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October 2007 • Anthropology News
59
S E C T I O N N E W S
Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges
LLOYD MILLER, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Annual Meeting 2007—A Brief Report
By Rob Edwards (SACC President)
The SACC annual meeting was held at Asilomar Conference Grounds next to Monterey Bay, Cal-ifornia, on April 5–8, 2007.
lunch “roundtables” allowed a place to continue those discussions.
It is always difficult to gauge the success of a conference you have orga-nized. I was therefore very pleased to receive an evaluation from a first-time attendee, Mary Huber of the Carnegie Foundation, and include it below, slightly edited:
Hi, I’m so glad I was able to get to the conference. It was a delight. Here’s what stood out for me:
1) The attention to place: Asilomar was a GREAT choice because it’s a state park with deep local roots itself. But then to bookend the conference with Ohlone Indian presentations, punctuate the evenings with talks on local architecture and local history, and devote a day to traveling to those places—all this was truly memorable. 2) The attention to time: It was not rushed! There was plenty of time to wander around, and talk to people at meals, think, etc.
3) The attention to teaching: Really, virtually every paper in the panel sessions touched on issues in teaching and learning anthropology—or anthro-pologically interesting topics (like your colleagues’ presentation on kinship care). And the papers were GOOD. I really liked Adrienne Zihlman’s update on new fossil finds and what they might mean.
4) The attention to each other: There was a great sense of people caring about each other, enjoying each other’s company, knowing each other—all without seeming to cut off newcomers.
So thanks to everyone for their hospitality. Mary Huber, Carnegie Foundation
Annual Meeting 2008
By Ann Kaupp (SACC President-Elect)
We often don’t have time to explore the rich cul-tural resources the nation’s capital has to offer, especially the Smithsonian Institution museums, when the AAA holds its annual meeting in Wash-ington DC. SACC is going to rectify that in 2008.
as anthropologists-in-training.” With this in mind, the annual meeting provides a signifi -cant opportunity for students to discuss better ways for this section to meet the needs and an-swer the concerns of students in our fi eld.
For this year’s meeting, we have organized three panels. They address the topics of gradu-ate student socialization, ethnoarchaeology and student activism. NASA is also sponsoring a number of volunteered papers and posters as well as a celebratory event to commemorate NASA’s 21st birthday—check the final program and the NASA website for details. We will also host an Open Business Meeting and a Student Orientation to help acclimate students who are attending the meeting for the first time. Again, please check the final program for times and locations.
And back by popular demand is the NASA Mentor Workshop. It will be held on Friday, November 30. This is a great opportunity for stu-dents to meet with professionals in the field and discuss the practical side of pursuing a career in anthropology. Based on feedback from partici-pants in last year’s workshop, this year’s mentors will focus on topics like applying to graduate school, conducting fieldwork and preparing for the job market. Students interested in attending the workshop should contact Marcy Hessling ([email protected]).
Additionally, please take some time to see what visual anthropology students are work-ing on at the Society for Visual Anthropology’s film festival. The festival features both student and non-student films. A screening sched-ule is available on the SVA website (www.societyforvisualanthropology.org/).
General NotesWe at NASA are excited about keeping our 21-year-old section active and useful to everyone in the community. For new students of anthro-pology, participating in NASA events, such as the workshops at the AAA annual meeting or attending a NASA sponsored panel, can be an effective way of learning more about the vari-ous opportunities available to you now and in the future. Additionally, we also seek to facili-tate conversations between students at differ-ent institutions, so being a part of NASA is an excellent way to start meeting like-minded stu-dents from across the country.
For those of you new to the AAA or not famil-iar with NASA and our activities, please take a look at our website (www.aaanet.org/nasa). We are working to make the site a central place for students to find information on degrees and careers in anthropology. You can also apply to join the NASA opportunities listserv, currently operating as a Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/nasa-list/about).
Starting in December, NASA will feature a new lineup of officers—keep an eye on this column for introductions.
Something to say? Please send your comments, questions, suggestions and contributions to Melinda Bernardo ([email protected]).
SACC conferees enjoying a meal at Asilomar, are (L to R) Judi Barker, Valerie Brown, Leanna Wolfe, and Mark and Maria Tromans. Photo courtesy Rob Edwards
The meeting included two days of contrib-uted papers and invited speakers and a full-day bus tour of the California landscape from his-toric Pt Lobos State Natural Reserve to historic San Juan Bautista and the restored Mission. We enjoyed evening speakers, one evening presen-tation of local Indian dancing and a couple of late informal discussions that continued into the wee hours of morning. Staying at Asilomar meant that all meals were provided onsite so that there was maximum time for conversation, including scheduled “Beach Breaks.” We main-tained a list of topics of interest and Saturday
Song and dance performance by Patrick Orozco and members of the Pajaro Valley Ohlone Indian Council for participants of the SACC 2007 meeting. Photo courtesy Rob Edwards
Anthropology News • October 2007
60
S E C T I O N N E W S
SACC’s annual meeting in DC is scheduled for Friday, March 14–Tuesday, March 18 and will take place at the Holiday Inn Central at Rhode Island Ave and 15th Street (202/483-2000), a few blocks from the White House to the south and Dupont Circle to the west. Holding it over a weekend, we received preferable room rates at $169 plus tax. A few rooms are being held at the same rate for those who might wish to arrive a day early. Reservations must be made by Wednesday, February 14, 2008, by 3 pm to receive the special room rate. Registration fee will be $250.
A board meeting is scheduled for Friday after-noon followed by a reception. Paper sessions will take place on Saturday and Sunday when we will also take time for a Washington After Dark bus tour to visit and view some of the major city sites. On Sunday, the Smithsonian histo-rian will regale us with stories about early and colorful Smithsonian anthropologists, whetting our appetite for our next day’s fieldtrip to the Smithsonian.
