Based in Pisté and Maya Communities surrounding Chichén Itzá,

One of the New Seven Wonders of the World

Students do research on an issue they select according to their interests.  Possible areas of work include:

• Art & Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Archaeological Heritage
• Ethnography of Archaeology
• Tourism Development & Urbanism
• Community Strategies of Tourism
• Social History through Life Histories
• Applied and Action Research
• Art Exhibitions and Ethnographic Installation
• Maya Forms of Health & Healing
• Environmental Heritage

Students enroll in two courses and receive 8 credits in Anthropology:

• “Anthropology Seminar in Heritage Issues”
• “Ethnographic Research & Field Work Practicum”

Program includes intensive training in spoken Yucatec Maya language for ethnographic field work.

osea Program Fees include:

• Direct Enrollment with Accredited  University Transcript
• Food & Lodging, Homestays with Maya families in Pisté
• Local Field Trips to Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam, Yaxuna, Cenote Dzitnup, & jungle caves
• Mid-Program Break (4-night/5 day) to allow participants free-time to explore Yucatán on their own (not included in program fees).

Students can use their state and federal financial aid for OSEA Programs

Program Requirements

• Open to Undergraduates in sophomore year and higher, with any social science & humanities major
• Open to Graduate Students in any social science and humanities fields.
• Minimum 1-year college-level Spanish
• GPA of 2.5 or higher

For Brochure and Poster email contact@osea-cite.org or visit http://www.osea-cite.org/resources/re_materials.php
Write to contact@osea-cite.org

Visit www.osea-cite.org

[ Download the OSEA Flyer ]

Thursday, December 3

• NAPA Governing Council Meeting. Mezzanine II, Courtyard Marriott.  2-6 pm.  Snacks and coffee.  You should eat lunch.
• AAA Business Meeting, Grand Ballroom, Salon H, Philadelphia Marriott. 6:30-7:30.  Be there or be square!

Friday, December 4

• NAPA Employer Exposition, Exhibition Hall, Philadelphia  Marriott, 12:00- 4pm.
• LPO Leaders Gathering,   Grand Ballroom, Salon I, Philadelphia Marriott.  12:15 – 1:30
• NAPA Members Speak Out, Room 409, Philadelphia Marriott. 12:15-1:30
• NAPA Business Meeting, Room 407, Philadelphia Marriott, 6:15-7:30

Saturday, December 5

• NAPA Stay Connected, Independence Ballroom II, Philadelphia Marriott, 12:15-1:30
• CoPapia Forum. Advancing Practicing Anthropology: A Forum on Creating Spaces and Places for Practitioners in the AAA.  Room 305, Philadelphia Marriott, 1:45-5:30.

See you soon,

Mary Odell Butler

The NAPA Nominations Committee invites any NAPA members to nominate themselves for the upcoming AAA elections for various open seats, see below. The deadline for nominations is October 2. All of the information you need is located on the AAA website: http://www.aaanet.org/about/Elections/OverviewofProcess.cfm. If you would like one of us on the nominations committee to write a support letter for you, please let us know, and also send along a brief bio and position statement to me, the current Chair. Thanks very much. Tim Wallace. tmwallace@mindspring.com.

AAA Executive Board-Practicing/Professional Seat (3-year term)

AAA Executive Board-Minority Seat (3-year term)

AAA Executive Board-Minority Seat (3-year term)

AAA Executive Board-Undesignated # 2 (3-year term)

Nominations Committee-Cultural Seat (3-year term)

Nominations Committee-Archaeology Seat (3-year term)

Nominations Committee-Undesignated # 1 (3-year term)

Committee on Ethics-Linguistics Seat (3-year term)

Committee on Ethics-Undesignated # 2 (3-year term)

Committee on Ethics-Undesignated # 3 (3-year term)

COSWA-Undesignated # 2 (3-year term)

COSWA-Undesignated # 4 (3-year term)

Committee for Human Rights-Undesignated # 4 (3-year term)

