I began interviewing authors of fabulous new anthropology books for this space back in 2016. While completing 11 interviews, I also amassed a backlog of more terrific books whose authors I planned to interview. One thing led to another, and my embarrassingly accumulating backlog fell hostage to a pandemic. I’ve
August 8, 2020 Ed Bruner passed away yesterday, at 95–peacefully, at home. I wish my daughter and I could have been with him, but–Covid. Ed started out as my senior colleague in the anthropology department at the University of Illinois. He soon became a mentor, then writing/editing buddy, then dear
Anthropologist Helena Wulff has been conducting research on youth culture and multiple art worlds (especially in Western Europe) for over thirty years. Wulff’s recent book, Rhythms of Writing: An Anthropology of Irish Literature (Bloomsbury, 2017), brings an anthropologist’s questions to the world of contemporary literature. In a review of her new book for
Can artists and social scientists inhabit the same universe? Melisa (“Misha”) Cahnmann-Taylor embodies that nexus. Her advanced degrees include an MFA in poetry . . . and a PhD in educational linguistics. She’s published plenty of scholarly work in academic journals and books (about language learning, sustainable or fragile states
Adrie Kusserow is one of an increasing number of anthropologist-poets. Or maybe more anthropologist-poets are just willing to come out of hiding. Either way, I was delighted to catch up with Adrie and interview her about her wonderful book of poems, Refuge, that was published by Boa Editions (a leading literary publisher)
Win a free copy of “A World of Babies”! To celebrate the official publication of the book, which is January 2017, our publisher is sponsoring an Amazon Giveaway. Act soon: the deadline to enter is Jan. 12! Just click here to enter . . . https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/be7654b0f8213fc9?ref_=pe_1771210_134854370#ts-fo
Interested in learning some behind-the-scenes stories about how “A World of Babies” came into existence? Check out a new interview with my co-editor, Judy DeLoache, and me in a newsletter published this month by the Jacobs Foundation, a private organization (based in Zurich, Switzerland) dedicated to improving the lives of
Today, I began a new series on my blog: interviews with anthropologists about their new books! We anthropologists often write wonderful books . . . that find too few readers. What better way to find new readers for a book than to interview its author? I begin this series by
Kristen Ghodsee’s new book, From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies that Everyone Can Read, was recently published by the University of Chicago Press (in 2016). The discipline of anthropology desperately needs good writers. Our writings are often so dense, jargon-packed, and off-putting that I sometimes fear we deserve our reputation