News & Events

12.09.2020

A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on “Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead” at the Diplomfeier Master of Arts und Promotionen, Basel.
15.01.2019 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "Boasian Vistas: The Poetic and Visual Work of Sapir, Benedict, and Mead" at the Collegium Helveticum, Zürich.
21.12.2018 A. Elisabeth Reichel defends her PhD thesis "Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict" at the University of Basel (summa cum laude).
25.10.2018 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "Of Literary and Social Innovation : Margaret Mead's Lyrical Work" at the Twentieth Century and Contemporary Colloquium, Harvard University.
15.10.2018 A. Elisabeth Reichel submits her PhD thesis "Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict" at the University of Basel.
26.05.2018 Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "'A Moment': Boasian Aesthetics and the Phenomenon of Historicity" at a conference of the HKW Berlin in the context of the exhibition "Neolithische Kindheit. Kunst in einer falschen Gegenwart, ca. 1930."
09.-14.07.2017 A. Elisabeth Reichel does archival work at the Archives & Special Collections Library at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., funded by the Swiss Association for North American Studies Research Award 2016.
16.11.2017 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "The Poetic and Medial Practices of Boasian Anthropology" at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
13.06.2017 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "Margaret Meads Gedichte zwischen Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit: Ein Forschungsbericht" as part of the lecture cycle "Privatheiten und Öffentlichkeiten" at the University of Freiburg.
08.06.2017 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "Making It New, Differently: Margaret Mead's Poetry" at the Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies, University of Hannover.
04/2017-07/2017 A. Elisabeth Reichel works as an Affiliate at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., on recommendation of Brian Hochman
07.-08.03.2017 A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "From Patterns of Culture to "In Parables": Cultural Representation in the Ethnography and Poetry of Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)" at the workshop Forschungsfeld: Feldforschung. Erkundungen zwischen Literaturwissenschaft und Ethnologie, University of Oldenburg.
04.03.2017 Philipp Schweighauser gives a talk on "Playing Seriously with Genres: Sapir's 'Nootka' Texts and Mead's Balinese Anthropology" at RANAM 50: Discourse, Boundaries and Genres in English Studies: An Assessment, University of Strasbourg.
16-17.12.2016

A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "On Alternating Sounds: From Franz Boas’s Ethnographic Ear to the Poetry of Edward Sapir" at the International, Interdisciplinary Conference Ear Pieces: Listening, Diagnosing, Writing, University of Cambridge.
11/2016 A. Elisabeth Reichel is awarded a 12-month Doc.Mobility Fellowship by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
25.-26.11.2016 International Workshop "Anthropology, Literature, the Senses: Questions of Cultural, Poetic, and Medial Alterity." Guests: Sieglinde Lemke (Freiburg i. B.), Richard Rath (Hawaii), Regina Bendix (Göttingen), David Howes (Montréal).
10.11.2016 Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "Anthropologists at Work: Kunst und Kultur in den USA der 1920er bis 50er Jahre" at the Johann Jacobs Museum, Zürich.
04.-05.11.2016 A. Elisabeth Reichel and Philipp Schweighauser give a talk on "Folk Communities in Translation: Edward Sapir’s Renditions of French-Canadian Folk Songs in Poetry" at the biennial conference of the Swiss Association for North American Studies, American Communities: Between the Popular and the Political, University of Berne.
21.-27.07.2016 A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "An Anthropologist's Paragonal Project: Cultural and Artistic Alterity in the Poetic and Critical Writing of Edward Sapir" (panel: New Perspectives on the Paragone) at the 21st World Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, University of Vienna. 
22.-24.06.2016 A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "On the Poetry of an Early Cultural Anthropologist: Ruth Benedict’s Palimpsestuous Writing" at the 10th MESEA Conference, Cultural Palimpsests: Ethnic Watermarks, Surfacing Histories, University of Warsaw, Poland. The paper is awarded an Honorable Mention by MESEA.
22.-25.04.2016

A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "Toward Unnerving the Us: Apollonian and Dionysian Others in the Ethnography and Poetry of Ruth Benedict" at the European Association for American Studies Conference 2016, Constanta.
22.-23.04.2016 Philipp Schweighauser gives the plenary talk "Writing Literature, Filming Culture: The Poetry and Multimedial Ethnographic Work of Edward Sapir, Ruth Fulton Benedict, and Margaret Mead" at the EUCOR English Trinational PhD Symposium, University of Strasbourg.
15.-18.03.2016 A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "'For you have given me speech!'—Gifted Speakers, Inarticulate Others, and Media Epistemologies in the Writing of Margaret Mead" at the Third Bremen Conference on Language and Literature in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts, University of Bremen.
12.01.2016 Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "Netzwerk Mead. Ethnographie als ästhetische und kooperative Praxis" at the Hamburger Gesellschaft für Volkskunde und Institut für Volkskunde/Kulturanthropologie, Hamburg.
06.-08.11.2015

A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on “Sonic Others in Early Soundscape Studies and the Poetry of Edward Sapir: A Salvage Operation.” Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies, Soundscapes and Sonic Cultures in America, University of Graz.
23.07.2015 Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "The sensitive ethnologist - Modernismus und die Kunst des Einfühlens" (panel: Aisthetik-Ästhetik-Medialität: Ethnographische Zugänge zu Ordnungen der Sinnlichkeit) at the 40. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, Universität Zürich.
27.-28.05.2015 Philipp Schweighauser gives two talks on "Wieso schreiben AnthropologInnen Gedichte?" at the SeniorenUni, Volkshochschule beider Basel.
24.04.2015 Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "'Grasping the cultural surplus' – Cultural Anthropology and the artistic field in the 1920s and 1930s" at the International Conference "Framing, Compiling, Sampling - Sensor Practices in Cultural Analysis", Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie, Schweizer Gesellschaft für Volkskunde und Schweizer Gesellschaft für Ethnologie.
10.04.2015 A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on “Mediated Immediacy: Cultural and Medial Alterity in the Poetry of Margaret Mead.” EUCOR English Trinational PhD Conference, University of Upper Alsace.
10.03.2015 Philipp Schweighauser and A. Elisabeth Reichel present the project at the research colloquium of the Department of English, University of Basel.
22.11.2014

A. Elisabeth Reichel gives a talk on "Against the Odds: Grasping Others through the Poetry of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Edward Sapir" at the biennial conference of the Swiss Association for North American Studies.
14.11.2014 Philipp Schweighauser presents the project at the "Looking Forward, 2014" conference of the John F. Kennedy Institute, FU Berlin.
Nov 2014 Silvy Chakkalakal does curatorial consulting for the Johann Jacobs Museum (JJM), Zürich; six weeks archival work for the JJM at the Motion Picture Division and the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
15.11.2013 Silvy Chakkalakal features as an expert in the WDR radio feature „Der Todestag der amerikanischen Ethnologin Margaret Mead“ by Matthias Eckoldt.
Jun-Aug 2013 Silvy Chakkalakal does archival research at the Margaret Mead Collection, South Pacific Ethnographic Archives, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., funded by  Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie, University of Basel
30.11.2012

Silvy Chakkalakal gives a talk on "Ethnographie als ästhetische und aisthetische Praxis – Kulturelle und mediale Alterität in den Arbeiten Margaret Meads" at the Symposium "Zwischen Objekt, Text, Bild und Performance: Repräsentationspraktiken ethnographischen Wissens," Gesellschaft für Ethnographie (GfE), Berlin
since 2012 Silvy Chakkalal is the reference person for the research cluster "Anthropologie der Sinne, der Medialität und der ästhetischen Praxis," Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie, University of Basel