The 2013 annual meeting theme Future Publics, Current Engagements invites discussions about how anthropological theory and method can provide insight into the human past and emerging future. Read More.

A list of submission types and requirements are listed on the AAA website at: Proposal Submission Types.

Check back soon for more updates!

View last year’s ABA Conference lineup.

3-0315 Imagining Anthropology without Borders

Thursday, November 15, 2012: 10:15 AM-12:00 PM

The theme, Borders and Crossings, challenges us to consider the ways in which anthropology is influenced and reshaped as borders are crossed. This roundtable will imagine anthropology without borders. Within such a context, we will consider the implications of the varied crossing with other disciplines and the consequences for not setting boundaries within the discipline. In order to accomplish this, we will address the following questions: Does a borderless discipline limit anthropology’s ability to contribute to a better understood and more just world? For instance, has the AAA lost its center? Does the growing number of sub-sections render the AAA an increasingly diluted and fragmented organization—especially as concerns major cultural and social issues? Have anthropologists ceased raising the big and fundamental questions because of the increasing specialization within the field? When and where do the varied anthropologies and anthropologists intersect and truly speak to one another? Or, perhaps anthropology is not doing enough to protect its borders. Should anthropology be more concerned about how other disciplines borrow our theories and methodologies? Should we be more insistent that those disciplines acknowledge their anthropological heritage? Finally, are we taking the best advantage of the places where borders are crossed? Specifically, should we be more creative and flexible about existing, new and possible borders to cross in order to encourage racial and ethnic diversity within anthropology?

Organizers:

Andrea Carol Abrams (Centre College)

Chairs:

Johnnetta Betsch Cole (National Museum of African Art)

Roundtable Presenters:

Brackette F Williams (University of Arizona), Yolanda T Moses (University of California Riverside), Robert Paynter (University of Massachusetts ), Gwendolyn Mikell (Georgetown University) and Kamela S Heyward-Rotimi (University of Massachusetts)

Crossing Borders: The On-going Work and Legacy of Johnnetta Betsch Cole

Thursday, November 15, 2012: 1:45 PM–5:30 PM

1:45 PM

Introduction Faye Harrison

2:00 PM

“Nothing Is Too Good for the People” Michael L Blakey (College of William and Mary)

2:15 PM

A Tribute to Sister President: HBCUs and Their Anthropological Legacies Marla Frederick (Harvard University)

2:30 PM

We Are All Sisters: Building a Language for Theorizing Black Non-Feminist/Anti-Feminist Anthropology Riche Daniel Barnes (Smith College)

2:45 PM

Women of Color and Might:  A Consideration of Anthropology, Art, Race, Gender and Border Crossing Andrea Carol Abrams (Centre College)

3:00 PM

The Poetics and Politics of Reclaiming: Indigenous Peoples & Anthropology Robin RR Gray (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

3:15 PM

Discussant Johnnetta Betsch Cole (National Museum of African Art)

4:00 PM

Introduction A. Lynn Bolles

4:15 PM

Connecting Through Art: Johnnetta Cole’s Encore Career Mary Catherine Bateson (Professor Emerita, George Mason University)

4:30 PM

The Curatorial Life Corinne A Kratz (Emory Univ)

4:45 PM

Educational Issues: The Anglophone Caribbean and the US Arthur K Spears (City University of New York – Graduate Center)

5:00 PM

Mentoring As Legacy: The Influence of Johnnetta Betsch Cole On Self and Anthropology Irma McClaurin (McClaurin Solutions)

This session would be of particular interest to:

Those involved in mentoring activities, Students, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizers:

Riche Daniel Barnes (Smith College)

Chairs:

Faye V Harrison (University of Florida) and A Lynn Bolles PhD (University Of Maryland College Park)

Discussants:

Johnnetta Betsch Cole (National Museum of African Art)

4-0090 The Politics of Party Music: Bay Area Beats, Rhymes and Dance

Friday, November 16, 2012: 8:00 AM–9:45 AM

8:00 AM

Speaking Back and Liberating Minds: Spoken Word Among Bay Area Youth of Color Ashley D. Aaron (San Francisco State University)

