Department of Anthropology

  • Newly Launched Praxis Network Includes MSU Anthropology’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative

    We are delighted to announce the launch of the Praxis Network, a new partnership of graduate and undergraduate programs that emphasize innovative models of methodological training and collaborative research.

    Part of the Mellon funded Scholarly Communication Institute’s current work on rethinking graduate education  the Praxis Network provides a closer look at selected programs that have taken unusual and effective approaches to core humanistic and social scientific methods, while also addressing how best to equip budding scholar-practitioners for a range of careers. The goals of each unique program are student-focused, digitally-inflected, interdisciplinary, and frequently oriented around collaborative projects.

    In addition to the Anthropology Department’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative, the Praxis Network features graduate programs at the University of Virginia, CUNY Graduate Center, University College London, and Duke University, as well as undergraduate programs at Hope College and Brock University.  The Praxis Network website, which is the first product of the partnership, takes the important step of sharing information about the commonalities and unique properties of these programs that are making effective interventions in the traditional models of humanities and social science pedagogy and research.

    About the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative

    Since its 2010 launch, the Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) Initiative has been a platform for interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration in the domain of Cultural Heritage Informatics at Michigan State University. Based in the Department of Anthropology, the CHI Initiative has two primary activities. First, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Program is designed to provide an opportunity for selected graduate students to collaboratively develop a significant and innovative cultural heritage informatics project. Through collaborative project development as well as guided instruction, fellows gain the theoretical and methodological skills necessary to creatively apply information, computing, and communication technologies to cultural heritage materials, questions, and problems.

    The second major activity is the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool, an immersive five-week summer program offered every other year to graduate and undergraduate students, as well as existing professionals in the cultural heritage sector. Based on the pedagogical model of the archaeological fieldschool, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool is an intensive theme-based program that leverages collaborative project development to teach skills needed to build applications and digital user experiences that serve the domain of cultural heritage—skills such as programming, media design, project management, user centered design, digital storytelling, and more.

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  • Sabrina Perlman Receives Best Graduate Student Paper Award

    Sabrina Perlman, ANP graduate student, has won the Rita S. Gallin award for Best Graduate Student Paper from the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen). Her award-winning paper is entitled “Native American Women and Diabetes: Voices in Suffering and Solutions.”

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  • Professor Emeritus Dr. Charles E. Cleland receives 2012 Midwest Archaeological Conference Distinguished Career Award

    Professor Emeritus Dr. Charles E. Cleland received the 2012 Midwest Archaeological Conference Distinguished Career Award http://www.midwestarchaeology.org/distinguished-career-award/ from outgoing President George Milner at the Annual Business Meeting. Last year’s recipient was Department of Anthropology Professor, Dr. William A. Lovis.

    MSU Department of Anthropology Professor Emeritus Dr. Charles E. Cleland receives 2012 Midwest Archaeological Conference Distinguished Career Award from George Milner

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  • Andy Upton (ANP Graduate Student) on winning 2nd place in the Annual Student Paper Competition at the 2012 Midwest Archaeological Conference

    Congratulations to Andy Upton (Department of Anthropology PhD Student) who was awarded 2nd place in the Annual Student Paper Competition for his paper entitled: “Preliminary Testing of the Efficacy of Shell Tempering as a Proto-Hominy Processor.”

    Andy Upton pictured (third from left) at 2012 Midwestern Archaeological Conference

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  • Sylvia Deskaj Receives AIA Graduate Student Travel Award

    Sylvia Deskaj (Ph.D. Candidate) has been awarded an Archaeological Institute of America Graduate Student Travel Award.  Sylvia will give a paper presentation at the 2013 Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the American Philological Association (APA) Joint Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. She will present a paper (co-authored by Dr. Anastasia Papathanasiou, Greek Ministry of Culture) entitled “Spatial Analysis of the Neolithic Mortuary Landscape at Alepotrypa Cave, Greece” in the session entitled “Mani: The DIROS Project and Alepotrypa Cave.”  Last summer, Sylvia began work on the DIROS project in Greece, focusing on the massive Neolithic cave complex called Alepotrypa (Fox Hole), where she is studying the distribution of 100s of pieces of scattered human bone.

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  • PhD Candidate Terry Brock Launches “All of Us Will Walk Together” Digital Project

    PhD Candidate Terry Brock Launches “All of Us Will Walk Together” Digital Project

    Although most people think of 17th-century archaeology when they think of St. Mary’s City, its space contains many more stories from later eras.  One is the 19th-century story of slavery and freedom at a large slave plantation.  This story is being told on a digital exhibit and blog, All of Us Will Walk Together (www.stmaryscity.org/walktogether), published by MSU Department of Anthropology PhD candidate Terry Peterkin Brock.  Support for the project has been generously provided by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Ford Foundation, and the SRI Foundation.

