S E C T I O N N E W S February 2000 Anthropology News

Trevor Purcell works with other retreat attendees, Dawn-Elissa Banks and Julian Smothers.

events. Kimberly Simmons (simmon38@pilot. msu.edu) is the ABA Program Chair, and special events chair-elect is Kevin Foster (KMFOS- TER@mail.utexas.edu). Next month, Mar 23-25, the AFS will hold its annual meeting ,in Tampa, FL. ABA member, Cheryl Mwaria is the Program Chair of that conference. Using the venues of other meetings, such as the Caribbean Studies Association or the Northeastern Anthropological Association, can be useful as impromptu gather- ing times for ABA members.

Please send commeni3 and items of interest for ABA column to us: A Lynn Bolles (B64@wnail. wnd. edu; and Johnnetta B Cole JBC@prinbnail.com).

Association for Feminist Anthropology KELLI ANN COSTA, C O ~ B U I T N G E D ~ R

Sylvia Forman Prize Please see t h i s month’s Awards Alert in the Career Development section for information on AFA invitation to graduate and undergraduate stu- dents to submit an essay in feminist anthropolo- gy in competition for the sixth annual Sylvia H. Forman Prize.

Call For Papers: Voices ZOO0

By Suzanne Bakm, Editor Has the climate improved for feminist anthro- pologists and feminist graduate students in the US as the century turns? AFA seeks graduate stu- dents as well as established feminist scholars to contribute to its forthcoming issue of the Voices on the topic of the “future of feminism and antiracism in anthropology.”

We are soliciting graduate students located in doctorate degree granting programs in a range of institutions including historically black colleges, Catholic universities, as well as more mainstream non-denominational public universities and his- torically racially and gender exclusive (read Ivy League and elite) institutions located in ail regions of the US to submit their brief evaluations

of the state of feminism and antiracism in their anthropology department as measured by the core curriculum requirements. We invite gradu- ate students to conduct focus groups of 5-10 graduate students on the topic of feminist anthropology and write a 1,500 word report for Voices. The questions that we would like consid- ered include, but are not limited to: 1) Is feminist theory and critical race theory addressitd in any of the required or core courses in your course cur- riculum? 2) How would you characterize the cli- mate for feminist graduate students and feminist faculty at your institution? 3) Are feminist gradu- ate faculty actively recruited? 4) Are feminists fac- ulty represented among the tenured faculty at your institution?

Please see the AFA website, www.QAL.berke- ley.edu/-afaweb/ for full details. If you require more information please contact the editors of Voices, Suzanne Baker at sbakerl@ne.uswest.net and France Winddance Twine at windanceS@aol. com with any questions or to receive a copy of the interview schedule. If you would like to con- tribute a reflection on your graduate student experiences as a feminist researcher please submit your 1,000 word essay no later than Feb 28 to the editors of Voices, whose addresses are listed at the AFA website.

1999 Travel Grant Winners Each year the AFA awards travel grants to the AAA meetings to under represented women stu- dents who participate in a significant way at the meetings. Please see the Anthro Award Winners column in the Rites of Passage section for infor- mation on this year’s recipients.

A reminder that the AFA awards four travel grants each year for under represented women to attend the AAA. We welcome inquiries for travel grants at any time. Please direct your questions to the AFA website and listserv: www.qal.berkeley. edu/-afaweb/where information is continually updated.

AFA Goals In an effort to keep members informed of AFA goals and mission, I reprint here our eight current goals. At the present time the Executive Board, with the assistance of members, is drafting a for- mal mission statement which will explicitly artic- ulate AFA goals and objectives.

1. To improve the outreach of AFA to feminists from all four fields of anthropology;

2. To include US women of color in all our activities, but especially to utilize our travel grants to assist women of color in attending the AAA meetings;

3. To increase outreach and mentoring to stu- dents at all levels;

4. To broaden our constituency, especially to include part-time feminist academics and femi- nists outside the academy

5. To expand our membership to reach 2000 members by the year 2ooo;

6. To increase the visibility and leadership of feminiit anthropology both within the discipline and the outside world;

7. To increase organization network-

8. To focus more attention on teach- ing within the AAA;

ing and feminist pedagogy.

Meeting News The success of Irma McLaurin’s (v Florida) well- attended workshop “The F-Word” at the Chicago meeting has prompted a call for continued par- ticipation by AFA members in future noon time workshops. It was suggested by the board that one regarding “chilly climates” would be a par- ticularly appropriate follow-up to Voices proposed issue on Affirmative Action-and sexist/ racist edu- cational venues.

