Elizabeth Ferry presents the XLII Journal of Anthropological Research (JAR) Distinguished Lecture, “Glitter, Grit and Graphics: How do the gold and gold market look from the perspective of a historic Mexican mining city,” on Thursday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the UNM anthropology Lecture Hall, room 163.

Ferry will also be hosting a specialized seminar at noon Friday, Nov. 19 in anthropology room 248 on “Materiality and Value in Gold Markets: Mexico, Colombia and the UK.”

Both events are free, wheelchair-accessible, and open to the public.

Ferry, who has an anthropology Ph.D. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. cum laude from Columbia University, is a professor of anthropology at Brandeis University. She is the author of four books on commodities in Mexico, author of 15 journal articles and book chapters, as well as of numerous book reviews, comments, popular publications, blogs and poems. She has presented lectures and papers at many universities and professional meetings in the U.S., Latin America and Europe.

For the JAR Distinguished Lecture, Ferry will explore how Guanajuatenses, miners and others view the recent gold market, and how it affects their sense of the city’s history and self-conception. The case of Guanajuato provides insight into how changing values of precious metal commodities affect the places around the world, including New Mexico, from which those commodities come, in complex social and material ways.

For the specialized seminar, Ferry will provide a more in-depth discussion of her current book project, which looks at the ways in which people participating in gold markets –– miners, mining executives, fund managers and commodities researchers – view the relationship between gold as a physical object and other financial assets based on gold. She will draw on examples from Guanajuato, as well as from Marmato, Colombia and the World Gold Council headquarters in London.

The Journal of Anthropological Research has been published quarterly by The University of New Mexico in the interest of general anthropology since 1945. The current editor-in-chief is Lawrence G. Straus, Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

 To subscribe to the Journal of Anthropological Research visit their website. For information on the JAR Lecture series, call 505-277-4544.