On Monday morning we will visit the National Museum of the American Indian where Curator Gabrielle Tayac (Piscataway) will talk about Indians of the Chesapeake Bay area and provide an overview of the museum’s exhibits, which we will tour on our own. After lunch we will visit the department of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History and hear a presenta-tion by Dennis Stanford, head of the archaeol-ogy division and director of the Paleo-Indian Program, on an alternative view on the peopling of the Americas. His talk will be followed by Doug Owsley, head of the physical anthropol-ogy division, who will present his research on bioarchaeological perspectives on 17th-century life in Jamestown. SACC members will have the opportunity to explore museums and sites on their own for the rest of the day.
This meeting will be in honor of former SACC President Leonard Lieberman who passed away this year and whose friendship and scholarship will be greatly missed.
Visit the SACC website (http://webs.anokaramsey.edu/sacc/) for up-to-date meeting information.
Send communications and contributions to Lloyd Miller, [email protected]
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness
LAWRENCE B MCBRIDE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
This month, we begin a series of reviews of the society’s 2007 annual meeting.
Review of SAC Spring 2007 Conference
By Constantine Hriskos
Last year’s conference, entitled “Thresholds of Consciousness,” was held in San Diego, CA (April 4–8, 2007) and explored various liminal
spaces and transitions to different modes of con-sciousness, those spaces betwixt and between, as well as the almost and the actual movement from one mode to another and all possible expe-riences and forms of awareness that these states might include. Lourdes Giordani, program chair, and SAC President John Baker, who was meeting arrangements chair, put together an extremely interesting, diverse and exciting program. Many thanks to Lourdes and John and all the others who, once again, met or exceeded the standards of SAC meetings, which is not an easy thing to do as many of you know.
Panels included: “Rethinking Assumptions About Altered States of Consciousness”; “Science, Faith, and Dreams”; “Therapy, Ambivalence and Thresholds”; “The Self and the Quest for Threshold States”; “The Role and Significance of Ritual and Chant in Inducing Threshold States”; “Love, Death and Threshold States”; “Anthropology’s Role in Ecopsychology: Specu-lations on the Creation of a Coherent Culture”; “Resonance Theory; Threshold States and the Natural and Human Built Environment”; and “Threshold States via the Internet, Dance and Sports.”
As is our custom a number of experien-tial sessions and workshops were held in the evenings. These included: “The PK Party as a Teaching Tool in Consciousness Studies”; “Crossing the Threshold—Sacred Places: An Experiential Journey of Consciousness”; and “Crossing Thresholds with Yoga Nidra.” SAC also held its board and business meetings. All in all almost 40 papers were presented in an intimate context that brought scholars from Australia, Norway, Canada, Taiwan, etc, as well as our US members from Maine to Florida to California. A diverse and open group that was ready to debate, share, question and reach some common ground. This was obvious during my own session on Ecopsychology, organized and chaired by Mark Schroll, which included such legendary foundational thinkers in conscious-ness studies as Stanley Krippner and Don Eulert as panel discussants. I would also like to take this opportunity to personally thank Don for having us out to his beautiful home in the high deserts of Southern California. And also a note of thanks to Valerie Mojeiko who was also one of our discussants.
The session on Ecopsychology organized by Mark Schroll proved a pivotal moment at the conference. In my opening paper, I tried to locate the various perspectives held by our members over the years and call for a more integrative approach to the field of conscious-ness studies. For the purposes of simplification I divided the field into three areas; those who favor empirical studies of consciousness that entail a modicum of scientific reductionism, those who feel that only experience of other states and cultural realms constitutes a valid understanding, and an anthropological relativ-ism heavily indebted to the heirs of Geertz that cannot find similarity anywhere and refuses generalization. I concluded with a call to begin a dialogue across these paradigms where we
would actually listen to each other and try to reach some common ground.
Mark Schroll followed with a quite dramatic description of the problem of environmental decay and degradation in Nebraska (and by implication the industrial world in general), describing how drought conditions precipitated by human planning and corporate greed and profit were destroying our lands. His conclusion was that all of us are living on the decaying edges of the Industrial Age, whereby we have arrived at a threshold of crucial importance that demands our ability to act.
Finally, Sharon Mijares’ paper took up an evolutionary feminist approach that called for reprising the feminine perspectives of ecopsy-chology to expunge a masculinist paradigm bent on the objectification, subjugation and domination of the earth and the environment. Discussants picked up on the themes above and took them a bit further. And Don Eulert in particular showed us how the work of Carl Jung not only anticipated much of what we were documenting but also suggested a path toward healing and integration.
The panel spilled over into our business meeting where a query by Matthew Bronson concerning questions asked by his students about practical dimensions of what can be done to effect change in the real world opened up a intense discussion between Mark, myself, Matthew and others that led to the realization and the suggestion that part of the study of consciousness must also include a pragmatic or applied wing that attempts to address the real world and the transformation of consciousness toward the betterment of humankind and the environment in all its forms.
Conference coverage continues next month....
Send SAC news to Lawrence B McBride ([email protected]).
Society for the Anthropology of Europe
ANDREA SMITH, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Roundtable Luncheon at AAA in DC
By Sascha L Goluboff (Washington and Lee U)
The SAE’s Roundtable Luncheon at this year’s AAA Annual Meeting will feature seven round-tables. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer will lead discussion on “How do we defi ne Europe?” “Europe” will not be defi ned but debated, and Mandelstam Balzer will encourage discussion of interethnic relations, multiple levels of identity and changing national values.
Jill Dubisch’s table, “The Changing Religious Landscape in Europe,” will explore the post-socialist revival of religion in Eastern Europe and the turning to pre-Christian forms of religion and spirituality by pagans and other
