I hope everyone had a good winter holiday season and is ready to embrace 2017 and the new semester. In general I reject the idea that the New Year should happen on January 1. The middle of winter seems like one of the dumbest times imaginable for thinking about change, turning over new leaves, tying off a year of bad fortune, bracketing a year of good fortune, or planning New Year revolutions. Somehow somewhere we, and now most of the world, got saddled with Jesus Christ’s circumcision day as our New Year. I doubt it would have worked for Jesus and it certainly does not work for me. The cold dark days of January hardly feel new and full of possibility.
Frankly, I prefer Nawrouz, the Persian New Year festival that I fondly remember celebrating when I was living and working in Kazakhstan. Occurring on the Northward Equinox, March 20 or 21, Nawrouz coincides perfectly with the appearance of daffodils in New York City – which seems to me to be the key moment of rebirth and the arrival of a new year. I am already looking forward to those little yellow flowers peeking out of the dingy black snow. In thinking about New Year cross culturally, so many of the cultures of the world have begun their calendars to coincide with the spring. For us northern hemisphere folks who are the vast majority of the people on this planet, this is March to May. I can certainly sympathize with Jews and early French Revolutionaries in the first 15 years after the storming of the Bastille who priortized the agrarian cycle; declaring a new year at harvest time when the work was done and the food stored. But who are they kidding with January 1? It’s almost as if some European Christians (Euro Muslims, Jews, and Pagans were left out of this decision) wanted to see how crazy of an idea they could impose on locals and then the rest of the world (not the first time, not the last and certainly not the worst outcome). In the Hobsbawm and Ranger pattern of seeing traditions as invented and the older the tradition the more recently invented, it is worth remembering that even most European Christians did not use Christ’s circumcision day as New Years until the last few hundred years. Given the rise of our new revanchist-irredentist president, I am guessing that the chances of swapping Christ’s circumcision day for Nawrouz are very low indeed. Regardless, I wish you all: Happy New Year Feliz Año Nuevo, 新年快乐 سال نو مبارک שָׁנָה טוֹבָה Etc. We have an exciting semester going in the Anthropology Department this spring. Shonna Trinch and Barbara Cassidy are continuing with their “Seeing Rape” project, and many students will be attending the student-written plays and doing essays on them. Avi Bornstein just published an article from research done by students in our department at a community court in Red Hook, Brooklyn called “Tell it to the Judge”. In addition to generously making me a coauthor, TWO OF OUR FORMER STUDENTS ARE also COAUTHORS!!! These are the kind of opportunities that get money thrown at students by the best graduate schools. Along these same lines, Aliyah Middleton, a McNair Fellow, who is mentored in our department, just coauthored an encyclopedia article on Pimps and Madams with me and Amber Horning, a former John Jay student who is now a Professor of Criminology at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Naomi Haber, one of our undergraduates in the Deviance Studies major, and Ed Snajdr’s mentee, just published a review essay in the journal Dialectical Anthropology. She trashed a book by one of our professors. Sometimes getting something off your chest can go on your CV. If you are interested in doing some research, working on a publication, and getting experience on your CV, our department is running numerous professional quality research projects as part of the class assignments. They are open to anybody who wants to work and is down for research, not just enrolled students. In addition, if you are interested in research being conducted by a member of our faculty you should always feel free to come in and talk about it and see if you can find a way in. That is how the academic sausage factory works. Below are listed the research sections for the coming spring. Ric Curtis is the research coordinator so it is always worth a stop at his office to find out what is happening and where crews are going to scour the city for data: ANT110 Drug Use and Abuse is doing two projects “Lighting Up The Hole” and “The Bathroom Overdose Project” – Professors, Ric Curtis, Brett Wolfson-Stofko, Leo Dominguez, Anjelica Camacho, Doug Goldsmith ANT 330 American Cultural Pluralism and the Law has a research project on best practices in youth mentoring that is being led by Professor Ilyasah Shabazz, the author of Growing Up X ANT 210 Sex and Culture is running a project on relationships, sex, body image, and youth in New York City that is being led by Professor Sarah Rivera Some select news of our faculty (sorry for anybody left out):
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