Helena Ragone (U Massachusetts) invited the AFA membership to submit ideas and papers for San Francisco 2000 with the theme of changing the ways we think of anthropology and also the way the public perceives of anthropology. The theme for the meeting will be “The Public Face of Anthropology in the Millennium”.

A Lynn Bolles (U Maryland) announced a new PhD program in Women’s Studies at U of Maryland-College Park. This is one of the few institutions currently offering this degree. U Maryland already offers a graduate certificate and an undergraduate major in Women‘s Studies, and currently serves as the home for the prestigious journal Feminist Studies.

Outgoing AFA President Meg Conkey (UC Berkeley) was thanked by incoming President Sandra Morgen (U Oregon) for her outstanding service to the AFA as well as her service to the AAA.

Please submit news items, am’cles and brief field reports to Kelli Ann Costa at: Dept of Anthropolou, Crestview Hall 334, Franklin Pierce C, Rindge, NH 03461; tel 603/899-4207, fax 603/899-4324, KACosta@worldnet.att.net. Visit the AFA website at www.qal.berkeley.edu/-afmeb.

Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists h J A N D R 0 LUG0 AND A”E TORRES, CONINBUTNG EDITORS

Call for Papers We are anticipating another successful year at the AAA Annual meeting in San Francisco. Please be advised that those of you who intend to submit panels for consideration should contact the Program Co-Chair, Javier Tapia (jatapia@uwm. edu) to ensure that deadlines for receipt of mate- rials are met.

Professionalism Forum

In anticipation of the AAA 2000 meeting in San Francisco, the Executive Board has proposed, and those members present at the annual ALLA Business Meeting have unanimously endorsed, the development of a yearly workshop for profes-

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Anthropology News February 2000 S E C T I O N N E W S

sionalism development at the annual meetings. Such a workshop will provide an orientation to both Latina(o2 graduate students and junior fac- ulty seeking mentoring and professional guid- ance and advice for navigating the often turbu- lent waters of the academy. At the Business Meet- ing, a number of ALLA members and leading scholars offered their assistance for the 2OOO meeting workshop. Among those who volun- teered their time to the development and coordi- nation of the workshops are Diego Vigil, Pat Zavella, Jim Taggart, Tom Weaver, Roberto Alvarez and Ruben Mendoza among others. Once again, please contact Program Co-Chair, Javier Tapia for information.

A U A Awards Competition Please see this month’s Awards Alert column in the Rites of Passage section for information on AUA’s 2000 Student Paper Competition and its Rising Professional Award.

As We See Ourselves

By Alejandro Lug0 This is my last column as contributing editor. I am glad that I could partiupate in t h i s forum in the last year or so with my colleague, Arlene Torres. I know that I will continue to try to serve ALL4 in other capacities in the future.

I would like to use t h i s opportunity to share with the readers of this column my honest response to one of the most difficult questions a serious undergraduate student posed to me in my nine years of teaching. The questions came through email during the last two weeks of the fall semester. He stated the following: “Professor, if you don’t mind, how do you identify yourself? And why? I question whether it is appropriate to call myself Mexican American. Should it not be just Mexican? Not like the American part really means anything to the mainstream world. I am not sure, I am a little confused. These questions were being posed by one of the best students (a sophomore) in the class (“Spanish-speaking Peoples in the United States”).

How would you, my colleagues, have answered these questions? How do you idenbfy or see your- self? I felt a re>ponsibility to try to do justice to his concerns. I attempted to answer as a teacher, and not always as a thmrist or scholar. I hope that t h i s excerpt from the original reply produces a bit of discussion, if not, some reflection on how I could have done a better job, or how you (my audience) have answered these kinds of questions in the past. What is at stake here should concern all anthropologists (not just ALL4 members) who teach about identity, issues of belonging, and everyday life experiences.

Dear Student, With regard to your question (which is actual-

ly about choosing one and only one identity), and if I were to apply it to all individuals of Mexican descent in t h i s country, there really is no general answer. Below I will tell you how I feel about my identity. But with regard to other indi- viduals/authors and the communities they

belong to/study (throughout the country: Southwest, Midwest, East Coast), I first look at how they situate and how they idenw them- selves and why: Chicano/a, Latino/a, Mexican, Mexican-American, Tejano/a, Hispano/a-inde- pendently of what I think. Situating them and

torical coqtexts is a major step forward. Myself in a Nutshell:

Identity for me in the US is like language; I can- not dream in, or limit myself to just one lan- guage: English or Spanish. Sometimes I speak both at once (Spanglish), other times I speak only English, other times I speak only Spanish. But I will never limit myself to speak, write and dream in only one language--even though as a kid, I only spoke Spanish; even though as a teenager, I struggled with both Spanish and English and even though as an adult, I came to speak both languages comfortably. In the same way, even though when I lived in Mexico I identified myself only as m e x i m ; even though as a teenager in southern New Mexico, I identified myself only as either mexicano or Mexican American; even though it was only in college that I began to call myself Chicano, a politicized identity that demands equality; and even though it was only in Illinois that I began to appreciate myself as a Latino-for all these multiple identities that I have come to understand and appreciate-I can- not limit myself to just one of these identities. As when speaking Spanish, English or Spanghsh, I feel comfortable with all these identities depend- ing on the context (Note: At the same time, we must remain critical of the limitations of each label, and we must be aware of the fact that other individuals might st i l l prefer only one of these

cano, Mexican, Mexican American and Latino. My family and US identity politics: Con mi fmi l - ia [with my family], I am meximo-con mi madre [mother], mis hemrmzos/as [siblings] y espsa [wife]; con mis hijas [to my daughters], I am both mexicam and Mexican American. Later, when they get older and experience (and acknowledge) racism, they will understand my Chicano identi- ty. Here in Urbana, IL, if my daughters don’t say that they are Mexican American (that they were actually born in Wisconsin and Texas), their teachers think that they are mexicanas and, there- fore, in the teachers’ minds, some day my daugh- ters will go back to “their country.” Hopefully, by the time my daughters go to college, the main- stream society will recognize that Mexicans can

Understanding them in their OW^ social and his-

terms). So, I can be (and I am) Chicano, Mexi-

be Americans, too (without denying their m i - amidad). . . .

The term for Mexicans from Chicago is “Mexicano/a”. “Chicano” is a term many have not heard of, and “Mexican American” is very suspicious to most of them (just as it is for the Chicanos in Texas, but for a different reason: in Chicago most of them simply prefer m e x i m ) . Here at the U of I, as you know, I also work with Puerto Rican and Cuban students, who see me as mexicano and probably as a Latino Professor who happens to be m e x i m and (maybe) Mexican American.

When I teach about different “American Ethniaties” in generak Asian Americans, K o m Americans, Italian Americans, Cuban Americans, and so forth, I feel that I should then talk about “Mexican Americans” to be consistent. Then I clanfy that some Mexican Americans label them-

nos/as,” and that some of them do not like the term “Mexican American” because the “Ameri- can” part is always contested, especially by Anglos who assume that “American’, means white, or “European American” exclusively. If I am speaking to a “multiraaal/multiCtural audi- ence” in the Midwest, I say that I am a US Latino of Mexican descent (not an international Latin American): I tell them that I am Latino, but also Mexicano, Mexican American, or Chicano-I am all of these things. In short, your identity, like your ability to speak more than one language, speaks to more than just one choice. These choic- es should add to our abilities as years go by, with- out losing your foundation. Because of all these abilities and identities, we can go very, very far. Nuestra Raza [nuestra comunidad]--los mexicanos y las mexicmas-es inwmparable [is incompara- ble].

selves “Chicanos/a~, ” “H~sP~~os /~s ,” “Mexica-

For contributions to the AN via AUA and @any comments please reach the contributing editors, Al&mdm Lug0 and Arlene Torres, via m i l to the fbl- laving addresses: a-lugo@uiuc.edu, a-tones@uiuc. edu. You can also wn’te to the U of Illinoisl Dept of Anthropology, 109 Davenport Hall, MC-148, 607 South Mathews Avenue, V b l lL 61801.

Association for Political and Legal Anthropology JOHN R BOWEN CONIRIBWITNG EDITOR We are exploring ways of strengthening ties with related sections and organizations in other disci- plines (as some other AAA sections are doing). For APLA t h i s “lateral collaboration” in the past has meant primarily active partiapation in the Law and Society Association. I would like to encour- age column readers to communicate (via my email address) news about other organizations with which we might wish to have regular con- tact-which could mean anything from regularly

posing anthropological beachheads at their meet- ings, to more active forms of collaboration. As for the Law and Society Assodation, their

meeting will be in Miami Beach this coming May 26-29. The theme is the rather opaque “Millen- nial Accidents-On the Road with the Rule of Law.” Fortunately, the LSA call for papers sounds less like a Bob Hope movie than a serious engage- ment with issues of transnational legal processes, one that is particularly appropriate for anthropo- logical comment and contribution. Among the subthemes proposed for the meeting are: the relationships of law and competing forms of authority (familial, economic), transnational movements of layers, legal institutions and NGOs, and the exportability of “the rule of law.”

listing their conferences (and they ours), to P’O-