8:15 AM

“So After All My Logic and My Theory”: Youth Participatory Action Research Through Hiphop Christopher Roberts (San Francisco State University and San Francisco State University)

8:30 AM

The Funk Behind Street Dance Alan Mar David (San Francisco State University)

8:45 AM

“Sound of Da Police”: Bay Area Hiphop Politics, Policy and Police

9:00 AM

Discussion

9:15 AM

Discussion

9:30 AM

Discussion

This session would be of particular interest to:

Students, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizers:

Dawn-Elissa Fischer (San Francisco State University)

Chairs:

Dawn-Elissa Fischer (San Francisco State University)

4-0220 Haitian Protestantism Across National Borders

Friday, November 16, 2012: 8:00 AM-11:45 AM

8:00 AM

The Army of Heaven: Strength and Ambiguity In Haitian Pentecostalism Frederick J Conway (San Diego State University)

8:15 AM

Notes Toward a Discussion of Protestantism, Creolization, and Self In 19th-Century Haiti Landon Yarrington (The University of Arizona)

8:30 AM

Salomon Sevère Joseph (1891-1973) and the Mission From God: The Founder and Internationalization of Indigenous Haitian Christianity Terry Rey (Temple University)

8:45 AM

Geographies of Faith In the Popular Neighborhoods of Port-Au-Prince: Protestant, Catholic, and Vodouist Coexistance, Solidarity, and Conflict Lynn Selby (The University of Texas at Austin)

9:00 AM

“If Any Man Be In Christ, He Is a New Creature”: Evangelicalism Among Haitian Agricultural Workers In the Dominican Republic David S Simmons (The University of South Carolina)

9:15 AM

Haiti’s Pact with the Devil: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Post-Earthquake Haiti Bertin M Louis Jr (The University of Tennessee)

9:30 AM

Shifting Boundaries of the Land of God and Shrines to the Anti-Christ Tekla Nicholas (Florida International University)

9:45 AM

Break

10:00 AM

Migrant Theology: Haitian Pastors and the Church of the Nazarene In Miami, FL Jemima Pierre (Vanderbilt University)

10:15 AM

Protestants Sans Frontieres: Humanitarian Thinking within the Haitian Protestant Diaspora Leonard J Lowe (The University of North Carolina)

10:30 AM

Discussant Karen E Richman (University of Notre Dame)

10:45 AM

Discussant Leslie Gerald Desmangles (Trinity College)

11:00 AM

Discussion

11:15 AM

Discussion

11:30 AM

Discussion

This session would be of particular interest to:

Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Organizers:

Bertin M Louis Jr (The University of Tennessee)

Chairs:

Bertin M Louis Jr (The University of Tennessee)

Discussants:

Leslie Gerald Desmangles (Trinity College) and Karen E Richman (University of Notre Dame)

4-0380 Mapping Diasporic Engagements/Mapping Blackness(es)

Friday, November 16, 2012: 10:15 AM-12:00 PM

10:15 AM

Geo-Corporeal Acrobats: Interrogating Nutritional Praxis, Theology, and the African Diaspora Among Hebrew Israelites Diana A. Burnett (University of Pennsylvania)

10:30 AM

Fighting Monkeys and Situating Selves: Mapping Shiny New Blacknesses Via Dirty Old Logics In Contemporary Black Diaspora Krystal A Smalls (University of Pennsylvania Museum)

10:45 AM

We All Niggas: Blackness As Analog In Gentrifying San Francisco Savannah Shange (University of Pennsylvania)

11:00 AM

Diasporic Imagery and Cultural Practice Brittany L Webb (Temple University)

11:15 AM

Discussant Bayo Holsey (Duke University)

11:30 AM

Discussion

11:45 AM

Discussion

This session would be of particular interest to:

Students, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizers:

Brittany L Webb (Temple University) and Savannah Shange (University of Pennsylvania)

Chairs:

Brittany L Webb (Temple University)

Discussants:

Bayo Holsey (Duke University)

