THE 5th UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY DIALOGUES ON CRITICAL SOCIAL JUSTICE & COMMUNITY HEALTH ISSUES

Nyumburu’s Multipurpose Room, University of Maryland, College Park (February 25, 2016, 11:00am-3:30pm)

“Towards a City-Wide Response to the African American Incarceration Epidemic”

In Celebration of Black History Month

The University-Community Dialogue integrates three of the post-retirement projects initiated by University of Maryland Anthropology Professor Emeritus and CuSAG Director, Dr. Tony Whitehead.  These include (1) a portion of the community research component of Whitehead’s Applied Urban Ethnography class; (2) a series of public forums on critical health or social issues in which race plays a significant role in creating disparities or inequities; and (3) a fundraiser for the UMD-HBCU Graduate Mentoring Scholarship Fund initiated in 2014.  

Community research, or ethnographic fieldwork is the cornerstone of cultural anthropology.   Each term the students in Dr. Whitehead’s ethnography class focus on a specific critical health or social issue, learn ethnographic methods for studying the issue, and then do fieldwork in a local community to learn how the issue is being addressed by various service organizations. The U-C Dialogues were created to complement students’ fieldwork efforts. This event also provides an opportunity for organizations to recruit students for volunteer and internship possibilities

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Running Database of Returning Citizen Service Providers in DC

Click Here for driving instructions to University of Maryland's College Park campus. The Nyumburu Cultural Center is located next to the Stamp Student Union behind the bus stops. The Multipurpose Room is room 0130 located on Level P of the Nyumburu Cultural Center. 

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The 4th University-Community Dialogues on Critical Social Justice & Community Health Issues

Nyumburu’s Multipurpose Room, University of Maryland, College Park (November 19, 2015, 1-4:30pm)

“Local Responses to the African American Incarceration Epidemic”

The University-Community Dialogue integrates three of the post-retirement projects initiated by University of Maryland Anthropology Professor Emeritus and CuSAG Director, Dr. Tony Whitehead.  These include (1) a portion of the community research component of Whitehead’s Applied Urban Ethnography class; (2) a series of public forums on critical health or social issues in which race plays a significant role in creating disparities or inequities; and (3) a fundraiser for the UMD-HBCU Graduate Mentoring Scholarship Fund initiated in 2014.  

Community research, or ethnographic fieldwork is the cornerstone of cultural anthropology.   Each term the students in Dr. Whitehead’s ethnography class focus on a specific critical health or social issue, learn ethnographic methods for studying the issue, and then do fieldwork in a local community to learn how the issue is being addressed by various service organizations. The U-C Dialogues were created to complement students’ fieldwork efforts. This event also provides an opportunity for organizations to recruit students for volunteer and internship possibilities

Click Here for Program

Click Here for Registration

Click Here for driving instructions to University of Maryland's College Park campus. The Nyumburu Cultural Center is located next to the Stamp Student Union behind the bus stops. The Multipurpose Room is room 0130 located on Level P of the Nyumburu Cultural Center. 

Hotel Information


PRESENTATION AT THE METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION (MWPHA) WORKSHOP 

Watha Daniel/Shaw Library, Washington, D.C. (June 4, 2015) 

Grassroots Recommendations for Addressing Juvenile (In) Justice in the United States

Healing Cultural Pathologies is a new series of discussion topics initiated by Dr. Tony Whitehead, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology Department, University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Whitehead retired after a 40+ year career as a medical anthropologist, straddling the fields of anthropology and community health. The idea for the series, Healing Cultural Pathologies, came from many years of observations that the long tradition of academic research that supports a public view of African culture and family systems as pathological, or having deficits, particular in comparison to those of Euro-Americans.  In this series, Whitehead argues that it is US society that is pathological, basing his argument in the concept of core cultural constructs, but then evolve into non-beneficial consequences that may have contributed to positive social results at one point in history. He defines cultural constructs as ideational and cognitive formations that are central to a cultural system that tends to permeate other components of that system. He then suggests that in the United States, capitalism, individualism, and racism are three such U.S. core cultural constructs. In this talk, he will address one of the issues that he considers an indicator of the US as a sick society—what he calls its self inflicted incarceration epidemic, in particular the incarceration of youth of color. He then describes the role of racism, capitalism, and individualism in the perpetuation of this epidemic.  After presenting statistical and other data to support his thesis of juvenile injustice in the US as an indicator of a sick society, he provides some of his own recommendations for societal and cultural healing, and then surveys the audience for others.


SYMPOSIUM/WORKSHOP: TOWARD A SCIENCE OF ETHNOGRAPHY, CULTURE, AND COMMUNITY HEALTH

George Washington University (GWU), Milken Institute School of Public Health (MISPH) (May 27, 2015)

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2015 UMD-HBCU GRADUATE MENTORING SCHOLARSHIP FUND'S UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY DIALOGUES AND DONORS' DINNER

Nyumburu Cultural Center, University of Maryland, College Park (April 30, 2015)

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Session at the 2015 Annual Meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA)

Pittsburgh, PA (March 24-28)

Applied Ethnography and CuSAG at 25!

The Cultural Systems Analysis Group (CuSAG) is an applied ethnographic research, training and technical assistance unit at the University of Maryland. This session was organized to celebrate CuSAG’s 25th anniversary. The paper presenters in this session include Whitehead, CuSAG’s founding director reporting on the research system that has informed the design and implementation of most of CuSAG’s past and current projects; and former and current professional and student CuSAG associates and staff members. The second session in this two-part program will consist of a discussion by leaders in the fields of Anthropology and ethnography. 

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