All posts by Rebecca Nelson

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).

Around the Web Digest: Week of March 22

This week I’m trying to spread the love to some blogs I haven’t featured in the past. Please, if you know of any good blogs, particularly physical/biological anthropology blogs, send them my way at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

If you haven’t done the Savage Minds Reader Survey yet, don’t fret! There’s still time to get in the running for the Awesome Stuff giveaway.

DigVentures describes a genetic mapping study that found a shocking lack of Viking DNA in the UK:  Not So Vicious Invaders? What Genetic Mapping Tells Us About Our Past 

Similarly, this post on The Conversation discusses recent evidence from genome sequencing that adds a new wave of steppe pastoralists to the history of European settlement:  European Invasion: DNA Reveals the Origins of Modern Europeans 

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Around the Web Digest: Week of March 15

For those of you in the Northeast like me, spring has officially come so don’t let a little snow fool you into thinking it hasn’t. As always, if you want me to feature anything here, send me the link at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

In honor of Sir Terry Pratchett’s life and work, here’s a quote from The Science of Discworld II: The Globe: “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.” If you’re unfamiliar with his books, I recommend the Rincewind series, which begins with The Colour of Magic and skewers academic pretensions.

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Around the Web Digest: Week of March 8

Beware the Ides of March, pansies. The dedicated anthropology blogs were a bit quieter than usual this week but to make up for it, anthropologists were featured in a variety of other spaces. As always, if you come across anything good or want to bring an anthro blog to my attention, email me at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com

Let me take a minute to boost the Savage Minds Reader Survey (after all, survey data shows that people who take surveys are nicer and smarter than people who don’t!).

This is a January post, and it’s not even written by an anthropologist. Bear with me. It blew up my feeds this week when it was republished by The Guardian, so I think it’s worth a look. The title is pretty self-explanatory: Don’t Call them Expats, They are Immigrants like Everyone Else

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Around the Web Digest: Week of March 1

Greetings anthroblogosphere! Do we have a word for our readers? Savage Minders? Pansies? As the new Around the Web intern, I’m going to be collecting and sharing anthropology-themed blog posts that I find interesting. If you come across (or produce) anything that you’d like me to share next week, please email me at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com. I could particularly use some recommendations for physical/biological anthro blogs.

National Anthropology Day was February 19th and I’m nothing if not observant, so here’s an older post from Glossographia: How and Why (Not) to Go to Grad School 

This interview in Guernica with Lily King, the author of Euphoria,  a novel inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, explores the experience of ethnographic fieldwork, what it feels like to be an outsider, and intellectual eroticism: Ethnographic Invention: Megha Majumdar interviews Lily King

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