MeTooAnthro is soliciting papers and creative works for an edited collection:
In the light of the #MeToo era, what kind of discipline has anthropology become? What do we want anthropology to be? This collection asks anthropologists to grapple with the troubling reality of sexual assault and gendered harassment in our discipline, and with how these stories are treated – both practically, via institutional responses and politics, and conceptually, as sources of knowledge.
As an intervention in anthropological scholarship and methodology, this collection takes as its departure point the #MeToo movement, founded by Tarana Burke. In late 2017, #MeToo rose to global prominence as a forum that gave voice to women’s anger and personal stories. It also revealed the pervasive nature of sexual assault and gendered harassment as structural conditions that we live and work within. Today, there is no shortage of evidence that these experiences pervade academic spaces and anthropological fieldwork also (see Berry et al 2017; Nelson et al. 2017).
This collection treats #MeToo as a catalyst. It has brought anthropology, and anthropologists, to a moment of disciplinary reckoning, and calls for radical change. Anthropology often lays claims to its skill in critical self-reflection and reinvention. Time and time again, scholars have challenged the most fundamental tenets of how fieldwork is conducted and anthropological knowledge produced – who it benefits, harms, or excludes. Yet, as scholars committed to constructive destabilizing efforts attest, such work must be ongoing, and must persist with a commitment to a feminist, queer and decolonial re-creation (see Tuck & Yang 2012). On these grounds, this volume presents itself as a both an intervention and reinvention, for the structures of anthropological work create inequality.
This collection will be edited by MeTooAnthro – an independent collective of predominantly postgraduate and early-career anthropologists who are working to make our shared discipline a safer, more inclusive, and just space. We welcome submissions as both standard, peer-reviewed academic chapters as well as creative/non-traditional formats (approximately 1000 words). The latter could be a poem, provocation, spell, script, lyric, photo essay, or ethnographic anecdote.
To submit, please email metooanthro@gmail.com by February 28th and include the following:
- A title
- A 200-word abstract (or similar, for creative works)
- A short author biography
We commit to publishing diverse voices. Contributions from under-represented groups and precarious academics will be solicited and encouraged.
In solidarity, MeTooAnthro
(Esther R Anderson, University of Southern Queensland; Hannah Gould, University of Melbourne; Amy Hanes, Brandeis University; Mythily Meher, University of Melbourne; Kathleen Openshaw, University of Western Sydney; Holly Walters, Brandeis University)
metooanthro 