Association for Political and Legal Anthropology

The APLA Board invites individuals who are students in a graduate degree-granting program (including M.A., Ph.D. and J.D.) to send stand-alone papers centering on the analysis of political and legal institutions and processes. Topics may include the State; citizenship; civil society; colonialism and post-colonial public spheres; nationalism; cultural politics; multiculturalism; cosmopolitanism; globalization; immigration and refugees; resistance; religious institutions; and communicative media. We encourage submissions that expand the purview of political and legal anthropology and challenge us to think anthropologically in new ways about power, politics and law.

APLA awards a cash prize of $350.00, plus travel expenses of up to $650.00 if the prize winner attends the 2012 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (San Francisco) to receive the prize in person. The prize winner will be announced in Anthropology News, and the winning paper will be published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

Authors must be enrolled in a graduate program through at least May 1, 2012. Papers should not exceed 8,000 words (including notes and references) and should follow the style guidelines of PoLAR: http://www.aaanet.org/publications/guidelines.cfm

Submissions and questions should be sent to Erica Bornstein at elbornst@uwm.edu.

Please submit papers as PDF attachments. Information (including a list of past winners) is also available at http://aplaorg.org/about/prize/

Deadline: 15 June 2012

At the beginning of February, PoLAR launched its Digital Editorial Fellows (def) Program for graduate students interested in enhancing their knowledge and experience in the areas of academic publishing and digital studies. The program is part of an effort to expand PoLAR‘s virtual presence and to foster dialogue among members, while continuing APLA’s tradition of graduate student mentorship in the field. Working with Online Content Editor, Kate Henne, Fellows receive specialized readings about digital publishing and anthropology, develop themes for virtual issues, initiate new spillover conversations, and collaboratively create initiatives for online content.

Our inaugural cohort is made up of the following students:

- Siva Arumugam (Columbia University)

- Natasha Pushkarna (University of California, Irvine)

- Eduardo Ramirez (Australian National University)

The new PoLAR interface will be online in May, so keep an eye out for further updates!