Meeting Details
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During the Spring 2023 semester, ECHO meets every Wednesday 1-2:30pm CST
We always meet in a hybrid format. In-person meetings are held at the ECHO/Pritzker Lab in Rowand-Johnson Hall 31. All participants on the ECHO email list are also sent a Zoom link for joining us remotely. If you would like to be added to this list, please send us a message using the form under the "Contact" tab above. |
Schedule of Events: Upcoming
Wednesday February 15, 2023
Communicative Violence on Campus and Beyond: an open conversation about embodiment, healing, and the politics of hate speech
Recently, as many are undoubtedly already aware, a series of antisemitic chalk messages were found on campus (you can read more here). Though it is far from the first time that this or other forms of overt hate speech has appeared in public spaces on UA campus, we rarely have the time, infrastructure, or resources to do much more than condemn the often unknown perpetrator(s); seek solace from friends and family; and/or pursue further examination with select colleagues, mentors, and/or students. Next week, however ECHO is honored to join with the UA Department of Anthropology’s Decolonization Committee (DECO) in opening up a brave space for students, faculty, staff, and others to engage in a conversation about hate speech and other forms of communicative violence on campus and beyond. In alignment with the core commitments of the ECHO (co)Lab to studying embodiment, communication, and health, our conversation will center the phenomenology as well as the politics and historicity of hate speech.
All are invited to review the following article prior to our meeting: “A recognition-sensitive phenomenology of hate speech” (Whitten 2020) . In brief, “this paper illustrates how these defining background conditions and intersubjective relations influence the harm of hate speech as it is experienced from the first-person perspective.”
whitten_2020_a_recognition_sensitive_phenomenology_of_hate_speech.pdf
For those interested in a linguistic anthropologist’s emergent perspective on the so-called “debate” between “free speech”and “hate speech,” we also invite you to listen to this conversation between Sonia Das, Associate Professor of Anthropology at NYU (linganth), and Uli Baer for the NBN Free Speech Series in 2018: https://newbooksnetwork.com/free-speech-19-speech-is-a-practice-not-an-abstraction-with-sonia-das
* Learn more about the UA Deco Committee here!
Previous Events
(Pritzker 2023)
October 31, 2022
Our very own Dr. Sonya Pritzker will be offering a preview of her upcoming AAA presentation: “When is interaction? Timescales of Embodiment and the Expansion of Methods in Linguistic Anthropology,” which will be part of the SLA-sponsored panel “Revisiting Methods in the Study of Language and Social Life” organized by Sonia Das, Christina Davis, and Erika Hoffman-Dilaway.
The overall session interrogates linguistic anthropology’s devotion to methods privileging face-to-face interaction, asking panelists “to consider how different methods reveal and may shape our implicit and explicit understandings of the nature of the subdiscipline.” Dr. Pritzker’s paper thus draws upon her collaborative research in at the intersection of biocultural-medical and linguistic anthropology to consider how both physiological and microphenomenological data “bring the “eventness” (Derrida 1994) of particular interactions into question, provoking a productive (re)consideration of appropriate methods for appreciating indexicality, meaning, and embodiment “beyond the speech event” (Wortham & Reyes 2015).”
No need to review anything in depth, though the full abstract, along with the session abstract, can be found below:
October 31, 2022
Our very own Dr. Sonya Pritzker will be offering a preview of her upcoming AAA presentation: “When is interaction? Timescales of Embodiment and the Expansion of Methods in Linguistic Anthropology,” which will be part of the SLA-sponsored panel “Revisiting Methods in the Study of Language and Social Life” organized by Sonia Das, Christina Davis, and Erika Hoffman-Dilaway.
The overall session interrogates linguistic anthropology’s devotion to methods privileging face-to-face interaction, asking panelists “to consider how different methods reveal and may shape our implicit and explicit understandings of the nature of the subdiscipline.” Dr. Pritzker’s paper thus draws upon her collaborative research in at the intersection of biocultural-medical and linguistic anthropology to consider how both physiological and microphenomenological data “bring the “eventness” (Derrida 1994) of particular interactions into question, provoking a productive (re)consideration of appropriate methods for appreciating indexicality, meaning, and embodiment “beyond the speech event” (Wortham & Reyes 2015).”