Committee for Human Rights-Undesignated # 5 (3-year term)

Committee for Human Rights-Undesignated # 7 (3-year term)

Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology-Undesignated # 1 (3-year term)

Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology-Undesignated # 6 (3-year term)

The overall purpose of the survey is to better understand MA career trajectories and how MAs have applied the knowledge and skills acquired in their Masters programs. The survey will provide feedback on how programs, associations, and professional groups can best serve the needs of MAs.  We hope to learn how Masters degree alumni have crafted careers, what retrospective advice they have for departmental programs, whether they continue to identify with the profession, and how we can engage them more generally in national organizations to benefit from their knowledge and experience.

Survey development has been ongoing substantively since the fall of 2008. In order to integrate multiple voices and perspectives in the design and distribution of the survey, CoPAPIA engaged an Advisory Network of experienced anthropologists representing departments with large Masters degree programs, members of the Consortium of Applied and Practicing Anthropology (COPAA), and MA alumni across the nation in diverse occupations and careers.

Ongoing survey management is provided by survey chair Shirley Fiske (Adjunct Professor, U Maryland), Linda Bennett (Professor and Associate Dean, U Memphis), and Patricia Ensworth (Harborlight Management Services). Terry Redding (Beta Development Associates) is the survey coordinator. Kathleen Terry-Sharp (Director, Practicing and Applied Programs) and Jona Pounds (Program Assistant) are providing AAA liaison and assistance.

Masters alums will be contacted through topical list serves, academic departments, and organizational list serves.  We are requesting the assistance and cooperating with a number of organizations in reaching Masters holders. Most importantly, a snowball sampling method will be used to reach MA graduates who have ‘disappeared’ from traditional anthropological networks. We are hoping that peer-to-peer, collegial, and friendship networks will help extend the snowballing effect.  The efforts of cooperating organizations to get information about the survey out to their broader networks of anthropologists will be critical to the survey’s success. The online survey opened in May and will stay open through August 31, 2009.

Results from the survey will be published through the AAA, including the Anthropology Newsletter and the AAA web site. Individual respondents can request a copy of the survey report as well. Analysis will begin in fall 2009 and the report is expected at the end of 2009 or early 2010. An open roundtable to discuss the survey and introduce preliminary data is planned for the 2009 annual AAA meeting in Philadelphia.

You may already know that the AAA has launched a major online survey of MA anthropologists in order to better understand the career trajectories of Masters degree holders. The survey will soon close, so the time has come to make sure your voice is heard if you have not already taken the survey.

Departments of anthropology nationwide graduate over 1,000 Masters students per year and yet we know very little about their careers, their educational experience, and their needs for organizational affiliation.  The survey will, it is hoped, help us all understand what happens to MAs and where their educational and career choices have led them. In addition, NAPA will benefit from knowing the issues MAs have concerning organizational membership.

The survey is open to anyone who received a Masters degree in anthropology (any specialty) from a North American institution prior to 2008, regardless of previous and subsequent degrees. Anthropology PhD holders are welcome to take the survey as well, especially those have had a gap between the MA and PhD, but the survey is primarily geared towards the MA experience.

The response to date has been very strong, and we hope to reach more MAs through extensive networking among individuals in the final weeks. Thus, we ask that, along with taking the survey, everyone forward the survey information to another MA, especially those who might have “disconnected” somewhat from the usual anthropological networks. It is vital to reach these individuals. If you are not eligible to take the survey, please forward it on to colleagues.

The direct link to the survey is: http://research.zarca.com/k/SsRXQTsVTsPsPsP.

Background information about the survey information is at http://www.aaanet.org/cmtes/copapia/MAalumnisurvey.cfm. It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete and is anonymous. Queries can be directed via email to MASurvey2009@aaanet.org.

It will be very important to have the strong participation of NAPA members, both in taking the survey and in forwarding the message on to MA colleagues. The survey is being conducted by the AAA’s Committee for Practicing, Applied and Public Interest Applied Anthropology (CoPAPIA) and will remain available until August 31, 2009.

