Author: Xygalatas Dimitris

Tenure Track position on African Diaspora within the Americas

Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by Xygalatas Dimitris

The Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut seeks to hire an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) with a research focus on the African Diaspora within the Americas whose research and teaching centers in areas such as social, historical, or cultural dimensions of inequality or strategies for effective interventions against settler colonialism; racism; globalization of white spaces and institutions; or xenophobia. Topics might relate, for example, to inequalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, health, migration, citizenship, and/or sexuality among African-descended peoples in North America. We strongly encourage applications from emerging scholars with broad training and an active research agenda who demonstrate theoretical innovation and a commitment to ethnographic engagement. The ideal candidate’s area(s) of specialty will contribute to an interdisciplinary and intersectional understanding of cultural structures or institutions that enable and sustain anti-Black racialization and relate broadly to one or more of the academic themes championed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, especially Inequalities, Social Justice, Truth, and Belief and Health, Disease, and Well-Being. Candidates should be able to offer courses that expand current offerings on anti-racism, state-sponsored anti-Black violence, and decolonial thought and practice, with the expectation that these courses would be included in General Education requirements. Qualified candidates should also be able to teach large survey courses, such as ANTH 1000(W) (Peoples and Cultures of the World), ANTH 1006 (Introduction to Anthropology); ANTH 2000(W) (Social Anthropology), as well as courses on methods and field research applicable to a wide range of majors from across the University. The candidate will support UConn’s long tradition of research and training in Cultural Anthropology by offering undergraduate and graduate courses, advising, and mentoring students, and engaging actively in Departmental and interdisciplinary initiatives. This hire demonstrates UConn’s and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and builds on the College’s existing strengths in Decolonial and Anti-Racism scholarship.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is also home to a vibrant collective of Institutes and Programs engaged in anti-racism scholarship, area studies, and intersectional struggles against oppression, including Africana Studies, American Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, El Instituto, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Founded in 1881, UConn is a Land Grant and Sea Grant institution and member of the Space Grant Consortium. It is the state’s flagship institution of higher education and includes a main campus in Storrs, CT, four regional campuses throughout the state, and 13 Schools and Colleges, including a Law School in Hartford, and Medical and Dental Schools at the UConn Health campus in Farmington. The University has approximately 10,000 faculty and staff and 32,000 students, including nearly 24,000 undergraduates and over 8,000 graduate and professional students. UConn is a Carnegie Foundation R1 (highest research activity) institution, among the top 25 public universities in the nation. Through research, teaching, service, and outreach, UConn embraces diversity and cultivates leadership, integrity, and engaged citizenship in its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. UConn promotes the health and well-being of citizens by enhancing the social, economic, cultural, and natural environments of the state and beyond. The University serves as a beacon of academic and research excellence as well as a center for innovation and social service to communities. UConn is a leader in many scholarly, research, and innovation areas. Today, the path forward includes exciting opportunities and notable challenges. Record numbers of undergraduate applications and support for student success have enabled the University to become extraordinarily selective.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The successful candidates will exhibit a genuine, demonstrated interest in using anthropological theory and methods to ground teaching and engaged research on anti-racism. Qualified candidates would also be able to teach large survey courses, such as Peoples and Cultures of the World, Introduction to Anthropology and Social Anthropology, as well as courses on methods and field research. Candidates will be expected to contribute to research and scholarship through high-quality publications in top-tier venues, externally funded research, and mentoring of graduate students. In the area of teaching, the successful candidate will share a deep commitment to effective instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Successful candidates will highlight a commitment to equity and be expected to: broaden participation among members of underrepresented groups; demonstrate through their research, teaching, and/or public engagement multiple perspectives as the foundation of a rich learning experience; integrate diverse experiences into instructional methods and research tools; and/or provide leadership in developing pedagogical techniques designed to meet the needs of diverse populations and intellectual interests.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Doctoral degree (or equivalent foreign degree) completed in anthropology by position start date.
Teaching experience or demonstrated capacity to teach courses with documentation of a commitment to teaching.
A solid record of scholarly productivity in the areas of inequalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, health, migration, citizenship, and/or sexuality among African-descended peoples in North America.
The ability to contribute through research, teaching, and/or public engagement to the diversity and excellence of the Department and College.
Effective communication skills (both written and oral).