No need to review anything in depth, though the full abstract, along with the session abstract, can be found below:
October 24, 2022
Baili Gall will lead us in an open discussion focused on her dissertation topic: the role of food and care in the child welfare system (CWS). We will explore the connection between food insecurity (past and/or present), child eating behaviors and nutrition, and how foster caregivers "learn" to provide care for children who have experienced adversity (otherwise known as trauma-informed care).
Some questions to guide our discussion:
More information on this topic can be found here.
Baili Gall will lead us in an open discussion focused on her dissertation topic: the role of food and care in the child welfare system (CWS). We will explore the connection between food insecurity (past and/or present), child eating behaviors and nutrition, and how foster caregivers "learn" to provide care for children who have experienced adversity (otherwise known as trauma-informed care).
Some questions to guide our discussion:
- In what ways can caregivers foster healthy eating behaviors and nutrition?
- How may caregivers enact care to promote a safe space for children?
- What kinds of methods would be appropriate for a biolinguistic study of food and care in the CWS?
More information on this topic can be found here.
October 17, 2022
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Julia Katila: "Pediatric dental procedures: Interaction during the emergence of the patient's fear, pain or resistance"
Dr. Julia Katila is a postdoctoral researcher from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. Her research interests include the study of embodied interaction, affect, and touch in various types of contexts. Her two main research projects currently consider touch and affective practices among romantic couples and embodied interaction in health care settings.
Abstract: In this datasession, I will show some data from Finnish pediatric dental encounters. The interest is in what happens in the interaction when the children show signs of resistance, fear or pain; for example, when their breath becomes observably heavy, when they vocalize response cries or cry, or when they "close" or turn their bodies away to anticipate or react to pain. I focus on how the dentists, dental nurses, and the patients' caregivers attend to the children's bodily reactions through various embodied and verbal means, and what consequences do various types of responses have for the ongoing interaction. The study data includes video recordings of authentic visits to the dental clinic of 6- to 11-year-old child patients with signs of dental fear and interviews with the dentists.
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Julia Katila: "Pediatric dental procedures: Interaction during the emergence of the patient's fear, pain or resistance"
Dr. Julia Katila is a postdoctoral researcher from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. Her research interests include the study of embodied interaction, affect, and touch in various types of contexts. Her two main research projects currently consider touch and affective practices among romantic couples and embodied interaction in health care settings.
Abstract: In this datasession, I will show some data from Finnish pediatric dental encounters. The interest is in what happens in the interaction when the children show signs of resistance, fear or pain; for example, when their breath becomes observably heavy, when they vocalize response cries or cry, or when they "close" or turn their bodies away to anticipate or react to pain. I focus on how the dentists, dental nurses, and the patients' caregivers attend to the children's bodily reactions through various embodied and verbal means, and what consequences do various types of responses have for the ongoing interaction. The study data includes video recordings of authentic visits to the dental clinic of 6- to 11-year-old child patients with signs of dental fear and interviews with the dentists.
September 26, 2022
Rose Doskey: "Deviance, Division, and Divinity: Gender Presentation, Identity, and Power in Roman Religion and Rhetoric"
Rose will present on an independent study based on a literature review about gender non-conformity in Roman religion.
Abstract: In this presentation I will analyze the relationship between presentation, identity, and power. The aim of this presentation will be to discuss where my research started and where it will go from here. Being nonbinary myself, the function of language in power dynamics from antiquity to the present day is of great interest to me. I hope you will join be as I explore how the elite of Rome used gender as a sociopolitical tool to elevate themselves, ostracize and discriminate against others, and promote unity with the same people against whom they discriminated.
Rose Doskey: "Deviance, Division, and Divinity: Gender Presentation, Identity, and Power in Roman Religion and Rhetoric"
Rose will present on an independent study based on a literature review about gender non-conformity in Roman religion.
