As a relatively new and evolving field within anthropology, multispecies ethnography challenges traditional human-centric perspectives by engaging with the complex web of relationships between humans and non-human entities, including plants, fungi, and animals.

This lecture reconstructs the process by which "Inca trepanation" became an accepted scientificfact, and the looting and trade in "Inca" and Andean ancestors and crania it relied upon to provide further museum "specimens" to prove or disprove Indigenous skill at this high-risk maneuver. Central to this process was the work of Andean collectors and Peruvian surgeons like the anthropologist Julio C. Tello, whose authority was sought but effaced by Americanist anthropologists in the United States.

Join directors Giorgio Angelini and Arthur Jones for a Q&A moderated by Prof. Gabriella Coleman (Harvard) co-sponsored by MIT Anthropology, MIT Philosophy, and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing

In this talk Jason De León will discuss his new book "Soldiers and Kings", a long-term ethnographic study focused on understanding the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. Using the stories of several smugglers, he examines the relationship between transnational gangs and the clandestine migration industry, as well as the difficulties of doing ethnography in this violent and ethically challenging context.

Part of A • H • STS speaker series:

This talk from Colette Perold analyzes the role of U.S. empire in the creation of South American markets for tabulating equipment and early mainframe computers. Grounded in two major programs—the 1940 Census of the Americas and the 1960s Latin American Free Trade Association—this talk explores the role of data integration and trade integration as two components of a regional strategy for U.S. corporate dominance over hemispheric tabulating and computing industries.

HOLLOW TREE follows three teenagers coming of age in their sinking homeland of Louisiana. Their different perspectives shape their story.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Director Kira Akerman, Producer Monique Walton, and the 3 protagonists. The Q&A will be moderated by Dr. Kate Brown, Professor of History of Science at MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society.  Seating is limited. Please register.

The event is sponsored by The Living Climate Futures Group at MIT.

The Center for Ethnographic Research at UC Berkeley welcomes MIT Anthropology Class of 1957 Career Development Assistant Professor Héctor Beltrán for a discussion of his book, "Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands"

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

Hear from undergraduate students and instructors involved in the MCSC-supported seed award project, “Anthro-Engineering Decarbonization at the Million Person Scale,” about their efforts to bridge anthropology and engineering to explore the design of a culturally appropriate, affordable, and sustainable intervention to create a pathway to decarbonization in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the coldest and most polluted capital city in the world.

Presenters: Iselle Barrios (’25), Dr. Lauren Bonilla (MIT Anthropology), Grace Gardner (’24), Madeline Hon (’24), Kiran Mak (’25), and Ella Trumper (’24)

Abstract:
How do we bring previously disparate ways of knowing, Indigenous Knowledge and “Western” or mainstream science, into right relationship with one another for mutual thriving of land and culture? At a time of accelerating environmental change and complex, overlapping challenges, we need a plurality of perspectives to innovate solutions. This talk focuses on work being carried out by a team of international, interdisciplinary, predominantly Indigenous scientists from the US, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand as part of the newly funded Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. I’ll share how our team, which includes archaeologists; climate, environmental, and water scientists; scholars with expertise in Indigenous knowledge systems and education, foodways, and museums and heritage, are collaborating to explore ethical practices and protocols of braiding knowledges, the seeds for building new research worlds. The talk highlights efforts to bring braiding methodologies into mainstream scientific practice through a transdisciplinary approach that reflects Indigenous understandings of place in which the urgent and interconnected areas of climate change, cultural places, and food sovereignty and security are the focus.

Bio:
Dr. Sonya Atalay (Anishinaabe-Ojibwe) is an Indigenous archaeologist, utilizing community-based participatory methods to conduct research in full partnership with Indigenous communities. Dr. Atalay’s scholarship crosses disciplinary boundaries, incorporating aspects of cultural anthropology, archaeology, critical heritage studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She’s currently involved in producing a series of research-based comics about repatriation of Native American ancestral remains, return of sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) law, and is Director of the NSF-funded, multinational Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS)

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

In this casual conversation, New York-based artist Rose Salane will describe her archival approach to documenting the forces of attraction that draw objects together. Salane has exhibited her “dynamic sets of object accumulation” at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and MASS MoCA, among many other museums and galleries. This short Art21 film introduces her practice.

Light refreshments will be served.

Questions? Contact Prof. Graham Jones (gmj@mit.edu) 

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

Ocean waves of relentless approach have long been objects of apprehension and fear. From mariner folklore to literature to Hollywood films, oncoming waves — both outsized and unremitting — have been forces and symbols of, variously, nature unbound and social planning unprepared. How do coastal engineers and marine scientists understand such entities? This talk will center attention on how ocean waves become objects of measure, monitoring, and modeling and in the process, entities whose frightening dimensions might yield to prediction and control. The talk will offer case studies from wave research centers in the Netherlands, Oregon, and Bangladesh. Amplified waves emerge as avatars of the Thallasocene, forces and forms diagnostic of the age of a rising ocean.

Join MIT Anthropology for The Last Anthro Tea of Fall Semester 2023!

Wed 12/6, 4-5pm, E53-335

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

Synopsis: Christine Taylor-Butler, ‘81, MLK Visiting Scholar and author of children’s literature, shares her journey from living in an urban environment where systemic barriers limited access to opportunities to writing as an act of civil disobedience. Despite advances in education, students from urban and rural areas are still entering kindergarten with lower STEM literacy levels and are unable to make up the gap by grade twelve. She’ll discuss the importance of integrating STEM into all aspects of literature, the barriers that still remain in children’s publishing, and how books often fuel the “dreaming’ that helps children see potential beyond the boundaries of their neighborhoods.

MIT Anthropology Professor Manduhai Buyandelger will be giving a talk:  "Why Do Mongolians Love Elections? Electable Selves, Campaigning, and New Economies of Democratization"  for Session 3 4:30-6pm on December 1st, 2023.

Full Program Here

Buy Tickets Here

Why is there such a striking similarity between the lines drawn on paper by children who are in the middle of getting or explaining an idea, and the white board lines made by scientists who are doing the same thing?

Explore questions of representational and other kinds of drawing with cartoonist Lynda Barry, and discover how this powerful tool of connecting through a different way of thinking, seeing and being is right at our fingertips.

November 3, 2023     6:00-7:30 pm
$15 General Public   $5 MIT ID holders

SOLD OUT

Co-produced by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), Morningside Academy for Design, MITx, MIT SHASS De Florez Fund For Humor,and MIT Anthropology.

Join MIT Anthropology to celebrate Stefan Helmreich's latest book, A Book of Waves.

Thursday, October 5, 4pm-6pm

@ Shore School, MIT Sailing Pavilion
Building 51
134 Memorial Drive