[URBANTH-L]POSTDOC: Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University

[Susan Falls]

We seek papers for a panel on "Protest, Humor, Drama and
Creative Destruction: Revealing Tensions and Contradictions in
American Society" at the Society for North American
Anthropology taking place  April 19-21 2997 in New Orleans.


>>> Responses to disaster often play upon or obliquely make
explicit many of the contradictions and conflicts that simmer
beneath the surface much of the time. In this panel, we
explore the multiple ways in which protest, humor, art and
drama emerge as the results of inequality producing dynamics
in terms of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, nationality or citizenship. What are some of the
effects of these enterprises? What is the role of joy,
laughter and general hi-jinx in critique or dissent that for
all its lightness is also deadly serious? Why does humorous
protest gain purchase in the "mainstream," or even in the
margins or in criticized corners when more direct forms of
dissent may prove less effective? What is the role of the
sensual in such responses?

We aim to collect a set of papers addressing these themes,
broadly cast, as dealing with practices emerging from the
ongoing unnatural disasters such as the general American
political landscape and neoliberalism, racism, classism,
xenophobia, jingoism, surveillance, the construction of
"terrorism," war, ongoing erosion of civil liberties, and
more. We invite creative approaches and ethnographic studies
for this theme, and though in the main we use an
anthropological bent, we welcome participants using
interdisciplinary approaches.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:  Comedy
television / stand-up, films, ex: Code Pink, graffiti art and
artists like Banksy, critical mass, burning man, demolition
derby, bio-art or bio-protest, burlesque, carnivale, ad and
culture busting, experimentalism, menstrual protest,
costume/mask/puppetry, cartoonage, public performance.......

Send 100-150 word abstract with title to Susan Falls & Amy
Jones at sfalls at temple.edu by January 10th, 2007.

PS: Please see SANA website at www.sananet.org for more
details about the conference April 19-21 in New Orleans. 


Susan Falls, PhD
Department of Anthropology
1115 W. Berks St, Gladfelter Hall
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA  19122
USA