My Blog Reading List (March 2012)

A few friends have asked recently what blogs I read, and where to learn about Cen­tral Asia. I have to admit I don’t fol­low the news in-depth – please send me inter­est­ing tid­bits if you do! – but a sam­pling of some of my favorite blogs and web­sites is below:

 

Gen­eral

1. Shapely Women 

Yep, this is nar­cis­sis­tic in more ways than one. SW’s a blog I started a cou­ple years ago for some… curves­pi­ra­tion? I col­lect art show­ing women in a pos­i­tive way, and I’m always try­ing to develop this. If you’re into art and would have any­thing to say or con­tribute here, let me know!

2. 100 Rea­sons NOT to Go to Grad­u­ate School

About five times a day, I think… maybe I should go back to grad school. And then I read this, and remem­ber why I’m not ready yet. This hasn’t stopped me from dream­ing, but does remind me that I need a depart­ment that’s con­vivial, a school that’s well-regarded, an excit­ing project, and a degree that’s fully funded!

3. The Chron­i­cle of Higher Education

Regard­less of the above, I’m still addicted to read­ing pro­fes­sors’ com­plaints and college-improvement ideas on the Chron­i­cle. Not quite as good as the old RYS, but the forums can get appro­pri­ately snarky…

4. Sav­age Minds 

This is hands-down the best trade blog for aca­d­e­mic anthro­pol­o­gists, with lively dis­cus­sion in the com­ments sec­tion. I read this one reli­giously nerdily.

5. The Browser 

A wide selec­tion of long-form arti­cles from around the net; see also longform.org and longreads.com. I had to take all of them off my feeds, though, because I was read­ing too much in Eng­lish to ever even pre­tend to be study­ing Russian!

6. Anthro­cy­bib 

If you’re at all into aca­d­e­mic com­men­tary on social aspects of Chris­tian­ity (?!), this is the resource for you. Three anthro­pol­o­gists who study Chris­tian­ity (Jon Bialecki, James Bielo, Naomi Haynes) keep a run­ning list of the lat­est pub­li­ca­tions in the field… It’s a great for­mat to keep track of the lat­est pub­li­ca­tions. The guys over at Sav­age Minds have also been talk­ing about doing some­thing sim­i­lar for digital/open-access anthro­pol­ogy.

7. Soci­o­log­i­cal Images

SocIm­ages is light but kind of fun, where they jux­ta­pose adver­tis­ing, video, news, and polit­i­cal images against soci­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives on cul­ture. Kind of like Jezebel.com, but a lit­tle less snarky. Also! I recently guest-posted; look for it

8. The Won­der­ing Minstrels

It hasn’t been active in years, but I keep it in my feed, because some day I mean to go and read back through this beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of poetry.

9. The 99 Percent

Yeah, post­ings are slug­gish now, but in the early years (i.e. two months ago?) this was an engag­ing site where peo­ple would com­plain about their lives in Amer­ica. It made me feel self-satisfied about being in Kaza­khstan every time I looked at it. Umm… maybe that wasn’t the point…

10. Hide My Ass

So this is the sort of thing I use if I need to, say, read a blog about libraries for work, as most blog­ging plat­forms are blocked in this coun­try. This may have been totally embar­rass­ing recently when sales reps pro­jected my browser onto a big screen at the library, and Hide­MyAss is the first thing that popped up in the address bar…

11. EurasiaNet

Far and away my favorite blog on Cen­tral Asia, because it’s thought­ful, to the point, and read­able – and it’s well-designed to be pretty and attention-catching. I’d wel­come hear­ing about other CenA­sia sites you recommend!

12. Shared Talk 

Not an RSS feed, but a great free web­site to meet inter­na­tional pen-pals in almost any lan­guage! Hosted by the Rosetta Stone soft­ware com­pany, you can trade your Eng­lish knowl­edge for their Bul­gar­ian knowl­edge, or what­ever. I’ve met peo­ple through here who are now my colleagues!

 

Friend Blogs

And of course there are friends’ blogs:

Aquil­ing - My super-cool fal­coner friend, Lau­ren, posts pic­tures from eagle-hunting meets around the world. .

Travel by Cas­sidy – Cassidy’s on Ful­bright in Mace­do­nia and is very com­mit­ted about post­ing her expe­ri­ences in Mace­do­nia — with pictures!

Journey2wonder — My mother, and by far my most reli­able com­menter. She also blogs at Lybrook about her edu­ca­tional work in rural New Mexico.

Cyn­thia Werner – One of my most-viewed sites, even though it’s sta­tic, because I can down­load all of my for­mer advisor’s arti­cles here! Today in the library, a stu­dent wanted to research mar­riage cus­toms in Kaza­khstan, and the only anthro­pol­o­gist who had writ­ten about it was her. Props!

Lisa Min - Beau­ti­ful pho­tog­ra­phy by my col­league Lisa, who recently fin­ished up a Ful­bright inter­view­ing Kore­ans deported by Stalin from the far east into, of all places, rural Kaza­khstan… I look for­ward to see­ing what else comes out of her projects!

Finally…
Snob.ru
A col­league rec­om­mended this as a place to read inter­est­ing Russ­ian arti­cles… I’m try­ing to read in Russ­ian, really… but the truth is I mostly end up going back to the same old Eng­lish web­sites! I’m open to any other web­sites you rec­om­mend for good and easy Russ­ian practice!

Any blogs or web­sites you think I’d really like??