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Demonstrated history of or potential for external research funding.
Experience teaching courses relevant to inequalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, health, migration, citizenship, and/or sexuality among African-descended peoples in North America.
Demonstrated experience and commitment to teaching and/or mentoring a diverse student population.
Ability to engage productively with faculty across disciplines.

APPOINTMENT TERMS

This is a full-time, 9-month, tenure-track position with an anticipated start date of August 23, 2023. The successful candidate’s academic appointment will be at the Storrs campus. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

Employment of the successful candidate is contingent upon the successful completion of a pre-employment criminal background check.

TO APPLY

Please apply online to Academic Jobs Online https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/22859 and submit the following application materials:

A cover letter,
Curriculum vitae,
Research and scholarship statement (e.g., prior research findings and impact; future research plans);
Teaching statement (e.g., teaching experience, mentoring experience, teaching philosophy, courses prepared to teach);
Commitment to diversity statement (e.g., values around social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion; diversity-related experience in teaching, research, and service; plans to continue to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion);
Writing sample and any supporting materials,
Contact information for three (3) letters of reference. References will not be contacted without notification of the candidate.
Review of applications will begin on October 10, 2022, and continue until the position is filled. For questions about this position, please contact Professor Françoise Dussart (francoise.dussart@uconn.edu).

At the University of Connecticut, our commitment to excellence is complemented by our commitment to building a culturally diverse community.

This position will be filled subject to budgetary approval.

All employees are subject to adherence to the State Code of Ethics, which may be found at http://www.ct.gov/ethics/site/default.asp.

The University of Connecticut is committed to building and supporting a multicultural and diverse community of students, faculty and staff. The diversity of students, faculty and staff continues to increase, as does the number of honors students, valedictorians and salutatorians who consistently make UConn their top choice. More than 100 research centers and institutes serve the University’s teaching, research, diversity, and outreach missions, leading to UConn’s ranking as one of the nation’s top research universities. UConn’s faculty and staff are the critical link to fostering and expanding our vibrant, multicultural and diverse University community. As an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity employer, UConn encourages applications from women, veterans, people with disabilities and members of traditionally underrepresented populations.

Tenure Track position on racial and ethnic health disparities

Posted on September 13, 2022October 3, 2022 by Xygalatas Dimitris

The Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut seeks to hire an Assistant Professor (tenure track) with a research focus on racial and ethnic health disparities. This position is part of a cluster hire involving six Assistant Professor (tenure-track) positions in the area of Social Aspects of Ethnic and Racial Health Disparities. This hire demonstrates UConn’s and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and builds on the College’s existing strengths in health disparities scholarship.

We seek to hire an emerging scholar with broad training and an active research agenda who demonstrates theoretical innovation and a commitment to ethnographic engagement. Areas of specialization may include, but are not limited to, critical analyses of the causes and effects of health disparities and inequities, anti-racist approaches to addressing health disparities/inequities, human-environment interactions, and/or intersectionalities (e.g., with social class, age, gender identity, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability). Experience and interest in innovative, interdisciplinary, and/or community-based approaches are especially welcome. Theoretical focus is open, with some preference for engagement with critical and/or decolonial approaches. Geographic focus is also open, but we especially seek applicants whose expertise complements that of our current faculty. The candidate will support UConn’s long tradition of research and training in Medical Anthropology by offering undergraduate and graduate courses, advising, and mentoring students, and engaging actively in Departmental and interdisciplinary initiatives, such as the Department’s Sociocultural Anthropology Colloquium, the undergraduate and graduate Global Health programs, and the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the Human Rights Institute.