4-0435 Association of Black Anthropologists Board Meeting

Friday, November 16, 2012: 12:00 PM-2:00 PM
Seacliff (Hilton San Francisco)

This meeting is for the executive board of ABA

Organizer:

Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute)

4-0580 Transforming Anthropology Board Meeting

Friday, November 16, 2012: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
Bay View (Hotel Nikko)

Editorial Board Meeting for Transforming Anthropology to discuss progress/issues of Transforming Anthropology

Organizer:

Dana-Ain Davis (Queens College, CUNY)

4-1065 Association of Black Anthropologists Awards Ceremony Reception I

Friday, November 16, 2012: 6:15 PM-7:30 PM
Yosemite A (Hilton San Francisco)

Awards will be presented at the ceremony and a reception will follow.

This session would be of particular interest to:

Those involved in mentoring activities, Students, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizers:

Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina), Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute), Aimee M Cox (Fordham University) and Melanie E L Bush (Adelphi University)

Chairs:

Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina) and Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute)

4-1165 Association of Black Anthropologists Awards Ceremony Reception II

Friday, November 16, 2012: 7:30 PM-9:00 PM
Yosemite A (Hilton San Francisco)

The reception will immediately follow the ABA Awards Ceremony.

This session would be of particular interest to:

Those involved in mentoring activities, Students, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizers:

Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina), Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute), Aimee M Cox (Fordham University) and Melanie E L Bush (Adelphi University)

Chairs:

Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina) and Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute)

AAA Sections Joint Reception

Friday, November 16, 2012: 8:00 PM-10:00 PM
Continental 4 (Hilton San Francisco)

Sponsored by: Association for Feminist Anthropology

Joint reception of Association for Feminist Anthropology, Association for Queer Anthropology, Association of Black Anthropologists, Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists, Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of North America, Society for the Anthropology of Work

This session would be of particular interest to:

Students

Organizer:

Jane Henrici PhD (Institute for Women’s Policy Research)

5-0360 Punishment and the State: Imprisonment, Transgressions, Scapegoats and the Contributions of Anthropology

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 10:15 AM-12:00 PM

In 2003, in her seminal book on prison abolition, Angela Davis wrote, “The prison has become a key ingredient of our common sense. It is there, all around us. We do not question whether it should exist. It has become so much a part of our lives that it requires a great feat of the imagination to envision life beyond the prison” (Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? 2003:18-19). More recently, Michelle Alexander concretized the explicitly racialized character of mass incarceration in the United States with a variety of statistics, including that “there are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began” (Alexander, Huff Post Online, posted February 8, 2010). It is at the juncture of these challenging statements — the hegemonic “common-sense-ness” of the carceral state, and the hyper-racial nature of state-meted punishment — that this roundtable discussion begins. The scholars participating in this conversation offer a variety of empirical standpoints, but share a research focus on the U.S. — a nation-state that incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. It is with this deep empirical, experiential and theoretical engagement with state-meted punishment and imprisonment that we hope to develop an anthropologically-informed theoretical framework for studying (and writing about) the peculiar contours of punishment in context of the state. Such a framework, we contend, holds value for research far beyond these particular state boundaries. While the outrageous statistics on the American carceral state and powerful writing on prison reform inspire our work, the participants in this session feel that anthropology’s sustained attention to “the common sense” helps to reveal additional forms of state-meted punishment — and it also contributes a unique and often overlooked set of tools for advancing scholarship and activism on punishment and imprisonment. We note the seminal work of anthropologists already writing about prisons and punishment — Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Lorna Rhodes, Loïc Wacquant, and Tony Whitehead, to name some — and honor their contributions by calling for a recognized (and recognizable) disciplinary space for scholarship on this topic. For example, we would like to see some concepts that are endemic to our work (e.g., punishment, imprisonment, and the state) show up as keywords in the AAA proposal forms. As it stands, while scholarship on punishment and imprisonment has been emerging both within and outside of academia, anthropologists play a relatively small part in this movement. And yet, who better to consider the culturally situated contexts in which punishment and imprisonment exist? Who better to problematize the “common sense-ness” of mass incarceration — or of other more invisible (but equally racialized) forms of punishment perpetuated daily by the state? The session is intended as a first stab at building a vocabulary for an anthropological oeuvre on punishment and imprisonment in the context of the state.

