Hosting four-field workshops on publishing

Throughout this year, I’ve been working Dr. Damani Partridge on a variety of projects focused on reducing inequalities in the anthropological graduate experience, supported by a Student/Faculty Ally Grant from my university (not a huge fan of that name). My current focus is setting up a series of informal workshops on publishing in each of the four subfields; these are part of a series discussing topics that are typically part of the “hidden curriculum,” to which students have varying levels of access depending on their race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, nationality, disability status, and a slew of other factors. Our hope is that by talking about these topics in an organized setting to which all are invited, we can do a little bit to help level the playing field, which could have impacts on student success as we move through our graduate careers and beyond.

Dr. Partridge and I decided it would be best to offer these workshops separately for each subfield, since expectations and practices around publishing can vary so much. At the socio-cultural workshop I hosted last week, for example, I was struck by how different publishing rates for grad students were in that area of study compared to archaeology. I can’t imagine going onto the job market unpublished, but in socio-cultural anthropology that seems to be quite common!

These workshops are also timely for me personally—I submitted my first journal article a couple of weeks ago and am waiting with bated breath to hear back from the editors. The article is about the use of lithic analysis to better understand sedentary, agriculturalist groups in prehistoric Peru, a topic that I’ve come to explore through my collaborations with other scholars working in Chachapoyas, Peru, where the Ceramic Period is typically the focus of research.  With the archaeology publishing workshop coming up, I’m looking forward to getting some advice on navigating the review process.