Abstract: In this presentation I will analyze the relationship between presentation, identity, and power. The aim of this presentation will be to discuss where my research started and where it will go from here. Being nonbinary myself, the function of language in power dynamics from antiquity to the present day is of great interest to me. I hope you will join be as I explore how the elite of Rome used gender as a sociopolitical tool to elevate themselves, ostracize and discriminate against others, and promote unity with the same people against whom they discriminated.
September 19, 2022
Michael Smetana: Update from the field: Hand-tapped tattooing in Hawaii
Michael will give an informal presentation on my summer research experience assisting Dr. Chris Lynn, in Hawaii, with his ongoing research project focused on Samoan identity, tatau (hand-tapped tattooing), and health, as well as my future dissertation research investigating hand-tapped tattooing in Hawaii through a biolinguistic perspective. The aim of this presentation is to get feedback on my proposed research question and methodology, as well as to engage in a broader discussion on how we can apply biolinguistic anthropology in the field and beyond.
Michael Smetana: Update from the field: Hand-tapped tattooing in Hawaii
Michael will give an informal presentation on my summer research experience assisting Dr. Chris Lynn, in Hawaii, with his ongoing research project focused on Samoan identity, tatau (hand-tapped tattooing), and health, as well as my future dissertation research investigating hand-tapped tattooing in Hawaii through a biolinguistic perspective. The aim of this presentation is to get feedback on my proposed research question and methodology, as well as to engage in a broader discussion on how we can apply biolinguistic anthropology in the field and beyond.
September 5, 2022- No meeting (Labor Day)
September 12, 2022
Discussion of article by Cabana et al. "Crossing at y/our own peril: Biocultural boundary crossing in anthropology" (Dr. Jason DeCaro lead)
September 12, 2022
Discussion of article by Cabana et al. "Crossing at y/our own peril: Biocultural boundary crossing in anthropology" (Dr. Jason DeCaro lead)
| american_anthropologist_-_2022_-_cabana_-_crossing_at_y_our_own_peril__biocultural_boundary_crossing_in_anthropology[49].pdf |
August 30, 2022
Practical Workshop: Diving Deeper into Microphenomenology with Baili Gall, Michael Smetana, and Sonya Pritzker
Read more on microphenomenology (MP): https://www.microphenomenology.com/home
Mike Smetana, Baili Gall, and Dr. Pritzker, who attended Dr. Claire Pettimengin’s intensive week-long MP training course in May, will very briefly share what we learned about MP, as well as our observations about using it in research at the intersections of biocultural and linguistic anthropology. Drawing upon a semi-structured MP-based interview guide developed for the ongoing ECHO project “Living Justice”, we will then offer a short demonstration (to the best of our current abilities!) of what MP interviews look, feel, and sound like.
Practical Workshop: Diving Deeper into Microphenomenology with Baili Gall, Michael Smetana, and Sonya Pritzker
Read more on microphenomenology (MP): https://www.microphenomenology.com/home
Mike Smetana, Baili Gall, and Dr. Pritzker, who attended Dr. Claire Pettimengin’s intensive week-long MP training course in May, will very briefly share what we learned about MP, as well as our observations about using it in research at the intersections of biocultural and linguistic anthropology. Drawing upon a semi-structured MP-based interview guide developed for the ongoing ECHO project “Living Justice”, we will then offer a short demonstration (to the best of our current abilities!) of what MP interviews look, feel, and sound like.
April 6, 2022
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Gili Hammer "Movement as Politics: Disability Dance and the Politics of Corporeal Aesthetics"
Dr. Gili Hammer is a cultural anthropologist working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, anthropology of the body, sensory studies, and performance studies. As an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she teaches courses on sociology of disability, anthropology of the senses, and ethnographic research methods.
Advance Reading: Expanding intersubjective awareness: the anthropology of kinaesthetic diversity
expanding_intersubjective_awareness_hammer_2020[88].pdf
Download File
March 23, 2022
Sonya Pritzker: “Embodiment, Emotion, and Intimacy at the Intersection of Biocultural and Linguistic Anthropology”
Dr. Pritzker will be presenting an analysis of data collected as part of the UA ECHO project on emotion communication in everyday interaction among couples in the Southeastern U.S.. This project, funded by the NSF in 2017 with Pritzker DeCaro, and Pederson as principal investigators, has also involved many former and current UA anthro grad students, including Rob Else, Baili Gall, Mandy Guitar, Mackenzie Manns, Larry Monocello, and Marlie Wells (to name just a few!). Dr. Pritzker's presentation this week draws on a recent collaborative analysis of the theoretical and methodological implications of a biolinguistic approach for understanding and studying intimacy in committed relationships over time.
