What is a Prostitute?

Don't you want to know? Here be an interesting article on the use of the term prostitute in an Egyptian context. Like the ending to a M. Night Shyamalan movie, the answer may surprise you.

(Wait, what?)

No, but seriously. Really solid anthropology. Do read.

Via Culture Matters.

Fictions

Assignment #1

Read fictions of feminist ethnography by July 7th for a prize! Prize is: post comments and bloggie-type-relatedness here and we will discuss a possible meeting time on the 7th or 8th for discussion.

Ready....GO!

*swoops in*

I AM THE TERROR THAT FLAPS IN THE NIGHT

And that means we need to get this show on the road, y'all. Where will we be meeting to have our book club discussions? Or are we going to rock out here on blogger?

Blogfail.

Vonnegut

I felt it pertinent to announce that I Finally found a Vonnegut book (Slaughter-House-Five), and will begin to consume it shortly.

Awesome!

Ha ha poll. Ha-ha

Look at us, all choosing the same thing and then..not :-)

For Funnies :-)

Elise appears on Savage Minds!

In other news, Should we agree to read the first one in a week, two weeks? Fict. of Fem. Ethnog.?

Off Topic, But Not

Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

Here's a NYTimes article about a cultural anthropologist, Jan Chipchase, that does studies on third world cellphone use for Nokia. He also has what looks like a very cool blog.

Bookses

Is this the book you were talking about, Jon? Looks really interesting, if so!

So, Sam and I spoke a bit today about some of the books we might like to read... Here's what we came up with.

• Kamala Visweswaran's Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. We read this for methods, but that was two years ago, and we thought it might be cool to revisit. It's Feminism/Postmodern/Subaltern Studies goodness.
  
• Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. As I understand it, this book discusses the relationship between media and the creation of the "Nation."
• Dirks, Eley and Ortner's (editors) Culture/Power/History. This is a general theory reader. It's got some wide selections, so we were thinking just reading the
  Intro (which is fantastic) and maybe one or two other chapters. I can scan this and send people PDFs.
• Judith Halberstam's "Oh Behave! Austin Powers and the Drag Kings." This is an article. I have the PDF handy. It's hilarious. It talks about how humor is used to contest "heteronormative masculinity" in Austin Powers and The Full Monty. It might be fun, I don't know.
• Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. I heard about this my freshman year and I've been wanting to read it. It challenges the notion of a homogeneous 16th c. Christian culture. It discusses (from what I understand is an interesting theoretical bent) the Inquisition confessions of a miller, and the world view expressed therein. Basically the miller believed the universe to be a mass of rotting cheese and God a worm in the cheese...

That was basically the ones we thought would be good to start with... They're all pretty theory heavy though. I like Jon's suggestion of reading fiction, and I'd be totally game to read Cat's Cradle. I'd also be up to reading Everything is Illuminated.

I'll look in to using the polling thing blogger has going for us to vote on books... alternative means of selection are welcome. But I figure we'll wait until tomorrow in case there are last minute suggestions!

Night all.

Vague

I know that plenty of us will think it hilarious if I suggest that we read Alan Klima's "The Funeral Casino." Ha!

Anyhoo, Lesley and Sam and the Fish Denouncer might remember this book that Elise had in capstone one day. But, for the life of me, I can't remember the title or author so I haven't found it yet. It was the day we talked about prosthetic memory and it was a little book and she showed us pictures of the snow globes that the author had collected. Maybe one of you could come up with something more concrete. Seemed like an interesting read about national memory.

Otherwise, if we want to take a leap, I could suggest Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Although I've read it several times, it was accepted as his master's thesis in anthropology at the University of Chicago and I've not really considered it on more than a leisurely level.

There you go.

Because I'm overexcited

I would like to read some theory, some "big names" or such. But that's just me. Aaaaaaand that's not my final answer. :-) I just wanted to contribute to the post now, and say to VOTE INDIA!

I want to know who the one person was that didn't select "India" in the poll... shame on you!

We Can Has Beginnings?

Alright!

A select few people have had select few conversations about how we thought this "reading group" thing might work. Based on my (select and few) remeberings of those conversations, we decided to read 4-6 books this summer, with two weeks between each, and then meet on this blog (and maybe in person?) to discuss said books.

But before any of this can happen, we first need books.

SO! Could you each suggest a book (or two) that might be construed as anthropological / cultural studies-ish or just damn good fiction by Monday night this week?? It might be good to link to a synopsis as well... If there are many suggestions we'll have an informal vote of some kind.

Off to it!