Session Abstracts

A-B-C | D-E-F | G-H-I | J-K-L | M-N-O | P-Q-R  | S-T-U-V | W-X-Y-Z

WALI, Alaka (Field Museum) and TOPASH-CALDWELL, Blaire (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians) Intersections between Indigenous Activism and Museums. By recognizing decades of cultural theft and the deployment of problematic narratives of Indigenous peoples, large museums are exploring ways to right historical wrongs. Simultaneously, Indigenous activism is transforming the ways in which museums care for collections and develop exhibitions. What does all this mean for cultural citizenship? How do differently situated museums approach the concerns of Indigenous activists and scholars? In this roundtable, the panelists, from differently situated museums and cultural centers will discuss their experiences working inside and outside of museum contexts to leverage Indigenous peoples’ agency around contemporary concerns. (F-64) 

WARLING, Adren and NÚÑEZ-MCHIRI, Guillermina (UTEP) Student Research Experiences: Gender and Sexuality on the Border. This panel will discuss the research experiences of students at the University of Texas at El Paso addressing issues of gender and sexuality on the U.S.-Mexico border region. Student researchers will present on projects on a variety of topics, including: intimate partner violence from LGBTQIA+ perspectives, performance ethnography to address gender based violence, Gender based violence and courtroom observations in protective order courts, the psychological implications associated with domestic violence occurrences, sexual health education and awareness at the University of Texas at El Paso campus, and the mental health experiences of pregnant and post-natal care experiences of immigrant women. (TH-98) 

WARREN, Narelle (Monash U) and SAKELLARIOU, Dikaios (Cardiff U) Intersectional Approaches to Disability; Convergences and Breaches, Part II. Research agendas, care practices, and national policies often foreground disability as an exclusive identity, positioning it as a category apart. This panel seeks to question the assumption of disability as a category apart, by specifically attending to the ways it intersects with gender, race, poverty, sexual and gender identities, illness, and age, among several other dimensions. Papers in this panel seek to ask: how does structural disadvantage emerge at the intersections of disability with other social constructs and environments, and what are the convergences and the breaches between the various ways to conceptualise and engage with disability and other identity-based politics? narelle.warren@monash.edu (F-42) 

WHEATLEY, Abby (ASU) and PAYNTER, Eleanor (OH State U) Disrupting Narratives of Risk and Rescue in Migration. Articulations of unauthorized migration by state actors and the mainstream media diminish the structural nature of migrant deaths by scapegoating a variety of actors, including smugglers, the physical landscape, and migrants themselves. In an effort to re-center the state’s culpability in manufacturing danger to control migration, this panel poses migrant crossings as a refusal to be territorially excluded and the demand to be rescued as an agentic strategy by people in transit. Bridging the EU-Africa and US-Mexico border regions, we consider the strategies for survival and solidarity that emerge and are enacted along vast, unpopulated, and unpredictable sea- and desert-scapes. awheatley@asu.edu (F-03) 

WIES, Jennifer R. (Ball State U) and HALDANE, Hillary J. (Quinnipiac U) Transforming and Reshaping General Education in Higher Education, Parts I-II. The 21st century higher education policy and practice landscape is one simultaneously marked by uncertainty and hope. Nowhere are these tensions more present than in discussions and actions around general education. Anthropologists and social scientists often find themselves at the forefront of general education programs on campus, attributed in part to a commitment to wide-reaching and holistic approaches. This two-part session includes analyses of general education concepts such as “diversity,” case studies of general education from the US and around the world, opportunities for faculty development, unique general education student populations, assessment strategies, and philosophical/pedagogical challenges. jrwies@bsu.edu (TH-14, TH-44) 

WILLGING, Cathleen (PIRE) Trust, Trauma, and Turnover: Advancing Health Equity for American Indian Elders. Understanding and addressing the significant health and healthcare inequities experienced by American Indian elders is an urgent public health need. This panel draws on mixed-methods research to explore the multifaceted sources of these inequities, from the historically traumatic (e.g., boarding schools) to the mundane (e.g., wait times, paperwork), as well as the comprehensive, multilevel health interventions and policy reforms needed to address them. Together, papers advance a call for both pragmatic improvements to elders’ experiences of the healthcare system and large-scale structural changes to fulfill the United States government’s unmet responsibilities to American Indian people. cwillging@pire.org (T-64)​​​​​​​ 