Organizers:

Mieka B Polanco (James Madison University)

Introductions:

Brackette F Williams (University of Arizona)

Chairs:

Mieka B Polanco (James Madison University)

Roundtable Presenters:

Tony Whitehead (University of Maryland), Mahri Irvine (American University), Anjana M Mebane-Cruz (State University of New York), Margaret E Dorsey (The University of Texas – Pan American) and Pem D Buck (Elizabethtown Community and Technical College)

5-0550 Business Meeting Association of Black Anthropologists

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
Continental 5 (Hilton San Francisco)

This meeting is for the general membership of the ABA

Organizer:

Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute)

5-0770 Race, Place and the Politics of Borders: Black Community Research in the 21st Century South

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 1:45 PM-3:30 PM

The socio-spatial histories of southern communities reveal the embeddedness of racialized policies and practices that have endured over time. In historical and contemporary contexts, race is a critical marker on both cultural and geographic landscapes. In Black communities, Jim Crow policies, urban renewal, slum clearance and interstate highways are among the many social and political forces that have influenced mobility and challenged African Americans’ relationships to space and place. Often founded along the borders of city limits or in isolated geographic pockets, southern Black communities and neighborhoods were not only places of refuge but also places of agency, initiative, rejuvenation and reinvention of self. While these legacies of resiliency and resistance can be found today, many residents of these communities also feel victimized by vicious forms of social and economic abandonment. Community research methodologies can reveal the social and historical significance of race, place and borders to African Americans in their struggles for self-definition and selfdetermination. Guided by the legacies of DuBois, Davis, Drake, and other community researchers, this roundtable will interrogate the relationship between race and landscape in southern black communities. We will discuss the construction of Blackness in the southern communities we study and the roles of Black identities in social, economic and health issues. We will discuss the meaning of historical and cultural landscapes to residents of Black neighborhoods and communities. We will also consider the ways that our collaborative efforts (with residents) can contribute to the revaluing of communities and inscribe new meaning to marginalized places.

Organizers:

Cheryl R Rodriguez (University of South Florida)

Chairs:

Cheryl R Rodriguez (University of South Florida)

Roundtable Presenters:

Antoinette T Jackson PhD (University of South Florida), Evelyn Newman Phillips PhD (Central Connecticut State University), Corliss D. Heath (University of South Florida) and Beverly G Ward (BGW Associates, LLC)

5-0815 Negotiated Blackness: The Politics of Genes, Gender, Beauty and Multi-Racial Identity

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 1:45 PM-3:30 PM

1:45 PM

Size Matters: Sustaining Female Inequality In a Post-Democratic World Signithia Fordham (University of Rochester and University of Rochester)

2:00 PM

Redrawing Borders of Belonging In a Narrow Nation: Challenges and Consequences of Afro-Ariqueño Activism In Chile Sara B Busdiecker

2:15 PM

Fit for Citizenship? Race, Respectability and the Politics of “Obesity” In Washington, DC Amanda O Gilliam (Columbia University)

2:30 PM

From Straight to Curly: The Natural Hair Movement In the Dominican Republic Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina and University of South Carolina)

2:45 PM

“Mixed,” “Multiracial,” “Other,” “Jamaican:” Contesting, Crossing, and Re-Drawing Racial Borders Sharon E Placide (Florida Atlantic University, Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University)

3:00 PM

Africanicity and Admixture: Tracing Ancestry, Ascribing Status James Battle (University of California, Berkeley/University of California, San Francisco)

This session would be of particular interest to:

Students

Chair:

Kimberly E Simmons (University of South Carolina)

