Senior Seminar

Is Apartheid Worse than Democracy When it Comes to Racism? Professor Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne) There is an ongoing struggle among anti-Zionist activists to make the charge of Apartheid stick to Israel as a description of the kind of racism that Palestinians are subjected to in Israel/Palestine. Zionists and...

Immediacy, residuality, difference: the social life of Heimat in the present populist moment Dr Nitzan Shoshan (Colegio de México) Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in the Brandenburg countryside, where the far right Alternative for Germany party scored unprecedented success and the socialist Die Linke—equally branded by many...

Ethics, Success, and Contentious Freedom in Return Migration to Cuba Dr Valerio Simoni (Graduate Institute Geneva) The presentation addresses the experiences of Cuban migrants that have returned to live in Cuba. The focus is on the predicament they face as they strive to (1) respond to, (2) reformulate, and (3) resist...

‘Obulema’ [disability] and ‘abaceke’ [weak people]: legal and relational obligations to disabled people in Uganda Julia Modern (University of Cambridge) In 1995, Uganda adopted a new Constitution mandating the election of disabled representatives in parliament and local councils. There are now over 45,000 disabled...

Activist Research Methods as Solidarity Practice in Brazil Dr Keisha-Khan Perry (University of Pennsylvania) This talk draws from the book I am currently writing entitled Anthropology for Liberation: Research, Writing and Teaching for Social Justice. I describe how my work with local Gamboa de Baixo activists in Salvador...

Beyond the Gender Paradox: Theologies of Sexuality and the Body in a Nigerian Pentecostal Church Dr Naomi Richman (University of Cambridge) In the anthropology of Christianity, the topic of gender has so far received less comprehensive treatment than other prominent themes, such as religious change, globalisation and the...

Pedagogies of Disaster Futures: Play and Habitual Preparedness in Japan and Chile Dr Chika Watanabe (University of Manchester) Devastating ‘natural’ disasters from earthquakes to floods loom large in many societies, many of them ushered forward under the crises of climate change. And yet, despite scholarly observations...

Critique Refigured: Art, Activism and Politics in Post-Recession Dublin Dr Natalie Morningstar (University of Cambridge) This paper argues that the anthropology of critique has been hampered by an implicit framing of critique as the content of, rather than an orientation to, knowledge about the world. It does so building...

How Plague Got Rats Professor Christos Lynteris (University of St Andrews) This seminar examines the ways in which plague became associated with rats in modern epidemiology. The seminar will discuss the transformations of the rat in epidemiological reasoning during the third plague pandemic (1894-1959). I will show how...

Film - Americaville (2020) with Adam Smith (University of Cambridge) Hidden among mountains – seemingly far from the crowds, pollution and bureaucracy of Beijing - a Wild West-themed gated community promises to provide an American utopia of freedom, happiness, and prosperity to its several thousand Chinese residents. In...