We have concluded the submission process for papers and reviewers for Volume 20 of TOTEM: The University of Western Ontario Anthropology Journal.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed a manuscript this year, and look forward to working with our excellent team of peer reviewers.

This year is the first time TOTEM submissions have been handled electronically, in an effort to streamline the editorial process, to permit supplemental and non-print data submissions, and to prevent waste from unnecessary printing. This has opened our doors to submissions from around the world, and we are pleased to say that we have received 36 manuscripts from undergraduate and graduate students in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

TOTEM is a peer-reviewed, student-run journal of anthropology published annually in association with the Anthropology Society and the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario (U.W.O). TOTEM’s mandate is to publish exceptional works of creative and original research by undergraduate and graduate students in any of the four sub-fields of anthropology.

Current Issue: Volume 19, Issue 1 (2011)

From the Co-Editors

Totem, as The University of Western Ontario’s Journal of Anthropology, has been long dedicated to showcasing original and excellent work within the field of anthropology. Our discipline is wide-ranging and this year’s volume reflects the diverse research undertaken and explored by students.

We accept and encourage submissions from all over, but we remain focused as ever on providing a platform for Western undergraduate and graduate students to not only experience the publication process but the peer review and editing process as well. Our peer reviewers did a fabulous job, and we are grateful to have worked with Zoe Morris and Karyn Olsen, who helped to create and enthusiastically lead the reviewer training sessions.

We’re very proud to be showcasing so much excellent work this year on a large range of topics from a variety of scholars across Canada. These articles thoroughly impressed us with their creativity and strong research components. We received a record number of submissions and we would like to thank all of those who submitted work.

Finally, our biggest achievement this year has been going online. We feel passionately about open access and we firmly believe that this change will benefit Totem and anthropology students worldwide as we are now able to publish more articles with higher impact. We want to thank Dr. Andrew Walsh for suggesting and encouraging our online goals; furthermore, we are indebted to Adrian Ho and the bepress team who have helped us to navigate the website process. This would not have been possible without the Scholarship@Western initiative.

We’d also like to thank Dr. Douglass St. Christian, our unofficial Totem advisor; he has been a great support when we have needed it. We also thank our supervisors for letting us slack in our own work in order to produce this volume! Last but not least, thanks are due to Micheline Piskun, who has been tirelessly scanning archived volumes so that we can have a complete online archive of Totem. She has done an amazing job.

So whether you are a student, faculty member, or newcomer to the field of anthropology, we are confident that you will enjoy the following collection of papers as much as we have.

Julianna Beaudoin and Flannery Surette
Department of Anthropology
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
June 2011