Haffenreffer Museum Calendar of Events

• Creative Traditions: Crafting Contemporary Indigenous Identity in Taiwan

  February 23, 2012 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM Anthropology graduate student Christy DeLair spent her summer in Taiwan collecting contemporary indigenous craftwork for the Haffenreffer Museum. She will share some of her experiences during this presentation of her research. Dominant narratives suggest that to be indigenous is to be stuck in the past, tied to tradition, and antithetical to ever encroaching development. In this view, indigenous cultures will disappear unless they are preserved in their historic forms and sheltered from the changing world around them. Yet indigenous artists in Taiwan are constantly challenging these preconceptions through their revitalization of local culture and the development of craft industries. In their daily crafting of traditional material culture using new materials, forms, methods, and designs, these crafters are also involved in creating new meanings and shaping new perceptions of indigeneity. While tradition and history remain significant, to be indigenous may also mean to be creative. Reception to follow at the Haffenreffer Museum. http://brown.edu/Haffenreffer Salomon Center, Room 001 Open to the Public, Haffenreffer Museum, First Years, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, For Masters candidates only, For PhD candidates only, Audience, Cross-campus academic topics, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Pre-Law, Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, Parents, YearOfChina, Departments, Exhibits, Lectures, Arts and Entertainment

• Shepard Krech II Lecture: Blue Jays, Toucans, and Starlings: An Undergraduate Folk Ornithology

  April 19, 2012 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM Shepard Krech III Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Brown University and Research Associate, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution The analysis of knowledge possessed by indigenous people of plants, animals, insects, birds, and so on--of "nature knowledge"-- is of long standing interest in anthropology. Far more rare is the analysis of the knowledge of the same or similar domains among people in the West for whom science is the default model for explanation of the environment or nature. In a seminar that plumbed nature and culture by focusing mainly on native people and birds, Brown students undertook brief research projects on conceptual and perceptual knowledge of birds possessed by their peers, other undergraduates. Some results are discussed here: the numbers of birds known, their names, their associations, and the identification of images of common birds and their taxonomies. A folk ornithology emerges that speaks on the one hand to the knowledge of one slice of nature by undergraduates, and on the other to its comparison to similar knowledge possessed by indigenous people. http://brown.edu/Facilities/Haffenreffer/index.html List Art Building, Room 120 Open to the Public, Haffenreffer Museum, First Years, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, For Masters candidates only, For PhD candidates only, Audience, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Pre-Law, Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, Parents, Departments, Lectures

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