Faculty hired as part of the cluster will have opportunities to collaborate within and across departments in the cluster, as well as opportunities for connections to other research-intensive centers and institutes across the University, including the Health Disparities Institute, the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), the Human Rights Institute, and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The College is also home to a vibrant collective of Institutes and Programs engaged in anti-racism scholarship, area studies, and intersectional struggles against oppression, including Africana Studies, American Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, El Instituto, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

This hiring initiative builds on the investment of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in research, teaching, and outreach focused on health disparities, including an earlier cluster hire that brought several exciting scholars to UConn.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The successful candidates will exhibit a genuine, demonstrated interest in using anthropological theory and methods to study Social Aspects of Ethnic and Racial Health Disparities. Candidates are expected to contribute to research and scholarship through high-quality publications in top-tier venues, externally funded research, and mentoring of graduate students. In the area of teaching, the successful candidate will share a deep commitment to effective instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Successful candidates will highlight a commitment to equity and be expected to: broaden participation among members of under-represented groups; demonstrate through their research, teaching, and/or public engagement multiple perspectives as the foundation of a rich learning experience; integrate diverse experiences into instructional methods and research tools; and/or provide leadership in developing pedagogical techniques designed to meet the needs of diverse populations and intellectual interests.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
● Doctoral degree (or equivalent foreign degree) completed in Anthropology by position start date.
● Teaching experience or demonstrated capacity to teach courses with documentation of a commitment to teaching.
● A strong record of scholarly productivity in the area of Social Aspects of Ethnic and Racial Health Disparities.
● The ability to contribute through research, teaching, and/or public engagement to the diversity and excellence of the Department and College.
● Effective communication skills (both written and oral).

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
● Demonstrated history of or potential for external research funding.
● Experience teaching courses relevant to health disparities.
● Demonstrated experience and commitment to teaching and/or mentoring a diverse student population.
● Ability to engage productively with faculty across disciplines.

APPOINTMENT TERMS
These are full-time, 9-month, tenure track positions with an anticipated start date of August 23, 2023. The successful candidates’ academic appointments will be at the Storrs campus. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience as well as disciplinary norms.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
Employment of the successful candidates is contingent upon the successful completion of a pre-employment criminal background check.

TO APPLY
Please apply online to Academic Jobs Online at
https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/22737 and submit the following application materials:
● A cover letter,
● Curriculum vitae,
● Research and scholarship statement (e.g., prior research findings and impact; future research plans);
● Teaching statement (e.g., teaching experience, mentoring experience, teaching philosophy, courses prepared to teach);
● Commitment to diversity statement (e.g., values around social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion; diversity-related experience in teaching, research, and service; plans to continue to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion);
● Writing sample and any supporting materials,
● Contact information for three (3) letters of reference. References will not be contacted without notification of the candidate.
Review of applications will begin October 15, 2022, and continue until the position is filled. For more information please visit the unit website: Anthropology. Since this is a cluster hire search, applicants will receive an email from our Human Resources department asking them to specify the department to which they are applying. For questions about this position, please contact Sarah Willen (sarah.willen@uconn.edu).

At the University of Connecticut, our commitment to excellence is complemented by our commitment to building a culturally diverse community.

These positions will be filled subject to budgetary approval.

All employees are subject to adherence to the State Code of Ethics, which may be found at http://www.ct.gov/ethics/site/default.asp.

UConn Anthropology Statement on the MOVE Bombing Case

Posted on June 23, 2021June 23, 2021 by Xygalatas Dimitris

In response to the realization that remains of victims from the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia were kept and used by anthropologists for a prolonged amount of time without consent from the victims’ family, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut supports the collective statement released by the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA), the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), and the Black in Bioanthropology Collective (BiBA). We also reaffirm our commitment to the following, as laid out in our Black Lives Matter Solidarity Statement:

1) Boldly and vocally addressing racism, injustice, and discrimination wherever it occurs in society, including within our discipline,

2) Committing to practice anthropological research that is anti-racist and against all forms of discrimination, and

3) Improving the lives of Native American, Black, Latinx, and other marginalized populations with whom we work.

Given the ongoing investigations into the practices of anthropologists at both the Penn Museum and Princeton University, the Department of Anthropology declares our solidarity with the surviving members of the Africa family. We also take this opportunity to declare our explicit commitment to critically evaluating our own practices involving human remains. As a part of our department’s stated commitment to equity and anti-racist praxis, we acknowledge that the colonial legacies and historic practices of our field not only contributed to problematic racial hierarchies, but also resulted in the disproportionate representation of communities of color in museum and academic collections of human remains. The history of enslavement in the United States particularly implicates Anthropology and its contribution to the exhibition of Black bodies and narratives of anti-Blackness. We therefore declare our commitment to:

1) Create space for dialogues about both the histories and ongoing issues in our field with regards to racism and anti-Blackness, and

2) Develop more explicit departmental guidelines to ensure the ethical and respectful treatment of all human remains, including engagement with families, descendent communities, and other relevant stakeholders whenever possible.

