MIT Department of Anthropology

Past Events

MIT Anthropology

Past Events

Feb 8, 2023

Anthro Tea!

Wednesday, February 8, 2023 4:00 - 5:00 PM E53-335

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation: no need to RSVP!

Dec 13, 2022

MIT WGS "Articulating Abortion" Series: Abortion Rights as Human Rights: The Continuing Fight for Reproductive Justice

Zakiya Luna, Dean's Distinguished Professorial Scholar

Department of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis

Tuesday, December 13, 2022 4:00 - 6:00 PM  3-133

The Women's & Gender Studies presents the year-long Articulating Abortion series. It is with great honor we will welcome Professor Zakiya Luna to MIT campus. Professor Luna will defend reproductive rights as human rights.

Nov 28, 2022

Xenia Cherkaev Book Talk "Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice" 

Xenia Cherkaev

Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg

Monday, November 28, 2022 4:00 - 5:30 PM 14S-130, The Nexus, Hayden Library

Xenia Cherkaev will speak about her forthcoming book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice (Cornell UP 2023). The book tells a radically new story of how the Soviet system functioned and why it failed. Mediating between today’s popular narratives of “Soviet times” and the ownership categories of Soviet civil law, it shows the Soviet Union as an explicitly illiberal modern project, reliant in theory and fact on collectivist ethics. A historical ethnography, its narrative begins in the 2010s with former Leningrad residents’ stories of gleaning industrial scrap from worksites. Placing these stories in conversation with Soviet legal theories of property and with economic, political and social history, this book shows the Soviet Union as a “socialist household economy,” whose members were guaranteed “personal” rights to a commons of socialist property rather than private possessions. It traces the development of such “personal” rights though three historically significant turns – during the 1930s, 1960s and 1980s – and shows how the Soviet project unfolded in dialogue with contemporaneous neoliberal thought in one overarching debate about the possibility of a collectivist modern life.

Oct 27, 2022

Cross-STS Series: "Food, Farms, and Factories: Transformations of the Industrial?"

Thursday, October 27, 2022 4:30 - 6:00 PM E51-095

with Alex Blanchette, Tufts Anthropology, and Deborah Fitzgerald, MIT STS

Join us for a roundtable discussion as we explore what makes industrialized food production so enduring. Together, we will think through agricultural pasts and futures, with an eye toward the ethics of making and eating food on a climate-changing planet.

Oct 26, 2022

AAA Anthropology Live: Online Event Series "The Stories We Tell — The Southeast Chicago Archive & Storytelling Project"

Wednesday, October 26, 2022 3:00 - 4:00 PM Virtual

The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project uses objects and stories donated by diverse residents of a former steel mill community in order to explore the transformation in what it means to be “working class” in the United States. This digital project includes mini-documentaries or interactive “storylines” created from these donated objects. The storylines explore such topics as experiences of immigration, historic union conflicts, the social impact of the mill closings, and environmental activism in a contemporary deindustrialized landscape. The discussion will focus on The Memorial Day Massacre storyline which explores one of the most famous events in U.S. labor history in which ten strikers were killed by Chicago police in 1937.

Oct 24, 2022

Fall 2022 Speaker Series: Mitali Thakor (HASTS '16), Artificial Intimacies: Eldercare Robots and Animate Companionship

Mitali Thakor, PhD. (HASTS '16)

Wesleyan University

Monday, October 24, 2022 4:00 - 5:30 PM 14S-130, The Nexus, Hayden Library

The demand for service robots has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the primary sites for development of such robots is in eldercare nursing. Eldercare robots seem to promise a continuation of care not otherwise possible under current medical infrastructures in the US. These robots purport to stave off loneliness, provide a watchful eye to alert family members and emergency medical personnel, and enhance clients’ therapeutic care by engaging memory recall and language skill.

Oct 17, 2022

Anthro Tea!

Monday, October 17, 2022 4:00 - 5:00 PM E53-335

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation.
No need to RSVP; just show up and bring your friends!

