future communication interventions into political conflict worldwide.”

Best,

Yael Warshel
Pennsylvania State University

Anthropology of Childhood and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) Statement of Solidarity and Action

The Anthropology of Childhood and Youth Interest Group, part of the American Anthropological Association, condemns the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and all of the many Black individuals violently killed. We stand with and point to the Association of Black Anthropologists’ statement against police violence and anti-Black racism.  As scholars of childhood and youth, we know that racism does untold violence to child and youth lives. As a predominantly white subdiscipline, in a discipline that has been shaped and intimately intertwined with whiteness and colonialism, we also acknowledge our current and historical complicity in Black oppression.

This statement is delayed because we have taken some time to think about what we can concretely do as an organization. We both call for comprehensive equity in the treatment of Black children and youth and commit ourselves to learn more about anti-Black racism and racial disparities in our discipline. Specifically, we commit to:

An Inclusive syllabus project and pedagogy.  Our hope is that through citing and deeply engaging with Black authors and Black communities who are too often silenced, we can help foster coalitional empathy among students and provide space in our classrooms for addressing oppression-based trauma (e.g., trauma from xenophobia, forced displacement, anti-Black racism, etc.) and combatting racial violence in all forms. We will compile suggestions of inclusive syllabi focused on the study of childhood and post these on our website.

A commitment to publishing from NEOS.  At NEOS, we stand in unequivocal solidarity with Black colleagues, students,  practitioners, and communities.  We commit to using NEOS as a platform to center issues of racial (in)justices in the lives of children and youth and to amplify the voices of scholars of color. In our commitment to equity in action, the October 2020 Issue of NEOS will be dedicated to exploring the intersections of childhood and health and we will prioritize submissions that attend to issues of racism and inequities in health, healthcare, and well-being. We also commit to the creation of a new standing column in NEOS dedicated to racial equity and the dismantling of white supremacy, which will be catalyzed by an April 2021 Special Issue on anti-Black racism, racial brutality, and the unapologetic pursuit of justice.

Recruitment and representation.  We will actively recruit BIPOC board members, as well as presenters in invited sessions and conferences. We are also planning on a number of keynote talks next year, and we are making a concerted effort to address some of the disparities in our field in these public gatherings.

Reflexive Introspection and Analysis. We will set up a committee to examine and report on equity and racism within the study of childhood itself, with suggestions for what we as an organization can do to address these issues.

 

Call for an Invited Session at the 2020 AAA’s

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

ACYIG: The Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group is announcing a call for an invited session at the 2020 American Anthropological Association in St. Louis, MO. We seek panels reflecting this year’s theme, “truth and responsibility” within a reimagined anthropology. We encourage submissions that are innovative, progressive, and pedagogically center the anthropology of children and youth. We are especially interested in panels that have a cross-cultural, cross-regional, and interdisciplinary reach. “Truth and Responsibility” is the broad theme of this year’s meeting.

ACYIG is broadly and holistically conceived as a collective of anthropologists and other scholars working in areas that emphasize the study of children and youth. It is formally constituted as the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).

Please, email your session abstract along with the individual abstracts from each presenter (of no more than 500 words), and  presenter names and roles by Tuesday, March 31, 2020, by 5PM CST to elisha.oliver@okstate.edu and elisha.r.oliver@occc.edu

Thank you and looking forward to reading your work!
ACYIG Board

 

CFP for April 2020 Issue of NEOS

NEOS: The flagship publication of the Anthropology of Children & Youth Interest Group
Theme: “Rich Pasts, Future Horizons: A New Decade in the Anthropology of Children & Youth”

The turn of the decade offers opportunities for retrospection, reflection, and imagining new paths ahead. As we launch the first issue of the decade and a new online format, we look to the future of child and youth studies and honor the solid foundation of scholarly innovation and community-building accomplished thus far in the field.

NEOS welcomes submission for its upcoming April 2020 issue: Rich Pasts, Future Horizons: A New Decade in the Anthropology of Children & Youth. We invite short-form original research articles (1,000 words max, excluding references), as well as commentaries (500 words max, excluding references) that address the issue’s theme. We are particularly interested in:

    1) Articles & commentaries that address methodological, ethical, geographical, political, and intersectional challenges/opportunities in childhood and youth studies; and
    2) Articles that speak to interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research in child and youth studies

NEOS also welcomes original research articles that—while not necessarily directly connected to the CFP theme—highlight recent “hot off the press” research in the field.

NEOS is an open-access publication of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association. We publish research on childhood and youth from scholars working across the four fields of anthropology, as well from those interdisciplinary fields in conversation with anthropological theories and methods. Articles published in NEOS undergo a double-blind peer-review process, and commentaries are reviewed by the NEOS Editorial Team.

The deadline for submissions is March 16, 2020 (end of the day). For further information on the submission process, see here.

We ask that all authors planning to submit articles or commentaries email the NEOS editors no later than March 2, 2020, with a brief message about their intent to submit and short abstract of their commentary or article. NEOS Editors may be reached at acyig.editor@gmail.com