Anthro 489 Contemporary Theory in Anthropology (Prof. Nakamura)

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Journal Archive Project

A major portion of your grade will come from your participation in the Public Anthropology Anthropology Journals Project. You will have to summarize 6 journal articles over the course of the semester. This year, we are summarizing:

• Current Anthropology, 1978 (vol 19, 22 articles)
• Current Anthropology, 1982 (vol 23, 28 articles)
• Human Organization, 1993 (vol 52; 40 articles)

Directions on how to write the summaries can be found on the Public Anthropology web site. For each article, you will be working with a peer reviewer who will be checking and commenting on your article. You will jointly be held responsible for each article summary.

Remember: I will be grading you primarily on your understanding of the author's position within the discipline of anthropology and the theoretical contributions of the paper. Don't get bogged down in ethnographic detail, find what makes the paper interesting to people outside of the narrow subject/geographical area.

Schedule

Half of the class will be writing a summary each week while the other half works on reviewing the summaries. The class has been split into two groups, Group A and B.

This is how it is going to work:

• GROUP A:
• The first set from Group A are due Tuesday September 16th in class. A week before then, you should go to the library and make a photocopy of the article you are summarizing for that week.
• The students assigned to do summaries that week will give a copy of their draft summary as well as the photocopy of the article for their peer reviewer in-class.
• Group B reviewers receive the draft articles and work on revisions/comments. Revision comments must be e-mailed back to the authors by 5pm Friday September 19th. Article photocopies should also be returned.
• Group A revises their summaries over the weekend and in-class on Tuesday September 23rd you must give me: 1) the draft summary, 2) the comments you received, 3) your final version, and 4) the copy of the article.

• GROUP B:
• The first set from Group B are due Tuesday September 23rd in-class.
• The students assigned to do summaries that week give their reviewer their summary and a photocopies of the article at that time.
• Group A reviewers receive the draft articles and work on revisions/comments. Those revision comments must be e-mailed back to the authors by 5pm Friday September 26th.
• Group B revises their summaries over the weekend and hands me a final version in class on Tuesday September 30th along with the original summary, the comments, and the copy of the article. On that same day, they receive drafts summaries from Group A and work on commenting on them.

Reviewers should rotate so that you never comment on the same student twice. After my own grading/commenting, you will be asked to forward your reviews to the Public Anthropology website, so keep them on a disk handy.

Summaries will be graded and are worth 30% of your final grade. Each summary is worth 4% of your total grade for a total of 24% with another 6% of your final grade from your commentary reviews of your peer papers. This is incentive to make sure that every summary is the very highest quality possible.

Late assignments will not be tolerated. You will be deducted 10% for not meeting a deadlines and another 10% for each additional day you are late. Authors: please let me know if your reviewer has not provided commentary in time. Reviewers: please notify me if your author has not provided an article photocopy in time.

Please remember that you are participating in a serious academic archiving endeavour. Your summaries will be on the web for all posterity. You should strive to make sure all of your summaries as well as the summaries of all of the students you work with are the best quality possible. Everyone should receive an 'A' for this part of the course assignment.

Orbituaries are extra credit (2%) each.

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