Apr 22, 2022

Living Climate Futures 

April 22 & 23 2022 MIT, various locations

Friday - Saturday, 22 - 23 April 2022

https://livingclimatefutures.org/

Living Climate Futures culminates in a two-day symposium of events and activities, April 22-23. Some events are open to the public and require Tim Tickets (see FAQ). Others are for the MIT community (preference to students) and community partners only.

Sign up on Eventbrite!

Jan 20, 2022

Graham Jones presenting: "Reviewer meets Reviewed: Magic’s reason: an anthropology of analogy" - A virtual seminar series of the Royal Anthropological Society

Graham Jones

MIT Anthropology

Thursday, January 20, 2022 4.00-6.00pm (London/BST), 11am-1pm (Cambridge/EST) Virtual

The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between author Professor Graham Jones  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and reviewer Dr Katherine Swancutt  (Kings College London).

Thursday 20 January 2022 at 4.00-6.00pm (BST)
 

This webinar will be held on Zoom. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7B7mapF5QOaHFoWtSvNU5A

In Magic's Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic.

Nov 11, 2021

Héctor Beltrán presents "Making Latinx Makers" at Northwestern University Center for Latinx Digital Media Virtual Seminar

Héctor Beltrán 

MIT Anthropology

Thursday, November 11, 2021 11am-12pm ET, 12pm-1pm CT Virtual

Throughout the academic year, the Center for Latinx Digital Media invites you to a series of weekly seminars held over Zoom on Thursdays. You can now register (click here) to the next seminar of the Fall 2021 quarter, happening next Thursday, November 11 at 12-1 PM US CT. Professor Héctor Beltrán (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will give a presentation entitled “Making Latinx Makers.”

Abstract: Popular “diversity in tech” discourse proposes ways to encourage “different” participants to join events aimed at empowering these communities through technology. Here I examine ethnographically how members of racialized groups are called upon to manage these differences themselves within maker and hacker collectives. To explore constructions of Latinidad within makerspaces I bring together scholarship on prototypes and participatory models with conceptual work on incompleteness advanced by Latinx Studies scholars.

Héctor Beltrán is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at MIT. He is a sociocultural anthropologist who draws upon his background in computer science to understand how the technical aspects of computing intersect with issues of identity, race, ethnicity, class, and nation.

This event is co-sponsored by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Radio/Television/Film, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and the Latina and Latino Studies Program.

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvzEbT1vQPJltIjXlDq2luFGdMJTtvCgd5WldPE68TA0HubA/viewform

Learn more information on the Center's website: https://ldm.soc.northwestern.edu

Sep 29, 2021

La Borinqueña book exhibition and talk with author, creator, graphic novelist, and illustrator, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez.

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 7:00 PM W20-307

The Association of Puerto Ricans at MIT, Latino Cultural Center, and Office of Multicultural Programs present:

La Borinqueña book exhibition and talk with author, creator, graphic novelist, and illustrator, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez.

Wed. Sept. 29th at 7pm

Room W20-307

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez is the writer and creator of the critically acclaimed and best-selling graphic novel La Borinqueña.

Learn the story of the superhero La Borinqueña, a student at Columbia University named Marisol Rios De La Luz majoring in Earth and Environmental Sciences.  During her study abroad trip to Puerto Rico, Marisol makes a discovery that gives her superhuman strength while exploring the island's caves, transforming her into La Borinqueña.

Co-sponsored by: Anthropology, Hermanas Unidas, Institute Community & Equity Office, MIT Libraries, Women’s and Gender Studies.

 

 

Sep 28, 2021

Wounding Wall: Infrastructure, Injury, and Rescue on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Ieva Jusionyte

Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology, Brown University

Tuesday, September 28, 2021 3:30 - 5:00 PM Room E51-095

Wounding Wall: Infrastructure, Injury, and Rescue on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Ieva Jusionyte, Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology, Brown University

Tuesday, September 28, 3:30-5:00pm

Room E51-095