Her talk this week is also the basis of a presentation, entitled "Embodiment, Emotion, and Intimacy at the Intersection of Biocultural and Linguistic Anthropology," to be given at Emory's Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (https://cmbc.emory.edu/about/index.html) next week. As such, it not only offers one of the first detailed analyses of a collaborative biolinguistic project that many of us have been involved in, but also serves as an opportunity for us to think together about the future possibilities of biolinguistic anthropology as a study of the embodiment of intimacy within and beyond romantic partnerships.
Details on our other previous events will be added soon
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Gili Hammer "Movement as Politics: Disability Dance and the Politics of Corporeal Aesthetics"
Dr. Gili Hammer is a cultural anthropologist working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, anthropology of the body, sensory studies, and performance studies. As an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she teaches courses on sociology of disability, anthropology of the senses, and ethnographic research methods.
Advance Reading: Expanding intersubjective awareness: the anthropology of kinaesthetic diversity
expanding_intersubjective_awareness_hammer_2020[88].pdf
Download File
March 23, 2022
Sonya Pritzker: “Embodiment, Emotion, and Intimacy at the Intersection of Biocultural and Linguistic Anthropology”
Dr. Pritzker will be presenting an analysis of data collected as part of the UA ECHO project on emotion communication in everyday interaction among couples in the Southeastern U.S.. This project, funded by the NSF in 2017 with Pritzker DeCaro, and Pederson as principal investigators, has also involved many former and current UA anthro grad students, including Rob Else, Baili Gall, Mandy Guitar, Mackenzie Manns, Larry Monocello, and Marlie Wells (to name just a few!). Dr. Pritzker's presentation this week draws on a recent collaborative analysis of the theoretical and methodological implications of a biolinguistic approach for understanding and studying intimacy in committed relationships over time.
Her talk this week is also the basis of a presentation, entitled "Embodiment, Emotion, and Intimacy at the Intersection of Biocultural and Linguistic Anthropology," to be given at Emory's Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (https://cmbc.emory.edu/about/index.html) next week. As such, it not only offers one of the first detailed analyses of a collaborative biolinguistic project that many of us have been involved in, but also serves as an opportunity for us to think together about the future possibilities of biolinguistic anthropology as a study of the embodiment of intimacy within and beyond romantic partnerships.
Details on our other previous events will be added soon
April 13, 2022
METHODS WEEK: Decolonizing Methods
This week will discuss decolonizing methods in anthropology and beyond. Attached is chapter by Dr. Julia Chinyere Oparah et al. (2015) titled “By us, not for us: Black women researching pregnancy and childbirth,” from the edited volume Research Justice. “This chapter aims to encourage communities to determine for themselves what knowledge would be useful to them, and how it should be obtained, disseminated, and utilized. It also aims to challenge professional and academic researchers to their complicity with research injustice, and to dismantle the power inequities that remain at the heart of traditional research practices.” (Oparah et al. 2015: 118)
Dr. Oparah is a transformational leader, social justice educator, activist scholar, and Provost and Dean of Faculty at Mill College in Oakland, CA.
For additional reading on decolonizing methods in anthropology please see the attached article, “What would it mean to decolonize Detroit? How does anthropology figure?,” by Damani J. Partridge (2021), from the University of Michigan. “Given its history, it most likely makes sense to ultimately eschew the term “ethnography,” to take the politics of the everyday and “observant participation” (Wilkinson 2017) seriously as strategies towards decolonial lives. The stakes, in the end, are often life and death, with some of us suffering systematically much more than others.” (Partridge 2021: 306)
METHODS WEEK: Decolonizing Methods
This week will discuss decolonizing methods in anthropology and beyond. Attached is chapter by Dr. Julia Chinyere Oparah et al. (2015) titled “By us, not for us: Black women researching pregnancy and childbirth,” from the edited volume Research Justice. “This chapter aims to encourage communities to determine for themselves what knowledge would be useful to them, and how it should be obtained, disseminated, and utilized. It also aims to challenge professional and academic researchers to their complicity with research injustice, and to dismantle the power inequities that remain at the heart of traditional research practices.” (Oparah et al. 2015: 118)
Dr. Oparah is a transformational leader, social justice educator, activist scholar, and Provost and Dean of Faculty at Mill College in Oakland, CA.
