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| Additional Resources |
 | Overview |
| Sheldon Scheps Memorial Library |
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| Sheldon Scheps Memorial Library |
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The Sheldon Scheps Memorial Library
at the Anthropology Department
Room 457 Schermerhorn Extension
Sheldon Scheps Memorial Library is named after a graduate student in Anthropology, who died while in residence in the Department. Sheldon was well known on the Columbia campus and was enormously popular with staff, faculty and students. When he died his family provided funds to start a student library, and over the years faculty and alumni have donated many books and journals to this facility. The library is for the students and is staffed by graduate students in the department.
Scheps has two functions: as a reading room for graduate and
undergraduate students and as the host for the Friday Seminar Series. Both are
overseen by the faculty advisor, aided by work study students. Scheps operation
is monitored by students of the department in this order:
1) Incoming
Ph.D. students (provided that the cohort is large enough).
2) M.A.
students eligible for work study.
3) M.A.
volunteers non-eligible for work study (they receive a modest compensation
depending on need and availability of funds).
4) Volunteer
Ph. D. students who have finished their course requirements.
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Reading Room: This is the fundamental function of Scheps. The
reading room operates every day, please see hours posted below (Fridays to 12:00)
except for weekends, starting the third week of classes and ending the last day
of the reading period in May. The Reading Room stays closed during the Boas
Seminar, the Friday Series Seminar, and during all University Holidays.
The reading room houses books, journals, MA Theses, Ph.D.
Dissertations, and holds course packets, that can be broadly taxonomized and
classified as follows:
Books: All the
books are taxonomized geographically (Americas,
Africa, the Middle East, Pacific Islands, the Subcontinent, Europe)
and books under these categories comprise ethnographies of historical
importance. These books are found on the shelves that flank the two seminar
tables. On the reading stand are current periodicals, current reading packets,
and very old books (mainly ethnographies and travelogues up to the 1930s). On
the back shelves are the following categories: History of anthropology, Theory,
Gender and Feminism, Religion and Magic, Race, Paradigms, Anthropology and
Psychoanalysis, Mass Media and Performance Theory, Theory of War and Resistance
Movements.
Journals: We have
almost complete collections of all the major journals (AA, AE, Cultural Anthropology,
Current Anthropology), a decent number of issues of theory journals (Critical
Inquiry, Daedalus, October, New Left Review, Journal of Philosophy), and a few
errant issues of area-specific or theme-specific journals.
Ph. D. and Master’s
Theses: Master’s Theses are placed in the glass bookshelf in the far end of
the reading room, and Ph.D. Dissertations are all around the top shelves of the
bookcases.
Reading Packets:
Current reading packets are placed in boxes on the reading stand. Copies of
past reading packets can be found in the wooden file cabinet under the title of
the course. We ask faculty in the beginning of the academic year to go through
those holdings before they order new packets, and also at the end of the
academic year we ask them to donate their packets to be placed there for future
use and reference.
Cataloguing: The collection has been electronically catalogued.
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Friday Seminar Series: It comprises: Seminars given by faculty
(ours, visitors from other departments, and visitors from other Universities)
who cannot be accommodated in the Boas Seminar and the Wednesday Faculty
Workshop but with whom we would very much like to engage in a critical exchange;
presentations made by graduate students; and screenings of interviews with
major thinkers conducted for the Series Paths
of Thought
(for the Greek Public Television). We have a very modest budget
for a lunch that precedes the seminar. The lunch takes place in the
student
lounge and the seminar itself in the reading room. The seminar starts
at 12:45 and officially ends at 2:00, although the discussion usually
goes on much longer than that.
Since the beginning of the Seminar Series Scheps has hosted the
following scholars (in alphabetical order):
Alex Alland (Columbia University, Anthropology Department)
Gil Anidjar (Columbia University, MEALAC)
Melissa Cefkin (IBM)
Steve Coleman (University of Cork)
Virginia Jackson (The New School for Social Research)
Henrietta Moore (LSE)
Penelope Papaelias (University of Thessaly, Greece/co-sponsored with Hellenic Studies, Harriman Institute)
Mary Louise Pratt (NYU)
Renato Rosaldo (NYU)
Antonio Lauria Pericelli (NYU-Gallatin)
Renata Selecl (LSE/Ljubliana)
Sam Weber (Northwestern/co-sponsored with Architecture, English,
CCLS)
Richard Wilson (University of Connecticut)
Scheps is also organizing colloquia. Radical Politics and the Ethics of
Life is the first in the series with the following participants:
Bill Ayers (UIC)
Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern)
Sally Bermanzohn (CUNY)
Stathis Gourgouris (UCLA)
Georgy Katsiaficas (WIT)
Robin Kelley (Columbia, Anthropology)
Ritty Lukose (U of Pennsylvania)
Beth Povinelli (Columbia, Anthropology)
Felicity Scott (UC, Irvine)
Gayatri Spivak (Columbia, CCLS/English)
Jeremy Varon (Drew University)
The fundamental premise on which the series was
conceptualized was the need to develop an informal space of intellectual
exchange where students and faculty could engage in critical exchange of ideas,
and with each other’s work. For this reason we asked faculty to present
work-in-progress, rather than finished or published work. In terms of the
student presentations we have been able to pair students with faculty who are
not involved with the student’s work.
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