Guerilla Panels at #AAA2012

A lot of people attended talks at the AAAs, but I think I’m one of the few who got to see a guerilla panel. It was awesome.

As I understood it, when the AAAs got more panels than could fit in their massive program, the AALCIG and AAGE’s* sponsored panels got dropped. But, rather than accept the rejection, they opened their Board Meeting with two new scholars’ papers. Three more senior scholars served as discussants for each. And maybe it was because there were more discussants than papers, and maybe it was just ‘cuz those guys were awesome, but it was massively educational. Apart from learning a great deal about what people who really like to work with “life course” care about, here are some other important lessons:

• the AAAs are an opportunity to do the kind of anthro you care about – you can use other methods to get the word out to people, but take advantage and make it happen, regardless of the institutional support
• champagne and chocolate chip cookies go fast
• silent auctions of stuff that people in the group are interested in is a great thing to have happening in the background of a meeting (and my grad student group should totally do something similar)**

In sum, it was pretty great, and maybe I’ll try to be part of making something like that happen again next year. What were your highlights?

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* the AAA Aging And Lifecourse Interest Group and the Association of Anthropology and Gerontology
** I won a video called My Name is Julius in the silent auction. Exciting because it’s about life course (my interest) and hearing loss (my husband’s interest, because of his company, Acudora).