Thank you in advance,

AAA MA Survey Team

Shirley J. Fiske,  CoPAPIA 2009 MA Survey chair; Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland

Linda Bennett,  CoPAPIA Chair; Professor and Associate Dean, University of Memphis

Patricia Ensworth, CoPAPIA subcommittee member; Harborlight Management Services

Terry Redding, Survey Coordinator (Beta Development Associates)

Keynotes

We are thrilled to announce that Gillian Tett has agreed to be our closing keynote. As some of you might know, Gillian is an award winning journalist and editor at the Financial Times in London.  She warned about the looming credit crisis over two years ago, her background as a social anthropologist having alerted her to the danger. In March 2009 she was named Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.  Gillian has a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University, based on research conducted in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Equally thrilled that Howard Tullman has agreed to be our opening keynote.  Howard is President and CEO of Flashpoint Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, and Chairman and CEO of Experiencia, Inc.  Mr. Tullman has over 35 years of new business development, entrepreneurial ventures, management and turn-around experience with a particular emphasis on information systems and an extensive operations background in online services, large-scale information assembly and delivery systems, database design as well as in the development, creation and production of all types and formats of multimedia content including CD-ROMs and DVDs.  He is also active in the arts and has served on President Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (1993 – 2001). In his talk, Mr. Tullman will address notions of relevance, impact, and change with perspectives informed from his background as a businessman, entrepreneur and educator.

Interruptions

We will disrupt the flow of the conference with periodic unannounced provocations intended to prompt conversations about the basics of what we do, as individuals, as a community, and in relationship to the wider world of global corporate life. These provocations will take form in a variety of ways, will focus on the questions and concerns of people who are new to the field, and highlight practitioners with less than five years’ experience as corporate-practicing ethnographers.

Artifacts at Institute of Design

ID has generously offered their school for the Artifacts component of our conference. The EPIC community is continually enriched by graduates of the ID program, so we’re thrilled to be able to collaborate with them on the Artifacts session.

REGISTRATION IS OPEN!

http://www.epic2009.com/registration.

We in NAPA are making a special effort to help network the survey because NAPA has more Masters alumni (probably) than any other Section other than (perhaps) Archaeology.  And, it’s the right thing to do – we know very little about where Masters grads end up, their career trajectories, their experiences and reflections on their degree programs, and any organizational affiliation needs they may have.  The anonymous survey takes approximately 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

If you have a Masters degree – and if you have friends and colleagues with Masters degrees in Anthropology (before 2008), PLEASE take the survey and pass it along to them.  The direct link to the survey is: http://research.zarca.com/k/SsRXQTsVTsPsPsP.

The genesis of the survey comes from a number of different interests. The AAA would like to connect with more Masters alumni with regard to planning services, programs, and benefits.  Departments of Anthropology nationwide graduate over 1,000 Masters students per year.  Yet we know very little about their careers, their educational experience, and their needs for organizational affiliation.  We have learned that departments of Anthropology would like feedback on their graduate programs’ usefulness as their Masters graduates pursue careers in the broad array specializations characteristics of the discipline.  In creating the survey, CoPAPIA engaged the advice of an extensive Advisory Network to provide feedback from all specialties across Anthropology.  I served on the Advisory Network along with 20 other individuals from all subdisciplines and degree statuses of Anthropology.  The CoPAPIA organizers of the survey are Shirley J. Fiske, Linda Bennett , Patricia Ensworth, and survey director Terry Redding.  Queries can be directed to MASurvey2009@aaanet.org or any of the previous individuals.

More details and information about the survey, including the membership of the Advisory Network, can be found on the CoPAPIA information web page.

Results from the survey will be published through the AAA, including the Anthropology Newsletter and the AAA web site. Individual respondents can request a copy of the survey report as well. Analysis will begin in fall 2009 and the report is expected at the end of 2009 or early 2010.