For additional reading on decolonizing methods in anthropology please see the attached article, “What would it mean to decolonize Detroit? How does anthropology figure?,” by Damani J. Partridge (2021), from the University of Michigan. “Given its history, it most likely makes sense to ultimately eschew the term “ethnography,” to take the politics of the everyday and “observant participation” (Wilkinson 2017) seriously as strategies towards decolonial lives. The stakes, in the end, are often life and death, with some of us suffering systematically much more than others.” (Partridge 2021: 306)
| oparah_et_al._2015[27].pdf |
April 20, 2022
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Xochitl Marsili-Vargas "Unconscious Listening: Resonance and Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires, Argentina"
Dr. Xochitl Marsili-Vargas is an Assistant Professor in the department of Spanish and Linguistics at Emory University. Dr. Marsilli-Vargas’ work centers on the reception and circulation of mental health discourses, media technologies, the anthropology of listening, and linguistic analysis. She received her PhD in cultural and linguistic anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book Genres of Listening. An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires (Duke University Press, 2022) is an ethnography of listening practices. It proposes that listening can be categorized into genres: just as there are many ways of speaking, there are many possible ways of listening. The empirical basis of her work has been Mexico, the United States, and Argentina where she has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural, institutional and urban contexts.
Abstract: In this presentation I analyze the constitution of genres of listening through the ethnographic study of psychoanalytic listening in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where personal identities, conceptions of citizenship, and constructions of the political, are rooted less in the performativity associated with speaking than on a particular form of listening based on psychoanalysis. In Buenos Aires, this listening is social, produced by a collectivity of individuals, and performed in all sorts of interactions surpassing class, age, and gender classifications. While there have been many studies that identify how linguistic practices create and transform contexts, the idea that listening has the potential of generating and sustaining social relations has not been similarly explored. What I call genres of listening differentially tune or guide the ear—and by extension eyes and bodies as well—to attend to some aspects of an utterance or sound while not attending to others; genres of listening thereby create contexts and frameworks of relevance that shape the listener’s orientation at the moment of reception, thus shaping context and social identities.
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Xochitl Marsili-Vargas "Unconscious Listening: Resonance and Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires, Argentina"
Dr. Xochitl Marsili-Vargas is an Assistant Professor in the department of Spanish and Linguistics at Emory University. Dr. Marsilli-Vargas’ work centers on the reception and circulation of mental health discourses, media technologies, the anthropology of listening, and linguistic analysis. She received her PhD in cultural and linguistic anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book Genres of Listening. An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires (Duke University Press, 2022) is an ethnography of listening practices. It proposes that listening can be categorized into genres: just as there are many ways of speaking, there are many possible ways of listening. The empirical basis of her work has been Mexico, the United States, and Argentina where she has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural, institutional and urban contexts.
Abstract: In this presentation I analyze the constitution of genres of listening through the ethnographic study of psychoanalytic listening in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where personal identities, conceptions of citizenship, and constructions of the political, are rooted less in the performativity associated with speaking than on a particular form of listening based on psychoanalysis. In Buenos Aires, this listening is social, produced by a collectivity of individuals, and performed in all sorts of interactions surpassing class, age, and gender classifications. While there have been many studies that identify how linguistic practices create and transform contexts, the idea that listening has the potential of generating and sustaining social relations has not been similarly explored. What I call genres of listening differentially tune or guide the ear—and by extension eyes and bodies as well—to attend to some aspects of an utterance or sound while not attending to others; genres of listening thereby create contexts and frameworks of relevance that shape the listener’s orientation at the moment of reception, thus shaping context and social identities.