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2025 AAA Annual Meeting
Being Curious: The Art of the Question
A conversation inspired by Nelson Graburn
With Jenny Chio, Zeynep Gursel, Marcia Inhorn, and Kathryn Mathers
Saturday, November 22, 2025, 10:15AM-11:45AM
Meeting Napoleon BR A3 (3rd Floor)
American Anthropological Association 2025 Annual [AAA Link]
Description:
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but this roundtable discussion posits that being curious is a critical method, skill, and, fundamentally, ethical claim in anthropology. But what does it mean today for scholars and students in our discipline to be curious and to hold onto curiosity as an intellectual value? How can curiosity be taught, and why would it be focused on? Is being curious more akin to mere dabbling, risking the warning to "stay in one's lane" rather than to tread on the theoretical or ethnographic toes of others? This roundtable seeks to foster a space and time for thinking with and working through the politics, poetics, and potentials of curiosity in our contemporary moment. At a time when the very questions we ask, let alone the answers we hold true, are perceived by some as dangerous or requiring surveillance, what does it take to continue to insist on curiosity as a fundamental right? We make the argument that one way of thinking about being curious in anthropology is as the art of the question. We are motivated by a desire to collectively remember and extend the work of Berkeley anthropologist Nelson Graburn (1936-2025). However, this roundtable discussion explores not what his conceptual contributions were to the discipline, but rather the fundamental characteristic – curiosity – that defined his intellectual worldview. You do not need to have ever met Nelson Graburn or read his work to come to this roundtable; all are invited. Being a Graburn student had only one real requirement: being up for conversations with anyone and actually listening to them. In retrospect, it was a tall order. Curiosity is infectious. Curiosity is emboldened by company. Many scholars are remembered by their scholarly contributions: the core concepts they coined, or the theoretical apparatuses they constructed. But within and beyond his scholarship on tourism, kinship, museums, and Native arts, Nelson excelled at being curious and in turn, he trained, encouraged, and supported generations of very Graburn curious beings: anthropologists whose research topics range from medical to media anthropology, and whose field research sites span across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. As his students, collaborators, and friends, the participants in this roundtable will begin with brief remarks on how curiosity has shaped our scholarly work and relationships, to be followed by an open discussion on the necessity and problems of being "curious beings" in academia today.
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