Every year for the past several years I've been tracking the number of jobs listed on the American Anthropological Association job postings as of September 26. That date is somewhat arbitrary and I chose it for historical reasons, but a slightly different date wouldn't really change much when what I'm looking at is the overall trend, year-over-year ( Read more... )

Every year for the past several years I've been tracking the number of jobs listed on the American Anthropological Association job postings as of September 26. That date is somewhat arbitrary and I chose it for historical reasons, but a slightly different date wouldn't really change much with the overall trends. As a proxy for the health of the job ( Read more... )

So, I am now on sabbatical!  Technically I believe my sabbatical started on August 15 which was the first day of the academic year, but in terms of its impact, it started this Wednesday when classes started and I sat around most of the day, except for the part where I took Arthur to meet his Grade 1 teacher.  So that's all right.  It's actually a ( Read more... )

This morning I returned to my office after nearly a week of being at a conference followed by a weekend and snow day, only to see: A GIANT PLANT ON MY DESK. Well, perhaps not giant, but really quite large. I was very perplexed. I knew how it must have gotten through the door - the department's main office secretary often puts packages in ( Read more... )

Every year for the past several years I've been tracking the number of jobs listed on the American Anthropological Association job postings as of September 26. That date is somewhat arbitrary and I chose it for historical reasons, but a slightly different date wouldn't really change much with the overall trends. As a proxy for the health of the ( Read more... )

Once again, the students in my senior/graduate linguistic anthropology course, Language and Societies, have written extended abstracts of their research papers, which we have published online at the course blog, Language and Societies. Both I and they would greatly appreciate any comments, questions, or suggestions you have regarding their projects ( Read more... )

I should have a research assistant whose sole job would be to pull me back from the brink every time I review something I have written and say to myself, "Oh, I should really tinker with that," or "Oh, but that sentence won't make very much sense until three pages later when I explain it in greater detail." Particularly when I am reviewing page ( Read more... )

How to know you're working with a very traditional press when you ask for a house style guide on preparing an index, and receive via snail mail a copy of a typewritten document. It tells me to begin preparing the index using typewritten 3x5 index cards, and indicates that I follow that up by compiling a typewritten document with a carbon copy, but ( Read more... )

Yesterday we decided to skip the morning session, where there wasn't much that appealed to us, and then hit the book room for an hour before heading off to our two afternoon panels (, both of which were exciting enough that I have half-scrawled proto-blog-posts in my notebook already, to be posted over at Glossographia when time and energy permit ( Read more... )

Yesterday a.m. we were up early to get to the blogger meetup, where I finally got to meet ancarett and a_d_medievalist and of course to see owlfish, plus we met a whole bunch of LJ and blog people whose identities remain obscure to me. Alas. Outside, we ran into angevin2 briefly, but unfortunately she was laid low with killer death plague. Mostly I just went to panels that were ( Read more... )