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Announcing
The 2014 Skomp Distinguished Lecture

"Fixing Connections:
Repairing Language in the Culture of Cell Phone Use
among Millennials in Washington DC"

Dr. Joel C. Kuipers

Professor of Anthropology & International Affairs
George Washington University
 
Monday April 28 at 5:15 pm

Business School Room 219
Reception to follow at the Mathers Museum

With over 6 billion handsets in use, cell phones are one of the most iconic technologies of the current era. An interdisciplinary ethnographic and linguistic study currently underway at GWU and the Smithsonian is investigating how these devices are used among so-called millennials in the DC area. By focusing on contexts of repair--both material repair of actual devices and verbal repair of dropped or misunderstood connections--we are examining the implications of this media technology for communicative and social relationships. The lecture will describe the project, some of its proposed theoretical and ethnographic implications, and provide some preliminary examples.
 

ABOUT THE SKOMP LECTURE

The Skomp Distinguished Lecture Series in Anthropology is made possible by an endowment provided to the Indiana University Anthropology Department in 1983 by David Skomp (AB 1962; MS 1965).  Mr. Skomp studied under the direction of Dr. Georg Neumann.  He left the remainder of his estate for the use of the Department.  The Skomp Endowment currently provides support for anthropology students in the form of fellowships, summer field research grants, dissertation-year fellowships, and distinguished lectures such as these.