Dr. Kristina Jacobsen wins award for an article
The article ‘Don’t Even Talk to Me if You’re Kinya’áanii [Towering House]’: Adopted Clans, Kinship, and ‘Blood’ in Navajo Country” was awarded “the most thought-provoking article in Native American and Indigenous Studies of 2019” by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
“Kristina Jacobsen’s and Shirley Ann Bowman’s article offers an insightful view on the dynamic formation of the Diné/Navajo kinship system (k’é) through the practices of adopting and incorporating in clan formation in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with some glances at the omnipresence of this history in present times. Moreover, this study throws light on how adoption became the terrain for multiform racial, cultural, and geographical crossings in Navajo Nation-building and permanence; as well as on the extent settler-colonial policies on citizenship and “ancestry” historically disrupted this extraordinarily dynamic clan formation process. As a publication authored by a non-Indigenous and a Diné scholar, this article is a sample of collaborative practice and reciprocity, materialized in a well-grounded ethnographic, archival, linguistic, and cultural research. In our view, this study suggests important ways to historically reflect on questions of tribal enrollment, citizenship, identity, belonging, incorporation, and movement of peoples in American Indian life.” ~NAISA Prize Committee, 2019
The Cruelty of Jazz: Toward a Hemispheric Politics of Sound
Rooted in concepts of affect and Empire, this paper argues that jazz operated in various 20th century Latin American settings as a vital touchstone bearing the risks and benefits of urban modernization, hemispheric geopolitics, and transnational cultural production, “cruelly” echoing the United States’ cultural, political, and economic dominance in the hemisphere and beyond.
Music from the Americas presents Versus 8
Percussion music in the Americas is one of the most exotic, visually attractive, and antique forms of expression since pre-hispanic times. Preserving, promoting and creating music for the percussion family of instruments is at the core of Versus 8’s mission through international collaboration with composers, performers, students, and cultural centers that contribute with their resources to the cycle of music, namely: creation, performance, and listening..
A Day in the Life of the Bosavi People
A 90 minute, 4K, 7.1 surround sound eco-rockumentary concert of a day in the life of the Bosavi people and their rainforest home in Papua New Guinea, directed and produced by Steven Feld and based on recordings and images from 1976-2018.