Category Archives: Announcements

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

On the Horizon: ACYIG Welcomes New NEOS Co-Editors and a Fresh Perspective

In August 2019, Drs. Courtney L. Everson and Maria V. Barbero began their positions as the new Co-Editors of NEOS: The Official Publication of the Anthropology of Children & Youth Interest Group (ACYIG), American Anthropological Association (AAA).

Read on to meet the new Co-Editors and hear their vision for the future of NEOS!

An Introductory Letter from the NEOS Co-Editors

Greetings!

We are honored to join ACYIG-AAA leadership as the new NEOS Co-Editors. We want to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, the editorial team, and the rising horizons for NEOS!

A Reflective Pause: This past February, NEOS celebrated its 10th year as a publication dedicated to building community among child and youth studies scholars, practitioners, and students. Over the years, it has morphed and re-shaped to meet the needs of its readership, both within and beyond the AAA community. As scholars who have found community within this carefully cultivated space for rigorous scholarly engagement and collegial support, we are thrilled to be able to continue this legacy, reflecting on how NEOS can be further re-imagined in line with the ever-evolving needs of our community.

You may have noticed it is October and you have not yet received your October issue of NEOS in your inbox. Good observation! We have decided to use our transition into the Co-Editor positions as an opportunity to take a NEOS reflective pause, reflecting on the good work accomplished to-date by our predecessors and thoughtfully planning for the future of NEOS. In commitment to our NEOS vision and goals (outlined below), we have worked with the ACYIG Board to develop a membership/readership survey in place of an October Issue. We genuinely believe that the future of NEOS must be participatory, meaningful, and responsive. As engaged researchers, we can think of no better way to enact this belief than to begin our journey as NEOS Co-Editors with direct input from our esteemed colleagues, allied practitioners, and students.

We thus cordially invite you to take the ACYIG/NEOS 2019 Survey. The survey can be found here or via www.bitly.com/ACYIG2019. The survey closes on December 6th, so don’t delay — help us shape the future of NEOS and ACYIG!

Our Vision: As the official publication of the Anthropology of Continue reading On the Horizon: ACYIG Welcomes New NEOS Co-Editors and a Fresh Perspective

Join the ACYIG Team as a Communications Committee Member

Starting January 2020 we are looking for the follow Communications Committee Member:

Webmaster – Maintains ACYIG’s website, including updated links, announcements, blogs and resources. Makes suggestions and implement functionality of the website that supports the continued online presence and growth of ACYIG. Knowledge of WordPress and coding a plus, but not required. Participation in quarterly Communications’ Team meetings is required.

If you would like to be considered for the position above, please email one to two paragraphs to Dori Beeler at dbeeler1@jhmi.edu by September 30, 2019 stating why you would like to become an ACYIG sub-committee member and what you feel you can bring to the position. Please be sure to include your name, title, affiliation (academic or otherwise) and email/phone number so that we can respond to you, and clearly list the position for which you are applying.

The ACYIG Board will make decisions by October 7, and notify you soon after. Duties as an ACYIG Board Member or a sub-committee member will begin January 1, 2020 giving time for a handover with the current webmaster.

If you have any questions about ACYIG committee member duties or the open appointment process, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to answer any questions.

New Article: “Zambian Children’s Imaginal Caring: On Fantasy, Play, and Anticipation in an Epidemic”.

by Jean Hunleth

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork she conducted in Zambia between 2005 and 2014, Jean Hunleth’s new article examines the fantastical stories children created to account for their own caregiving practices during a TB and HIV epidemic in Lusaka, Zambia. Through the lens of fantasy, Hunleth provides a productive account of children as both agentive and vulnerable, imaginative and cognizant.
This article was originally published in Cultural Anthropology and may also be accessed at the following link: https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/3915/442

NEOS FEBRUARY 2019 EDITION NOW AVAILABLE!

The February 2019 issue of Neos is now available for your reading pleasure at http://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/current-issue/.

Highlights include: 
  • “Parenting and solidarity in research on (im)migrant youth” by Andrea Dyrness (U of Colorado, Boulder) – pp. 4
  • “Childhood and divergent experiences of armed conflict in Nepal” by Krista Billingsley (U of South Florida) – pp. 8
  • “On Hopes, Dreams, and Tensions: Youth Perspectives on Combining Digital Literacy and Cultural Resurgence” by Amy C Mack, Rob McMahon, and Herman Manyguns (U of Alberta) – pp. 15

Let us know what you think! Share your reactions in a Letter to the Editor at ACYIG.Editor@gmail.com.