WILLOW, Anna (OH State U) ExtrACTION and Time, Part I: Temporalities. This two-part session explores the diverse and dynamic intersections of extraction and time. In recent years, anthropologists have investigated the causes and consequences of extreme extraction, pervasive pollution, and interrelated instances of socioecological devastation. Less well understood, however, are the relationships among extraction, impacts, and time. Papers in these sessions consider 1) how diverse temporalities can be used to justify or challenge environmental destruction, 2) how attention to time can help us make anthropological sense of life in a rapidly changing world, and 3) what ethnographic narratives can reveal about extractive processes and local fights for land and life. willow.1@osu.edu (TH-06)​​​​​​​ 

WILLOW, Anna (OH State U) ExtrACTION and Time, Part II: Narratives. This two-part session explores the diverse and dynamic intersections of extraction and time. In recent years, anthropologists have investigated the causes and consequences of extreme extraction, pervasive pollution, and interrelated instances of socioecological devastation. Less well understood, however, are the relationships among extraction, impacts, and time. Papers in these sessions consider 1) how diverse temporalities can be used to justify or challenge environmental destruction, 2) how attention to time can help us make anthropological sense of life in a rapidly changing world, and 3) what ethnographic narratives can reveal about extractive processes and local fights for land and life. willow.1@osu.edu (TH-36)​​​​​​​ 

WINTHROP, Robert (UMD) Occasional Victories: Are There Successful Interventions over Energy and Resources? While anthropologists often document the disproportionate burdens that extractive technologies place on poorer and less powerful communities, do they also participate in successful interventions that lead to more equitable outcomes? This roundtable asks what constitutes “success” in regulated energy and natural resource projects, drawing from scholarly research, practice, and advocacy. Each panelist will briefly describe a professional experience in the energy and resource sector. Panelists and audience are asked to consider: By what criteria should we determine success? Can we identify any common factors contributing to success? Do these examples suggest useful directions for research, practice, or advocacy? rwinthro@umd.edu (F-66)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

WOIAK, Joanne (U Washington) SDS Roundtable on Disability Anthropology as Activism and Academics. Disability studies and applied anthropology each arose from collective action that includes political activism and academic research and teaching. This roundtable gathers together Board members of the Society for Disability Studies who engage in disability anthropology with a commitment to activism. We particularly welcome the participation of people working on disability and aging, education, health, development, immigration, and environment. How does disability anthropology encompass the roles of activist-scholars, scholar-activists, artists, and community organizers? How can our fields work to generate understanding and sustainable growth out of the tensions engendered by the current perception of an academia/activism divide? jwoiak@uw.edu (TH-12)​​​​​​​ 

WOLF-MEYER, Matthew (Binghamton U) and DOUCET-BATTLE, James (UCSC) What Kind of Substance Is This? Medical practice is changing how Americans think about bodily substances and their relations to them. Through diverse corporeal lenses such as blood, mucus, DNA, skin, brains, and more, biomedical technologies offer new ways of reckoning kinship and ascribing risk. Drawing on anthropological approaches to kinship that see substance as a mediating factor in making kin and relations between kin, how might we think about medical and medicalized substances and their impacts on social forms in the U.S. in the early 21st century? How is biomedicine reworking kinship, and how is this reworking being challenged, by who and with what effects? mwolfmey@binghamton.edu (F-129)​​​​​​​ 

YAMADA, Toru (Meiji U) Turbulent Nationalism(s) and Alienation: Patterns and Considerations. The papers in this panel focus on alienation from policy processes. We indicate groups that are detached from policy formations either because of exclusion by power holders, or because of disregard of the processes. These case studies across the ethnological spectrum—small-scale markets in Cambodia, Japanese heritage landscapes, media analysis in the context of Trump’s obstruction, and Chinese musical galas on TV— tell us about divisiveness that often centers on affect over processual realities. We ask how anthropological research can address this separation, especially in the context of rising nationalism. (F-93)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

ZHANG, Shaozeng (OR State U) Digital Technologies and Cultural Citizenship. The “ubiquitous” use of digital technologies both as social infrastructure and as personal devices has become a transformative cultural force at local, national and transnational scales nowadays. This session explores a wide array of questions, from the digital ways of thinking since the beginning of industrial labor division, to the transformation of citizens and nation into cyborgs, and from marginalized communities’ access to basic technologies as educational infrastructure, to the impacts of more recent technologies on citizen status and rights. This session examines cultural citizenship as a social-technological process, challenges the concept of citizenship, and contributes to current policy debates. shaozeng.zhang@oregonstate.edu (F-124)