1. Welcome  (Elizabeth Nanas)
2. On Mary’s Mind (Mary Odell Butler)
3. NAPA Occupational Therapy Special Interest Group Update (Amy Paul-Ward, Gelya Frank)
4. Designing an Anthropology Career (Sherylyn H. Briller, Amy Goldmacher)
5. Volunteer Opportunities
6. News from the Program Chair (Carol Hafford)
7. Conference Announcements
8. NAPA Student Achievement Award
9. WAPA 2009 Praxis Award CFP

This issue marks the beginning of a newly designed Newsletter that includes regular features and also provides fresh opportunities for NAPA members to engage in conversations that contribute not only to professional development, but that also cross boundaries to challenge the borders of practicing anthropologies.

We understand that too much content can become an unwelcome chore, and we will strive to create a balance between expanding our Newsletter while maintaining a reasonable product that does not overwhelm. Your ideas and feedback will be essential in negotiating this balance.

Over the next year, we will experiment with new columns and we seek your contributions in shaping this mediated production.

The NAPA e-Newsletter will continue to be published bi-monthly and sent to you through a link that may be downloaded through http://www.practicinganthropology.org/. Regular columns will include Mary Odell-Butler’s “On Mary’s Mind,” AAA-related news

and announcements, a Local Practitioner Organization highlight, a product or book review, and announcement of events and conferences. If you represent an LPO, have a product or book you would like to review, or know of any upcoming events that would be of interest to our readers, please do not hesitate to contact me at: napaenews@gmail.com.

I hope that you will enjoy the new design and the expanded content of this Newsletter. I look forward to providing you with a resource that is timely, of interest, and useful to your applied projects.

NAPA’s e-Newsletter is edited by Elizabeth Nanas. Ideas & submissions may be addressed to her at:

Wayne State University

College of Engineering – IME

4815 Fourth Street, Room 2033

Detroit, MI 48202

Phone: 313-205-8595 (cell/text) E-Mail: napaenews@gmail.com

As you read this issue, please consider its strengths and opportunities for

improvement. Do you love it? Do you hate it? I hope to hear from you regarding your ideas, rants, and raves. With your involvement, we can transform our e-Newsletter and our section into a quality production that will enhance our practice and push the boundaries of our discipline. I look forward to working with you all in developing this vision.

Sincerely, Elizabeth Nanas NAPA e-News Editor

On Mary’s Mind

Having survived my first Governing Council Meeting as President of NAPA, I returned from Santa Fe with much to share about my experience. The SfAA meeting was well-attended considering the economic challenges we are all facing—within our professional organizations and within the Academy. It is always invigorating to have the privilege of taking part in so many activities—the stimulating discussions, the parties, the old and new friends, the restaurants, the city, the sunshine. When I got back to Washington, it was winter and I was reminded of the day-to-day work of developing and promoting our section.

As always, our General Council Meeting experienced minor glitches and these complications certainly helped me think about the opportunities and challenges ahead. Often taken for granted, food service was not made available at our meeting site and our ever-faithful Council would have likely passed out had it not been for the attention of

SfAA’s Executive Director, Tom May. Adding to our troubles, we couldn’t figure out how to get the conference phone

to stay on the line and electrical problems posed an obstacle to the use of laptops—a necessary tool that has become a staple of planning, organization, and strategy. And, of course, there was too much on the agenda …nothing like one’s first ever GC Meeting as President to keep one humble. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the energy of our GC. Of particular importance, we adopted a new format for the Governing Council Meeting with longer discussions of issues that are important for us rather than reporting on what we have already done. This brought up many new directions for NAPA’s development as well as innovative opportunities for NAPA as a whole in terms of mentoring, increasing our membership, and encouraging new voices within our leadership.

