The number of future linguistic anthropologists who worked with Evon Vogt is rather impressive, besides the obvious ones, Victoria Bricker, Gary Gossen, John Haviland, and Robert Laughlin, you also had Donald Bahr, Michelle Rosaldo and Keith Basso

Fanning

I still can't believe this was a real book

The book was better

Enough with the "gotcha" attacks like the recent firing of a Texas A&M instructor. Let professors teach. Let students learn, writes Pauline Turner Strong. | Opinion

Time to watch Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious. RIP Robert Redford www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

The light

Good morning friend

I was reminded today that Margaret Hodgen was fired from UC Berkeley for refusing to sign a loyalty oath in 1950, she was eventually reinstated, but she took early retirement; also this is a brilliant book

I'm very proud of this paper, now published in Anthropological Linguistics: "Alfred Kroeber’s Documentation of Inuktun (Polar Inuit)," a study of the earliest substantial documentation of Inuktun (NW Greenland) and what it shows about Inuit dialects and change. muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Arthur Sze has been named the new U.S. poet laureate. He succeeds Ada Limón, who has held the position since 2022. During his term as poet laureate, Sze plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages. Read more: at.pw.org/ArthurSze

Exciting new issue of Anthropological Linguistics is now available (and open access). With articles by Andrew Garrett, Julie Marsault, and Morgan Siewert and a book review by Anthony K Webster muse.jhu.edu/issue/55603

For those of us who knew Leila, it's nice to see this posthumous chapter in the new volume of History of Anthropology Annual

Into the pines

"Whatever ethnography is, it consists in a disciplined attempt to fathom other people's understandings of themselves, and to make explicit how it is that these understandings give shape, pattern, and meaning to their behavior."--Keith Basso

Mist

Dreaming of autumn

For the very first time, the History of Anthropology Interest Group of the @americananthro.bsky.social will be awarding a prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper in the field. Deadline to submit papers is September 26, 2025. Details here: histanthro.org/news/announc...

"Reading [Basso's] 3 books alongside the the 4 volumes of Lévi-Strauss's Mythologiques is a study in contrast between richly detailed, meticulously documented ethnolinguistic analyses of mythic narratives...& a philosophical analysis ofNative American mythology as a prop for intellectual gymnastics"

I never get tired of someone suggesting, since I'm interested in Navajo poetry, that I should take a look at The Diné Reader; I usually thank them and tell them it sounds fantastic

It was amazingly 30 years ago that I started graduate school, one of the first articles I read in graduate school was this paper by Joel Sherzer, that it had a profound influence on me is an understatement, I ended up going to UT Austin to work with Joel for my dissertation

I am continually impressed with my late colleague Jonathan Hill's productivity as a scholar, here another recent chapter by Hill

In honor of Graham Greene, revisiting Barb Meek's insightful discussion of his role in Maverick On Relanguaging: From Documentation to Decolonization escholarship.org/uc/item/0cd8...

Next week is our Oral History Project Global Week! Grab a mentor, colleague, or friend & ask them about their path in anthropology. No fancy equipment needed, just curiosity. Form, instructions, & release: appliedanthro.org/oral-history-project-global-week/ We can’t wait to hear your stories!

Reading this book, and it has some very good chapters, but it also feels like a book from another era, and not just because it has a chapter by Terence Turner, it feels like a book from another time, and a time that could not last, or could have, but didn't

Morning reading "Often Confused as”: Contestations of Colonial Place Making in the Yukon Territory, Canada By Martina Volfová

"I know that it is said in Fleet-street that poetry is dead. But this only means that it is dead in Fleet-street. Poetry itself cannot die."--Thomas Hardy (1912)

"When anthropology departments decide not to have a linguistic subfield, thinking that they don’t need one, their students tend to take language for granted, identifying it with a vague notion of 'discourse.'"--Alessandro Duranti

I heard pinker has a new book, so I bought this book by Geoffrey Kimball instead, because I'm interested in language and culture and empirical research, I also respect serious scholarship

It's the lack of pines in Austin that always reminds me that I'm just passing through there, it'll never be my home

Was reminded of The Big Chill today and was curious if any of those fictional Michigan students would have taken an anthropology class with either Eric Wolf or Marshall Sahlins

As seen in the Carbondale Times. I'm old enough to remember when SIU had a department of anthropology

Whip it

Making donuts

In the canyon

White House ruins at Tséyi'

Ives Goddard has passed away. This is my favorite paper by Goddard. I should add that when I was editor of Anthropological Linguistics, Goddard was a reliable reviewer. His reviews often suggested ways a paper could be improved. They were constructive reviews.

That time Ives Goddard and Michael Silverstein went wandering the streets of New Orleans

"Those who have thought that decontextualized collections of animate nouns directly reveal the mental culture of the Algonquian Other on its own terms seem to have been describing instead a projection of their own culture."--Ives Goddard

Tségháhoodzání

My blog post for the SLA blog theme on invisibility linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2025/08...

Window Rock

Big show tomorrow

Old Town

I'm sorry to hear of the passing of Robin Lakoff, hugely influential. The first work of hers I encountered was Talking Power, which we read in an undergrad class for Myrdene Anderson

As seen at the lake

Found a stray shower

Reading about that time Dashiell Hammett gave a young Keith Basso a crossbow as a gift

My favorite Whorf story "Often, as we approached the house, we could hear Sapir playing piano. There was always much lively talk, and usually there was music. On one of these evenings, Ben Whorf and his brother Richard sang Irish songs to Sapir's accompaniment"--Stanley Newman