Comments on: Congrats Leppänen! /2007/05/04/congrats-leppanen/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology Fri, 08 Dec 2017 18:00:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1 By: lhc /2007/05/04/congrats-leppanen/comment-page-1/#comment-77610 Wed, 30 May 2007 06:51:32 +0000 /2007/05/04/congrats-leppanen/#comment-77610 I’d love to hear some thick description of PhD conferral by sword, involving academic regalia, etc.

Anthropologists in the states should start inventing some traditions… our graduations are so anticlimactic.

]]> By: Strong /2007/05/04/congrats-leppanen/comment-page-1/#comment-76356 Fri, 25 May 2007 20:49:38 +0000 /2007/05/04/congrats-leppanen/#comment-76356 I am happy to report that Antti performed admirably at his dissertation defense. The opponent, Nancy Abelmann, engaged Antti’s thesis quite seriously, looking at questions of class anxiety, pressures to perform, and more in the context of South Korea’s somewhat notoriously ‘obsessively’ modern economy. Readers from Europe and the U.S. may be unaware just how different the convention of the ‘dissertation defense’ is in different places. In Finland, the ritual actual involves a sword! Generally speaking it is more formal here than in the U.S., although apparently it is even more formal elsewhere in Europe. There are swords and such, or tuxedos, academic regalia, etc.

Antti also hosted an enormous banquet for colleagues and family following the defense, which is also a conventional practice here in Helsinki.

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