CASCA is proud to announce that the poster winners 2018 are :

• Idoia Arana-Beobide - jury prize plus tied for people's choice award
• Marley Duckett and Mika Rathwell tie-winners for people's choice

CASCA is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Sonja Luehrmann as Anthropologica’s incoming Editor-in-Chief and Editor of English Manuscripts.

Dr. Luehrmann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on religion, interethnic relations, and lived ideology in Russia and the North Pacific Rim. She is the author of Alutiiq Villages under Russian and U.S. Rule (Alaska, 2008); Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic (Indiana, 2011); and Religion in Secular Archives: Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge (Oxford, 2015). Most recently, she edited Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice (Indiana, 2018). Sonja enjoys the range of geographic areas, theoretical and methodological approaches, and genres represented in Anthropologica, and looks forward to continuing to highlight the critical insights of Canada-based anthropologists.

Dr. Luehrmann will be working with the editorial team from February to ensure a smooth transition toward taking up her new roles officially on May 1. Members will be able to meet her and find out more about her work and ideas for Anthropologica at CASCA’s annual conference in Santiago de Cuba.

We extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Dr. Jasmin Habib, associate professor at the University of Waterloo, who has served as Editor-in-Chief and Editor, English manuscripts since May 2015.

Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria specializing in visual anthropology and sound studies, will be serving as Editor of French manuscripts from August 1, 2018 (once she has recovered from convening this year’s Counterpoint CASCA conference in Cuba!). She takes over the role from Dr. Alicia Sliwinski (Laurier University). Sincere thanks to Alicia for her work in this capacity since 2013.

Dr. Daniel Tubb will begin to serve as English Book Review Editor from July 2018. He is an assistant professor at the University of New Brunswick who focuses on economic and environmental anthropology. He is taking over from Dr. Margaret MacDonald (York University), who has served in the role since 2014. Thank you, Margaret!

Last but not least, Dr. Karine Gagné, an assistant professor at the University of Guelph who works on environmental anthropology and the anthropology of knowledge, continues as French Book Review Editor.

Anthropologica, the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Association (CASCA), invites you to submit articles for peer review.

We always consider stand-alone articles that do not correspond to our call for papers but at this time we are particularly interested in articles on the topics of:

• borders, migrations and refugees;
• foodscapes and foodways;
• populism and new political economies; and
• technologies and temporalities.

Note that this is not a call for special theme issues but for individual articles.

Full details concerning the submission of papers are available at www.utpjournals.press/journals/anth/submissions. All contributions must be submitted via Anthropologica’s online peer review management system at http://bit.ly/AnthroScholarOne.

We look forward to reading your submissions!
Anthropologica Editorial Team.

In honor of Daniel Brasil

Daniel Brasil, a recent PhD graduate of the UBC department of anthropology, has tragically died recently. I learned from the Brasilian consulate in Vancouver that he was helping some construction workers and a pillar fell on his head. He was a member of the Brasilian diplomatic service. Daniel completed the first joint PhD in anthropology with UBC and the University of Brasilia in 2016. He carried out long term field work with Quilomobo communities of Brasil, the topic of his book O Mar Virou Sertao, published in 2014. He also worked for two years with a Yoruban-descended Afro-Cuban community in Matanzas, a small city northeast of Havana, and with First Nations and American Indians of North America. He was engaged in a project of mapping and recording community oral histories with the Afro-Cubans at the time of his death. Daniel greatly enjoyed working in the field and lending his assistance to communities he understood as “underdogs.” He used this term to refer to those aware of the subordination they experienced through colonialism yet searching for ways to use the legal and administrative structures of the nation-state to challenge and improve their circumstances.

Daniel was both my former student, shared with Stephen Baines of the University of Brasilia, and my friend. We spent time in the field together on many occasions and enjoyed the hospitality of each other’s homes. I use the Brasilian spelling here in honour of Daniel’s family name and his country of Brasil.

Bruce Granville Miller
Professor, Anthropology
University of British Columbia

CASCA News

Congratulations to Marie-France Labrecque for the nomination of her book La migration saisonnières des Mayas du Yucatán au Canada at the 2017 Canada Prizes of the Federation for the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

CASCA wishes to express its condolences and solidarity with Quebec Muslim community, along the anthropology department of Université Laval. 

CASCA shares and supports the Canadian Association of University Teachers' stand against the ban on entry to the US for people from seven Muslim-majority countries. To read the CAUT position and sign the petition, follow this link. 

CASCA offers its warmest congratulations to our member Richard Borshay Lee, who has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General of Canada: "For his contributions to anthropology as a scholar and mentor, particularly for advancing our understanding of hunter-gatherer cultures.

Following the successful recognition of CASCA's Founding Fellows, the Executive would like to invite nominations for CASCA Fellows, to be received by March 10th.

Read more ...

News 

Jim Waldram is the winner of the SSHRC Insight Award. To read about the illustrious CASCA member, click here. Congratulations!  

CASCA is proud to share the position statement released by the WCAA and the one by IUAES in support to the Polish Ethnological Society. 

WCAA has launched In one's own terms a channel within global space for the local anthropologies to express themselves in their own languages. Follow it here.

Don't forget that the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archeological Association is being held in Ottawa-Gatineau right after CASCA-IUAES2017!

