What I Learned Today

http://www.pctrailruns.com/SF1Day_Webcast.htm

Time

I haven't delivered an update lately... to anyone, anywhere. More accurately, I haven't been able to. I have been seriously ill since my return to the States in March. Enough said on that point, it's not worth or ready for discussion. But even though I have been prevented from reaching out, and my life has looked pretty much like a sum total of the pictures on the left, I have been thinking of and missing every one of you... and have been wanting to tell you that. So I'm telling you now. I love you, and I'm working on it.
~GV

Anthropology Professor

I am just loving my Anthropology professor; her background is incredible, and her current work with the Austin/HIV Planning Council an especially interesting twist given what my goals are with future work. Here's her bio:

Dr. Jennifer Price holds a BA in Cultural Anthropolgy from Macalester College, an MA in Cultural and Biological Anthropology from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. from the U.C. Berkeley/U.C. San Francisco Joint Program in Medical Anthropology. She has conducted research among diverse groups including Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees, ethnically diverse institutionalized elderly, U.S. medical students, rural Malawians (sub-Saharan Africa) and rural Maasai families (in Kenya) focusing on a range of issues including reproductive health, dietary practices, blindness, HIV prevention, family planning, and emergency contraception awareness. Dr. Price currently teaches in the Anthropology Departments at Foothill College and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The courses she teaches at Foothill -- Cultural Anthropology and Peoples of Africa in fall/winter/spring quarters and Medical Anthropology in summer -- are all online, so if you either need credits or are just interested in the subject(s) I am finding her to be an awesome wealth of knowledge and an excellent guide through the complex layers of African studies.

Hope

"With no pain, there is no struggle, no struggle, no rewards, and if no rewards, then why bother living at all?"

Peoples of Africa

The anthropology course I am taking this quarter focuses entirely on the continent of Africa, where my heart tells me my work is and whose culture, history and anthropological heartbeat I realize I (as I'd venture to say the majority of Americans) know less than I should. So I'm looking forward to the course. Here's the description:

This 4-unit course is a survey of Africa through the study of cultural anthropology. Issues addressed include: the historical development of Africa; popular American (mis)perceptions and portrayals of Africa and Africans; patterns of social organization, family, and kinship; political organization; traditional subsistence patterns; present economic conditions and ties to the global economy; conceptual systems; health and disease; popular culture; and social change. The course draws upon classic and contemporary anthropological research, research from other disciplines, ethnographies, and literature by African writers. A case study approach will be used for some topics allowing in-depth analysis of particular African societies.

Here's the reading list:

Understanding Contemporary Africa, 3rd edition by April and Donald Gordon.
2001. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
2002. Seattle: Seal Press.

The Dark Child: The Autobiography of an African Boy by Camara Laye
1954. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Singing Away the Hunger by Mpho Matsepo Nthunya
1996. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

...and DVD list:

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. 2002. Director: Lee Hirsch.

Ghosts of Rwanda. 2004. Frontline.

Sometimes in April. 2005. Director: Raoul Peck.