First Rites: Innovative Undergraduate Research in Anthropology
The AAA is pleased to host for the sixth year a poster session featuring undergraduate research at the American Anthropological Association meeting. The session will be hosted in collaboration with the Society for Visual Anthropology. The abstract is below. To submit an abstract...
(1) Become a member of AAA, if you are not already.
(2) Register for the conference.
(3) Upload your abstract to the conference portal through http://avectra.aaanet.org/eweb/?Site=AAAweb&WebCode=LoginRequired&URL_success=http%3A%2F%2Faaa.confex.com%2Faaa%2F2012%2Favectraredirect.cgi%3Faction%3Dportal%26usertoken%3D%7Btoken%7D
(4) Send an email with your name, university affiliation, poster title, and abstract to Dr. Deb Rotman at firstname.lastname@example.org.
(5) Complete all these steps by 8 am on Thursday, April 12, 2012.
Undergraduate students are an increasingly important element in the production of anthropological knowledge. In its best form, undergraduate research can be seen as an apprenticeship, wherein the novitiate is granted a partnership and some degree of agency in pushing the boundaries of and crossing into new frontiers of shared knowledge. Collaboration with undergraduate students in research is one of the important ways we can facilitate innovation within our discipline. Their research breaks down classroom/ research boundaries, focuses on the importance of experiential learning, and exploits the naiveté and vigor of students not yet indoctrinated into paradigmatic complacency. Undergraduate students can be agents and partners in reshaping the landscape of anthropology. The importance of undergraduate research and scholarly activity is underscored both in financial support by federal-level agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Institutes of Health, and the growing number of faculty-student collaborations in anthropology departments across the globe. Through their engagement, undergraduate students challenge current boundaries and present their findings in the inter-disciplinary medium of visual posters to enrich anthropological inquiry into the human experience. This session is supported by the Society for Visual Anthropology.
Last year, the SVA held a competition and students who best utilized visual media in their presentations of anthropological knowledge won prizes from the Society. It was great fun and will be repeated this year as well. Please encourage your students to participate!