The Senate at Queen's University Belfast reversed its previous decision to withdraw the single honours degree in anthropology. Instead, it approved a proposal to re-launch a stronger single honours degree in anthropology in 2018, while the joint honours anthropology degrees will continue uninterrupted. Queen's anthropologists are grateful to you as individuals and as associations for all your support in this process, both in terms of morale and significant outcome.

CASCA News

PhD student Walter Callaghan (University of Toronto) have been awarded a multi-year SSHRC Insight Grant for his interdisciplinary project "Gender and the transition from military to civilian life in Canada.", in collaboration with Prof. Maya Eichler (Mount Saint Vincent University) and PhD student Victoria Tait (Carleton University). Congratulations! 

It's now official: CASCA will hold its 2018 annual conference meeting in Santiago de Cuba, Universidad de Oriente (16-20 May).

Jim Waldram, University of Saskatchewan, is shortlisted for the SSHRC Impact Award. Congratulations! Jim Waldram received the CASCA Weaver-Tremblay Award in 2009.

The Salisbury Award is now open. Deadline is February 1st, 2017. Visit this page for more details. 

Award and acknowledgements

Gerald Sider received the Conrad Arensberg Award for his contributions to the anthropology of work and our future president, Martha Radice, is pictured in an article with her homologue in sociology, both at Dalhousie University. The anthropologist Jean L. Briggs past away last July, and the Globe and Mail published this great piece about her work. 

Canadian Declaration for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2016

The Simone de Beauvoir Institute Calls for Homa Hoodfar’s Immediate Release

Our colleague Professor Homa Hoodfar is a world-renowned scholar who studies the lives of women in the Middle East, South Asia, and Canada. The author of dozens of articles and book chapters, and the author of several books, her scholarship offers nuanced portraits of the complexity of women’s lives.  Indeed, her work not only focuses on the struggles of women to advance their rights in the Middle East but also the rights of women in Canada, including the rights of veiled women. Prof. Hoodfar is also an outstanding mentor and supervisor, going well beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of her students. In fact, several of her graduate students are waiting to complete their degree under her guidance.

Since Prof. Hoodfar’s arrest on June 6, 2016 she has been held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.  Although we are not aware of the charges, Prof. Hoodfar has already been subject to numerous and lengthy interrogations since she was first taken in for questioning in early March. We at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute are gravely concerned about the health and welfare of our colleague. Indeed, Prof. Hoodfar is being denied access to prescription medicine for a rare neurological disease (Myasthenia Gravis), and we are very worried that her health may be deteriorating.  We are also deeply concerned about the precedence this arrest sets for the rights of women in Iran and for the academic freedom of all Iranians. 

Throughout her long tenure at Concordia, Prof. Hoodfar has played an extremely important role in the life of our academic community. The fact that Prof. Hoodfar may be under arrest for her scholarship on women, strikes us as in urgent need of redress. Indeed, undertaking research on issues related to women should not be treated as a criminal act, it is an integral part of the work necessary to improve conditions for women, whether in Iran or here in Canada. We thus strongly urge that the Canadian government work with every tool at its disposal to ensure Prof. Hoodfar’s immediate release from prison and her return to Canada.

English Media Contact:

Kimberley Manning, Principal, The Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University:Kimberley.Manning@concordia.ca, 514-583-7865 

Simone de Beauvoir Institute, June 11, 2016

Emma Varley, Brandon University, speaks to Hoodfar's plight

The executive of BUFA has voted to send $1,000 to the Concordia University Faculty Association to support their efforts in seeking the release of Professor Homa Hoodfar of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. 

I asked Dr. Emma Varley of the Department of Anthropology at BU to provide us with a statement that speaks to Professor Hoodfar's plight and the importance of this issue to faculty everywhere. These are Emma's words:

"Dr. Hoodfar is well known around the world for her anthropology research and writings, which have worked to promote a better and more sensitive understanding of Islam and Muslim cultures in the West and Canada in particular. While not a political activist, her detention in Iran confirms that this has not stopped her scholarship from being interpreted in political ways, or her being targeted for political purposes. 

The struggle that Dr. Hoodfar now faces and which we, as Canadian academics, hope to help bring to an end as quickly as possible, is one that is well-understood by social scientists working in politically repressive, unstable and conflicted regions of the world. Indeed, the risk of arrest and other forms of undue influence -- which are intended to silence us and our work -- are familiar to and feared by a number of Brandon University faculty, such as myself, while we conduct our research in zones defined by insecurity, surveillance and oppression. 

By acting together to bring attention to Dr. Hoodfar's plight, BUFA members confirm our commitments to academic freedom as well as the professional and ethical ties which hold us together as a global community of scholars, irrespective of the nature of our research or our institutional and national affiliations. In so doing, we also reaffirm our support of those scholars who continue to conduct research in complex and volatile settings." 

Doug Ramsey, June 17, 2016.

The Associação Brasileira de Antropologia intimidated 

CASCA co-signed a letter asking to curtail unjustified investigations of the ABA. Read the letter here and share it.

Tim Ingold's Manifesto

Tim Ingold, professor of anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and keynote speaker at the CASCA 2015 meeting in Quebec City, wrote a manifesto in favor of his university. To read here.  

French-language editor and French book review editor wanted!

Anthropologica, the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) is looking for a French-language editor and a French book review editor.

Read more ...