As one of the large number of us who had little help in figuring out how to become a practitioner, I think that mentoring is one of the most important things we do. It’s hard to figure out a lot of the job skills we need when we’re still in school. NAPA needs to provide continuous mentoring to new professionals while establishing good referral and on-line services to undergraduate anthropology students and the general public. I will be appointing a Task Force on Mentoring to be headed by Tom Greaves to build ideas for our mentor program. Interested? Let me know: maryobutler@verizon.net

We brainstormed ways to increase our membership by offering special kinds of membership to special kinds of

people. We talked about special rates for unemployed anthropologists, part-time anthropologists, retired

anthropologists and those who already belong to other AAA sections. We thought of ways to get the message out about what we do and to be more attractive to new members by improving our services to them. The Membership Committee, led by Micki Iris, will be developing recommendations for the GC and Business Meetings to be held in Philadelphia. Got ideas? Contact Micki at miris@northwestern.edu

My own history has led me to choose leadership development as my personal project for my presidency. I became a

practitioner when I was denied tenure in an academic department. I was angry at “anthropology” and stayed away from the Academy for eight years until Ed Liebow, my colleague at Battelle, dragged me back to the AAA meetings. I was fairly doubtful about this involvement at first, but then I started to make friends in a new kind of anthropology— an anthropology with stakeholders who I could identify with and with whom I could share experiences, ideas, and visioning. A couple of years later, I asked someone what I should do to become more involved. “Volunteer for something,” she said. So I did. And I have never been lonely or bored at meetings again.

In the next year and a half, I would like all of us who are part of NAPA to reach out to enlarge the group of NAPA members who are part of the leadership. I will be approaching some of you directly, but I don’t know everyone. If you’ve ever thought in the rosy glow of meeting time that you would like to be more involved, this is the time. Volunteer for something. NAPA needs you. And, I promise you won’t regret it.

In the meantime, enjoy the springtime. Be back in June. Until Next Time,

Mary Odell Butler, NAPA President

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Update from NAPA-Occupational Therapy Special

Interest Group: Linkages and Bridges

Amy Paul-Ward, Ph.D., MSOT, Florida International University

Gelya Frank, Ph.D., University of Southern California

The Occupational Therapy & Occupational Science

Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group was organized in 2006 as a part of the American Anthropological Association, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology. The NAPA-OT SIG includes individuals from a wide range of disciplines interested in issues related to health, well-being, disability, social justice, occupation, participation, and rehabilitation. “Occupation” refers to meaningful and purposeful activity related to health and well-

being across the lifespan, for individuals, families, communities and populations.

One of the primary objectives of the NAPA-OT SIG is to build alliances and collaborations between anthropology and occupational therapy and occupational science. An area of particular interest to the group is exploring the feasibility of developing interdisciplinary and cross-training programs in occupational therapy and anthropology. A special theme issue of Practicing Anthropology 30 (3) (Summer 2008), edited by NAPA-OT SIG members Pamela Block, Gelya Frank and Ruth Zemke, focused on “Anthropology/Occupational Therapy/Disability Studies: Collaborations and Prospects.” Contributors included Pamela Block and Eva Rodriguez, Rachel Thibeault and Michèle Hébert, Yda J. Smith and Sarah Munro, Margaret A. Perkinson, Devva Kasnitz and others.

Building linkages will be furthered by the NAPA-OT Field School in Antigua, Guatemala, project that will launch this summer (http://www.proyectovision.net/images/NAPA-OT-Flyer.pdf). The goal of the six-week field school (July 6-August

14, 2009) is to provide a setting where anthropologists and occupational therapists can study, practice and learn together in

an international setting focusing on social justice. The field school will partner with the NGO Common Hope (www.commonhope.org) and its curriculum will allow students to engage in research and/or hands-on practice in local institutional contexts focused on child development, provision of services to older adults, and community based disability studies/disability rights.

In the area of cross-training, several NAPA-OT SIG members are exploring the feasibility of graduate-level training programs to enable doctoral students in anthropology to pursue clinical degrees in occupational therapy as part of their studies. This undertaking is significant in that there are currently more occupational therapy faculty positions than qualified individuals to fill them. Both anthropology and occupational therapy are holistic in their approaches to understanding human experience. Moreover many anthropologists are already actively engaging in meaningful research issues that are fundamental to occupational science and occupational therapy (e.g., phenomenological accounts of the disability experience, socioeconomic, political and cultural influences of occupation and well being, etc).

