Click here to listen to the March 5, 2013 monthly Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA) meeting, as new AAA Executive Director Ed Liebow sought feedback about his plans for the Association.

Posted 13 April 2013

The American Anthropological Association has updated its Resources for Practitioners webpages. WAPA members are invited to take a look and provide feedback.  WAPA members who know of other resources that should be included may send suggestions to Courtney Dowdall.

Students at Florida State can once again major in anthropology.  Read the story here.

An article in The Washington Post has identified the location of "Tally's Corner." Author Elliot Liebow carried out his doctoral dissertation at Catholic University in the 1960s at an unidentified location in Washington.  Post columnist John Kelly recently published an article about the location -  the corner was at 10th and M Street, NW, (not far from Sumner School).  Read the article here.

Howard University is considering a number of significant changes to its programs, including dropping the undergraduate anthropology degree program.  There is no graduate program in anthropology, so the proposed change would leave individual course offerings that would be available to majors from other disciplines. 

WAPA's board proposed expressing our recommendation to retain the undergraduate degree, and so we sent a letter supporting the current anthropology program to Sidney Ribeau, Howard's president.  Our letter and his response are shown below.

Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists.pdf

WAPA sponsored a panel at SfAA's annual meeting in Seattle to celebrate our Praxis Award history.  The panel was held on April 2, 2011. 

This award began as an historic effort to recognize excellence in the work done by applied anthropologists and to share groundbreaking methods and results.  We invited a number of past winners and judges to discuss their work and the role of the award in developing recognition for applied anthropologists.

Panelists included Bob Wulff, Shirley Fiske, Judith Freidenberg, Ed Liebow, Erve Chambers, Barbara Pillsbury, Cathleen Crain and Niel Tashima.  John VanWilligen from SfAA's Oral History Project was the discussant.

The panel was co-sponsored by WAPA and SfAA Oral History Project

The Screen Painters

Presented by Elaine Eff, University of Maryland

Painted screens are among Baltimore's distinctive folk traditions. An art form found originally in working class ethnic neighborhoods, painted screens have an early history abroad and survive today in unanticipated forms and locations.

Folklorist Elaine Eff has spent much of her professional life uncovering this Baltimore story, the artists, the architecture, the changing communities. She shared the award winning documentary film, The Screen Painters, and led a discussion of the state of the art, its practitioners today, and outlook for the future.

She is now writing the book "Picture Windows" for University Press of Mississippi. Eff is co-Director of Maryland Traditions, the statewide folklife program based at the Maryland State Arts Council and Folklorist-in-Residence in the American Studies Department at University of Maryland Baltimore County. She can be reached at elaine.eff@verizon.net.

This month’s WAPA meeting was hosted at the University of Maryland’s anthropology department on Tuesday, November 9^th.  WAPA student board member, Kirsten Benham, from the University of Maryland, organized a salon-style discussion on the topic, “What is Applied Anthropology?”

UMD PhD students Kristin Sullivan and David Colon-Cabrera served as the student moderators for the meeting and stimulated conversation by posing some interesting discussion questions on topics such as the difference between applied and practicing anthropology; applied anthropology and scholarship in the field; and the role of activism in applied anthropology. 

Roughly 30 people participated in the discussion, including some who were exploring anthropology for the first time, students of anthropology from St. Mary’s College and UMD, and professional anthropologists working in academia, as well as the private and public sectors.

Dr. Erve Chambers from the University of Maryland served as the senior-level anthropologist discussant for the meeting and in closing suggested the book: "Anthropology Put To Work," edited by  Les Field and Richard G Fox. 

We’re pleased so many were able to participate in making this a successful salon discussion. We would like to extend a special invitation to those for whom this was their first WAPA meeting to continue to join us in the future!

--Submitted by Kirsten Benham