Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar (BARS)
The Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar (BARS) is a weekly yearlong seminar that meets on Fridays at 2:30 pm in Schwartz 103 (except where noted below). The series includes anthropology colloquia presented by invited guests and Brandeis anthropology faculty, alternating with workshops, reading groups and presentations by graduate students. For more information, contact anthropology@brandeis.edu.
Anthropology Welcome Reception
September 5, 2025
Time: 4-5 pm
Location: Schwartz 103 and the adjoining foyer
Preparing and Presenting Conference Papers
with Beth Derderian, Brian Horton and Sargam Sharma
September 19, Schwartz 103
Preparing Successful PhD Applications
with Janet McIntosh and Sarah Lamb
September 26, Schwartz 103
Colloquium: Pinky Hota, Smith College
Ecofantasy as Indigenous Erasure: Conservation and Tourism in Adivasi India
October 3, Schwartz 103
This talk focuses on conservation and tourism efforts in indigenous geographies in India. In Odisha, adivasis speak of themselves as less-than-animal to articulate their rights within a local landscape shaped by charismatic species conservation and ecotourism. Tracing a unifying logic that continues from state as agent of ecological destruction and state as ecological steward is a morphed capitalist logic predicated on indigenous displacement and erasure, I describe how where once lands were subject to aggressive development, they are now subject to a new form of nature capitalism in which a carefully cultivated nature is commodified, including through the introduction of charismatic species. In such a context, adivasis describe themselves as less valuable than animals to the government to draw attention to their rights, emphasizing the continuities between extraction and ecotourism.
Writing Grants
with Sarah Lamb and Yesmar Oyarzun
October 10, Schwartz 103
Colloquium: Michael Berman, Brandeis University
October 24, Schwartz 103
Book talk: Casey Golomski (Brandeis PhD ‘13), University of New Hampshire
God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End—from immersive fieldwork to creative nonfiction
November 7, 2025, Schwartz 103
Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room (Rutgers U Press, and Wits U Press)—a 2025 awardee of the Victor Turner Prizes in Ethnographic Writing—considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative ethnographic nonfiction, Casey Golomski's story of his years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end of apartheid, is narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. For BARS, he’ll share both overall findings and the creative process and toast to Brandeis Anthropology colleagues that helped to make it happen.
Collloquium: Gareth Doherty, Harvard Graduate School of Design
November 14, Schwartz 103