Our short term goal is to develop awareness and institutional links or programs to bring Ph.D. and MA level anthropologists into

occupational therapy to fill faculty roles and develop new forms of practice that are already emerging. Some of the topics

with ongoing collaborations include:

• How disability affected and is affected by gender;

• Sexuality of persons with disability and cultural norms;

• Clinical processes that hinder or facilitate cooperation;

• Intersection of technology and accessibility;

• Limits of clinical measurement instruments to capture occupational change;

• What may be defined as ‘success’ in occupation;

• Intersections of ethnography or ‘thick description’ of clinical practices;

• Organization of rehabilitation services that respect familial, cultural and spiritual dimensions of being;

• Social policy implications of empirical studies;

• Migration, refugee status and dis-abling immigration policies of states.

At the recent Society for Applied Anthropology Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, members of our group organized and

presented 12 sessions on issues related to Occupational Therapy, Occupational Science, Anthropology, and Disability Studies. See program (www.sfaa.net) for titles, presenters and affiliations. Among the non-clinically oriented sessions was a double panel on Indigenous Partnerships in a Global Setting: Public Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, Sustainable Tourism, and Occupational Science,” organized by archaeologist and Chair of Native American Studies, Joe E. Watkins (U Oklahoma; Japan-based archaeologists Mark Hudson (U West Kyushu) and Hirofumi KATO (U Hokkaido); and anthropologist and occupational scientist Gelya Frank. The session included, among others, a paper on occupation-based tourism in Cape Town, South Africa, by Frank Kronenberg and a discussion by Dikaios Sakellariou. Both are occupational therapy activists and co-editors of the ground-breaking books: Occupational Therapy without Borders (Elsevier, 2006) and

A Political Practice of Occupational Therapy (Elsevier, 2008).

(www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/716364/description#description).

The growing number of sessions at SfAA is fostering meaningful and intellectually-driven conversations among members in the United States and Canada and abroad. During the annual business meeting at SfAA, new officers Amy Paul-Ward (Florida International University) and Jyothi Gupta (College of St. Catherine) were selected to serve as Co-chairs for a two-year term. Special thanks to Founding Co-chairs

Gelya Frank (U Southern California) and Karen Barney (Saint Louis U)

for establishing and guiding the group for its first two years.

Gelya Frank (gfrank@usc.edu) continues as Director of the NAPA-OT Field School and as NAPA-OT SIG Program Chair to assist and mentor organizers of sessions for upcoming conferences at SfAA. She has been invited to give a plenary lecture on Occupational Science at the

upcoming special conference, “Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity” at Yale University, New Haven, CT, September 24-27, 2009 (www.yale.edu/macmillan/smaconference). Other plenary speakers include Paul Farmer, Didier Fassin, Arthur Klenman, Lynn Morgan, Emily Martin, Annemarie Mol, Margaret Lock, Barbara Koenig, Merrill Singer, Rayna Rapp, Richard Parker and Lawrence Cohen.

Margaret Perkinson (Saint Louis U) will serve as the liaison between the NAPA-OT SIG and the NAPA Governing Council. Devva Kasnitz (U California, Berkeley) will oversee the development and maintenance of a moderated listserve to facilitate communication among the membership (NAPAOTOS@YAHOOGROUPS.COM). To join, send an email to devva@earthlink.net.

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Envisioning and Re-envisioning an Anthropology Career Over Time

Sherylyn H. Briller, Ph.D., Wayne State University

Amy Goldmacher, Ph.D.c., Wayne State University

Developing and furthering one’s career can be exciting, challenging and, at times, intimidating. We would like to introduce our new book entitled Designing an Anthropology Career: Professional Development Exercises,

to the practitioner community as a resource for anthropological career development at any level.

