Flash Presentation - Executive Session Status Awarded

Sponsored by: AAA Executive Program Committee

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students, Those Involved in Mentoring Activities

Primary Theme: Labor

Secondary Theme: Teaching

(3-0020) Academic Precarity in American Anthropology

This panel addresses the precariousness of the academic job market for US-based PhDs in socio-cultural anthropology (based on an article, with 8 commentaries, on the Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots by Platzer & Allison, Feb 2018). While a tenure-track job remains the desired outcome for most, if not all, PhDs, figures show that no more than 20% of graduates will achieve such positions within five years out. We ask here: why then are PhD programs almost exclusively training students for a professional life so few will realize, and how else might we reconceptualize our programs--and aspirational horizons--for a better (and more varied) job placement for our students? Participants address four themes: pedagogy and graduate education; the applied/academic divide; adjunct labor; the contemporary moment in light of (possibilities for) the persistence/resilience/resistance of anthropology as a discipline

Organizer(s)

• Anne Allison

  Duke University

Presenter(s)

• Anne Allison

  Duke University

• Ilana Gershon

  Indiana University

• Peter Redfield

  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Ken Anderson

  INTEL Corporation

• Carole McGranahan

  Associate Professor
  University of Colorado

• Tamisha Navarro

  Associate Director
  Barnard College

• Linda Whiteford

  Professor
  University of South Florida

• Hugh Gusterson

  Professor
  George Washington University

• Elizabeth Rodwell

  Senior Researcher
  University of Houston-Downtown, Schlumberger

• Jordan Kraemer

  Wesleyan University

• Samuel Shearer

  Washington University in St. Louis

• Keri Brondo

  Professor & Chair
  Univeristy of Memphis

• Janet Roitman

  The New School for Social Research

• Daniel Ginsberg

  Manager of Education, Research and Professional Development
  American Anthropological Association

Chair(s)

• David Platzer

  Research Fellow
  Berggruen Institute

Presenter(s)

• Jennifer Carlson

  Sustainability Fellow
  Cornell University

• Tamara Hale

  Principal User Experience Researcher
  Workday

Presentations:

• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Academic Precarity Forum: Successful Graduates
  Linda M. Whiteford – University of South Florida
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Anthropology and Academic Class Struggle?
  Samuel Joseph Shearer – Washington University in St. Louis
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Anthropology between Academia and Practice
  Daniel Ginsberg – American Anthropological Association
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Anthropology Beyond Precarity
  Anne Allison – Duke University
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Anthropology’s Ends: Precarious Love and the Necropolitics of Worry
  Jennifer D. Carlson – Cornell University
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Design Anthropology: three stories about cultural critique outside the academy and teaching anthropologists
  Tamara Hale – Workday
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Epistemological crisis ?
  Janet Roitman – The New School for Social Research
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Learning from the Margins: What Applied Anthropology Programs Might Teach Us about Graduate Education
  Keri Brondo – Univeristy of Memphis
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Provincializing Precarity
  Peter Redfield – University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Race-ing to the Bottom: Considering Race and Gender in the Ranks of Contingent Faculty
  Tamisha Navarro – Barnard College
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Roads Away From Precarity
  Ken Anderson – INTEL Corporation
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Should I Stay or Should I Go?
  Ilana Gershon – Indiana University
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  The Invisible Labor of Precarity
  Jordan H. Kraemer – Wesleyan University
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  The MacDonaldization of the professoriat
  Hugh Gusterson – George Washington University
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  Training Anthropologists Rather Than Professors
  Carole McGranahan – University of Colorado
• 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

  What it Asks of Us: The Irrationality of Our Discipline
  Elizabeth A. Rodwell – University of Houston-Downtown, Schlumberger