    Brock is studying the lives of the slaves and tenant farmers who live at the St. Mary’s Manor Plantation, which stood in what once was the heart of St. Mary’s City.  Brock is conducting the research project under the direction of Historic St. Mary’s City’s Director of Research, Henry Miller, who received his PhD from MSU’s Anthropology Program in 1984.  His objective is to open a window into lives that have been often neglected in the history of St. Mary’s City, yet were vital to the sustainability of its land and people.  Brock traces these African American laborers from the erection of the slave quarters in 1840, through the Civil War, and into the post-slavery era, where they lived and worked as tenant farmers.  One building, a duplex quarter, continued to serve as a tenant home until 1950.  St. Mary’s City is currently in the process of turning this structure into a physical exhibit through funding from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture and the Maryland Historical Trust.  The digital exhibit and blog will include a discussion of the process.

    Visit  All of Us Will Walk Together  to see the findings of Brock’s research and learn about how researchers use archaeology, history, and preservation to discover the African American past.  The website and blog are designed for audience participation: please comment and ask questions on the site, and learn how you can participate by sharing your stories, see if you are a descendant of those who lived on the plantation, or help to preserve the duplex quarter. Follow the project on Twitter at @WalkTogethr

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  • New Book published by Dr William Lovis – The Geoarchaeology of Lake Michigan Coastal Dunes

    New Book published by Dr William Lovis – The Geoarchaeology of Lake Michigan Coastal Dunes


    The Geoarchaeology of Lake Michigan Coastal Dunes, the recently released book coauthored by Drs. William Lovis (MSU Anthropology), Alan Arbogast (MSU Geography), and G. William Monaghan (Indiana University), is the culmination of almost seven years of research and writing.  Published in the Michigan Department of Transportation Environmental Series, edited by MSU alumnus James Robertson, and produced by MSU Press, the volume explores the taphonomy and differential temporal and spatial preservation of archaeological sites in the Lake Michigan coastal dunes.  The research employed innovative approaches to paleoenvironmental reconstruction focusing on the relationship between changing climate and the activation of coastal sand supply.  With funding from the Intermodal Surface Transportation Enhancement Act or ISTEA, through the Michigan Department of Transportation, the research reported in this book has significant policy implications for land managers responsible for the protection of Michigan’s archaeological and heritage resources on public lands at the Federal, State, and more local levels.   The research complements prior work by Lovis and colleagues on site preservation on the alluvial floodplains of southern Michigan.

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  • Anthropology PhD Student Meskerem Glegziabher awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad

    The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to announce that PhD Student Meskerem Glegziabher has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad award

    Her research project is entitled “India Rising: Understanding Development, Gender and Urban Poverty Alleviation in Delhi’s Jhuggi Jhopris.” She will be conducting ethnographic and archival research in Delhi, India and will examine contemporary development and women’s empowerment initiatives that target Delhi’s slums by government agencies and NGOs and examining how understandings and applications of broader notions of gender, identity, and belonging bear upon the structure of these development initiatives and how such understandings rest upon and engender differential conceptions of citizenship in Delhi and impact ultimate access to public space and basic resources.

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  • Anthropology PhD Student Emily Riley awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad

    The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to announce that PhD Student Emily Riley has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad. Emily’s research, entitled “The Fight Against Wastefulness’: Legal and Political Engagement in Senegal,” will investigate the legal and political efforts for social change in Senegal, specifically examining the history and current impacts of the law of 1967 that reprimands excessive spending for family ceremonies and subsequent campaigns to revive it. Emily will examine the state, religious, and non-governmental intersections regarding the law, and will then analyze them in relation to broader questions of economic development, gender relations, social change, fiscal policy, and state-citizen relations.

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  • Department of Anthropology Sponsors Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on Migration

    The Department of Anthropology is happy to announce that it will be sponsoring Migration without Borders, an interdisciplinary graduate student conference on migration at Michigan State University on October 5th & 6th.

    This conference aims to facilitate and foster an interdisciplinary, trans-institutional cohort of scholars interested in issues of migration and mobility. Panelists are scholars at various stage in their graduate careers, working on a plethora of thematic, conceptual, spatial, and temporal aspects of migration, from numerous disciplinary perspectives and regional backgrounds. Topics include the intersection of migration with health, youth, the state, gender, and development.

    Attendance at the conference is free and open to the public.

    For more information, please visit the conference website at http://migrationconferencemsu.wordpress.com

     

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