One widely circulated infographic impression of how a book is born. By designer Mariah Bear. BY JASON WEIDEMANNSenior acquisitions editor at University of Minnesota Press Last week some good news hit my inbox. A book published by the University of Minnesota Press, begun as the author’s dissertation, had been discussed in the New Yorker. Matthew … More What do university presses do?
Author Kathleen Nolan has studied what really happens when police patrol school hallways. Images from Creative Commons. BY KATHLEEN NOLANPrinceton University lecturer <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073741899 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal … More More guns in schools? An ethnographer’s perspective.
Street scene near Galleria Umberto, a public shopping gallery in Naples, southern Italy. Here, author Jason Pine discusses the city’s neomelodica music scene that makes celebrities out of young singers—and the politics of gaining such fame. BY JASON PINEAssistant professor of anthropology and media, society, and the arts at Purchase College, State University of New … More Counterfeit capitalism and the neomelodica scene in Naples
We are not biologically programmed to rest a full night of consolidated sleep. In fact,some societies favor shorter periods of sleep, during both the day and night. Image via Creative Commons. BY MATTHEW J. WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Have humans evolved to sleep in a consolidated, nightly fashion, … More On the evolution of sleep
Should you share your sleeping space with Fido? BY MATTHEW WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Sure, sharing a bed can be a nuisance from time to time. And spending the night in a hotel alone while traveling can be a vacation in itself. But there’s been some recent attention … More The benefits of sharing a bed — with lovers, children, or dogs
Sleep: It might traditionally be relegated to the twilight hours.But that doesn’t mean it has to be. BY MATTHEW WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Slate & Survey Monkey just published the results of a poll on sleep, most of which is pretty innocuous. The two findings that work pretty … More Is a good night’s sleep legitimately possible?
The “I’m a Mormon” campaign appears on a billboard in Times Square in New York City. Image source. BY HOKULANI AIKAUAssociate professor of indigenous and Native Hawaiian politics at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa If you live in New York City, Atlanta, Minneapolis or any of the other 20 cities in which “I’m a … More The "I’m a Mormon" Campaign: Reconfiguring the myth of an American melting pot
As zero-tolerance discipline policies have been instituted at high schools across the country, police officers are employed with increasing frequency to enforce behavior codes and maintain order, primarily at poorly performing, racially segregated urban schools. Actions that may once have sent students to the detention hall or resulted in their suspension may now introduce them … More Schools vs. Prisons: How zero-tolerance and other punitive disciplinary policies are hurting students
BY LAURA A. OGDENAssociate professor of anthropology at Florida International University This movie poster from the film Shark River manages to cram almost every single Everglades-related stereotype into one “vivid color” tableau. It is really quite remarkable, reflecting, in particular, the racial binaries common to American landscape politics in the early 1950s. Here, we see, … More The Florida Everglades: A land of alligators, outlaws and so much swampy, cinematic excess
In 2006 the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh won the Nobel Peace Prize for its innovative microfinancing operations. In March 2011, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus was ousted as head of the microfinance lender by the Bangladesh government, which owns 25% of the company. The government claims Yunus, 70, is far past its country’s mandatory retirement … More Lamia Karim: The fall of Muhammad Yunus and its consequences for the women of Grameen Bank.