The book is divided into two sections: Part I establishes a framework for continually thinking about how to design a career in anthropology or other related fields. Part II contains a series of professional development

exercises to help anthropologists at various career stages articulate their

personal and professional histories, unique abilities, and career goals. Each customizable exercise is followed by an example to provide models for anthropologists to complete their own exercises. The exercises are the tools to choose the best next steps in their careers and to imagine an evolving anthropology career as a lifetime endeavor.

While this book was originally conceived to be used by students, the

exercises have been field-tested by practitioners and found to have utility for them as well. The book’s approach relies on the concept of the life course and applies it to careers. Using the life course concept makes this book relevant to anthropological practitioners who may be constantly rethinking and re-envisioning their own careers as they respond to the demands of the changing workplace in general and particularly in this economic climate. The life course is a powerful concept for thinking about the culture-specific ways in which the stages, activities, and transitions in individuals’ lives and the social lives of groups occur. Practitioners are well aware that the overall nature of 21st century work life is changing. People are working longer, and in more settings than ever before, and are not necessarily retiring. Trends such as less job security, underemployment, more competition, and more career changes over time have resulted in a need to rethink what work means to people over their life courses (Gamst 1995). A significant perk of a non-linear career path, such as many anthropologists have, is that it may provide greater flexibility to navigate and make changes in direction. This aspect can indeed be critical in having a fulfilling work life over time.

Whether you are a seasoned practitioner or a student graduating with an anthropology degree, there is an art to taking a series of seemingly unrelated jobs and experiences and creating a coherent anthropological career out of an eclectic background. Although we know from firsthand experience that doing this is possible, it will require you to highlight for potential employers how your prior skills and broad background will be a significant advantage in their particular work situation. Successful anthropological practitioners do this already, and we recommend consistently rethinking and re-envisioning an anthropological career over time. The exercises in our book are a way to do this.

We use the metaphor of weaving to illustrate the concept of bringing together the variety of skills and experiences in one’s background to create a coherent career story. Through the exercises in the book, you will weave together the threads of your background and create a beautiful tapestry out of it, however large or small it may be. This tapestry with all its intricate and different threads is your masterpiece, and you should be proud of how you have woven it together over time. It may not have been created in a linear or orderly fashion; it may include sections that you ripped out and rewove into a different pattern. The important thing to recognize is that there is a pattern in the entirety of your discrete experiences, and the tapestry that is created out of the various strands of your experience is how you demonstrate your abilities for the next work opportunity.

5

Further, we draw on the networks and communities of anthropologists who have blazed career trails and done what might have seemed unusual or impossible before, entering new realms where this type of hire was never previously considered. These exercises help create strategies for oneself and others to find those who have created a career path similar to what you want to do. Connecting with others and hearing their stories about how they got their jobs and created their careers can be very insightful at any stage of career development (e.g., Guerron-Montero 2008, Wasson

2006.)

We believe this book is a valuable resource for practitioners who work across disciplinary boundaries, who mentor or provide career counseling and development, those who teach in anthropology or liberal arts disciplines at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and of course, students. We invite your comments.

The book can be found at Amazon.com at  http://tinyurl.com/c25eoc, at the publisher’s website at http://tinyurl.com/d4te36, and at other retail outlets.

References

Gamst, F. C. 1995. “Considerations of Work,” in Meanings of Work: Considerations for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by F. C. Gamst, pp. 1-45. Albany: State University of New York press.

Guerron-Montero, C. Editor. 2008. Careers in Applied Anthropology: Advice from Practitioners and Academics. Vol. 29: National

Association for the Practice of Anthropology.

Wasson, C. Editor. 2006. Making History at the Frontier: Women Creating Careers as Practicing Anthropologists. Vol. 26: National

Association for the Practice of Anthropology.

NAPA Needs Your Involvement!

Do you have ideas to build on the success of our mentoring program? Please join our Task Force on Mentoring by contacting NAPA President, Mary Odell Butler at:  maryobutler@verizon.net.

