This series of workshops has been organized by PhD students concerned about landing fulfilling jobs in academia and interested in thinking seriously and practically about alternatives to traditional academic positions. The workshops will explore satisfying careers for anthropologists outside, or at an angle to, academia by looking beyond what is traditionally offered by "alt-ac" databases and by focusing on careers that call upon the skills we are trained in as anthropologists: in-depth research, analytic thinking and writing, instruction. We will hear from people who have found—or created—satisfying careers about what they do, how they came to it, and why they enjoy it. 

Please join us for our second workshop, focused on public anthropology, broadly construed:

Anthropology in the Public 

Friday, April 8, 2-4 pm
Scheps Library - 457 Schermerhorn Ext., Columbia University

with
Sarah Kendzior (Writer)
and
Amy Starecheski (Associate Director of the Oral History MA, Columbia University) 

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Anthropology Graduate Students Association. Contact the organizers with any questions: Amiel Bize (abm37@columbia.edu) and Soo-Young Kim (csk2140@columbia.edu)

Participant bios

Sarah Kendzior is a writer and researcher who focuses on politics, the economy and media. She is a columnist for the Globe and Mail, a former columnist for Al Jazeera English, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Politico, Foreign Policy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other publications. In 2012, Kendzior received her PhD in anthropology from Washington University, where she studied the effect of digital media on social movements in former Soviet Central Asia. Kendzior lives in St. Louis and is the author of the essay collection “The View from Flyover Country”.

Amy Starecheski is a cultural anthropologist and oral historian. Since 2012, she has been the Associate Director of the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University. She was a lead interviewer on Columbia’s September 11, 2001 Narrative and Memory Project, for which she interviewed Afghans, Muslims, Sikhs, activists, low-income people, and the unemployed. In 2015 she won the Oral History Association’s article award for “Squatting History: The Power of Oral History as a History-Making Practice.” She received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center and her book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.

Website coming soon at fartherafield.org