Around the Web Digest: Week of August 2

Happy August! I hope you aren’t going into panic mode looking at your to-do list for summer. Send along any blog posts that need to be featured here at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com!

NPR profiles two cases, an athlete whose levels of testosterone are considered too high for her to compete as a woman and a transgender teen who has caused controversy by seeking to use the men’s restroom at his school:  Being A Woman: Who Gets To Decide?

Nautilus explores the Whorf/Kay and Berlin debate in more depth than most blogs: Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language

How To Anthropology is a new blog looking to provide advice like the following post, which should be useful to graduate students: 10 Tips for Writing a Winning NSF (DDRIG) Proposal

AnthSisters features this interview with a student in medical anthropology who argues that anthropology is no less practical than any other major that doesn’t lead directly to a specific career:  Anthropology… What Kind of Job Will You Get with That?

According to IFL Science, early humans had smaller bodies than we previously thought: Bigger Wasn’t Better For Early Humans

This BBC video clip analyzes what it means that bonobos are vocalizing outside of an obvious context or stimulus (autoplays with sound): Bonobos Evolving Language Similar to Babies?

National Geographic reports that European artifacts have been found on Hatteras Island, lending support to the theory that members of the “lost colony” of Roanoke assimilated with local Native American groups: We Finally Have Clues to How America’s Lost Colony Vanished

According to the Scientific American blog, Anthropology in Practice, We’ve Modified Our Behavior So We Can Text and Walk. The title is pretty self-explanatory.

Some of the posts on Medizinethnologie are in German but some are in English as well. The post On the History and Future of Medical Anthropology in Germany – and the Close Relationship between Medicine, Technology and Society in a Globalizing World features an interview with Arthur Kleinman.

The AAA blog points out that the Other has long been associated with the fear of contagion: Epidemics, Xenophobia and the Other Fear Factor 

See you next week!

Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is the executive director of América Solidaria U.S. She recently graduated with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on volunteer tourism in Guatemala and how it is opening up new avenues for tourists and hosts to develop more cosmopolitan understandings of the world (as well as opening up new forms of friction over the circulation of knowledge).