Do you have a stack of recent books you’ve been intending to read for some time, but hardly can find the time to do so? Would you like a community of readers to discuss the book with you? Then become an active member of SEAA Reads.
Next book: Saturday 18 October, from 8 p.m. EST to 9:30 p.m. (by Zoom). RSVP to seaa.americananthro+reads atgmaildot com to reserve your place at the table.
Nan Kim leads the online discussion on Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations. Come and discuss these issues through the lens of Nicole Constable’s ethnography.
Previously: June 21, 2025 for SEAA Reads we talked about Julie Valk’s Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope. (London: Routledge 2021). Summary of sessions.
PURPOSE: To form a stronger sense of community around regular intellectual and social exchange by online book club discussion. Open to all members of SEAA.
DETAILS
- Discussion around a commonly read book, with an emphasis upon more recent publications.
- Held online quarterly at a time TBD (1.5 hours): February, April, June, October.
THEMATICALLY: ethnography as method and as enterprise
- What does ethnography mean today?
- How does ethnography mean?
- What are the limits of ethnography?
FORMAT
- Facilitator assigns reading, arranges for the zoom meeting, leads the discussion.
- In general, author of featured book should not be the discussion facilitator. But if the facilitator decides that it would be of interest, they may invite the author to perhaps the last half hour of the session.
- Limit participants for any given session. The first 20 to sign up are in that meeting’s group, with priority given to SEAA members.
Want to become a session facilitator? Contact Christine Yano, cryano athawaii dotedu
Sign up now! First come first served, since numbers for any one session will be limited to 20.
Look for announcements via the SEAA Google Group, “SEAA List,” linked from the seaa.americananthro.org homepage, right margin. A chronology of titles to date appears below.
FUTURE SESSIONS
February 2025
June 21, 2025
October 18, 2025
BOOK CLUB PREVIOUS TITLES (reverse chronological order since April 2022). Session summaries.
13. Julie Valk 2021 Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope. [host Bill Kelly]
12. Akiko Takeyama 2023 Involuntary Consent: The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry. [hosts Christine Yano, Amy Borovoy]
11. Monica Liu 2023 Seeking Western Men. Email-order brides under China’s global rise. [host Ellen Oxfeld]
10. Ryo Morimoto 2023 Nuclear Ghosts. Atomic livelihoods in Fukushima’s gray zone. [host Bill Kelly]
9. June Hee Kwon 2023 Borderland Dreams, The transnational lives of Korean Chinese Workers [Sojung Kim]
8. Heather Swanson 2022 Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon. [host Christine Yano]
7. Anne Allison 2023 Being Dead Otherwise. [host Dan White]
6. Lynne Nakano 2022 Making Our Own Destiny: Single Women, Opportunity, and Family in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. [host Bill Kelly]
5. Chikako Ozawa-De Silva 2021 The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan. [host Jennifer Prough]
4. Eleana Kim 2022 Making Peace with Nature, Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ. [host Yookyeong Im]
3. David Palmer and Elijah Siegler 2017 Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality. [host Jie Yang]
2. Iza Kavedzija 2019 Making Meaningful Lives. [host Bill Kelly]
1. Sylvia M. Lindtner 2020 Prototype Nation: China and the contested promise of innovation. [host Marvin Sterling]