March 27-28, 2026
Renaissance Park 909
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Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, professor of religion and anthropology and WGSS-affiliated faculty, and Keanna Smigliani, Operations and Program Manager of the Ethics Institute, are organizing an “Anthropology at the End of Worlds” Conference at Northeastern University in Boston. This two-day conference will bring together invited keynote speakers and regional scholarly panelists who have submitted proposals for panels or papers. Together, attendees will think about how anthropology and ethnographic toolkits might need to change or be reconfigured to remain vital in increasingly challenging conditions of constraint, austerity, and foreclosure that affect our world(s).
“We are in the midst of a crisis of our historical system, and the violence will much increase before we emerge from it. What can
intellectuals contribute?” (Wallerstein 1994). Apocalyptic rhetoric around the end of or crisis in the humanities and social sciences has
long been prevalent in the field of anthropology. In the late 2010s, this language only increased with growing political polarization and
violence, rapid technological shifts to education and healthcare, environmental ruination, increasing social inequalities, and the overall
financial precarity of late capitalism. Anthropologists must address the “vicissitudes of social life in these perilous times” (Stoler 2018).
Concerns about the perilous nature of contemporary life bring with it methodological and theoretical considerations that must be
addressed. How can anthropologists—who learn being in and with communities—continue to work during perilous or apocalyptic times? What happens when access to sites or communities are foreclosed due to political, financial, and social constraints? How can anthropologists navigate the material constraints that are mounting in the higher education landscape and beyond?
Keynote lectures will be given by Dr. Angelo Baca, a professor of anthropology at the Rhode Island School of Design, on “De-Centering the Anthro in Anthropocene: Indigenous Philosophical Perspectives at the End of Another World” on March 27th from 4:30pm-5:45pm, and Dr. Judith Brunton, a scholar of religious studies at Rice University, on “Living in Oil Time: Anxiety and Desire in Petro-culture” on March 28th from 9:30am-10:45am.
Panels on March 28th will feature a variety of anthropology scholars, including Roxana Aras, Lily Chumley, Gal Dafadi, Alison Frisella, Erica Robles, Joshua Rubin, Alisa Sopova, and Fern Thompsett.
RSVP and review the conference schedule here.
