Anthropologies of the United States of America. Views from near and from Afar

(Aps 2017)
Jun 15, 2017 - Jun 16, 2017, Palermo

This conference is an interdisciplinary research project intended for scholars from various fields. The aim is to discuss a historically, anthropologically and politically central country: the United States. Is it possible to see the United States as a country to be examined from multiple points of view – both from near and from afar – with particular interest in the current “anthropological” culture, while also paying attention to history and making predictions about the future? Specialists and enthusiasts from various backgrounds are invited to respond from specific perspectives, in order to compare and contrast different interpretations of the “American galaxy”. To this end, both studies of a theoretical nature and case studies are encouraged. The view from near and from afar, obviously a reference to Lévi-Strauss, alludes to a modus operandi anthropologically based on comparing and contrasting different perspectives. Anthropologists are directly concerned here, because it was in the United States that the much-discussed anthropological Postmodernism recently emerged, and because it was also in the United States that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, based on studies of Native Americans, was conceived. The reference to “anthropologies” should therefore be viewed literally (anthropologists specializing in the United States in largely ethnographic terms) and with a culturally wider meaning (linguists, comparatists, geographers, semiologists, historians, etc., who observe American culture from their respective epistemological perspectives). The reference to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, aside from being a theoretical inclination shared by the organizers, is a happy necessity for those who study a multicultural country like the United States, with its difficult past of coexistence between colonizers and natives, as well as between the different cultures of which it is composed today.  

Important Dates:

• Paper Submission deadline:May 30, 2017
• Notification of Acceptance:Jun 1, 2017
  
• Final Version Due: Jun 20, 2017