The NAPA section of the AAA needs to expand our membership in order to receive additional invited sessions at the AAA meetings. To help us develop recommendations and actions for the Membership Committee, contact NAPA’s Membership Committee Chair, Micki Iris at:  miris@northwestern.edu.

We need your involvement to grow NAPA and to ensure that we will develop future leaders and visionaries to champion the practice of anthropology.

We also need your contributions to develop this Newsletter. Do you have a story or an idea to share with us that will help your colleagues in their practice? Have you read a book, subscribed to a journal or magazine, or used a product that has enhanced your work? Do you know about a conference or an event that we should publicize? Let us know what you’d like to see here by sending Elizabeth Nanas an email at:  NAPAeNews@gmail.com.

Picture cropped and altered from “We Want You” by Caia Dominicus. Source:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/caido89/281254496/

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News from the Program Chair

Carol Hafford, Ph.D., James Bell Associates

The full program for the 2009 AAA Meeting in Philadelphia is currently under development, but we do have some news to share about the Invited Sessions. NAPA is very pleased to be co-sponsoring two timely and practice-oriented sessions, and will also feature an Invited Roundtable. In the coming months, NAPA will select another Invited

Session based on the volunteered abstracts, as well as recommend additional panels and papers for inclusion. We are looking forward to developing the full program and thank all those who have submitted abstracts for NAPA to review. Here’s a brief look at what’s planned so far:

Teaming with the Society for Medical Anthropology, NAPA will co-sponsor “The Lived Experience of Health Research Ethics: Negotiation of Guidelines into Practice.” This session, organized by Margaret Perkinson of St. Louis University and the NAPA-Occupational Therapy Field School in Guatemala, will explore the process of negotiation of research ethics guidelines into everyday practice. This occurs amidst a mix of players who differ in discipline, language, ethnicity/nationality, power, and/ or priorities. Applied/ medical anthropologists who study a wide variety of ethically-contested health-related topics and vulnerable populations in both U.S. and international settings will discuss their experiences with and resolutions of issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and protection of research data. The session will provide an opportunity for dialogue to identify problematic issues and articulate a working code of ethics that is amenable to the world of practice.

Along with Central States Anthropological Society, NAPA will co-sponsor “The End/s of an Era in Detroit: Refiguring Anthropological Research and Training in a 21st Century Post Industrial Urban Context. The session addresses the Presidential theme regarding “The End/s of Anthropology,” and speaks to the imperative of reframing anthropological training and research in a world of global flows of peoples, artifacts, and representations. As aptly noted by the session organizer, Sherylyn Briller of Wayne State University, the majority of anthropology graduates work outside of academia, and will likely continue to do so in the future. What does this mean in terms of student preparation and training to be engaged in the institutions and activities of the contemporary world, for the field as a whole, as well as in specific local contexts? The panel will consider current anthropological training in the Detroit region, a post-industrial urban setting, where the effects of the global economic crisis are particularly salient.

NAPA rounds out the program with an Invited Roundtable discussion on “Innovation and the Anthropology of the Future,” organized by Christine Miller of the Savannah College of Art and Design and Julia Gluesing of Wayne State University. This session will continue a dialogue begun at previous meetings regarding innovation and change related to applied anthropology in a variety of organizational contexts. The discussants will explore approaches, both theoretical and methodological, to investigating collective action and the nature of organizing in communities of different kinds (public, private, formal, informal, business, scientific, religious, etc.) that are linked and mediated by technologies.

Upcoming Conference Announcements

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference

Chicago, IL USA, August 30 – September 2, 2009. For details, see:  http://www.epic2009.com/

International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

University of Athens, Greece, July 8 – 11, 2009. For details, see:  http://i09.cg-conference.com/

Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity

Yale U, New Haven, CT USA, September 24 – 27, 2009. For details, see:  http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/smaconference/

American Anthropological Association

Philadelphia, PA USA, December 2 – 6, 2009. For details, see:  http://aaanet.org/meetings/

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