Illinois University Professor to Discuss Ethnicity, Race and Class at VMU

On Thursday 13 October, 6 p.m., professor Jane Adams from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA) will give a seminar at VMU  (K. Donelaičio g. 52, Room 309) titled Shifting Realities of Ethnicity, Race & Class in the U.S.: Social Memory & Every-Day Life Perspectives.

The United States’ founding constitution addressed relations with American Indian tribes, conflicts between state economies built on free and slave labor, and conflicts between urban and rural, production and commerce. It developed as a "nation of immigrants" churned by rapid industrial development, fought a bloody civil war, and was repeatedly swept with religious revivals followed by large scale class struggles and moving after WWII into a position of global dominance, transformed in the post-communist era by "globalization" and "neoliberalism".

The founding institutions and their meanings within everyday life have, therefore, undergone continual, sometimes fundamental, transformation. American anthropology has itself been an important actor in contests over social meaning. In their disciplinary efforts to develop conceptual tools to comprehend the daily life of different ethnic and racial groups, anthropologists’ work has contributed to the memory and meaning-making in the groups they have studied and in the larger society.

The seminar is organized by the Centre for Social Anthropology at VMU Faculty of Social Sciences.