5-1030 Acting Out: Youth Performance in the African Diaspora

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 4:00 PM-5:45 PM

This roundtable engages the forms and functions of performance among African Diasporic youth. Anthropological and cultural studies examinations of youth have long focused on the salience of performance in the social construction of expressive youth culture. Employing frameworks offered by interdisciplinary visionaries such as Stuart Hall, Audre Lorde, and Katherine Dunham, we understand Black youth culture as determined both by its African heritage and by contested diasporic conditions, and as uniquely characterized by emphases on style, music and the use of the body (Hall 1993). Following Hall, we set our sights on performativity in African Diasporic youth cultures, on “linguistic innovations in rhetorical stylization of the body, forms of occupying an alien social space, heightened expressions, hairstyles, ways of walking, standing, and talking, and a means of constituting and sustaining camaraderie and community” (Hall 1993). In the United States, Black youth culture has been linked to “corrupt” self-fashionings such as expensive sneakers, prison-inspired and hip hop-aligned baggie jeans, and most recently, the hooded sweatshirt, as markers of criminality. Black youth have deployed these self-fashionings to contest, affirm, and creatively refashion racialized, sexualized, gendered, and age-based identities, and to protest racial and economic injustice. Globally, African Diasporic youth have also “acted out” in the forms of dance and hip hop music to individually and collectively place black bodies in public spaces in which they have often been policed or rendered invisible. These examples frame the presentations which include an analysis relating gendered performance in the works of author Jamaica Kincaid and hip hop emcee Nicki Minaj to West Indian girls’ feminine identity constructions; an exploration of racialized representations of youth in the 2011 London riots; and an examination of Caribbean immigrant drag parodies on the Internet. We conceptualize “performance” broadly to consider the youthful construction of African Diasporic identities at the intersections of race, sexuality and gender. Following the 2012 AAA meeting theme of “borders and crossings across time, space, embodied differences, language and culture,” the panel addresses performance as a theoretical tool, a mode of expression, and as a vehicle for activism and global dialogue among black youth in disparate locations, exploring the mutable borders between overlapping renditions of youthful African Diasporic identities.

Organizers:

Oneka LaBennett (Fordham University)

Introductions:

Elizabeth J Chin (Art Center College of Design)

Chairs:

Oneka LaBennett (Fordham University) and Aimee M Cox (Fordham University)

Roundtable Presenters:

Raymond G Codrington (The Aspen Institute), O Hugo Benavides (Fordham University) and Nicholas Andrew Boston (City University of New York – Lehman College)

5-1090 Telling the Truth: Pioneer, Archeology, and Emancipation Projects Then and Now

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 4:00 PM-5:45 PM

4:00 PM

Engaged, Evocative Ethnography to Document Unacknowledged Black Pioneers of Immokalee, Florida Brie McLemore (New College of Florida) and Amanda D Concha-Holmes (University of Florida, New College: the Honor’s College of Florida and aMandala.org)

4:15 PM

Incorporating Archaeological Findings and the African American Experience In the Architectural Design of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Ayana Aisha Flewellen (University of Texas at Austin)

4:30 PM

Democratizing the Canon: Institutionalizing a Decolonized Anthropology Justin Hosbey (University of Florida) and Justin Dunnavant (University of Florida)

4:45 PM

Freedom Sound: Emancipation Day Musicking In Rural Jamaica Edward B Sammons (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

5:00 PM

“I Live Here, Too/I Want Freedom/Just As You.”: Migration, Mortality, and Belonging In Emancipation Era Washington, DC Justin Dunnavant (University of Florida)

5:15 PM

Tensions In the American Dream: Racial Nationalism and the Multiple Crises of U.S. Hegemony, Historical Capitalism, and White World Supremacy Roderick Bush (St. John’s University)

This session would be of particular interest to:

Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Organizers:

Edward B Sammons (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Chairs:

Edward B Sammons (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

5-1165 Works in progress session

Saturday, November 17, 2012: 6:15 PM-8:15 PM
Golden Gate 6 (Hilton San Francisco)

This session pairs tenured scholars (associate/professor) with graduate students/post-docs/assistant professors, to discuss papers, applications, or chapters. This program is designed to meet the needs of students and junior faculty of color who may seek the advice of senior scholars on works in progress and career and professional developmen

This session would be of particular interest to:

Those involved in mentoring activities, Students, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Practicing and Applied Anthropologists

Organizer:

Riche Daniel Barnes (Smith College)