April 23, 2024

Jason James Publishes Book on Eastern Germany

Palgrave-Macmillan recently published “Preservation and National Belonging in Eastern Germany: Heritage Fetishism and Redeeming Germanness,” by Jason James, associate professor of anthropology.  The book explores the ways in which everyday citizens grapple with a difficult past through heritage.  It seeks to shed new light on the everyday politics of heritage and memory by highlighting the dynamics of longing, fantasy, fetishism, and local performance.

Eric Bonds Publishes Research Article

Eric Bonds

Eric Bonds, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, recently published an article, entitled “Indirect Violence and Legitimation: Torture, Surrogacy, and the U.S. War on Terror” in the journal Societies Without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences.  The article uses data from the Wikileaks “Iraq War Logs” to document the extent of torture practiced by the Iraqi state during the years of the U.S. occupation.  In the article, Bonds argues that the U.S. shares responsibility for this torture, despite official efforts to create distance from this violence and deflect blame.  The article can be downloaded at: http://societieswithoutborders.com/.

A Bigger Impact

The night before graduation, Laura Allan got a life-changing phone call. Allan, a 2012 UMW graduate, had been accepted to the competitive DC Teaching Fellows program. Less than one month later, she arrived in Washington, D.C., to start an intensive eight-week training session. DC Teaching Fellows, a partnership between District of Columbia Public Schools and [...]