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anthony k webster🐿

@ethnopoetics.bsky.social

1.4K followers 400 following 870 posts

linguistic anthropologist, linguistic relativist, philologist, humanist, kayaker, tree grower, midwesterner, purdue alum

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · Nov 16

If you're interested, for those that I don't know, here is a thread with some open access articles I've published on Navajo poets and poetry

The art of failure in translating a Navajo poem

journals.openedition.org/jsa/14602

The art of failure in translating a Navajo poem

The pun, or to use a more erudite, and perhaps more precise term – paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable.Roman Jak...

journals.openedition.org

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 4h

"If you ask about a particular feature for a particular person you get a precise answer...Edna pointed out that Nancy's family...was from Baker...and that the suffix was typical of speakers from this area. Edna was able to specify which words the suffix could be used with"--Wick Miller

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 15h

In which I interview Miki Makihara and Juan Rodriguez about their book Language and Political Subjectivity: Stancemaking, Power and Politics in Chile and Venezuela

campanthropology.org/2025/10/13/m...

Miki Makihara and Juan Luis Rodríguez on their book, Language and Political Subjectivity

Tony Webster: I want to say how much I enjoyed reading your book Language and Political Subjectivity: Stancemaking, Power and Politics in Chile and Venezuela. It’s really a wonderful and thou…

campanthropology.org

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 1d

One of the more satisfying things about being an academic is seeing your students publishing good work

The Deer Farmer: Authority, Generation, and Improvisation in Nishnaabemwin
Morgan Siewert

muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 1d

Honestly had no idea Diane Keaton was in the godfather movies, I've never been able to get through any of them

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 1d

Certainly, if you're selling your book, you can go on any podcast you want, but if you go on a podcast by the likes of Razib Khan or Richard Hanania and normalize them, then I can't imagine ever buying or reading your work, and tbf, I probably wasn't your audience anyway

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 3d

That time the light was just right in southern Illinois

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 5d

Revisiting this paper by Richard Emerick, he taught the first anthropology class I ever took in college

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 5d

Morning light

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 5d

Great talk by Will Wilson today

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 6d

The Paramount is a beautiful venue, and the show was wonderful

Mike Scott @mickpuck.bsky.social · 6d

Four favourite venues from our North American tour: Lensic Theatre, Sante Fe; Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas, The Paramount, Austin & Aladdin Theatre, Portland.

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 6d

The Paramount

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 6d

"All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen."--J.L. Carr

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 8d

“There’s a value in (being) offline, and I think we sometimes confuse ourselves by thinking, since so much is online, that the world is online, but the world isn’t online, right? The world is still here in the physical space that we inhabit and we engage (with),” Webster said

Professors, go offline

Senior columnist Arista Rail argues that professors should offer offline aspects as part of their class.

thedailytexan.com

Reposted by anthony k webster🐿

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 10d

The Irish language is a joy not a burden: in what other tongue is a penis a wild carrot? | Una Mullally

Record numbers of pupils are seeking opt-outs from compulsory learning. This is misguided – Irish is a portal to a world of imagination, says journalist Una Mullally

www.theguardian.com

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 9d

Evening reading, Juliana Barr's
There’s No Such Thing as “Prehistory”: What the Longue Durée of Caddo and Pueblo History Tells Us about
Colonial America

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 10d

So now I've done that

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 10d

The Paramount before the show

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 11d

"Nouns denoting abstractions such as old age, hunger, disease (or its symptoms), 'germs', emotions, or other things of which no action is seen other than effects. You may find it of some comfort to know that in Navajo old age cannot kill you. You may only die of it"--H. Creamer

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anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 11d

Hayek's Bastards was very good

The New York Review of Books @nybooks.com · 11d

Our 10/23 issue is now online, with @jacobweisberg.bsky.social on deep fake news, Elaine Blair on feministskaya istoriya, Andrew Katzenstein on Pynchon, Suzanne Schneider on Hayek’s bastards, Jay Neugeboren on the working homeless, Ariel Dorfman on Pinochet’s Nazi, and more.

October 23, 2025 Issue

Table of Contents

buff.ly

Reposted by anthony k webster🐿

AAUP chapter @UT Austin @utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 11d

www.texastribune.org/2025/09/30/t...

Texas colleges launch course reviews amid push to limit gender identity instruction

After a viral video stirred controversy at Texas A&M, Texas Tech ordered course adjustments while other university systems like UNT and UT launched reviews. It’s unclear what the reviews will look for...

www.texastribune.org

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 11d

"Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labour of reassembling what has been scattered."--John Berger, The Hour of Poetry

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 12d

I saw Jane Goodall give a talk at Purdue long years ago, and, of course, as an undergrad I watched the famous documentary. Remarkable life. RIP

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 12d

Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91

Jane Goodall Institute says ‘tireless advocate’ for natural world died in California during US speaking tour The world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91, her institute has said. The Jane Goodall Institute announced that she had passed away of natural causes while in California as part of a US speaking tour. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 12d

"Example 2 contains the syllables 'ha le ya le ye ya' which is said to stand for the sound of water as it turns to steam when sprinkled on the hot stones in the sweathouse"--Leanne Hinton, Vocables in Havasupai Song

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 12d

They clearly meant metaphorically 😉 Yeah, it's all pretty terrible

anthony k webster🐿 @ethnopoetics.bsky.social · 12d

I admire Beverly Crum's devastatingly quiet critique of Julian Steward's inability to see Shoshoni people as fully human, rather he could only see them through a "gastric" lens and, in so doing, missed their verbal art and the possibility of joy and delight in their lives