Approved by the Department of Anthropology June 18, 2021.

Statement on recent acts of hatred

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Xygalatas Dimitris

We are deeply disturbed that the individual arrested on April 29, 2021 for spray-painting anti-Semitic graffiti on a building at the University of Connecticut was a major in the department of Anthropology. We condemn this individual’s act in the strongest terms. Such acts go against the core values of our department and our anthropological community and cannot be tolerated. We reaffirm our commitment to anti-racist pedagogy, as declared in our solidarity statement with Black Lives Matter (https://anthropology.uconn.edu/2020/07/07/solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/) and our dedication to educating and empowering UConn students to become agents of change in our collective struggle for a just future.

Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Xygalatas Dimitris

UConn Department of Anthropology Solidarity Statement with Black Lives Matter

The Department of Anthropology of the University of Connecticut joins the UConn community in proclaiming Black Lives Matter. We stand with the Black community against systemic racism and ongoing police brutality. We mourn with the family, friends, and communities of Black people who have lost their lives to racism and police violence, including George Floyd, David McAtee, Atatiana Jefferson, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Kathryn Johnston, Ayiana Stanley-Jones, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, John Crawford III, Oscar Grant, and countless others whose names are not as well known. We also recognize that the Black community, along with Latinx and Native American communities, are disproportionately burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic because of the long and ongoing history of structural racism.

We commit to being strong and vocal allies who confront racism, injustice, and discrimination wherever it occurs in society, including within our discipline. We commit to practice anthropological research that is anti-racist and against all forms of discrimination and to work to improve the lives of Native American, Black, Latinx, and other marginalized populations with whom we work. And we reaffirm our commitment to anti-racist pedagogy as we dedicate ourselves to educating and empowering UConn students to become agents of change in our collective struggle for a just future.

Our department will take action immediately by assembling an anti-racism curriculum of anthropology courses for dissemination to the UConn student body and making race a mandatory topic for our Fall 2020 introductory courses. We pledge further action in the Fall semester by forming a committee of faculty and graduate students to identify and implement strategies to address racial disparity. These strategies include, but are not limited to 1) reviewing and revising our course offerings and syllabi on race, racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and the experiences of Black people and other communities of color in the United States and globally, 2) increasing our recruitment of graduate and undergraduate students of color and making our department more welcoming to students from diverse backgrounds, 3) continuing our efforts to recruit and hire more faculty of color and providing them with mentorship to advance their careers and scholarship. We will disseminate an annual report on our efforts, recommendations, and outcomes on our department Web site and to the wider UConn community.

We endorse these statements from UConn’s Institutes/Centers:

Statement from Centers, Institutes and Programs on Racial Justice:

https://humanrights.uconn.edu/2020/06/05/statement-from-centers-institutes-and-programs-on-racial-justice/

Public Statement on Anti-Black Violence from Africana Studies Institute:

https://africana.uconn.edu/public-statement-on-anti-black-violence/

Joint Statement from the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and Human Rights Institute:

https://humanrights.uconn.edu/2020/06/05/joint-statement-from-the-dodd-center-and-human-rights-institute/

In solidarity,

Department of Anthropology (Faculty, Graduate Students and Staff), University of Connecticut

July 3, 2020.

Anti-Racism Curriculum, Fall 2020

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Xygalatas Dimitris

As part of the Department of Anthropology’s core commitment to educate and empower UConn students to become agents of change in our collective struggle for a more just future, we present our anti-racism curriculum for Fall 2020. Our 13 introductory and upper-division undergraduate and one graduate courses focus on or integrate critical components on race, anti-racism and related topics, including postcolonialism, social and health inequalities, power relations, hate speech, resistance, and social justice, among many others. We invite you to engage, contribute and become actors in overturning deeply entrenched race-based injustices.

Continue reading →