Tenure, the movie!– Oh, you think I’m kidding. But it’s real:
Mike Million will make his directorial debut with his own script about a beleaguered college professor (Wilson) who competes for tenure with an impressive new female colleague.
“The Office” regular David Koechner co-stars as Wilson’s anthropology professor sidekick
Martian Museography: The Barbican gallery in London is mounting the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art. The premise of the show is a group of Martian anthropologists investigate what humans call ‘contemporary art.’ Scroll down to download audioguides to the exhibition titled, “Ancestor Worship,” “Masks,” “Kinship Diagrams,” and the like. [Also, see Boing Boing‘s post on the exhibit.]
Academic Dope– New York Times article considers whether prescription drugs like Adderall are academic performance enhancers. [Note: you may need to sign up for a free NYTimes account to read this article.]
Good Reads– LLWynn at Culture Matters compiled a growing list of ethnography that’s enjoyable to read as well as some ethnographic fiction.
Description laid on a little too thick: In honor of recent controversies regarding truth and memoir, Slate ran a piece on How to embellish your life story without getting caught.
Cultural Sustainability: danah at apohenia wrote a post proposing that companies should incorporate a notion of ‘cultural sustainability’ into their practice as good corporate citizens.
Lost? This Gulf Times article, “Lost Tribe of Africa,” documents the Siddi, an African diaspora group in India. The writer contends that the Siddi are lost since they:
say they know nothing of their origins as descendants of African slaves. ‘I was born here. I got married here. My father and grandfather are also from this village. I’ve no idea where their ancestors came from,’ said Aishubehn Makwana Basurim, a 40-year-old woman who is the village head.
The New Superorganic: Scientific American ran a piece on cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick, who was able to wire the nerves in his forearm over the internet.
If we have any readers in London, I want them to go to the Barbican and destroy that exhibit. Send pictures.
Jay, I love your round-ups of news. You’re my go-to source for new and interesting tidbits on all and sundry that’s slightly related to anthropology. Much better than my Google news alert for “anthropology.”
Its driving me crazy. I saw a great performance of Siddi music on the web about a year ago, but I can’t find it anymore…
The Chronicle of Higher Education blog has a “sample” portion of the Tenure script: See http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/index.php?id=1841. Too bad there’s almost nothing about the anthropology professor sidekick character.
Chris, I live quite near London. However, I can’t get the mp3s in the link to open. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think I should go to the Barbican and trash the exhibition? I’m quite a destructive person, so I probably won’t take too much persuading 😉
oh, well, it’s not so much the destruction I want as the targeted removal of bad uses of anthropology. I put this in the same camp as Indiana Jones, the whole “what if alien anthropologists came to earth?” thing. I’d actually be more interested in a report on the exhibit and how it uses anthropology… I’ll post it if you write it 🙂
I just hope that tenure movie with Luke Wilson is as brilliant as Old School with his big brother Owen…… actually, I’ve been thinking about turning my experience of the tenure review into a musical. A sort of South Pacific-Avenue Q-West Side Story (“I have to live in America….?”).